Maleshi looked at the halfling and dropped the beetle shell to her side with a shrug. “Nice guy, right?”
Cheyenne slowly shook her head. “You’ve got a weird definition of ‘friend.’”
“Yeah, you too. Just another reason I like you so much, kid.” Maleshi winked, then turned to follow the raug through the beaded curtain. She paused briefly to eye the dangling threads at the end. “Huh.”
The halfling waited for the beads to drop back into place behind the Nightstalker. She almost sounds like Mattie again, but I don’t think the Mattie I knew is coming back.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Both Maleshi and the raug Oracle had taken their seats by the time Cheyenne stepped into the huge, dusty living room. She moved gingerly around the frayed pillows and ornately woven cushions scattered across the floor, trying not to look too closely at the dark shadows that flickered across the room when the hanging lanterns flared to life.
Maleshi scanned the piles of soiled cushions with a grimace. “Business must be booming if you haven’t found the time to clean up in here a little.”
Gúrdu waved his clawed hand toward the silver tray on one of the low tables, this one with two hookahs. A thin tendril of smoke rose from the dish at the top of one of the devices, and Cheyenne went out of her way to avoid that table and whatever the raug had been smoking there. The silver tray rose from the table and floated across the room toward the Oracle’s raised platform of a throne. When it settled beside the raug, who was sitting cross-legged on another pile of soiled cushions, the halfling nudged a pillow beside Maleshi with the toe of her shoe.
“It’s fine if you don’t think about who sat down before you,” the Nightstalker whispered.
“Or breathe through your nose.” Cheyenne lowered herself onto the pillow and crossed her legs too.
Gúrdu went through the same weird raug ritual—another bundle of thin twigs dipped into the bowl of water and dragged down the Oracle’s face from his forehead to the underside of his chin. The loud crunch of those twigs between his sharp, stained teeth filled the room. Gúrdu closed his eyes and munched away.
Cheyenne leaned toward the Nightstalker. “Does he have to do that every time?”
“No, but I’ve heard it helps an Oracle see whatever it is they’re trying to see. Little power boost to their system, you know?”
Even with her drow hearing, the halfling could barely hear Maleshi’s words above the crunch of the raug’s messy chewing and the grunting snorts that sounded more like a rooting hog than anything else. “Like the Nimlothar seed.”
Maleshi smirked and shot Cheyenne a sidelong glance. “Branches of the same tree, kid.”
“He’s eating Nimlothar sticks?”
“Not the tastiest treat, probably, but mozzarella cheese sticks don’t pack the same punch.”
The halfling snorted and choked down the small laugh fighting to escape. She shook her head, staring at the base of the raug’s platform. Doesn’t mean I’ll forget about what happened at the portal.
As if the Nightstalker could read her thoughts, Maleshi leaned toward Cheyenne and dipped her chin. “If you have to hold a grudge, kid, I get it. You wouldn’t be the first, and I can handle it. Just try to put that aside while we’re here because I want you to pay attention.”
Cheyenne clenched her jaw. “Is this a lesson you want me to learn?”
“No. Only an idiot commissions an Oracle without a witness.”
“What?” The halfling looked into Maleshi’s glowing eyes as the raug kept munching.
“Don’t get all worked up. He’s not gonna attack me. I think.”
“Great.” Cheyenne turned back toward the platform against the wall and cocked her head. “I’m just here to say I saw the whole thing if he does.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, kid. Prophecies get a little...dicey. I didn’t have the supplies on me to set up a magical camera, but I had you. Listen to what comes out of the raug’s mouth and etch it into your brain. Got it? We’ll have to go back through it if we want to make any sense of his blabbering later.”
The halfling pressed her lips together and fought the urge to step outside into the fresh autumn air and wait for the Nightstalker there. “Fine. But you’re gonna get a bill for personal assistant hours.”
“Ha. I might have to transfer this IOU—”
“Offering!” Gúrdu’s low, gravelly voice thundered across the room.
Cheyenne and Maleshi both jumped a little on their cushions. The Nightstalker sighed and shot the half-drow a perturbed look, then lifted the fractured beetle carapace in both hands and raised it toward the Oracle. “The offering.”
When Gúrdu opened his eyes, they were focused on the shell glinting in the light of the flickering lanterns around them. He flicked his clawed hand toward the Nightstalker, and the black shell rose into the air to drift toward him. Those red claws met around the fragment of the nightmarish in-between creature as he snatched it from the air. Then he gripped the shell with both hands and lowered it into his lap with a low hum. His eyes closed again. “Ask.”
Maleshi took a deep breath and stared at the carapace. “How did the offering’s source break from the in-between into this world, and how do we stop it?”
The raug’s upper lip lifted in a snarl, exposing his stained teeth and the bits of Nimlothar twigs caught between them. “That is more than you are allowed.”
“Saving your life allows me to ask as many questions as I want, Gúrdu. Don’t fuck with me.”
A rumbling laugh escaped the Oracle, but he said nothing more.
The room fell silent. The flames in all the lanterns flickered in a breeze with no source. Cheyenne looked at them just before every flame in every lantern flared to three times its normal height. The low glow of the
