None of the ogres were amused by his antics. The closest one glared into the corridor and snarled before waving a huge, thickly scarred hand at the chamber entrance. A metal door slid out of the wall and cut off L’zar’s view of the room with a sharp clang.
“Hmm.” He chuckled and kept moving. “I expected more of a reaction.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “You almost sound disappointed.”
“You know, I just might be.”
The second chamber they passed was visible only through a narrow slit in the wall, but the magicals’ enraged voices filtering through it into the corridor made it easy for Cheyenne and L’zar to pinpoint where this second gathering was held. The halfling noticed the narrow opening in the passage wall immediately. Nobody considers drow hearing down here when all the drow have been living the high life in the inner city.
“I say we put an end to this now!” A hissing, snarling skaxen woman pounded a fist into her clawed hand. “I won’t stand for seeing that low-life piece of nilsch úcat scum sitting on the throne when the Cycle turns.”
L’zar came to a silent stop in the narrow underground passage when he heard those words. He cocked his head toward the slit in the wall and turned that way.
“Shut your mouth, Raesh.” A huge magical stepped in front of the opening and blocked the rest of the chamber from view. “That’s bordering on treason, and you know it.”
Cheyenne wrinkled her nose at the stench of rotting meat and body odor that wafted into the passage. She looked at L’zar and pointed down the hall.
The drow lifted a finger for her to wait and faced the chamber opening, folding his arms while listening intently to the argument.
“It’s only treason once the new Cycle turns, Folreg,” the skaxen hissed in reply. “You were singing prettily about the unending rule three days ago. Don’t tell me you’re changing your tune now.”
“I don’t sing.” The massive shadow covering the slit in the wall moved aside again, and the thin light from inside the chamber threw a yellow line down the center of L’zar’s grinning face.
“You two need to pull yourselves together.” The high, nasal pitch of the third speaker’s voice made Cheyenne think of nails on a chalkboard. “I’m as prepared to see the new Cycle turn as the rest of us. The Crown’s had Hangivol on its knees for longer than anyone wants to accept anymore. If L’zar Verdys truly returned to take the throne for himself, I say we sit back and watch the threads unfold.”
“If L’zar Verdys came here to sit the throne, he brings the deathflame for all of us!”
The huge magical named Folreg growled. “Just because he set you back a few hundred years with that flight scheme of yours doesn’t mean he’s here to kill his own.”
“Set me back? Set me back?” The skaxen leaped across the chamber in a flash of orange flesh and snarled. “That blood traitor took everything I had! For what? So he could power some fell-damn experiment he stole from the tinkerer in Qi’woc.”
“He must have had his reasons.”
“He only needs one! His own greed and insatiable desire to watch the rest of us flail while he skirts by without consequences.”
“Raesh, I said—”
“So it’s treason! I have nothing left to lose.” The skaxen woman pointed a glinting claw at the unseen magical with the nasal voice and shouted, “You’ve been spending too much time in the Goldsmile dens, Hivara. As long as those stay open, you’d be happy with a radan sitting the throne. If I see that Weaver scum in this city before the Cycle turns, I’ll show him a side of O’gúleesh loyalty he’s never seen before.”
L’zar chuckled and raised a hand toward the thin opening in the wall.
The magicals in the chamber fell silent, and more than three bodies shifted uneasily inside the room. “What was that?”
Cheyenne leaned toward him to mutter, “Don’t.”
“I can’t help it.” L’zar waved his hand at the opening, and the narrow slit widened as both doors slid slowly apart to reveal the chamber beyond. “My name’s been invoked.”
When the doors stopped opening with a shudder and an echoing boom, the trio in the passageway looked on a gathering of over a dozen magicals, all of them crouching in surprise and wariness. Half of them had summoned attack spells in their hands, and all but one of them immediately killed their magic when they saw L’zar Verdys standing in the corridor, his arms spread wide as he gave them that feral grin that had given him such a reputation even in prophecies.
“You called, and I answered.” The drow scanned the shocked faces in the corridor. “I wasn’t aware there was a side of O’gúleesh loyalty I haven’t had the chance to examine, but I have to admit I’m remarkably curious.”
The huge magical who smelled like rotting meat—a cross between the gargoyle-like Golra and a rhinoceros—grunted. “You skaxen moron.”
The skaxen woman’s yellow eyes widened at L’zar, her entire body trembling as she raised a handful of hissing orange sparks in her upturned hand. “How dare you?”
“Me?” L’zar gestured toward himself and chuckled. “I merely want to give you the opportunity.”
The skaxen hurled the ball of sparks at him, intentionally aiming for the space beside his head and the far wall of the passageway instead of the drow’s grinning face. Her spell exploded against the metal wall disguised as stone and crackled across the grooved lines spanning the hallway. Cheyenne and Ember stepped toward each other in the middle of the corridor and stared warily at L’zar.
The drow cocked his head and blinked. “Come now, Raesh. That’s no way to greet an old friend. They were only minor damages. I
