‘Now,’ Kaitar added.
Sevekai’s skin tingled and he thought he detected a slight resonance to the warrior’s voice.
Hreth and Latharek sat down as ordered, as if pole-axed and struck dumb.
‘That’s better,’ said Kaitar. ‘Is that any way to behave when we have guests?’ He turned to Sevekai, who couldn’t stop his flesh crawling nor the itch behind his teeth. ‘You were right.’
‘About what?’ Sevekai asked.
Kaitar pointed to the tip of a craggy rise.
‘She did come.’
Drutheira had arrived with Ashniel and Malchior.
Sevekai gave Kaitar one last look before greeting the witch.
‘Enter, stranger…’ He gave a mock bow, masking his discomfort with absurd theatrics.
Drutheira did not appear to be impressed.
‘We do not have much time,’ she hissed, glancing at the brooding sky overhead. Now he saw them up close, Sevekai thought the coven looked more ragged than his own tattered followers.
‘You’ve been prettier, my dear,’ he said, betraying a mote of concern at Drutheira’s appearance.
‘Like a cold one sniffing blood,’ she spat, seeming not to hear the gibe. Her fingers were thin, almost like bone, and her sunken cheeks reminded Sevekai of a cadaver that had yet to realise it was dead. ‘It has taken all of my power to stay hidden.’
The two at her side bristled at this.
Her power?
Sevekai could almost hear their thoughts, slipping porously through their hateful eyes.
‘The elf woman? I thought we had eluded her years ago.’
Drutheira rounded on him, snarling. ‘She is a mage, idiot! Such creatures cannot be eluded. She has found my magical spoor, tracked me, dogged me without relent.’
‘Then you must flee.’
‘I am fleeing, my love,’ she said, ‘to you. I need you to kill her for me.’
Now Sevekai laughed. ‘And her beast too, I suppose?’ His face hardened. ‘You reap your own harvest, Drutheira. Leaving a stain on that gorge was a mistake, one that will hound you to the edge of the Old World.’
‘Do you know how many settlements I have razed to ash over the last eight years?’ she asked, fashioning a coruscating orb of dark energy in her hand. ‘And my wrath is far from spent.’ The orb writhed as if constricted in Drutheira’s grip, oily tendrils coiling and uncoiling in agony, eager to be unleashed.
Sevekai stepped back.
‘This black horror will strip flesh from bone,’ she promised. ‘I saved your miserable life in that gorge. That dwarf would have killed you all had I not intervened. Now,’ she said, the summoning receding into trailing smoke that left a dark scar on her open palm, ‘the balance of that must be accounted.’
‘What makes you think I can kill her?’
‘You are not fixed in her eye. She won’t see the blade until she’s already dead from its poison.’ She cast another glance skywards, imagining the beat of heavy wings, a shadow overhead…
Sevekai smiled.
‘You are weak, aren’t you?’
Drutheira came close, so only he could hear her.
‘She has hunted me for eight years, Sevekai. I am exhausted,’ she said, with a furtive glance at her predatory cohorts, but they were just as wasted. Drutheira’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She will kill me.’
Appealing to the heart of an assassin is no easy thing but despite their ostensible enmity Sevekai did not want harm to come to the sorceress.
‘I know a hidden path, one that will take us south, beyond the mountains and to the coast. There is a ship waiting in dock that can take us to the Sour Sea and from there we’ll make our way back.’
Drutheira dragged Sevekai close and hissed, ‘I will not make it that far. She must die.’ Her face darkened, blackness pooled in her sunken eyes and a shadow of a grin lifted her features. ‘You have no choice.’
Sevekai threw her off.
‘Another dagger in my back, Drutheira?’ he snarled. ‘You led her here deliberately.’
All of a sudden, the sorceress did not appear so weak or desperate.
‘I’m sorry, my love, but our survival depends on us working together. Our dark lord has decreed it. I need the elf bitch dead. She is interfering with my plans.’
Murderous intent flashed over Sevekai’s face.
‘How close?’
‘A day, if that. It is Malekith’s will that the dragon rider dies.’
The shade shook his head, ‘And here I was thinking all I had to be concerned about was the rain.’
‘And one other thing,’ Drutheira said, keeping her voice low as her gaze lit on Kaitar. ‘That is not a druchii.’
With the coming of the dream, she smelled smoke and heard the crackle of fire…
Cothique was burning.
Liandra ran through the streets, crying out for her mother, desperate to see her father and brothers. She was young, too young to wield a sword or spear. Not like them. They would have killed the raiders, put them to flight, but the warriors defending Cothique were all dead and only women and children remained.
A terrible clamour raked the air, and it took a few minutes for Liandra to realise the sound belonged to gulls, screaming as the air in which they flew was set aflame.
The port was ablaze, half-burned bodies face down in the water from where they’d tried to douse themselves. Quarrels protruded from their backs like spines.
Everything was haze and shadow, muffled by the flames, clouded by the smoke. Liandra coughed, bringing up a ropey phlegm that spoiled her summer dress. She was crawling before she realised she had fallen, hands and knees in the dirt and blood. It sluiced down the streets in a river.
Somewhere, she couldn’t tell precisely in her dark occluded world, a horn was braying. Liandra knew that sound, just as she knew the raiders were taking flight, their black galleons brimming with slaves. Lothern had answered, their ships had come and sent fear running through the hearts of the druchii.
Reaching out, half blind with smoke, Liandra found the edge of a broken cart. She began to crawl beneath
