Chall allowed himself to be pulled to his feet—well, he was a big man now, too many ales, so he had to do quite a bit of helping and there was grunting involved all around—but he paused as she tried to lead him up the stairs. “One thing, though,” he said, unable to help himself now, as always, in feeling that he was a charlatan just as she had claimed. For now, as always, he felt that he had messed up the illusion, somehow, felt that there was some terrible flaw in it.
His friends—or, maybe better to call them coworkers—had always given him a hard time about that, about how he always thought there was something wrong with the products of his magic, but they could never understand. A painter might, or a poet, any artist that knew exactly those heights to which their work reached just as they knew that they were inevitably doomed to fail. True, a layman, looking upon their art, might see only what had been done right, but they, like Chall, would know that something was always wrong with it, that it had fallen short somehow, even if he could not pinpoint where the flaw lay. “Do I look like him? Your would-be lover, I mean?”
She grunted. “Don’t look like yourself anyway, and that’s a plus. Now, come on—let’s see about that room.”
***
Two men stalked through the darkness. Great trees loomed up around them, radiating malice, their shadowed limbs seeming to reach for these trespassers in their home, meaning to scoop them up and devour them. One of the men, young, little more than a boy, really, took note of this and was afraid. He walked behind the other, casting furtive glances around him, thinking that he was in danger. He was right to be afraid, for the place where they trod was an old place, one of old jealousies and old scores. It was a place of death, and it did not take kindly to the living.
The man who walked in the front was a big man with wide shoulders, with arms and hands that looked as if they could crush boulders. There was a grim expression on his face, not because of their circumstances, but simply because it was the only expression he seemed to know. This man carried no weapon, yet he exuded a primal energy, a ferocity which only the world’s greatest warriors did, and any who saw him would know that he needed no weapon, for he was one. This one did not seem to take note of the danger they were in or, more likely, simply did not care, for his life had always been one of danger and murder and death, and he had thrived, going on when so many others had fallen.
The men walked. And the forest watched.
Then, the vision shifted, changed, and the men walked through the wood no longer but stood at its very edge, gazing out onto fields covered in pale yellow and brown grass, signs of winter’s coming. Others crouched amongst that waist-high grass, but the boy was still too busy gazing back at the forest anxiously to take note of them. The other man, too, did not notice them, for his gaze was distant, and it seemed that he gazed back at some far different and—by the expression on his face—far worse, time.
And so the two set off into the field, the grass rasping and crunching beneath their feet, and the others—at least fifty all told—waited, positioned so that the two would walk into the midst of them, would be caught unawares and surrounded, cut down by the blades the waiters held ready.
One of those who crouched in the grass was familiar to Chall, and he recognized him immediately. He had been a good man, once—perhaps even a great one—that man, but he, like all things, had changed, and he was that man no longer. He was, instead, something altogether…different.
The big man with the thick rippling muscles and the grim expression was also one he knew, one he had counted a friend, long ago, at least as much as anyone might have counted such a man a friend. He, too, had changed, his dark hair now with specks of gray, but his eyes were the same, eyes so pale blue as to be almost gray. Eyes that showed no compassion and no mercy. Killer’s eyes, Chall had always thought, and looking at them now only reaffirmed that belief. Killer’s eyes, yes, but eyes which did not see the trap into which he and the boy walked, a trap which was only moments away from—
Chall woke with a gasp and a snort. He jumped up in bed, or at least intended to, but there was something—or someone—lying on his ample stomach, and his movement did no more than serve to send that something—or someone, definitely a someone, given the shout of surprise—flying off the bed and onto the floor to land with a clatter and a curse.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” a woman’s voice demanded.
“Not me,” he said, finding it difficult to breathe. “Not me.”
“What?”
“Them!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and afraid. “Don’t you get it? They’re waiting for them, they’ve set a trap and they’re going to walk right into it!”
“Who?” the woman demanded. As she climbed back to her feet, the swirling fog of panic which had clouded his thoughts faded, and Chall remembered that the woman he had so unceremoniously—perhaps even rudely—dumped onto the floor was the owner of the bed and the whole inn in which he found himself. The same woman who, just then, was staring at him like he was a particularly ugly bug she’d particularly enjoy squashing.
“It…never mind,” he said, “i-it doesn’t matter.” But of course it did. It mattered a lot. He had thought that a lot of his feelings, what he now considered his misplaced loyalty, had faded over the years. The big man
