Unfortunately, Luthcheq possesses those in abundance.”
Medrash gave a quick nod. “Indeed. And given that he prowls the entire city and kills the highborn and the low, the prosperous and the poor alike, how would we go about luring him into a snare?”
Jhesrhi frowned. “There might be a way. Places can have a spirit. An atmosphere. Often it derives from their history. They attract a certain sort of person, and certain events tend to happen there.
“Generally speaking,” she continued, “it’s a very weak effect. So weak we never feel the tug. So weak that if you mean to go one way instead of another, you will. The influence can’t change your mind. But if you kept track, you’d find that over the course of a year, or a hundred years, the groups that took each path differed at least slightly.”
“Maybe I see what you’re getting at,” Khouryn said. “But if the effect is as subtle as all that, how can we count on it solving our problem in the next several days?”
“The effect as it occurs in nature is subtle,” Jhesrhi said. “We wizards should be able to infuse a particular location with a negativity more potent than that found in any of Luthcheq’s dueling grounds, slaughterhouses, torture chambers, or what have you. That will cause the Green Hand to gravitate toward that area when he chooses his next victim. And we’ll be waiting there to catch him.”
“But what about the people who live and work in that area?” Khouryn asked. “If I understand you correctly, the new atmosphere will poison their thoughts. They might end up hurting or even killing one another.”
Oraxes sneered. “To the Towers of Night with them. If somebody doesn’t catch the Green Hand, those bastards will come back here to burn and butcher all of us.”
Medrash gave him a level stare. “It’s unlikely that all the people whose minds you’d corrupt hate mages, or would try to slaughter you in any case. But even if they are your enemies, this is a dishonorable way to strike at them.”
“Oh, sharpen your claws,” said Balasar. Gaedynn had never heard the expression before, but he assumed the smaller dragonborn was telling his clan brother not to be so squeamish. If so, then he thoroughly approved.
“If a person isn’t depraved to begin with,” Jhesrhi said, “the influence won’t make him so in just a few days.”
“What about the man who’s right on the edge?” asked Khouryn.
“And what about angry blows and spiteful words?” Medrash asked. “A person doesn’t have to fall into outright fiendishness to make mistakes that will mar his life forever afterward.”
Aoth frowned. “There’s no point debating the morality of it unless we’re sure it’s even possible. In the time we have left, I mean.”
“I think it is,” the aged sorceress said. “It’s not really that complicated, just funneling the raw essence of malice into a place-and this time there shouldn’t be resistance to overcome. We can probably proceed with a ritual as early as tomorrow night.”
“Then I say we go ahead,” said Aoth. “The Green Hand murders people every tenday. The city’s in a panic. Every wizard’s in danger, and the future of the Brotherhood’s at stake. If we can fix all that, it will more than make up for whatever incidental nastiness we cause along the way.”
Oraxes grinned. “Unless somebody finds out about it. Because what we’re really talking about is laying a curse on a part of Luthcheq and the people who live there. And there’s no way of justifying that to fools who already hate sorcery.”
“Then it’s a good thing we all know how to keep our mouths shut,” said Aoth. “Now, I’ve already committed the Brotherhood to this plan. Do the rest of you agree?”
The Chessentan mages exchanged glances, then murmured or nodded their support.
“I still don’t like it,” Medrash said. “But promise me a place among the hunters, and that you’ll lift the curse as soon as we catch the murderer, and I’m with you.”
“Done,” said Aoth. “Now let’s decide where to center the spell.”
“The ropemakers’ quarter,” Khouryn said. “It’s a poor district, with all the ills that go along with want, and a boy died a bloody, pointless death there just a few days back. If you want a place to stink of misery and anger, your work’s already halfway done.”
Aoth and Jet glided over the rookeries and the narrow streets and alleys snaking between them. Aoth was the only rider in the air. Griffons were magnificent beasts, useful for many purposes, but you couldn’t expect ordinary ones to circle endlessly without screeching to one another.
It likely didn’t matter that no one else was aloft. Clouds shrouded the moon, and few lights burned below. Even a dwarf like Khouryn couldn’t have seen much from such a height.
But with his fire-touched eyes, Aoth could. He could even see the taint he and his fellow mages had cast over a portion of the ropemakers’ precinct. It revealed itself as a slow seething inside the deepest shadows.
He wished they could have confined it to a smaller area. That would have made it easier to spot the Green Hand if the magic actually succeeded in drawing him in. It would also have reduced the number of innocents obliviously immersing themselves in filth.
But Aoth didn’t find it all that hard to disregard their plight. He’d done worse things in war. And as far as he was concerned, he was at war now-a war to save the Brotherhood from ruin.
A dark form skulked across a canted tenement rooftop. “There!” said Aoth.
“Where?” Aoth felt his psychic connection to Jet deepen as the familiar availed himself of vision even keener than his own. “Oh, right, I see him. But is that the Green Hand?”
“I don’t know. Fly lower.”
Crouched, clad in a voluminous robe and a hood that covered his entire head, the man below certainly looked like anyone’s notion of a fiend. But like most slums, the ropemakers’ precinct harbored a diversity of outlaws, and a masked man could lurk on a roof for a number of reasons. Aoth didn’t want to reveal his presence until he was sure he’d found his quarry.
The hooded man stalked to the edge of the roof and then crawled over it, clinging to the wall head down like an insect or lizard. He scuttled along the top tier of shuttered windows, seemingly peering through the cracks.
Aoth’s doubts fell away. A thief who could climb like that, whether by dint of skill or magic, would steal from wealthier folk than paupers in a tenement. The man below was here to kill. Come to think of it, it was in just such a setting that he’d committed the first murders in his string.
Jet perceived his master’s certainty. “I can peel him right off that wall.”
Aoth snorted. His steed could perform amazing maneuvers in flight, but the prospect of plunging into the narrow space between buildings, mere inches away from one of them, was enough to give any rider pause. “Just swoop low enough to give me a shot.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” But Jet did as he’d been instructed.
The hooded man dug his fingertips between the laths of a shutter like he meant to rip the barrier off its hinges. Aoth aimed his spear and considered whether to hurl frost or darts of light.
Then Jet went rigid and plummeted toward the street. His spread wings caught just enough air to keep Aoth from breaking bones when they crashed down. It was only then that Aoth spotted the arrow buried deep in the feathered part of the griffon’s flank, just behind the foreleg.
Aoth looked up just in time to see a second hooded figure, this one armed with a bow, step back from the edge of a roof and out of sight. The man on the wall was gone.
At that moment, Aoth hated himself for failing to spot the archer, even though no one had ever even speculated that the Green Hand might have an accomplice. “How bad is it?” He started to swing himself out of the saddle to take a better look.
“Stay where you are!” said Jet.
“You need-”
“Stay where you are!” The griffon ran and leaped. His wings lashing, he rose into the air.
Just high enough to thump down on a rooftop, where Aoth felt his exhaustion and fatigue almost as if they were his own. “Now you can see which way they went,” said Jet.
He was right. The Green Hand and his lookout were fleeing to the north, bounding like grasshoppers from building to building. “Will you be all right here?” asked Aoth.
