Gaedynn shook coins out into his palm. “My companion is a wizard. She’s going to cast a charm that will alert her if you try to cheat us.”
It was a lie. Jhesrhi had mastered dozens of spells, but none that would serve that particular purpose. But other people had no way of knowing that, and she and Gaedynn had used the bluff to extract the truth from the credulous on several previous occasions.
As he took the coins, the halfling made a spitting sound. “As long as she doesn’t turn me into a rat or make my manhood fall off, she can do what she likes.”
Jhesrhi whispered words of power. The room grew colder. For a moment, the candles burned green, and a breeze rustled the parchments on the table. It was likely enough to create the impression that some useful enchantment was in place.
“Now,” said Gaedynn, “go ahead.”
The halfling leaned over the table and riffled through the maps until he found one drawn on vellum. He sketched a circle on it with his fingertip. “Somewhere in this area. And I think that if it’s really there to be found, you’ll find it on the western side of a hill.”
Maintaining the fiction that Jhesrhi could tell if their informant was telling the truth, Gaedynn looked to her. She nodded.
The redheaded archer extended his hand. “Thank you for your help.”
The halfling blinked like he wasn’t used to courtesy or gratitude. “There’s one more thing I can tell you. People only ever glimpse or hear the dragon at the dark of the moon.”
“That complicates matters,” Gaedynn said, “but at least it’s not for a while yet. We have time to get to the right place. Thank you again.”
After the cripple showed them out, Jhesrhi said, “You could have just given the poor fellow ten gold.”
“That would have seemed very strange to him. He expected me to haggle.”
“And, it’s bad luck to swear a false oath by any of the gods.”
“Oh, I imagine Waukeen will forgive me.” He grinned. “As you know better than anyone, I’m well nigh irresistible to blondes with golden eyes.”
She scowled. “Where now? Back to the stable?”
“If you like. We have what we came for.”
They headed in that direction. To her relief, the crowds in the streets had thinned out. In fact, they soon found themselves entirely alone on a block lined with dark, shuttered shops at ground level. In the quiet, even the iron ferrule of her staff bump-bump-bumping against the mud seemed noisy. She picked up the weapon and carried it over her shoulder.
Then the wind whispered to her. She willed the bindings on the staff to loosen, and the cloth fell away. She lifted the rod into a middle guard and roused the power stored inside it. The golden runes glittered.
By that time, Gaedynn had noticed what she was doing and nocked an arrow. “What?” he asked.
“People are stalking us,” she said.
“Where are they?”
“All around us. I think. They’re using magic that hinders even the wind’s ability to perceive them, and-”
“And anyway, the breezes in Mourktar haven’t fallen in love with you yet.” He shifted so they stood back to back. “I’ve heard the song before. If the bastards are just thieves, now that they see that we’re ready for them, maybe they’ll go away.”
“I doubt common thieves would command such potent enchantments.”
“Permit me the comfort of my delusions.”
The breeze moaned, warning her. “Above us!” she said.
They both looked up at the wide, shadowy something plunging down at them. They each leaped forward, separating in the process because otherwise they wouldn’t have had time to scramble out from underneath. The weighted net thudded and rustled down between them.
A figure with a white face and hands jumped off the rooftop after the meshwork like a four-story drop was nothing. And apparently for him it was. He landed like a cat, and Gaedynn drove an arrow into his chest.
That too should have killed or at least incapacitated him. But he simply staggered a step, then charged. As he did, Jhesrhi recognized him as the small man from the tavern. She also noticed his bared fangs.
Fortunately, Gaedynn did too-and after the nightmarish campaign in Thay, he knew how to fight a vampire. His next shaft punched into the creature’s heart, where it would serve the same function as a stake. Paralyzed, the undead collapsed.
Jhesrhi glanced around. Other pale figures were creeping from between the houses. She hurled a blast of fire and set the nearest two ablaze.
Then she pivoted, searching for her next target. Even though she was trying to avoid it, she looked straight into another vampire’s eyes.
The undead’s coercive power stabbed into her head. Suddenly she couldn’t move. She wanted to, but it was like she’d forgotten how. She had the terrifying feeling she’d even stopped breathing.
She strained to break free. In her mind she recited words of strength and liberation that would no longer pass her lips. Abruptly, and without realizing it was about to happen, she wrenched her gaze away and gasped for air.
Her paralysis, brief though it had been, had given her foes the chance to rush closer. She spoke to the wind, and it hurled a vampire backward an instant before his outstretched hands could grab her.
Behind her, light flashed, momentarily painting the world blue-white. Thunder boomed, power crackled, and Gaedynn laughed a single “Ha!” of satisfaction. He’d used one of the special arrows she’d enchanted for him, evidently to good effect.
Even comparatively weak vampires-and it seemed to her that these were some of the weaker ones-were fearsome opponents, but so far it appeared that she and the archer were holding their own. Hoping to stand back to back again, she retreated a step, and then other figures stalked from the gloom behind the undead.
The newcomers weren’t pale as bone, and she didn’t see any glistening fangs or lambent eyes. Humans, then, wrapped in shapeless hooded cloaks much like her own.
She drew breath to cast a spell at the new enemies, then realized some of them were already chanting. A couple whirled implements resembling picks through serpentine passes with a nimbleness at odds with the weapons’ obvious weight.
Jhesrhi abandoned her offensive magic to rattle off a briefer charm. A disk of golden light shimmered into existence in the air before her.
Also floating and made of glowing light, but continually rippling from one color to another, several picks abruptly appeared in front of her defense. The magical weapons hurtled at her, and though her amber shield shifted back and forth, it couldn’t block them all. One red as flame whirled itself around the edge of the oval. She parried it with her staff, but at the same instant another such attack stabbed her in the back.
Wracked with pain and horribly cold besides, she crumpled. The pick that had wounded her changed from white to green and struck again before she finished falling. Her nose, mouth, and throat burned, and she started coughing uncontrollably.
Evidently recognizing that she was no longer able to oppose them, the enemy sent the animated picks streaking over her to take Gaedynn from behind. Still coughing, floundering in her own blood, she flopped over to watch the inevitable result.
Gaedynn whirled and loosed another arrow. Then, chopping relentlessly, the luminous, multicolored picks assailed him like a swarm of wasps. He fell with blood streaming from his wounds.
Between coughs, Jhesrhi caught the stink of charred flesh. Hands grabbed her and slammed her flat on her back. His skin burned black, a vampire dropped to his knees and bent over her.
Then one of cloaked men stepped into Jhesrhi’s field of vision. Now that he’d come close enough, she could make out the pattern of scales on the robe visible through the gap between the wings of his outer garment. She could even discern how the folds of the iridescent vestment changed color as he moved, although in the darkness she couldn’t truly see the colors themselves.
But she didn’t have to see them to recognize a priest of five-headed Tiamat, the Dragon Queen. “Get away from her,” the cleric said.
The vampire glared up at him. “She burned me,” he said, the words garbled for want of the lips the fire had
