He hoped he was buying Jhesrhi enough time to get home.
Then something whistled. And, mad with rage as they’d appeared, the hounds drew away from him. Panting, he turned in the direction of the sound.
A little way up the slope, a shadar-kai sat on a black horse. By the light of day-or what passed for it there- Gaedynn saw that the rider’s raised facial scars formed geometric patterns and must have been cut deliberately. He held a lance and wore a chain coiled on his hip.
Gray-skinned, black-haired, and clad in dark garments like the horseman-but hunched, stunted, and coarse- featured-small figures stood to the sides of his steed. One held the wooden syrinx that had evidently called back the hounds.
Gaedynn realized the shadar-kai was a hunter. And the halfling-sized creatures were servants charged with the management of his coursing beasts.
The rider lowered his lance and spurred his horse. Either he was worried that his intended prey would hurt more of his animals, or he’d decided it would be more fun to kill Gaedynn with his own hands. Either way, he must have been confident of his prowess.
The black horse accelerated to a gallop. Gaedynn forced himself to stand still while the shadar-kai and the point of his lance raced closer. Dodge too soon, and his foe would compensate.
The dark horse and rider vanished and reappeared immediately, just an arm’s length short of striking distance.
Gaedynn hurled himself to the side. He avoided the lance, but not quite the horse. The animal’s shoulder clipped him with bruising force and knocked him staggering. As he fought to regain his balance, something brushed his head, and he realized the shadar-kai was trying to catch him by the hair. He managed to twist away from that too, and the steed and rider pounded past.
As he regained his footing, Gaedynn felt angry with himself for not guessing that the horse might be able to shift through space like half the other creatures in the vile place. But that particular anger could only hinder him, so he took a breath and tried to exhale it away. I know now, he told himself. That’s what’s important.
Even so, the same trick nearly served to surprise him again. As the shadar-kai wheeled his mount, a subtle flicker lined it up with Gaedynn an instant sooner than mere conventional movement would have allowed. It started forward, disappeared, and reappeared.
Right where Gaedynn had estimated it would. He stepped diagonally, past the head of the lance and to the side of the horse, and sliced its foreleg just above the knee.
The beast pitched forward onto the ground, and the shadar-kai tumbled out of the saddle. He landed on the wrong side of his thrashing horse, and Gaedynn moved to scramble around it.
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something small rushing in on his flank. He wrenched himself around and parried a low thrust from a jagged-edged dagger that would have crippled him as he’d crippled the horse. His assailant was one of the stunted servants-who could apparently blink through space too, or maybe he was just sneaky. Gaedynn slashed his neck and his body dissolved in a puff of cold, black vapor.
The stuff got in Gaedynn’s eyes, and for one terrifying instant he was blind. Then he blinked his vision clear.
Just in time to see the fallen rider vanish and reappear, still sprawled on the ground, among his servants. His face contorted; he spoke. Gaedynn couldn’t hear his voice, but he saw his lips move.
He did hear it when the little hunchback with the pipes blew a different note. And when the remaining hounds bayed and ran at him again.
He wondered if he had time to kill the horse and put it at his back, but decided the dogs wouldn’t have much trouble climbing over the carcass even if he did. Then a red spark flew into the midst of the onrushing beasts and exploded into a ragged burst of flame. The detonation tore the hounds apart.
The shadar-kai and his servants turned toward Jhesrhi. Too late. She snapped a word of command and jabbed the head of her staff at them. The hunter burst into flame. Then fire leaped from his body to the servant with the syrinx, and from him to another stunted creature, in a manner that reminded Gaedynn of water cascading down a series of ledges. In a moment, all the dark figures were burning. And flailing.
When they stopped doing the latter because there was little left of them but smoldering black husks, Gaedynn turned to Jhesrhi. “It wouldn’t have hurt my pride,” he said, “if you’d done that a little sooner.”
She shook her head, perhaps to convey that she hadn’t been able to-or simply that as usual, she didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “Are you all right?”
“Somewhat miraculously, yes.” He looked around and retrieved his bow. He checked his quiver and found he had two arrows left.
“Do you think this shadar-kai was hunting us specifically? Because of what happened last night?”
“I don’t know and don’t particularly care. I just want you to get back to work before someone or something else shows up to bother us.”
“It’s no use.”
“What are you talking about? I felt something happening.”
“That was all you were going to feel. I just don’t know how to break through.”
He tried not to let the depth of his disappointment show in his face or his tone. “Ah, well. I’m sure we can last a month here if we have to.” And maybe afterward they could take a pleasure cruise on the River Styx.
Cheeks puffing, Jhesrhi exhaled sharply like she was blowing out a candle. For an instant, wind gusted and howled and all the little fires left by her two attacks died. “I have thought of one other thing that might get us home sooner.”
“Then tell me, please.”
She did, and when she finished, he felt a mix of dismay and admiration.
“Bravo,” he said. “That’s as crazy a scheme as I’ve ever heard. Easily crazier than invading Thay with nothing but the strength of the Wizards’ Reach behind us.”
She scowled. “Then you don’t want to try it?”
He grinned. “Actually, I do. But right now we need to clear out of here. Then we should find a place where we can go to ground, at least temporarily. We’ll proceed with your idea come nightfall.”
Waiting until night wouldn’t ensure they went undetected, not in a world populated by creatures that saw well in the dark. But he hoped that like the orcs and goblin-kin with which he was familiar, they couldn’t see as far in the dark as a man could in the light.
Once the Shadowfell was black as a coinlender’s heart, with just a few faint stars gleaming in the sky and a feeling of sheer poisonous wrongness suffusing the air like a stench, he and Jhesrhi crept back to the hill where Tchazzar lay imprisoned. They kept watch long enough for him to start feeling hopeful that the dragon truly was alone, with nothing but his weakness and the staples to prevent his escape.
Then suddenly, one of the shadar-kai’s small servants appeared on the hillside. Then another. Gaedynn peered closer and discerned that the dark little men were emerging from a hole in the ground like a line of ants.
Once he and Jhesrhi spotted the mouth of that tunnel, they soon noticed others, and the traffic that came and went, shadar-kai and other things that looked stranger and more dangerous still. Evidently, most of the time the hill was full of them, although they cleared out when the blight wyrm came to feed.
“Curse it,” Jhesrhi whispered. “It won’t work.”
“Yes it will,” Gaedynn replied. “It’s just that you only came up with half a workable plan. Fortunately I, clever fellow that I am, have now devised the rest.”
“Which is?”
“Do you remember wondering if the shadar-kai huntsman was hunting us specifically?”
She scowled. “Of course.”
“Well, if they weren’t before, we’re going to make them start.”
NINE
9-10 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
