“All I mean is that if there’s something here and it’s going to attack us, it makes sense that it would choose this road to launch its attack. It’s a defensible position and puts us at a strong disadvantage, particularly if the attacker is better at navigating the cliff than we are.”
“What’s your advice, then?” Shara asked, exasperated.
“Is there another way up?”
“We could ford the stream and pass through Lowtown. Two other roads lead up the bluffs, but they’re just like these.”
“In the absence of a better option, then, we climb the road here. But instead of hoping we don’t get attacked, we prepare for an ambush. That way, with luck, we stay alive.”
Shara nodded. “All right. I’m going first. I need both of you behind me with your eyes wide open-especially you, Uldane. You’ll notice any attackers long before I do. When they strike, they’ll probably come from front and back, to make sure we can’t flee down the road. So Quarhaun, you have to be ready to cover our rear. Uldane, stick to throwing your dagger, unless you can get around behind them on the narrow road.”
“Fine,” Quarhaun said. “But I think you’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve planned for an attack from two directions. What if they come from three directions, or four? Or what if they come only from the top and bottom, scaling the cliffside?”
Shara blinked, trying to imagine what sort of ambush Quarhaun was used to.
Evidently Quarhaun could discern her thoughts. “My people have been known to ride giant spiders that cling to walls as easily as walking on the floor,” he said. “With a large enough attacking force, we would come from all four sides in a situation like this.”
“Then what defense do you recommend?”
“If there’s that many of them, we’re in trouble.”
“You’re really not helpful, you know that?” Shara started up the road. “Let’s go. We’re overthinking this. If we get attacked, we kill them all.”
“Because that plan worked so well in the swamp,” Uldane grumbled.
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?” Shara said.
“Sure, I’ll take blind luck over careful strategy any time.” The halfling couldn’t hide his smile.
“Good, because I think that’s all we have.”
Shara found herself remembering her conversation with Uldane in the swamp ruins, discussing the day Jarren and her father died. She tried to remember the hours before the dragon attacked, the trek through the forest, the jovial banter that made up the fabric of their bond as a group, an adventuring party. They’d shared a rapport that was so hard to come by, but so easy to relax into. She still had it with Uldane, most of the time, but with Quarhaun-somebody always seemed to say something wrong, and somebody else felt hurt or took offense.
She and Jarren had shared more than a comfortable rapport, of course. Even in the moments before the dragon’s attack, he’d given her one of his smoldering looks, and she’d brushed against him with a suggestive smile. By all the gods, how I miss him, she thought, wracked with the familiar ache of his absence.
Quarhaun’s eyes seemed to be developing a certain smolder, too, and that left her … confused. Even more perplexing was the reaction his touch seemed to stir up in her, from the raw physical yearning to the damned schoolgirl blushing, which she wished she could just turn off.
She rounded the first switchback in the road, and realized she’d been ignoring her own orders, walking up the bluffs with her mind on anything but the threat of ambush. She glanced back at Uldane and Quarhaun to make sure they were paying better attention, and the drow met her gaze with a sly grin. Ignoring him, she tried to clear her mind of her other thoughts and stay alert.
Despite her best efforts, she found her mind drifting back to Quarhaun, thinking about that grin, his breath in her ear, his hand on her chin. She tried to also remind herself about his snide comments to Uldane, his outrageous attitude about the lizardfolk being expendable, and his apparent acceptance of bloodthirsty drow politics, but her mind kept coming back to the way his eyes lingered on her.
When the demons leaped out near the second switchback, she was almost relieved.
A good fight will get my blood flowing, she thought, and not so much to my brain.
Then her thoughts fled entirely, replaced by paralyzing fear as the nearest demon, a creature of shadow and burning blood, tore into her mind.
Roghar and Tempest rode toward Fallcrest on the King’s Road from the west. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows in front of them, and the forest that lined the wood was draped in a cloak of silence and darkness.
“It’s awfully quiet,” Roghar said. He didn’t expect an answer-Tempest had spoken little on their long journey from Nera. At times he’d almost wished he’d been traveling alone. At least then, he could sing at the top of his lungs without feeling like he was disturbing someone.
“It’s not right,” Tempest said.
Roghar looked around in surprise at her reply. She was peering into the woods around them, a frown creasing her brow.
“There’s an unnatural presence here,” she said. She met his gaze, and the anguish in her eyes drove his smile away. “It’s him.”
“You can feel his presence?” Roghar said.
“Not exactly. But I can feel the wrongness, all around. Can’t you?”
Roghar closed his eyes and drew a deep breath through his nostrils. The smell of autumn decay and fresh earth filled his nose, but there was something more-acrid smoke, not the warm scent of hearth-fires but the sharp odor of destruction. He closed his eyes and reached for whatever sense could detect “wrongness,” and felt a warm tingling at the back of his skull. Then nausea seized his stomach and cold fear gnawed at his chest.
“Oh, that wrongness,” he said, blinking.
“We should ride,” Tempest said.
From the look on her face, Roghar wasn’t sure whether she meant ride ahead to discover the source of the wrongness or turn around and ride away as fast as their horses could carry them. He cocked his head at her.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, slumping in her saddle.
After their encounter with the cult of the Chained God in Nera, Tempest had stayed in bed for three days, sleeping-or at least pretending to sleep whenever Roghar came to check on her. Finally, he had forced her to look at him and argued the case that they should return to the Nentir Vale. If the demonic influence had spread as far as Nera, then it appeared they could not flee far enough to escape it forever. It was far better, he argued, to return to the Vale and confront it at its source. In Fallcrest, he argued, they had other friends who could help them, and the mention of Albanon seemed to finally start to sway her.
It had taken all of Roghar’s powers of persuasion, but he’d finally convinced Tempest that no other course of action would ever bring her peace and close out that chapter of her life. And so they had ridden for weeks from the old capital out to the frontier of the fallen empire, where the nightmare had begun.
“It’s the only way,” he reminded her, as gently as he could given the harsh reality of her situation.
“Remember your promise,” she said, meeting his eyes.
Roghar nodded slowly. The only way he’d been able to convince her to come to Fallcrest was by swearing a solemn oath that if she ended up possessed or infected in some way by the vile red liquid, he would kill her without hesitation. He wasn’t sure he could actually carry out this promise, but he had sworn it and so he supposed he must.
But he earnestly hoped he wouldn’t have to.
Apparently satisfied, Tempest coaxed her horse back into motion. Roghar spurred his black stallion ahead of her, turning over in his mind the significance of the nausea and fear he had tasted.
The road wound around the base of Aranda Hill to come into Fallcrest from the north. Roghar recognized the point on the road, just ahead, where they would come out of the curve and be able to see straight down the road to the Nentir Inn. He called it the homecoming spot, the point where he always announced that he’d arrived. The thought of the inn made his body ache with longing for a soft, warm bed and a real dinner.
He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and a grin of excitement spread across his face as he neared the
