'Don't struggle,' she said. 'It will only make it worse.'
Actually, she doubted it could get much worse, but he presumably didn't know that.
Something in her expression or the way she moved must have alerted him, however, because he finally made a scramble for the door. It didn't matter. She pounced on him, paralyzed him by applying pressure to the proper part of the spine, and laid him on the table she'd cleared to serve as a makeshift altar. She chanted the first invocation as she tore his clothes away.
Most sacrifices required scalpels, lancets, and such to pick apart the offering in just the proper way. Sefris took a cold satisfaction in the fact that her fingers were strong and skillful enough for her to achieve the same sort of excruciating precision barehanded. As a result, life lingered until she performed the final mutilation, drawing forth the glistening intestines and looping them to form a mystic sigil on the victim's chest. The boy flopped once like a fish out of water then expired-gratefully, more than likely.
At the same instant, purple light and a wave of chill pulsed across the room. Unsurprised, for it was the desired result of the ritual, Sefris turned. Before her stood what appeared to be a gaunt human male with the long- eared head of a jackal. Its voluminous robes were black, and its body was outlined by a hazy sheath of flickering violet flame that somehow burned cold instead of hot. The garment and fire together made the arcanaloth a living emblem of the Lady of Loss for those with the wit to understand.
The fiend took a disdainful glance around the hovel, with the untidy litter of corpses, then turned its dark eyes back on Sefris. Few mortals could have abided that gaze, freighted as it was with a malice as deep and as wide as the ocean, but it didn't faze the monastic. Indeed, she respected it as essentially the same attitude she herself had striven so diligently to cultivate.
'Dark Sister,' the arcanaloth said, acknowledging her, a hint of a canine yip in its tenor voice, 'what do you want?'
In Sefris's experience, arcanaloths-the scribes and mystics of their infernal race-were generally direct to the point of rudeness. In and of itself, it didn't bother her. She shared that trait with them as well.
'Do you know why my Dark Father sent me to Oeble?'
The jackal-headed fiend wrinkled its muzzle in a sneer.
'I know,' it said. 'Mortal foolishness.'
'Neither one,' Sefris replied. 'When my order assigns me a task, it's because the deity whom you and I both serve wishes it done.'
'I have my own essential tasks awaiting me in Shadow.'
Sefris reminded herself that while hatred was a virtue, impatience was not, and she took a breath to steady herself.
'Was the offering acceptable, or not?'
The arcanaloth shrugged and replied, 'It was all right.'
'Then I've paid your price, and you'll either help me or suffer the consequences of your refusal.'
The fiend rolled its eyes and asked, 'What help do you require?'
'I've never been to Oeble before. I'm confident I can kill whoever currently holds The Black Bouquet, but less sure of my ability to find it. That's where you come in. Your magic is more versatile than mine, so you're gong to cast a divination.'
'Very well.'
The spirit waved its hand, and a long oval mirror in a golden frame appeared on the wall. It was so highly polished that it almost seemed to glow with its own inner light and so manifestly valuable as to appear grossly incongruous in such humble surroundings. Sefris assumed the fiend had summoned the looking glass from its own extradimensional realm.
The arcanaloth used its claws to tear loose a scrap of the offering's flesh, which it then ate. Sefris had the feeling that wasn't part of the conjuring. The fiend was simply peckish. When it was done nibbling, it dipped its forefinger into one of the boy's wounds, coating the digit with blood that it employed to write arcane signs along the curved edge of the mirror. The runes burned with the same purple flame that surrounded the creature's body.
After that, the arcanaloth stared intently into the mirror. Peering past it, Sefris could no longer see anything coherent in the glass, not even their own reflections, just formless shadows that oozed, merged, and divided. But then, she wasn't the scryer. She assumed the fiend was making more sense of the rippling blackness than she could.
Or at least she did until the arcanaloth abruptly barked an incantation in some demonic language and swept its arms through a complex mystic pass. At that moment, its annoyance was unmistakable. The bloody sigils burned brighter, but the vague shapes flowing inside the glass became no clearer.
'What's the matter?' Sefris asked.
'The Dark Goddess's enemies warded their plunder against attempts at divination. They must have anticipated that someone would try to take it back.'
Well, Sefris thought, at least that means they can't use magic to find it either, but the notion was precious little consolation.
'Surely you can do something,' she said.
'Not necessarily, and the effort would take a great deal out of me. I told you, I have my own responsibilities to-'
'Do it.'
The arcanaloth bared its fangs and said, 'We may meet again someday, on my own plane, perhaps, in circumstances where I hold the whip. If so, you might be glad you didn't push me too hard.'
'Do as I command you, or I'll speak the words of torment,' Sefris replied. 'By darkness impenetrable and empty-'
'All right! I can't see the treasure itself, but perhaps I can make out something that connects to it in the great web of fate. That might give you a clue to its whereabouts.'
The fiend snarled another incantation, and resumed its peering.
Finally, it said, 'There.'
'What have you found?' Sefris asked.
'The future is never certain,' the arcanaloth said. 'But find this woman, and chances are good she'll lead you to your goal.'
It gestured, and a face took shape amid the drifting shadows.
Once Aeron waded ashore, he followed a circuitous route, sometimes descending to the Underways, sometimes proceeding at street level, and periodically climbing to the Rainspans, a rickety network of bridges connecting the roofs and balconies of certain of the city's towers. By custom, the aerial paths were open to the public even where they linked one private residence or business to another, and a good many folk traversed them daily in blithe disregard of the manner in which they groaned, shuddered, and swayed. At that, it was arguably safer to walk over them than underneath. Every rogue in Oeble knew the 'spans afforded any number of excellent locations from which to throw knives at or drop heavy objects on a victim.
Aeron glanced around frequently, making sure no Red Axe was creeping up on him. Perhaps he was so intent on spotting Kesk's cutthroats that it blinded him to other dangers. Or maybe Selune's departure from the sky, and the deeper darkness she'd left in her wake, were to blame. In any event, he was crossing a Rainspan, one that wound among the decaying spires bordering Laskalar's Square, when two Gray Blades and a goblin seemed to pop up out of nowhere just a few paces ahead of him.
Luckily, the lawmen, one human and one who, judging from his slender frame and pointed ears, might have some elf blood, were too busy questioning the stunted, flat-faced creature they'd accosted to notice Aeron's approach. He turned to slink back the way he'd come, but then he heard the half-elf mention the Paeraddyn. The Blades were asking questions about the robbery.
If Aeron was wise, maybe that should be all the more reason to slip away quickly as he could. But he thought in the long run it might pay him to listen to what the Gray Blades had to say. So he crouched motionless, trusting the darkness to hide him.
As the interrogation proceeded, the lawmen slapped the shrilly protesting goblin around and even threatened to toss it off the bridge. Aeron didn't know the runty, bandy-legged creature. Apparently its tormentors had accosted it at random, simply because it looked shifty. From that fact, and the general tenor of their questions, he
