of the body down a nearby cistern.
Lugging a sloshing bucket, Cerris climbed the narrow stone steps toward the nearest of half a dozen platforms the Cephirans had erected along the ramparts. Drawn upward as if hooked by some divine fisherman, his gaze rose, taking in the awesome power of the wooden monstrosity above. Dozens of feet high, equipped with a counterweight heavier than many houses, it seemed to exude a living malevolence. Cerris had seen more than one trebuchet in action, and held nearly as much awe for their power as he did for the magics of the Kholben Shiar, but he hadn't the slightest notion of how to operate it.
That was all right, though. Operating the infernal machine wasn't his job.
Over the following hour, Cerris acquired the tiniest piece of each member of the trebuchet's crew. From the first, a rag with which he'd blotted the worst of the evening's sweat from his face; from the second, a dollop of spittle collected after he hawked something up onto the floor; a few strands of hair from the third, when Cerris brushed a nonexistent wasp from his shoulder; and so forth.
And then he was gone, back down the stairs and out into the streets, as casually and unobtrusively as he had come.
Privacy was actually harder to come by than anything else he'd required, but he finally found a home, broken and abandoned during the Cephiran siege and never reoccupied. He scrambled over piles of rubble, cringing from walls that rained dust and seemed to be waiting only for the right time to crumble inward and squash him into a delectable pate, but he found two of the inner chambers standing, and that was one more than he needed.
Pushing aside bits of broken brick, he cleared a spot to sit that was, if not comfortable, at least not actively painful, and lowered himself to the floor. First he laid Sunder beside him, in easy reach. Next he carefully spread out the various bits and dollops and goo before him, placing each just so, this far from the others, that far from him. And for the next several hours, his voice steady but low, mouthing impossible syllables until his tongue felt like taffy and his throat as though he'd been gargling eggshells, Cerris struggled to invoke what just might have been the most potent spell in Imphallion.
Chapter Seven
A SIZABLE PROPORTION of the nation's citizenry firmly believed that Duke Meddiras, the middle-aged governor of Denathere, was paranoid. The so-called Jewel of Imphallion, Denathere was second in importance only to Mecepheum itself. Yes, it was geographically and conceptually the heart of Imphallion, where the major highways that were the veins carrying Imphallion's lifeblood converged. And yes, more than half the Guilds kept their greatest halls and highest offices within its borders.
But surely Meddiras-or 'Mad-diras,' as some called him-went rather to extremes. Since he'd assumed the title of duke almost six years ago, he'd tripled the size of the city's standing militias. From the old city walls, new layers of stone had been layered upward and outward, until most of Denathere was surrounded by a rampart larger than that of Mecepheum, or of border cities under far greater risk of siege. What few stretches of the outer wall had not yet been sufficiently reinforced were bandaged in great wooden scaffolds, swarming with both paid laborers and petty criminals sentenced to indentured servitude. Meddiras had even attempted to institute more thorough entry requirements, demanding that the guards search every visitor and every wagon from top to bottom. He'd relented only when the merchants had threatened everything shy of open revolt. Men and women in hauberks or breastplates marched atop the walls in groups of five or more, and various engines-from small ballistae to great catapults as large as Cephira's trebuchets-lurked every few hundred feet, eager to hurl death upon any foe who might dare approach.
Yes, nearly everyone thought Duke Meddiras paranoid-but nearly everyone, even those most inconvenienced by Denathere's slow transformation into a military city-also had to admit that the man had his reasons.
Twenty-three years ago, the city had fallen to the armies of the Terror of the East, at the end of his fearsome campaign. And here, almost seven years ago, Denathere had fallen once more to the forces of Audriss the Serpent, at the start of his own.
Meddiras, who inherited the dukedom when his aunt perished at the hands of the Serpent's soldiers, would sooner have ripped out his own fingernails with his teeth than allow history to record him as the third duke in a row to see Denathere conquered.
And that paranoia had saved his life once already. For Duke Meddiras, and several of Denathere's Guildmasters, had some weeks ago been invited to Mecepheum, to participate in a meeting of great import, a dialogue between the nobility and the Guilds to discuss some means of reconciliation.
Or so the message had stated. Meddiras and Denathere's Guildmasters, in a show of unprecedented unity, had refused to leave their city while the murderous dawn of war threatened from beyond the eastern horizon. They had dispatched emissaries in their stead-emissaries who, like everyone else present in that meeting chamber, were now purported dead at the hands of Corvis Rebaine.
That rumor, unconfirmed though it might be, sent Meddiras and his court into a frenzy, and his captains and military advisers ran themselves ragged following his assorted orders. The gates to Denathere were now so choked with guards that it was challenging even to drive a cart through them, and those gates shut firmly more than an hour before dusk no matter how many travelers sought admittance. Every noble manor and keep, every governmental office and Guild hall, was surrounded by vassal soldiers and hired mercenaries, and the street patrols were redoubled yet again. It looked very much as though Denathere had been flooded by a pounding rain of swords and armor.
In the end-for the Guildmasters and for Meddiras himself, if not for his city-it was, every last bit of it, a wasted effort.
In an inner room of a large stone house, a faint breeze kicked up where no breeze could possibly blow. The dust and dead beetles accumulated over years of neglect danced across the carpet, fetching up against the walls, and the flimsy wooden door whistled in its uneven frame. Had anyone been present within the room, and had he possessed a remarkably acute nose, he might have noted the faintest humid odor, rather akin to mildewed parchment.
The impossible wind ceased as swiftly as it appeared, and then there was someone in the room, standing at the heart of the miniature storm. One hand clutching the bridge of his nose, the other outstretched to prop himself against the nearest wall, the wizard Nenavar took deep, deliberate breaths, trying to allay the quivering of his muscles.
Teleportation was so much easier when I was younger…
It would pass quickly enough; it always did. While he waited, he placed his back against the wall and allowed himself to slide. There he sat on his haunches, the overly large sleeves of his fine tunic dragging in the dust. He found himself, for lack of anything better to do, staring at the floor.
'I really must remember,' he muttered to himself, 'to hire someone to tidy up while I'm away.'
After a few moments, Nenavar felt his strength (such as it was) returning, and he rose. Night had fallen outside, and no lamps burned within the house, but the old man had little trouble finding his way. This was but one of several abodes he owned throughout Imphallion's major cities, and all had been built to his specifications, identical to one another in every particular. Such intimate familiarity with one's destination made teleportation easier-not to mention rather less prone to catastrophic accident-and exhausting as it was, Nenavar far preferred it to weeks on horseback.
He felt a few startled glances from neighborhood folk who knew the house to be empty, but otherwise attracted little attention as he shut the door behind him and stepped into Denathere's streets. The throng bustled around him, jostling and deafening even at this hour, and he felt himself cringing, his skin threatening to unwrap itself from his body and go hide in a corner. Gods, he hated being touched!
Or spoken to. Or looked at. It was one of the reasons he'd taken up his studies in the first place: lots and lots of blessedly peaceful solitude.
Nenavar gritted his teeth into a cage to imprison the various snarls, imprecations, and occasional pestilential spells that sought to hurl themselves from his throat at anyone who drew too near, and continued on his way.
There was, at least, no danger of becoming lost. He'd made certain he could always find the man he now
