to save Sithicus, or to destroy it?
Fourteen
Nabon's daydreams had once been simple. In them the giant wandered faraway hills, to places familiar and places fresh. Beyond that, their content was inconsequential. Freedom was all.
Freedom was, of course, something Nabon no longer possessed.
That theft darkened the giant's fantasies. He dreamed now of roaming the land, but not in idle explorations. Nabon ranged the Sithican wilds in search of the one who had first ensnared him: Inza, a Vistani girl with hair as black as her soul and a viciousness in her heart the likes of which the giant had never seen in all his wide travels.
Deep in the Fumewood, Nabon had responded to her cry for help but found himself set upon by the girl instead. With a cudgel of unbreakable wood she shattered first one kneecap, then the other. As he lay on the ground, howling in pain, she beat him unconscious.
The greatest indignity of all was the purpose the assault served. Inza had captured him and broken his legs so she could barter him to Azrael for a mere dagger. The dwarf had been given the blade by Malocchio Aderre as a symbol of their recently forged alliance. Inza wanted it, and Nabon was the substantial price she was willing to offer.
Azrael was wont to torment Nabon with this tale on nights the giant slacked in his ceaseless toil. Nabon loathed the dwarf and wished him harm more times than he could remember, but his chief hatred was reserved for Inza. Had she not preyed upon his kind nature, he would never have fallen into Azrael's hands. Worse, the Vistana had hunted Nabon only after hearing stories that lauded the giant's gentleness of spirit. That, Inza explained as she hauled him to the salt mine that first night, made him the perfect slave.
With the mine shut down, the men all shuffling off to war, Nabon passed the time in a fitful drowse. He envisioned himself inflicting his revenge upon the girl in myriad ways, but only after he had pursued her through the Sithican wilds. The chase made the kill all the more satisfying. In those dreams, his footfalls shook mountains and sloshed rivers from their banks. His legs were whole. He was free.
One morning, in the quiet moments before dawn, he awoke to find the dream had become reality. At least parts of it, anyway.
The pain was gone. The shrieking ache of mangled flesh and broken bones had left his legs. He squinted into the darkness, reached down with trembling hands. It was true. His legs were sound again. The shackles that had pinned him to the filthy floor were broken.
The joy in Nabon's heart was overwhelmed an instant later by a terrible dread. This had to be a trick. Surely Azrael lurked in the darkness. Worse still, maybe Inza was there. When he moved, when he got the first fleeting taste of freedom after his long imprisonment, they would descend upon him. This time they'd cut off his legs and rob him of any hope at all.
The giant cowered against the wall of his light-less, stinking prison.
'No need for that,' came a soft voice from the darkness.
A lantern glowed to life. Its light revealed a figure dressed in pale clothing, a fine cloak, and a wide-brimmed hat. He removed the mask that concealed his features. The friendly smile on that handsome face made the giant gasp. It had been so long since he'd seen such a sign of goodwill that he scarcely knew how to respond.
'You really are free,' the Cobbler said, 'and well shod for the road that awaits you.' He held the lantern toward the giant's feet. 'Tell me, how do they feel?'
Nabon let his eyes trail down his legs. The wounds had all but vanished. The only traces of his abuse were some faint scars. Around his ankles, though, he could detect some heavier puckering. He ran his fingers over the marks. They were like the stitching that joined a sleeve to a coat or held together the pieces of a shoe.
'They're much bigger than the ones I normally make,' the Cobbler noted casually.
He leaned close to admire his handiwork. It had taken the Cobbler much of the night to dress the giant's feet. The work had required much more from the Vistani corpses than the soles of their feet, but the magic had taken hold. That much was obvious from the way Nabon's bones had knit. The boots didn't look half bad, either.
'She betrayed them too,' Nabon said softly as he ran his fingers over the leather. 'Her own people.'
The Cobbler smiled more broadly. This was clearly the best match he had ever made.
'Inza orchestrated the attack that took their lives,' the pale-clad figure confirmed. 'She paid the murderers in advance, with money stolen from the gypsies' own vardos.'
'But why?'
'The slaughter gave her a reason to call upon Lord Soth for aid,' the Cobbler replied. 'She needs to be inside Nedragaard Keep for what she has planned.'
Nabon stood. He wobbled a bit at first and bashed his head upon the Engine House's beams. He soon got his balance again, though. When he did, he offered a quick but sincere thanks to the Cobbler, then bulled his way through the huge building's back wall.
The Bloody Cobbler was chuckling to himself as he emerged from the rubble into the morning sunlight. The smile didn't abate, even when he found Azrael standing before him. 'You're fortunate he didn't wait around to hammer you into the ground like a tent peg,' the Cobbler said.
The dwarf's face was so colored by fury that even his bone-white mustache and sideburns seemed tinged with crimson. He let the jugs and candles he'd been cradling in his arms crash to the ground. 'I still needed him,' he rumbled. 'Now I'll have to climb down to the chapel.'
'You could use the exercise,' the Cobbler replied calmly.
Azrael's stubby fingers sprouted thick black claws. The bones of his face shifted, grinding into a profile that reflected both dwarf and badger. 'Who do you think you are to challenge me here?' Snarling, he locked one hand around the Cobbler's arm.
'You're wasting your time,' the pale-clad man said lightly. 'I can leave any time I want.'
'Not from here you can't,' Azrael said. He pushed the Cobbler against a pile of shattered timber.
It was then that the Cobbler noticed the items the dwarf had dropped into the dirt. A thick black sludge oozed from the shattered bottles. It stank of salt and of sorcery. Concern stole across his handsome features. He reached for a shadow in the rubble, expecting to enter it. His fingers met solid wood. The way was blocked.
As swiftly as he could picture it, a pale leather case appeared in the Cobbler's hand. Before he could extract one of his knives, though, Azrael batted the entire thing from his grasp. The silver tools scattered.
'I sealed the place off,' Azrael said. The Cobbler's lost smile was on the werebadger's lips now, all pointed teeth and malicious glee. 'You're not going anywhere.'
The beast reached down for one of the silver scalpels.
'You can't kill me,' the Cobbler said defiantly, 'even with that.'
'Oh, good,' Azrael replied. 'That will make this a lot more interesting.'
In her two days at Nedragaard Keep, Inza had grown insensitive to the smell of death. The whole place reeked of it, from the web-choked dungeons to the top of the shattered tower. That was hardly a surprise. Skeletal soldiers patroled the battlements. Banshees howled through the corridors. Death had never frightened Inza, though, and the walking dead held no special place in her nightmares. Despite the lingering fetor of decay-perhaps even because of it-she found the castle much to her liking.
Soth had abandoned her soon after they arrived. They stepped into the shadows at the battlefield and emerged an instant later within Nedragaard's circular throne room. Soth informed Inza that she was free to roam the keep-at her own peril, of course-but that he had more important business elsewhere. He left her standing in the darkness.
Since then Inza had marched through every hall and explored every room of Nedragaard Keep. The inspection was long and largely tedious. The castle revealed little about its master that the Vistana didn't already know.
Now, at last, Inza had returned to the hall from which she had started her explorations. She lingered at the
