Realms of War

into service at sword point. It was good coin, but it was still unasked for.

'I know who he is,' Maze muttered.

It was just, the general's sword had moved so fast. Jaeriko couldn't have stopped it had it crossed her mind to do so. One moment Maze was telling the General of Reth what he could do with his job; the next, her friend's body was bleeding on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of blood and chicken soup.

'The coin I'm paying for this job is more than enough to cover your friend's resurrection,' the general had said. 'Just bring me the boy.'

There had been no further arguments.

Dead blue eyes darkened to brown as she refocused on Maze. Then a branch snapped back into place and Maze continued on her way, the errant limb smacking Jaeriko across the face. That was going to leave a welt. She rubbed at her skin and felt the gummy sap work its way farther into the rising abrasion. Great—she didn't have time to clean it now, so she'd have to let it go until morning—until after the job. By then, it would be nice and sore.

'Why doesn't he just do it himself? He's obviously powerful enough,' Jaeriko asked, rubbing at the rising bump on her cheek. Maze's scorn burned more than the welt, and she dropped her hand.

'If you'd asked that question yourself before you invited him into my home, we might not be in this mess,' Maze snapped. When Jaeriko colored but did not rise to the bait, Maze sighed. 'Do you know what they say about the good General of Reth, our beloved patron? They say he's more like the devils of Arrabar than us ... Turned for some reason known only to him, and liable to turn back again just as soon as he gets what he wants.' Maze turned back to the path and continued walking, but her assaults on the flora were half­hearted at best.

'Then why did we accept his help—why are we helping him now?'

Maze shrugged. 'Who am I to question when one devil wants to kill another?'

'You're a strange woman,' Jaeriko said.

'No, Druid—you're the strange one. Most people are running as fast as they can from the war. All of our best soldiers are dead, or in the case of Arrabar, dishonorably raised to kill and die again. The streets of formerly great cities are littered with corpses, victims of a war-spawned plague that kills indiscriminately. Poor divided Chondath is disintegrating under her own sickening mass. Most people want to get as far away from this catastrophe as possible, but you—you're heading down into its bloody heart to kidnap a diseased boy from his deranged father. And you're pulling me with you.'

Jaeriko shrugged. 'Some things are worth fighting for. With the General of Arrabar raising the fallen to fight again, Reth might never win her freedom. And if we have a chance to stop him—even at the cost of our own lives—we have a responsibility to try. This could end the war.'

Maze groaned. 'So could killing the bastard.'

Jaeriko couldn't argue with that—or wouldn't, with a self-professed assassin. Though she thought killing the General of Arrabar might be just a little harder than all that. Maze fixed her with a glare.

'So how far to this river of yours?' Maze asked. 'Let's get this over with.' Jaeriko nearly took a mouth full of fir.

'I thought you were leading the way!' she protested, wincing at the wail that found its way into her voice. Maze's glare hardened but then cracked under the weight of her smirk.

'I am,' Maze said. 'It's a joke. Ha. See? I can be funny too.

Jaeriko was flooded with equal parts relief and irritation.

'That is not funny!' she insisted.

'Anyway, we're here,' Maze said, sitting down on a fallen, moss-riddled tree.

With Maze's body out of the way, Jaeriko could see the river. While the waters might be raging farther north, by this point the river was silent and strong, pulling the whole water­course deep underground. That was no excuse for her not hearing it in advance of almost stumbling upon it, but she'd give herself the very real distraction of trying to calm an irate assassin as reason enough.

'Your turn, Druid.'

Jaeriko walked over to the water. It worried her to place so much stock in the word of a man who had tricked her into leading him to Maze's house so that he could force them both into his employment, but she had little else to go on. The general told them that this river fed the cistern in the ruined citadel the General of Arrabar had holed up in. Provided he was right, a simple spell and an uncomfortable, wet time later and they should find themselves both within the citadel and undetected. Getting out undetected with the boy in tow would prove more difficult—but they'd tackle that problem when they came to it.

Reaching inside her doeskin jerkin, Jaeriko pulled out a locket. Reverently, she kissed it; the gold was cool against her lips. Then her fingers worked the catch, and it sprang open to reveal a sprig of mistletoe—her conduit to the spirits of nature. She spun the green sprig between her fingers.

'This will not be pleasant,' Jaeriko warned Maze.

'Get on with it,' Maze said. It was not as though they had a choice.

'Get in the water.'

Maze complied, twisting her face as the water seeped under her leather. She ducked her head under the water and came back up gasping with cold.

'Keep your eyes closed and your limbs close until you feel air on your skin,' the druid instructed. 'The river's bargain allows you to breathe underwater, but it doesn't protect you from the dangers of underground water travel.'

'Right, right,' Maze said, but her teeth were already chattering.

'See you on the other side,' Jaeriko said. Rubbing the mistletoe between her fingers, Jaeriko closed her eyes. Sister River, listen to me. . . Words ripped through her and off her tongue like lightning, burning away the instant her mind touched them. A loud, rushing, siren song filled her ears, and the smell of salt filled her nostrils—then all was quiet. She opened her eyes to see five red gashes open on each side of Maze's neck like cuts from a tiger's claws. The woman fell into the water, the red gashes fluttered open and closed, and bubbles of air escaped Maze's nose. Jaeriko held her breath for Maze as the woman waved, then let the powerful undertow sweep her away.

Moments later, Jaeriko joined her.

* * * * *

Air washed across Jaeriko's face and she gulped in breath blindly. Searching for something to hold onto, her fingers swept up and closed around something slick and unforgiving. She opened her eyes—bars. The cistern had a grate covering its mouth, and the bars were encrusted with slime. The water was damn cold. Goose bumps rose along her exposed skin as the wind swept across again, raising a low moan from both her and the cistern. Already Jaeriko's arms ached from cold and forced use.

She heard a splash and a gasp and saw two eyes blink back at her in the darkness. Maze.

'Holy Hells,' Maze panted. 'I never want to have to do that again.' A frown furrowed the woman's brow, and her fingers searched along the bars. 'Gods be damned. I could deal with a lock, but there isn't even a door. What in the Nine Hells am I supposed to do with this?' She grabbed the grate in both hands and shook it angrily. It didn't budge.

'Shhh!' Jaeriko said. 'They'll hear you!' The last thing she wanted to see was a ghoul's ghastly, flesh-torn face glaring at them from the other side of that grate. She could well imagine the spears and arrows that would follow.

'Bring them on,' Maze whispered, but then she gritted her teeth and held her tongue.

Jaeriko breathed out a sigh of relief. It was hard enough to think with the icy water muddying her thoughts— trying to come up with any sort of way out with an irate assassin screaming in her ear was too much. Her fingers traveled automatically to the locket at her neck. Fire of the heavens, what was she to do now?

Jaeriko's eyes traveled the breadth of the grate. The whole contraption was essentially a stone opening to an underground river that had a grate tacked over it, probably to prevent intrepid intruders such as themselves from entering. There had been little to no modification to the natural stone at all, in fact ... The fingers of her free hand traced the unworked stone as the other hand held the grate. A wild thought took root in her head, and she prayed it wasn't the cold speaking.