two bodies and the encounter with the strange sorcerer. Grigor listened attentively without interrupting; the harmach might not have been a young man, but he had a keen memory and never forgot the details of a story. Geran knew that his uncle would get around to his own questions eventually, after he’d had ample time to weigh all the accounts.
When Geran finished, Grigor leaned back in his leather chair. “Weren’t you worried about breaking into the barrow? You know that’s dangerous.”
Geran met his uncle’s gaze evenly. “Someone had moved those stones recently, and I wanted to know why. Kara didn’t want to disturb the burial mound, but I thought there wasn’t much risk.”
“As it turned out, you were right. It’s not in Kara’s nature to trust her intuition, but I’m glad that you trusted yours.” Grigor sighed heavily. “I knew that Darsi Veruna and the rest of the Merchant Council had reasons to want Jarad Erstenwold out of the way, but I had no reason to think that Veruna mercenaries might be involved with the tomb-plundering that Jarad was investigating.”
“Speaking of which, I’d like to know exactly which barrows have been broken into, and when,” Geran said. “Jarad must have discerned some pattern to it. He had a reason for choosing that barrow to keep watch over.”
“You believe the Verunas aren’t finished plundering the barrows?” the harmach asked.
“We’ve spent the last few days watching the Veruna sellswords,” Hamil said. “Small bands of Darsi Veruna’s armsmen are constantly coming and going from the camps and yards. By our rough count, we’d guess that as many as a third of the Veruna men-thirty to forty mercenaries, all told, mostly in bands of five or six at a time-are engaged in some activity that takes them away from Veruna mines, sawmills, and wagon trains.” The halfling glanced at Geran and back to the harmach. “We doubt they’re all out patrolling the wilds at the same time.”
The harmach sat in silence for a long moment, gazing out the leaded glass windows of the library. Finally he said, “Assuming your suspicions are well founded, Master Hamil, what business is it of yours? You are not sworn to my service-nor is Geran. There is no reason to make Hulburg’s troubles your troubles too.”
“As I told you before, my lord Harmach, I’m here to look after my partner.” Hamil nodded at Geran. “A few years back, when Geran and I were both members of the Company of the Dragon Shield, Geran saved my life at terrible risk to his own. I’m obligated to him for that, if nothing else. But beyond that, Geran is my friend, and his fights are my fights too.” The halfling paused. “Besides, it seems that many of the foreigners in this town know your men all too well. We might be able to get answers your Shieldsworn couldn’t.”
“In that, you may be correct, Master Hamil.” Grigor shifted his watery gaze to Geran. “But, Geran, it doesn’t explain why you’ve chosen to make this your fight. I’ve never blamed you for your decision to seek your fortune elsewhere. You have no debt to repay me or Hulburg.”
“I’ve nothing in Tantras that I need to hurry back to, and I think I’ll be staying a little while.” Geran kept his eyes locked on the harmach’s. “I find that I’m not satisfied with the questions that are left unanswered, Uncle. And I don’t like what I’ve seen so far of this Mulman merchant coaster that Sergen has apparently sold Hulburg to. This whole business doesn’t sit well with me.”
“Nor with me,” the harmach answered, with surprising firmness in his voice. “Very well, then-I have the reports of tomb-breaking close at hand.” He pulled open a drawer in the desk, then checked another. “Ah, here they are.”
The old lord glanced through the papers and handed them to Geran. Most were in Jarad’s handwriting, simple and terse summaries of each break-in he’d discovered.
“There were five instances that we know about before Jarad’s encounter,” Grigor said. “Of course, there may be more we haven’t discovered yet. There are literally hundreds of barrows scattered from Thentia to the ruins of Sulasspryn, and most are so far from traveled paths and grazing land that no one would ever know if they’d been broken into.”
Geran looked at them quickly and handed them to Hamil. He’d read them more thoroughly later. But first, he wanted to see where the robbery attempts had taken place. He glanced at the crowded bookshelves in the harmach’s study. “Do you still have Wolther’s map, Uncle?”
“Of course,” Grigor answered. He pushed himself to his feet with a slight wheeze and shuffled over to a rack where dozens of large leather cases lay gathering dust. He ran his frail fingers over each, muttering quietly to himself, then he settled on one case and tapped it once before removing it and bringing it back to the desk. “This is the one.”
Geran waited while Grigor carefully opened the case and pulled out the large, yellowed parchment map. He spread it out over the top of his desk; Geran and Hamil stood and gathered around to see it better. The map showed the hills and valleys around Hulburg in exquisite detail, dotted with lakes and bogs and crisscrossed by small streams and old footpaths. Small triangular marks speckled the lands surrounding the Winterspear Vale. “My father hired the mapmaker Wolther to make a survey of the Hulmaster lands,” Grigor explained to Hamil. “It would be more than fifty years ago now, but no one’s ever taken a better measure of the lands around Hulburg.”
“What are the triangles?” the halfling asked.
“Marker cairns,” Geran answered. “You’ve seen a few already-the whitewashed stones out on the Highfells. You’ll see that Jarad’s letters begin by mentioning the cairn nearest to each of the broken barrows. Read them off to me, Hamil.”
The halfling looked back down at Jarad’s letters. “The first is, let me see, ‘Twelve north-northeast, eight hundred yards southeast, right of small rise.’ You can make sense of that?”
“The marker cairn is twelve miles north-northeast of Griffonwatch. From the marker, the barrow is eight hundred yards to the southeast.” Geran found the marker symbol on the old map and carefully marked it with a pin. Hamil read off the rest, and Geran marked each. When he finished, no immediate pattern seemed obvious. Some of the barrows were east of the Winterspear Vale, some were west, and none were particularly close to each other.
“That doesn’t help very much,” Geran said.
“What did you expect to see?” the harmach asked.
Geran sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was hoping that something might seem obvious once we’d looked at all of the locations together.” He looked at Hamil. “How do you feel about sleeping under the stars tonight?”
The halfling grimaced. “It seems likely to rain all day, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“If we leave soon, I imagine we could visit all these sites by midday tomorrow, so it’s only one night out in the Highfells. And there are plenty of herdsmen’s shelters and huts up there, so we’ll probably have a roof over our heads.”
“I think we’d be better off watching the Verunas,” Hamil said sourly. “I propose that we spy out the taverns their armsmen frequent and eavesdrop on them for a few evenings. We’ll have to make ourselves comfortable, eat well, spend coin generously, and feign revelry, but I am willing to make those sacrifices. That seems to offer better prospects than riding around to look at abandoned barrows.”
“We’ll try your suggestion next if the barrows have nothing to say to us.” Geran glanced at his uncle. “Can we borrow paper and ink? I’d like to copy down the locations.”
“Of course.” Grigor found Geran a small journal, and the swordmage carefully copied Jarad’s notes about the barrows that had been found open. He thought he knew at least two of the mounds already, just from Jarad’s descriptions, but distance and direction could be deceptive on the Highfells. Geran did not want to spend hours riding around in circles looking for a marker or a barrow because he hadn’t bothered to write anything down.
When he finished, he tucked the small book into his vest pocket. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said. “We’ll be on our way. I expect we’ll return tomorrow.”
The harmach took his hand. “Be on your guard, Geran. I will see you soon.”
NINE
19 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One
Orange pillars of smoke filled the night sky above the mining town of Glister. It was not much of a town by human standards, of course, little more than a permanent camp and trademeet in the foothills bordering Thar. Few women or children lived there; it was a place where hard and desperate men came to work and wring gold from the
