Jolan Kine leaned against a support several buildings down from the Greenbrier Inn where Garrolus Kreeth usually ate his lunch. There he waited and watched. Though he did not know why he waited.
Dark sorcerers never did anything to attract attention to themselves in the bright light of day. Not if they wanted to live long. Maybe it was that Kine wanted to watch him more, to size up his opponent, to take the fullest measure of the man before finally bringing him to justice. But there was more to it than that. There were pieces missing in the equation he had formulated in his mind, things that weren’t adding up the way they ought to. Kine cursed Jort under his breath. The old fox took too many damned secrets to his grave.
Plus, the mayor was now missing, and that was a fact that he and Lord Joachim had not let out. With all of the mysterious break-ins, people were edgy. Jolan winced at his own failing in this. He had allowed himself to get too caught up in those three boys when he ought to have discovered why the mayor had been so preoccupied and agitated. He was sure that Kreeth was somehow involved. And he liked to know how and why before he made a move. Perhaps senility was more than an act by the time Jort died. His death had been sloppy. Had his old mentor moved against Kreeth before he should have? He had a reputation of jumping before looking and catching up on the details after the final move was carried out. But if there was anyone who ever managed to pull it off, Jort was the man.
Jolan shifted uncomfortably as this ran through his mind while he waited for Kreeth to leave. Reaching up, he pulled a wide brimmed hat down over his face. Kreeth might not make a move in public, but he still didn’t want the man to recognize him.
Of all the magical arts, sorcery was expressly forbidden. Fear of magic still inspired enough terror among people to hunt down rogue wizards and put them to a flaming end. Sorcerers were even more reviled.
This area had always been a magnet to practitioners of the magical arts. But the amount of dark arts being employed here was enough to cause Kine many sleepless nights. The area now practically hummed. Ever since the day Jort discovered Kine, a young wharf rat fending for himself in the dirty port below Pallodine, Kine’s life had been a study in hunting down rogue mages and sorcerers.
Now Jort was gone, and the knowledge of what he had uncovered here gone with him. As if what the boys were was not enough for any three Hammers to deal with! Beyond this, with all of the things the boys were certainly destined to attract, far more was afoot in the Lake Valleys.
The most valuable tool a Hammer possessed was his ability to sense the presence of magic and sorcery. Magic existed as a resonance, or vestigial energy left over from the world’s creation. Practitioners learned to attune themselves to these resonances, and eventually they learned to harness them. But they existed as a part of nature. Sorcery drew on powers that came from, for lack of a better word . . . someplace else. Always there was a taint, or residue of filth and darkness that hung around long after a sorcerer moved on. And on a number of occasions, after entering a sorcerer’s lair, Kine had the suspicion that there was a kind of intelligence that lingered too. In such places, he often felt as if he were being watched from a place of shadows.
From the other side of the park across the street, someone shouted. The urgent insistence of the voice snapped Kine out of his thoughts. He knew that voice. It belonged to the young Hapwell boy.
Kine’s eyes darted to Hapwell and then to the person he was motioning to.
Niam Maldies.
The distraught expression on Maldies’s face clearly showed even from a distance. Niam waved his arms frantically. He wanted Hapwell to see a girl being followed by a much larger boy. Jolan Kine looked at the large lad intently. He saw the look in the kid’s eyes and shivered. Kine didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what the big fellow was thinking.