He forced his mind to focus on the three enemies before him. Perhaps they had attacked only to recover the sphere, and had only killed the guards in their way. He hoped so. But if that was true, what in the Nine Hells was the sphere?
He backed up until he felt the parlor wall behind him. If he had to fight all three, he wanted a wall at his back. He took care to ensure that as much furniture as possible stood between him and the intruders. With his combat mobility, he could use the furniture to his advantage if they tried to close.
He had few options. He considered casting another of his darkness spells but dismissed it because of the boy. The Almor double could kill him whether she could see or not. Cale was not prepared to sacrifice the young guard to save a piece of Thamalon’s art. For the moment at least, they were in charge.
They had probably teleported into the courtyard and walked unchallenged right into the manse. It occurred to him then that possibly no one else knew the house to be infiltrated. No, he reminded himself. He had sent the other young guard to find the grounds patrols. They would be coming.
Cale eyed the sphere in Halthor’s hand. It looked like … nothing more than what it was. An unusual piece of quartz with flecks of diamond and tiny gemstones suspended within it. He wondered what in the Nine Hells he and Thamalon had purchased.
Almor slid near her two comrades, dragging the guard with a chokehold while staring at the bloody corpses in the center of the room as though they were a feast.
“You have it?” she asked of Halthor. Halthor nodded and held the sphere up for Almor to see.
Almor smiled and said, “Excellent. Then we’ll be off.”
Halthor, broad and going to fat, eyed Cale with narrowed eyes.
“And him?”
Almor, still keeping the hostage guard between herself and Cale, said, “I suspect he’s going to follow us out. Probably staring daggers with his eyes all the while. Isn’t that right, Cale?” She fluttered her eyelashes, a grotesque display from Almor’s scarred face. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.” Seeing the disgust on Cale’s face, she jerked the house guard’s head to the side to expose the jugular. “But not too close. Or else slice-slice.”
Cale said nothing, merely gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and forced himself to stay focused. At that point, he could have darted out of the parlor and recruited help—could have, that is, were he prepared to sacrifice the house guard and let the intruders go. But he wasn’t. If they made one mistake, he’d make his move.
Halthor frowned at him and said, “I heard you were mean. You ain’t mean. You’re as tame as a pussy.”
Cale made no reply, but promised with his stare what would happen if they met in another context.
It was Halthor who looked away first, muttering something unintelligible.
“Well done, Mister Cale,” the Almor double purred. “You are interesting indeed.”
They started to move toward the main exit. Derg and Halthor led, with Halthor holding the sphere in one big hand and his long sword in the other. Almor brought up the rear, facing backward toward Cale and holding the young house guard between them.
Cale followed at a few paces, tense, coiled, ready to act at the first opportunity.
“The main door,” Almor said to her companions.
They nodded over their shoulders. She kept her eyes on Cale as they moved down the hall. After a few moments, she shot him a grin.
“You’re wondering how we did it, aren’t you?” With her gaze, she indicated herself, Halthor and Derg, all the while keeping her blade at the guard’s throat.
Cale knew how they had done it.
“Illusion,” he said, and closed a stride closer.
Back on the street outside the Stag, Vraggen had used a sophisticated illusion to project an image of himself through which he could cast spells. A different but equally sophisticated sort of enchantment placed on these men and the woman could have altered their appearance and voices to look and sound like Uskevren guards.
She smiled enigmatically and said, “I suppose it is an illusion, of sorts.”
Cale closed another half stride. Her gaze focused on him.
“Stay back, Cale, or he dies. He’s just meat to me.”
She pressed the blade so tight against the guard’s throat that he gagged. The slightest motion would slit his throat. Cale backed off, seething.
The hallway beyond led through the Great Hall. From there, it was only a short distance to the high-ceilinged reception hall and the main door. Cale watched Almor carefully, hoping she would make herself vulnerable, even for just an instant. She didn’t. She kept a hawkish gaze on him and a sharp edge at the guard’s throat.
Cale could see the young guard growing increasingly nervous. Sweat pored down his clean-shaven face. His eyes looked wild. Cale realized then that he couldn’t have seen more than nineteen winters. Despite his previous bravado, the tension had the young man close to breaking. If he did break, he might try something stupid and get himself killed. Cale tried to distract him.
“What’s your name, guardsman?”
The boy’s gaze focused on Cale. He blinked away the sweat dripping from his eyebrows into his eyes.
“Huh?”
Almor choked him off. “Shut up,” she hissed, and glared at Cale.
Cale ignored her. If he could have, he would have dug out her eyes with his thumbs.
The guard twisted his neck to the right to free his windpipe and said, “Ren, Mister Cale.”
Cale gave him a nod and said, “Stay calm, Ren. They don’t want to hurt you. They just want to get out. It’ll be over soon.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Another word and I open him, Cale,” Almor said. Her eyes were hard. She meant it.
Cale said nothing more.
They reached the reception hall. Wood framed arches opened on all sides. Two dead house guards, stabbed through the chest, lay propped against the wall to either side of the closed main door. Cale knew them—Vondel and Mran. Good men. He resolved then and there that whatever happened that night, he would eventually find and kill the woman and her two lackeys.
Distant shouts from outside in the courtyard carried through the walls. The guard Cale had sent to find the grounds patrols must have rounded up some men and sounded the alarm. It would spread quickly.
As though to emphasize the point, from somewhere above them on the second floor, more shouts were taken up. The heavy thump of boots reverberated throughout the house.
“Outside! Now!” Almor commanded Derg and Halthor.
They hurried for the main door. Almor followed, dragging Ren across the reception hall, all the while keeping steel at his jugular. Cale kept pace. Though it might have, the raising of the alarm did not give him comfort. The tension level had risen. It showed on Almor’s face. And tense people did rash things. Were the guards to appear, Cale thought it unlikely that he could get Ren out of it alive.
“They won’t get here in time,” he said, trying to reassure her. “Just let him go and get the Hells out.”
Cale figured that the moment Almor and her team got clear of the wards on the manse proper, they could teleport out.
Almor sneered.
But I’ll find you later, Cale silently promised. This isn’t over.
At that, Almor gave an absent nod and replied, “I’ll look forward to that, Mister Cale.”
That almost stopped Cale in his tracks. Could Almor read his mind also?
Nine Hells!
“Who are you?” he asked.
She made no reply, only smiled.
“Let’s go,” she said to her team.
Derg reached for the large main door—
—and it flew open, smashing into Derg and knocking him back a step. Three house guards, no doubt one of the alerted grounds patrols, poured through, blades bare. Upon seeing what appeared to be three of their comrades holding another hostage and standing over the two dead guards at the door, they stopped in surprise
—
“D-Derg?” one of them said, haltingly.
Before he could say any more, before Cale could shout a warning, Halthor stepped forward and stabbed the speaker through the chest. He went down immediately, bleeding and gasping. The two others bounded backward toward the doorway, confused, weapons held in uncertain hands.
“Bastard,” cried Cale. He whipped one of his throwing daggers free from its belt sheath, and with a flick of his wrist, hurled it underhand at Halthor. It tore a gash along the side of his throat. Blood fountained to the floor. Halthor staggered, dropped his blade, and clutched at the slash with his empty sword hand.
At the same moment, Derg leaped over the dying guard and unleashed a powerful overhand slash with his falchion at the smaller of the two remaining guardsmen. The house guard tried to parry with his shield, but too slow. Derg’s heavy blade split the links of his coif and opened his skull. His eyes went white and he started to fall.
Cale drew another dagger, but before he could throw, before the small house guard had even hit the ground, Derg jerked free his blade, spun three hundred sixty degrees, and slashed low at the last guard. It took him below the knee, nearly severed his calf, and swept him from his feet. A stab through the chest finished him. The whole combat had taken the space of two breaths.
Halthor, still bleeding from his throat, shot Cale a glare. Cale took a step toward him, blade ready. He would gut the man.
Unarmed, Halthor snarled and advanced, raising the sphere above his head as though he meant to bludgeon Cale with it.
“Stop!” ordered Almor. She threatened the boy with the blade. “There’s five dead here already, Cale! You want another? I’ll kill him. I promise you. Dolgan! Put that down.”
With effort, Cale stopped his own advance, but didn’t lower his blade. Halthor—Dolgan, Cale corrected—also stopped. The big man lowered the sphere. Blood poured from his throat. He seemed unconcerned.
Cale struggled to keep his anger under control. Five men lay dead at his feet. He ought to kill every one of these sons of whores. But he could not simply sacrifice Ren, and he could not get to Almor before she could slit Ren’s throat. So he fought down his instincts and did nothing. They would let Ren go when they got outside. It was the sphere they wanted.
Halthor continued to stare hate at him while stanching his wound with a fat hand. Surprisingly, the bleeding stopped. Halthor grinned. Cale returned a stare, promised with his eyes that their next combat would be fatal. Cale knew his real name—Dolgan. He would not forget it.
“As I was saying, Mister Cale,” Almor said. “We’ll be leaving now.”
She glanced at the five corpses on the floor and again somehow twisted a warrior’s face into a feminine smile. Cale wondered what her real name was. He wouldn’t have forgotten that either.
“You’ve been most hospitable,” said Halthor, then he spat on the body of one of the guards. “Thank you.”
“Whoreson,” Ren said.
“Shut up,” Almor ordered.
It was all Cale could do not to attack. Everything in him screamed for him to gut Halthor, to slit Almor’s throat and tear her head from her shoulders. But he held on.
From back in the parlor, Cale could hear house guards rushing toward them. They’d be too late, he knew.
Halthor picked up his sword and stumbled through the doorway. Derg kicked one of the dead guards and followed. Still holding the boy to keep Cale at bay, Almor backed through the doorway.
To Cale, Ren mouthed the words, Kill them. Cale made no reply. He would kill them, but not there, not then.
He followed them through the door onto the large porch overlooking the lawn and courtyard. In one hand he held his sword, in the other, his last throwing dagger.
“More coming,” Derg said to Almor. He didn’t sound alarmed.
From across the courtyard, another patrol was rushing toward them. Cale couldn’t see numbers in the darkness, only torches. Shouted voices rang out. More shouts answered from within the manse. House guards were closing from both sides.
“Halt! Halt!”
Cale figured maybe six or seven men. He looked to Almor.
“You’re out,” he said. “Let him go.”
She grinned at him, winked, and said, “Good-bye, Mister Cale. Don’t forget your promise to me, now. I’ll look forward to seeing you again.”
With a free hand, she removed a small bronze rod from her belt. Gold runes swirled around it, and parts of it rotated. She began to manipulate it, with difficulty though because she could use but one hand.
To her men, she said, “Go.”
In Cale’s head, a woman’s voice said, Nice to have met you, Erevis.
Hearing her “speak” his name made him feel soiled.
“You won’t think it’s so nice, next time,” he said.
He’d never killed a woman before, though he had come close once. She would be his first.
Each of her men removed a similar device from a pocket and began to turn its parts.
Cale could do nothing but grit his teeth and stand there. She still had Ren.
Almor winked at him and said, “I’ll keep him, Cale. Just to make sure.”
Without any sound, without even a flash of magical light, Almor simply disappeared. And took Ren with her. One instant they were there, the next they were gone.
“Godsdamnit!”
In the next breath, Derg was gone.
Cale raised his dagger to throw. Halthor, his thick fingers slicked with blood, fumbled with the teleportation rod. Cale hurled the dagger and charged.
The sliver of steel took Halthor in the stomach and nearly doubled him over. Cale charged forward. Halthor pulled the dagger from his flesh and tried to parry with his sword. Cale would have none of it.
Using the force of his momentum, he swept Halthor’s blade out wide, then suddenly reversed his motion and slammed the hilt of his sword into the man’s face. Squarely. Bone crunched, and blood sprayed. The big man’s head snapped back and he groaned in agony, a sound lost in the gurgle of blood pouring into his mouth. He dropped his teleportation rod and staggered back, reeling.
“Still seem tame, you bastard?”
Halthor muttered something, but a mouthful of blood, a split lip, and several dislodged teeth made it unintelligible. He still gripped Thamalon’s sphere in his hand. Cale knew that if he could stop Halthor, the Almor look-a-like would come back for it.
From behind, he could hear the guards charging into the reception hall. Behind Halthor, the grounds patrol closed in. They had him surrounded. They could take him alive if they wished.
No.
Cale decided that Halthor would be dead before the guards arrived. If they needed to speak with his corpse, the Uskevren could hire a priest. If he’d had time, Cale would have killed the man painfully for what he’d done.
He advanced, blade held low.
Though bleary-eyed and wounded, Halthor did not back away. Instead, he stood his ground and began to laugh. To Laugh. Not at Cale, it seemed, but as though he found being wounded and about to die exhilarating. His illusionary fat stomach bounced with his mirth. Blood frothed in the mess of his mouth.
Cale was disgusted, but lunged forward anyway and chopped downward, a blow that would split Halthor’s fat, balding head right down the middle.
Stunningly quick for such a big man, Halthor raised his arms and interposed the sphere before Cale’s slash, still smiling. Cale’s enchanted sword rang off the quartz—
—and sound exploded in Cale’s ears, as loud as the braying of a thousand Cormyrean bass shawms. A shower of sparks flew from the sphere, raced up Cale’s blade, and danced around his arms. His hands went instantly numb. His sword fell from his grasp. A wave of concussive energy erupted outward from the sphere and blew him back toward the manse. He crashed into the doorjamb and sank to the floor with a groan.
The explosion knocked Halthor flat onto his back and drove him a full handbreadth into the ground. He recovered more quickly than
Cale. As he sat up, he left the outline of his body imprinted in the soil.
Bleeding not only from his nose and mouth but also from his eyes and ears, Halthor still somehow wore a twisted smile. He got to all fours and crawled forward toward his teleportation rod.
The guards were coming, Cale knew, but would not get there in time. The explosion had knocked them to the ground as well. He struggled to get up. His legs would not respond. He fell to his side, helpless as a babe.
Halthor fumbled with the teleportation rod, still grinning like a jester.
“Halt!” shouted the house guards.
They had regained their feet. The concussive energy must not have affected them as severely. Crossbows twanged, and bolts stuck in the earth beside Halthor. He ignored them.
“Wondafa,” he managed to say to Cale through his broken mouth. “Wondafa.”
It took Cale a moment to understand: Wonderful, he had said. Dark! Who in the Hells were these people?
Seemingly satisfied with the setting on his teleportation rod, Halthor leered at Cale. He tried to raise the sphere as though it were a trophy but was too weak to lift it. To Cale, the sphere looked wrong, as though the explosion had left it misshapen, though Cale’s muddled brain did not quite register how. So instead of lifting it, Halthor settled for cradling it to his side. One more twist of the rod and he was gone.
Guards rushed forward moments later. Voices filled Cale’s ears but he could not distinguish words. He stared at the ground near where Halthor had fallen. He stared for a long while, trying to focus on what lay there. When it finally registered, when he finally understood what it was, he began to laugh.
The guards helping him to his feet shot him perplexed looks. Cale did not bother to explain.
Wonderful indeed, he thought and laughed still more.
The sphere had not been misshapen, and Halthor, the fat dolt, had not teleported out with it. He had teleported out with only half of it. Cale’s blade had split it cleanly down the middle, exactly what he had intended to do to Halthor’s skull. The other half lay in the grass, inert.