“How do you mean?” Shavas asked, her graceful hands arranging her pieces for the first move.
“We both have the same desires.”
“Ah!” Shavas lifted her head. Her word held a volume of meaning, of promise. Her gaze was warm, her voice and body alluring. Her face was incomparably beautiful.
Raistlin, swallowing, began setting up his own pieces. He watched Shavas’s hands carefully, saw her fingers shake. She accidentally knocked over a foot soldier.
“Is there something wrong, my lady?”
She shook her head briskly, tightening her lips, her pale skin flushing in the heat of the fire. “Who shall go first?” she asked.
“I will,” Raistlin replied, pushing a yeoman forward. “I must admit that I am surprised to find you so cairn, with your city in such chaos. What has happened?”
Shavas glanced up. “Don’t you know? Where have you been?” She pushed her own yeoman to counter her opponent’s. “Lord Brunswick was murdered last night. Lady Masak was killed just . . . just this afternoon.”
“You can’t move that piece yet.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . thinking.”
“How did they die?” Raistlin brought out another yeoman.
“The same as Lord Manion. They were killed by a giant cat.”
The mage lifted one of his knights from the board, re-
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placing it in front of his lines.
The councillor removed a small bar from the scales at the side of the table, shifting the balance very slightly in Raistlin’s favor. She placed a metal barrier, carved to resemble a hedgerow, in front of the knight.
“It is now my turn to ask questions. You have found the reason for the cats’ disappearances?”
Raistlin sent the knight around the hedge, pressing forward, evening the scales by removing one of his own ingots and placing it next to the figure.
“No, I have not. Do you have any information to add to the investigation?”
Shavas paused before answering, placing her fingers against her mouth in thought. She opened a drawer in the board and took out a footman, clad in heaviest armor, placing it two squares in front of Raistlin’s champion.
“It seems late to further a lost cause.”
Raistlin detected a note of relief in her voice.
“How, then, have you spent your time?” she questioned.
The mage left his knight where it was, placing another marker next to it. “In strange company. ”
“Whose?”
Raistlin moved the piece forward, in front of Shavas’s footman. “You know him, I think. You keep his picture . . . there.” He pointed.
“Really? In a book?”
“Allow me to show you.”
The mage rose from his seat, aided by his staff, and went to the shelf where he had replaced the volume entitled, Mereklar and the Lord of Cats.
It was gone.
Raistlin glanced back at Shavas. “Ah, I see you’ve found it for yourself.”
The woman appeared uneasy. “I have no idea what
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you mean. But perhaps I have seen the man. What does he look like?”
“Tall, with dark skin and hair. Many would consider him handsome,” the mage replied, with a slight touch of bitterness. He returned to his seat, scanning the board with expert ability.
“And his eyes, are they . . . unusual in any way?”
“Unusual? How do you mean?”
“Did they . . . shine, reflect, in the light?”
“Perhaps. I didn’t notice. I didn’t spend time gazing into his eyes,” said Raistlin. He removed the opposing footman from the board and the yeoman behind it, setting it into its square.
The councillor bit her lower lip and scraped her ta-pered fingernails against the varnished table, leaving a slight mark of their passage in the wood. Reaching to the scales, she removed another ingot, this one larger than the others.
Raistlin frowned, wondering at her strategy. The spell she was about to cast was powerful. In defense, he took a marker of his own.
Shavas lifted her knight, dropped it nervously.
“He is here!” she said in a hollow voice. “He has come to kill us all!”
“Who?”
“You know very well who I’m talking about! The Lord of the Cats! He has come to punish the Council of Mereklar.” Shavas reached out a lovely, trembling hand to Raistlin. “I desperately need your protection!”