drove both feet full into the face of yet another.
Sparhawk and the others were running toward the tent in
response to Sephrenia’s cry of alarm, but the Queen of the Atans
seemed to have things well in hand. She parried a hasty thrust
and split the skull of the shabby assailant who had made it.
Then she engaged the remaining attacker.
‘Look out!’ Sent shouted as he ran toward her. The man she
had felled with her feet was struggling to rise, his nose bleeding
and a dagger in his hand. He was directly behind the Atan
Queen.
Always before, when Xanetia had shed her disguise, the
change had been slow, the concealing coloration receding
gradually. This time, however, she flashed into full illumination,
and the light within her was no mere glow. Instead, she
blazed forth like a new sun.
The bloody-nosed assassin might have been able to flee from
her had he been in full possession of his faculties. The kick he
had received in the face, however, appeared to have rattled him
and shaken his wits.
He did scream once, though, just before Xanetia’s hand
touched him. His scream died in a hoarse kind of gurgle. With
his mouth agape and his eyes bulging with horror, he stared at
the blazing form of she who had just mortally wounded him but
only for a moment. After that, it was no longer possible to
recognize his expression. The flesh of his face sagged and began
to run down, turned by that dreadful touch into a putrefying
liquid. His mouth seemed to gape wider as his cheeks and lips
oozed down to drip off his chin. He tried to scream once, but
the decay had already reached his throat, and all that emerged
from his lipless mouth was a liquid wheeze. The flesh slid off
his hand, and his dagger dropped from his skeleton clutch.
He sagged to his knees with the slimy residue of skin and
nerve and tendons oozing out of his clothing.
Then the rotting corpse toppled slowly forward to lie motionless
on the leaf-strewn floor of the forest – motionless, but still
dissolving as Xanetia’s curse continued its inexorable course.
The Anarae’s fire dimmed, and she buried her shining face in
her glowing hands and wept.
CHAPTER 28
It was raining in Esos, a chill, persistent rain that swept down
out of the mountains of Zemoch every autumn. The rain
did not noticeably dampen the Harvest Festival celebration,
since most of the revelers were too drunk to even notice the
weather.
Stolg was not drunk. He was working, and he had nothing
but contempt for men who drank on the job. Stolg was a Nondescript
sort of fellow in plain clothing. He wore his hair cropped
close, and he had large, powerful hands. He went through the
crowd of revelers unobtrusively, moving toward the wealthier
quarter of the city.
Stolg and his wife Ruts had argued that morning, and that
always put him in a bad humor. Ruts really had little cause for
complaint, he thought, stepping aside for a group of drunken
young aristocrats. He was a good provider, after all, and their
neat little cottage on the outskirts of town was the envy of all
their friends. Their son was apprenticed to a local carpenter,
and their daughter had excellent prospects for a good marriage.
Stolg loved Ruts, but she periodically became waspish over some
little thing and pestered him to death about it. This time she
was upset because their cottage had no proper lock on the front
door, and no matter how many times he told her that they, of
all people, had no need of locks, she had continued to harp on
the subject.
Stolg stopped and drew back into a recessed doorway as the
watch tramped by. Djukta would normally have bribed the
watch to stay out of Stolg’s way, but it was Harvest Festival
time, so there would be plenty of confusion to cover any incidental
outcries. Djukta was not one to spend money needlessly. It
was a common joke in the seedier taverns in Esos that Djukta
had deliberately grown his vast beard so that he could save the
price of a cloak.
Stolg saw the house that was his destination and went into
the foul-smelling alley behind it. He had arranged for a ladder
to be placed against the back of the house, and he went up
quickly and entered through a second-story window. He walked
on down the hallway and through the door into a bedroom. A
former servant in the house had drawn a diagram and had
pointed out the room of the owner of the house, a minor nobleman
named Count Kinad. Once inside the room, Stolg lay down
on the bed. As long as he had to wait, he might as well be
comfortable. He could hear the sound of revelry coming from
downstairs.
As he lay there, he decided to install the lock Ruts wanted.
It wouldn’t be expensive, and the peace and quiet around the
house would be more than worth it.
It was no more than half an hour later when he heard a
heavy, slightly unsteady footfall on the stair. He rolled quickly
off the bed, crossed silently to the door, and put his ear to the
panel.
“It’s no trouble at all,’ a slurred voice outside said. ‘I’ve got a
copy in my bedroom.’
‘Really, Count Kinad,’ a lady’s voice called from below, “I take
your word for it.’
‘No, Baroness, I want you to read his Majesty’s exact words.
It’s the most idiotic proclamation you’ve ever seen.’ The door
opened, and a man carrying a candle entered. It was the man
who had been pointed out to Stolg two days ago. Stolg idly
wondered what Count Kinad had done to irritate someone
enough to justify the expense of a professional visit. He brushed
the thought aside. That was really none of his business.
Stolg was a thorough professional, so he had several techniques
available to him. The fact that Count Kinad’s back was
to him presented the opportunity for his favorite, however. he
drew a long poniard from his belt, stepped up behind the count,
and drove the long, slim blade into the base of the count’s skull
with a steely crunch. He caught the collapsing body and quietly
lowered it to the floor. A knife-thrust in the brain was always
certain, and it was quick, quiet, and produced a minimum of
mess. Ruts absolutely hated to wash her husband’s work-clothes
when there was blood all over them. Stolg set his foot between
the count’s shoulders and wrenched his poniard out of the back
of the skull. That was sometimes tricky. Pulling a knife out of
bone takes quite a bit of strength.
Stolg rolled the body over and looked intently into the dead
face. A professional always makes sure that a client has been
permanently serviced.
The count was definitely dead. His eyes were blank, his face
was turning blue, and a trickle of blood was coming out of his
nose. Stolg wiped off his poniard, put it away, and went back
out into the hallway. He walked quietly back to the window
through which he had entered.
There were two more names on the list Djukta had given him,
and with luck he could service another this very night. It was
raining, however, and Stolg really disliked working in the rain.
He decided to go home early instead and tell Ruts that he would
give in just this once and install the lock she wanted so much.
Then he thought it might be nice if they took their son and their
daughter to the tavern at the end of the street to have a few
tankards of ale with their neighbors. It was the harvest Festival,
after all, and a man should really try to spend the holidays with
his friends and family.
Sherrok was a small, weedy sort of fellow with thinning hair
and a lumpy skull. He did not so much walk as scurry through
the crowded streets of Verel in southern Daconia. In the daytime,
Sherrok was a minor official in the customs house, biting
his tongue as he took orders from his Tamul superiors. Sherrok
loathed Tamuls, and being placed in a subservient position to
them sometimes made him physically ill. It was that loathing
that had been primarily behind his decision to sell information
to the diseased Styric Ogerajin, to whom a mutual acquaintance
had introduced him. When Ogerajin, after a few carefully
worded questions, had slyly hinted that certain kinds of information
might be worth quite’ a bit of money, Sherrok had leaped
at the chance to betray his despised superiors – and to make tidy
sums as well.
%The information he had for Ogerajin tonight was Lenl important.
The greedy, blood-sucking Tamuls were going to ‘raise the
customs rate by a full quarter of a percent. Ogerajin should pay