“Where’s Stilcho?”
Haught nodded back toward the room. The fires were silent. Every word seemed
drawn in ice, written on the still air inside and the stormwind without.
“This is not a good night, Haught. Take him and go somewhere. No. Not just
somewhere.” She pulled a ring from her finger. “I want you to deliver this.”
“Where, Mistress?” Haught came and took it, ever so carefully, as if it were
white-hot; as if he would not hold it longer than he had to. “Where take it?”
“There’s a house fourth up and across the way from Moria. Deliver it there. Say
that a lady sends to Lord Tasfalen. Say that this lady invites him to formal
dinner, tomorrow at eight. At the uptown house. And tell Moria there’ll be
another place for dinner.” She smiled, and Haught found sudden reason to clench
his hands on the ring and back away. “You’re quite right,” she said, faintest
whisper. “Get out of here.”
She lay back a moment, eyes shut in her dreams (and Tasfalen’s) as she heard the
door open and shut. She felt the tremor in the wards which ringed the place
about and sealed its gates.
Come with me, Randal had said, knowing what he faced in god-healing. Ischade, I
need you-
And Strat: Ischade-for the gods’ sake-
For no gods’ sake. No god’s.
She had fled Straton’s presence as she would have fled the environs of hell…
fled running, when she had left that place and left him and the ruin of Roxane’s
house, in utmost confusion and dread, her heart pounding in terror of what was
loose, not in the night, but in her own inner darkness-a thing which made her