Shadowthrone… now something else…
Kalam whispered, 'Still not touching…'
Bottle settled back, crossing his arms as he lay down on the sand. '
Wait,' he said, then closed his eyes, and a moment later was asleep once more.
Crouched close at Quick Ben's side, Fiddler let out a long breath.
The wizard pulled his stare from the reconfigured Shadowthrone, his eyes bright as he looked over at the sapper. 'He was half asleep, Fid.'
The sergeant shrugged.
'No,' the wizard said, 'you don't understand. Half asleep. Someone's with him. Was with him, I mean. Do you have any idea how far back sympathetic magic like this goes? To the very beginning. To that glimmer, that first glimmer, Fid. The birth of awareness. Are you understanding me?'
'As clear as the moon lately,' Fiddler said, scowling.
'The Eres'al, the Tall Ones – before a single human walked this world.
Before the Imass, before even the K'Chain Che'Malle. Fiddler, Eres was here. Now. Herself. With him.'
The sapper looked back down at the doll of Shadowthrone. Four-legged now, frozen in its headlong rush – and the shadow it cast did not belong, did not fit at all. For the head was broad, the snout prominent and wide, jaws opened but wrapped about something. And whatever that thing was, it slithered and squirmed like a trapped snake.
What in Hood's name? Oh. Oh, wait…
****
Atop a large boulder that had sheared, creating an inclined surface, Apsalar was lying flat on her stomach, watching the proceedings in the clearing twenty-odd paces distant. Disturbing conversations, those, especially that last part, about the Eres. Just another hoary ancient better left alone. That soldier, Bottle, needed watching.
Torahaval Delat… one of the names on that spy's – Mebra's – list in Ehrlitan. Quick Ben's sister. Well, that was indeed unfortunate, since it seemed that both Cotillion and Shadowthrone wanted the woman dead, and they usually got what they wanted. Thanks to me… and people like me. The gods place knives into our mortal hands, and need do nothing more.
She studied Quick Ben, gauging his growing agitation, and began to suspect that the wizard knew something of the extremity that his sister now found herself in. Knew, and, in the thickness of blood that bound kin no matter how estranged, the foolish man had decided to do something about it.
Apsalar waited no longer, allowing herself to slide back down the flat rock, landing lightly in thick wind-blown sand, well in shadow and thoroughly out of sight from anyone. She adjusted her clothes, scanned the level ground around her, then drew from folds in her clothing two daggers, one into each hand.
There was music in death. Actors and musicians knew this as true. And, for this moment, so too did Apsalar.
To a chorus of woe no-one else could hear, the woman in black began the Shadow Dance.