Stalking Darkness

21

Vargul Ashnazai moved restlessly around Rythel's tiny room while the smith was making his report to Mardus. So far the man's spying attempts had turned up little of any significance, for all his self-important airs. But his sabotage of the sewer channels had been brilliantly carried off and, more importantly still, his compilation of the map of sewer channels beneath the western ward of the city.

Mardus had it before him now, making a final painstaking check before paying the smith for its delivery.

Ashnazai's job was to maintain a cloaking glamour about the two of them; through Rythel's eyes, they were fair, heavyset men with Mycenian accents. He also had a dragorgos on watch, ranging the courtyard outside—an especially taxing task for a necromancer of his degree, but a necessary one, as it turned out.

Soon after their arrival, he suddenly felt a silent call from the dragorgos.

Closing his eyes, he sent a sighting through his dark creation and discovered the intruder on the roof overhead, a rough-looking young fellow with a knife.

Vermin, he thought.

A common thief.

With a barely perceptible smile, he mouthed a silent command. A moment later he felt the stalker lunge and heard a satisfying thud from the yard below.

Mardus glanced up from the document the smith was showing him.

"It's nothing," Ashnazai assured him, going to the window and pushing back one of the warped shutters. As he looked down at the body sprawled below, a small figure darted over to it from the deep shadows across the street. Ashnazai sent a quick stab into this one's mind: a child thief, too grief-stricken at the loss of his compatriot to notice the ripple of blackness flowing down the side of the building toward him.

The dragorgos gave a hungry, questioning call. Ashnazai was about to release it for another kill when his hand brushed something on the windowsill, something that sent an unpleasantly familiar tingle through his skin.

Incredulous, he forgot the child completely as he bent to scrutinize the sill.

There, so faint no one but a necromancer would ever have noticed, was a thin smear of blood. And not just any blood! Pulling out the ivory vial, he compared the emanations of its contents to these.

Yes, the boy! Known here as Alec of Ivywell, minion of the Aurenfaie spy, Lord Seregil.

That much they'd learned since their arrival in Rhiminee. Urvay had tracked the troublesome thieves as far as a villa in Wheel Street, where they acted the fine gentlemen as they consorted with nobles and royalty.

Ashnazai had seen them several times since then, could easily have had them at any point, but the two were still under Oreska protection; any move against them would alert the real enemies in the Oreska House. So he had stayed his hand and soon after the Aurenfaie and his accomplice had dropped maddeningly from sight yet again.

Vargul Ashnazai clenched a hand around the vial for a moment, using its power to detect other traces of Alec's blood around the room: droplets on the shutter, a smudge on the table by Mardus' elbow, a tiny brownish circle dried on the floor near the hollow bedpost that Rythel thought such a clever hiding place, and none of it more than a day or two old.

Standing there, surrounded by the essence of the hated boy, Ashnazai experienced a brief twinge of the fear a hunter feels realizing that the prey he's been stalking has circled to stalk him. In the midst of his silent fury, he was startled to hear Rythel speak the Aurenfaie's name.

Seated at ease across the table from the smith, Mardus was regarding his spy with polite attention.

"Lord Seregil, you say?" Mardus inclined his head slightly as if greatly interested, but Ashnazai saw through the pose; at such moments Mardus reminded him of a huge serpent, chill and remorseless as it advanced unblinking upon its prey.

"A lucky meeting, my lord," the smith told him proudly. "I happened across him in a gambling house one night last week. He has quite an interest in the privateering fleet and likes to brag about it. A puffed-up dandy, full of himself. You know the sort."

Mardus smiled coldly. "Indeed I do. You must tell me everything."

Ashnazai bided his time impatiently as the smith described how he'd courted the supposed cully, and the information he'd had from him. He made no mention of the boy.

Standing behind the smith, Ashnazai caught Mardus' attention, pointed to the window, and held up the vial with a meaningful look. The other gave a slight nod, betraying no reaction.

"You've surpassed all expectations," Mardus told Rythel, passing him a heavy purse in return for the sewer map, together with a packet of the sabotaged grate pins. "You've done an excellent job with the map, and I believe I can arrange an additional reward once you've completed your work in the tunnels."

"Another week and it'll be done," the smith assured him, eyes alight with greedy anticipation.

"If there's anything else I can do for you, you just say the word."

"Oh, I shall, I assure you," Mardus replied with a smile.

Unseen and unheard under the cover of Ashnazai's magic, he and the necromancer made their way down through the crowded rooms and stairways of the tenement to the yard.

The thief's body lay where it had fallen, twisted like a child's discarded doll.

Mardus turned the corpse's head with the toe of one boot. "The face is damaged, but it clearly isn't one of them."

"No, my lord, just a common footpad who blundered into the dragorgos by chance. But the boy has certainly been here within the past day or two. His blood is all over the room. He must have been wounded."

"But not by Rythel, I think. There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest he was hiding anything of the sort."

The necromancer closed his eyes for a moment, his pinched face narrowing still more as he concentrated.

"There's blood on the eaves above the window. He must have cut himself breaking in."

Mardus looked down at the dead man again.

"Two thieves in as many days? Rather a lot, don't you think, even for this part of the city." He watched with satisfaction as a fish hook of anxiety tugged in the necromancer's cheek. "A pity we weren't here the night our young friend made his visit," he continued.

"Then it could have been him lying here dead and unable to be questioned, instead of this useless piece of meat. Get rid of it before it attracts any attention."

Vargul Ashnazai muttered a summons through clenched teeth and the darkness beside them convulsed. A second dragorgos materialized, a wavering, faceless presence that hung like smoke for an instant before streaming down into the dead man's mouth and nose. The body gave a convulsive jerk, then lumbered clumsily to its feet. There was no semblance of life in the face; the dead glazed eyes remained fixed, the one on the ruined side of the head bulging grotesquely from its smashed socket.

Mardus regarded the thing with detached interest. "How long can you maintain it in this state?"

"Until it decomposes, my lord, but I fear it would be of little use. So much of the magic is consumed simply to animate it that it lacks the dragorgos' strength. That, of course, will not be the case once our purpose has been accomplished."

"Indeed not." Mardus touched a gloved hand briefly to the corpse's chest, feeling the black emptiness of death within—such power in that void, and so nearly in his grasp.

The necromancer spoke another command and the corpse loped away in the direction of the nearby harbor.

Still cloaked by the necromancer's spell, they rode up to the main city. The few folk they passed in the streets at that hour were aware of little more than a momentary chill, a fleeting bit of movement caught from the corner of the eye.

"It's of little consequence really, even if they do discover Rythel's work in the sewers," Ashnazai ventured nervously as they rode down Sheaf Street toward their lodgings near the Harvest Market. "The map is the important thing, and we have that. Still, it's unsettling, having the two of them both nosing around Rythel."

"On the contrary, I see the hand of Seriamaius at work in it," said Mardus. "It seems our journey has been a long spiral path, one narrowing quickly now to tighten around our quarry. You may have been correct after all about these thieves being of some importance, Vargul Ashnazai. They wouldn't be crossing our trail so often unless there is some greater purpose in it. We have only to bide our time until the others arrive. Meanwhile, I think it's time to deal with Master Rythel. Arrange something unremarkable, would you?"

Nearing the market, Mardus reined in. "I'm to meet with our new friend, Ylinestra. I shouldn't be long."

"Very good, my lord. I'll check on Tildus and the others at the inn."

Parting ways with the necromancer, Mardus turned his mount down a side lane. Halfway down it, he glanced at the fine pair of brass cockerels decorating the entrance to an inn of the same name.

He'd passed through Blue Fish Street several times since arriving in Rhiminee and the figures, each holding a lantern suspended from an upraised claw, often caught his eye.