Alliances

As he drew the frightened Favaronas to his feet, Robien raised one black eyebrow. “Your hand is cold, yet you’re covered in sweat. What ails you, scholar?”

Favaronas longed to tell Robien all, but Faeterus’s threats still rang in his ears. He forced a weak smile and laid a hand on his stomach. “Too many roots and nuts.”

The one thing that hadn’t vanished when Faeterus disappeared was the mage’s walking stick. Robien picked up the thick tree branch and offered it to Favaronas.

“This is just the right length. Perhaps it’ll help you make the climb.”

The archivist tried to decline, but Robien insisted, so he took the stick and resumed his uphill slog. After a short time, he became aware Robien wasn’t following. In fact, the bounty hunter was squatting on his haunches, studying the ground by the boulder. Favaronas imagined that telltale traces of Faeterus’s presence stood out like beacons to the wily tracker.

Head down, Favaronas plodded silently up the hill.

* * * * *

Thunder rolled over Khuri-Khan and caused the sandstone buildings to vibrate. The sound was so rare, Khurs all over the city paused and looked skyward. Rain hadn’t fallen in Khuri-Khan in many months.

In the windy plaza atop the Khuri yl Nor, the royal palace, Prince Shobbat found the sound not amazing, but painful and frightening. His nerves seemed to worsen with each passing day. Loud noises oppressed him, bright lights burned through his closed eyelids, and everyday smells sent him into unexpected paroxysms of disgust or delight. Four days earlier, he’d had to quit a meeting early because the smell of roasting lamb made him ill.

The meeting had been a vital one, a secret rendezvous with three of the outlawed priests of Torghan. The Torghanists had long hated Sahim for his tyranny, for his lack of reverence to their god, and for the foreign laddad taint he had allowed into Khur.

The priests offered to put seven hundred fanatics in the streets of Khuri-Khan whenever Shobbat should need them. They would set fires and storm the souks as required. The riot would form the first stage of Shobbat’s plan to bring down his father, Sahim-Khan. When the city garrison marched out to quell the disturbances, Shobbat would admit a special cadre of Torghanists into the palace. Every member of the cadre was a trained assassin who had volunteered to kill Shobbat’s father.

Shobbat and the priests were discussing how best to appease the bloodthirstiness of the fierce warriors-perhaps the cadre should draw lots to determine who would have the honor of killing Sahim?—when the aroma of roasting lamb had come to Shobbat’s nose from the tavern below. A hairbreadth from vomiting, the prince fled, leaving the astonished priests wondering at his sincerity and his sanity.

Shobbat wanted his father dead. His sincerity, as the sages say, was perfect. As for his sanity, even the prince himself was no longer sure.

Worse than the sensitivities to light, smell, and sound were the strange waking visions. Colors would become brighter and brighter, until they seemed to vibrate of their own accord. Every candle flame, fire, and torch wore a rainbow aura. People and animals trailed visible clouds of scent, which wafted behind them as they walked or swirled around them as breezes blew. Without warning, any of his senses could become agonizingly intense.

The sun had set, bringing twilight to the rooftop plaza. To the east, dusk made the sea a smooth, gray-blue mirror. Silent flashes of light illuminated the distant, northeastern mountains. At each stroke, Shobbat flinched as though a lash had been laid across his back.

Voices from the steps below heralded the approach of Sahim-Khan and his entourage. Shobbat panicked. He mustn’t be seen in his current state, but there was nowhere to hide. Beyond the waist-high parapet at his back was a sheer drop to the coast. The sea crashed and foamed around house-sized boulders two hundred feet below.

Light was brightening the top of the stairs, light from the lanterns borne by Sahim’s servants. Shobbat put his back to the parapet and froze in panic.

Sahim was arguing with the new emissary from Neraka, Lord Condortal.

“What Neraka desires is of no consequence!” Sahim snapped. “I will not send my army after the laddad!”

“We had an understanding.” Condortal was a very tall man, his head hairless but for thick eyebrows and even thicker side-whiskers, both the color of polished walnut wood. He never J seemed to speak at any level but loud, which was not a trait that endeared him to Sahim-Khan.

The sovereign of Khur was accompanied by Hakkam, general of his armies, six guards, four attendants, and two councilors. The Nerakan emissary had his own suspiciously muscular “advisors.” When the two lantern-bearing attendants turned to light their monarch’s way on to the plaza, they let out twin shouts.

“Great Kargath! What is that?” Sahim-Khan exclaimed.