Dark Thane

Also, to other dwarves, gully dwarves looked as alike as grains of corn. They simply didn't take the time to study them well enough to discern an imposter among them. The gully dwarves were the soft underbelly of the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin. But Zen was not surprised that no one had ever tried to exploit this weakness. It was a singularly useless weakness, for the gully dwarves were a singularly useless race. One could not recruit spies among them, for they could not relay even the simplest of information. One could not bribe their leaders to fight on your side because they could not follow even the simplest orders. They were inherently cowardly, shy, and devious, utterly untrustworthy even as bribed allies. They had no cultural identity that could be exploited to motivate them, no enemies they hated enough to attack. In a word, useless.

Zen found no pleasure in killing them whenever he needed to assume a new form. It was like killing a cat-a hideous, ugly, noisy affair, that was best gotten over quickly. He even pitied the species a little, which did not ease his conscience whenever he was forced to murder them. He justified the murder by telling himself that he was putting the creature out of its misery. The saddest thing of all was that he was right-a gully dwarf probably was better off dead.

Zen had come to know the gully dwarf point of view all too well. He had felt the hatred and anger directed toward them because he had lived as them, walked among them, and shared their miseries. The other dwarf clans treated the gully dwarves little better than rats. They wouldn't go out of their way to kill a gully dwarf, but neither did they consider it a serious crime to kill one, either by accident or design. The only thing that kept the gully dwarves moderately safe among their larger, stronger, and smarter kin were Tarn's strict laws, coupled with the fact that there was so little point in killing a gully dwarf, no one bothered.

Exploring the city in the guise of a gully dwarf, then, Zen was forced to endure the injustices heaped upon all gully dwarves whenever in the company of their cousins. He couldn't buy food at a merchant stall, nor beer at a tavern, not even if he had the money, for no one would serve him. What he ate he begged or stole. He was allowed on some streets, but not all streets, and some buildings were strictly off limits. He dared not retaliate against those who slighted him, lest he be captured and his true identity revealed.

The sewers, on the other hand, were free to use as he wished. Combined with a vast network of dark alleys and cramped staircases, he was able to move pretty much anywhere within the city's three levels, but it had taken well over a year for him to learn them well enough to not get repeatedly lost. Once, he'd been hopelessly lost for three long days in the maze of sewers beneath the Anvil's Echo. Changing identities left one with a ravenous hunger, and he'd been forced to eat his victim to keep from starving. He still hadn't recovered from the taste of raw gully dwarf.

Zen/Orchag turned into an empty alley and quickened his stride. He knew this alley well, knew that no windows looked down upon it, and so he felt confident in shaking off the mincing, crouching posture of a gully dwarf and he deliberately loosed his stride. Slick with offal and rotting garbage, most dwarves avoided the alleys. Yet it was the swiftest path to the edge of the Hylar residential area on the second level of Norbardin.

He was in a hurry. Jungor Stonesinger was holding audience from his rooftop, as he did most days at this time, and Zen was already late. He tried to come each day, not to hear Jungor preach, but because he was stalking his next victim. The same victim he'd been stalking for the past eighteen months, the dwarf who had betrayed him and murdered his lads that evening in The Bog.

They had made a deal. Ferro Dunskull had broken it.

Ferro was the most difficult mark that Zen had ever had the pleasure to stalk. The Daergar master of scouts (a euphemism for master of assassins) was wily and intelligent; an accomplished assassin himself, Ferro knew how to avoid assassination. And Ferro knew that Zen was stalking him, so he took extra care. He continually altered his habits, never traveled by the same road twice; there were numerous entrances to his house, all of them well guarded. Ferro had few discernible patterns to his life. He was surrounded by a tiny cabal of close confidants, and all others were kept at a safe distance. He and Zen had been playing a game of cat and mouse for eighteen months now with neither having made significant progress.