City of Torment

CHAPTER THREE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) New Sarshel, Impiltur

Behroun Marhana hunched over the small green jewel. The lamp burning beside his desk lent the crystal a malevolent glitter as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. His face was a mask of indecision.

Behroun crouched on the edge of his white leather chair. It was the least comfortable position he might have found on the luxurious seat, but it suited the moment.

"Should I break it?" The man said, his voice hoarse. It wasn't the first such entreaty he'd made that day. "It'd be so easy to hammer you into a thousand pieces of sand…"

The tiny jewel was indifferent to Behroun's threat.

He was the sole owner of Marhana Shipping. He was one of the Grand Councilors steering New Sarshel's destiny. Both positions lent Lord Marhana incredible privileges and power. He was used to making hard choices. Yet this one was beyond him.

Behroun bellowed his frustration. He swept his desktop clear of its parchments, quills, and small devices useful for plotting nautical routes.

The crash and tinkle of breaking glass calmed him.

He got up from his chair and walked to the side of the desk opposite the lamp. He pushed aside an artfully stuffed osprey on a mounting rod. One of its wings hung broken. He bent and retrieved the jeweler's hammer he'd just brushed off his desk.

He straightened, hammer in one hand, emerald pact stone in the other. In the silver — framed mirror by the door, he looked like someone who'd just made an important decision.

"I wonder what you'll say when the Lord of Bats finds you, Japheth, whelp of a Sembian beggar!"

He raised the hammer.

Indecision slithered back onto Behroun's face. His shoulders slumped.

As satisfying as it would be to feel the green stone crack, the act wouldn't ultimately serve him. Destroying the pact stone would rob Behroun of his last pretense of leverage. Not merely leverage over the warlock Japheth, but also with his allies, if they could be called that.

The moment the emerald was smashed, the Lord of Bats would find and destroy Japheth. With the warlock gone, there was no way Behroun could claim the Dreamheart for himself. Only in the act of destroying the stone would Behroun wield power. In that very instant, he'd be the fulcrum.

The next moment, he'd hold a handful of ashes.

Behroun suspected all the extraordinary things Neifion promised in return for the jewel's destruction were fabrications, lies meant to entice, not to be made good on.

On the other hand, Lord Marhana controlled Japheth by threatening to destroy his pact stone. A threat that daily seemed less and less credible.

The threat meant nothing if he could not bring himself to follow through, especially if following through left him worse off than before, never mind its effect on the warlock.

"No. Not yet," he whispered.

Behroun dropped the hammer into his vest pocket.

His reflection in the mirror no longer showed a decisive man. Instead, it showed someone caught between two tempests. The mirror contained a tiny flaw that lent a faint distortion to his features, a blur he'd learned to ignore years before. At that moment, however, his-visage reminded him of a dream he'd had the previous night. He'd completely forgotten it.

He'd dreamed of his half sister, Anusha. An unsettling dream-no wonder he'd put it from his mind.

Anusha was standing in a shadowed space. Hints of pillars tall as mountains shadowed away into the distance behind her. The floor was pocked like a honeycomb. Every surface was slicked with a phosphorescent gleam whose color Behroun couldn't quite recall, but which made him feel sick to his stomach nonetheless. Slimy, snail-like humps crawled here and there, some the size of men, others far larger.

Anusha stood at the edge of the darkness, limned in greenish vapor.

His half sister yelled to him, desperate. What was it? Her mouth moved, but Behroun heard no sound. She seemed terrified. Of what? Was she looking at him? No, she was looking beyond him, reaching for something.

Tears leaked from her eyes. He couldn't hear her voice, but her lips moved as she repeated a phrase over and over. Something about a… key? The vapor behind Anusha churned. He glimpsed something, a single fantastic image of some squirming bulk.

The uncertain shape snatched Anusha back into a void of darkness.

He'd woken, though at first he'd been unable to distinguish the shadows of the dream from his lightless bedroom, so suddenly was he thrust into heart-thudding wakefulness. His trembling hands had relit the candle next to his bed, eager for the reassurance of the warm yellow glow.

And then he'd fallen back to sleep and forgotten the dream entirely.

How had such a nightmare slipped from his memory until now? Behroun shuddered.

It was foolishness anyway. His half sister was safe. He'd bundled her off to the country house, lest some of his adversaries on the New Sarshel Grand Council try to eliminate her.

Not that he would be sorry to see the woman gone. She was a snotty problem who'd given him nothing but trouble. But he'd mourn the loss of what she provided him. Through her, his claim to the Marhana family name had at least the hint of legitimacy. Her death was a complication he didn't need at the moment.

He shook off the dream. Anusha was safe, he was certain. She'd packed her travel chest as he'd ordered. That had been the last he'd seen of her. No doubt his spoiled half sister had already forgotten the reason he'd sent her away.

He reflected on the mystery of how dreams mixed real events with imagined scenes. Horrors such as those he'd glimpsed in the dream were outside his experience… but he could guess the origin of the nightmarish images.

Now that Malyanna had come to live at the mansion, things in New Sarshel had changed.

Behroun left his office. He slipped the pact stone into the locket he wore like an amulet around his neck. It had a secret clasp that only he knew the trick of opening. Its star-iron body would keep any treasure safe, even from a mad eladrin noble exiled from the Feywild.

*****

The hunting bay of a hound echoed through the house.

As Lord Marhana tramped down into the subterranean wine vault, the baying grew louder. The sound indicated Malyanna was at her games again. Despite how her presence strengthened Behroun's position in New Sarshel, her methods sometimes appalled him.

An oak door reinforced with iron bars stood ajar at the bottom of the stairs. Behroun frowned, passed through the door, and closed it behind him. He locked it with a key from his tunic. It wouldn't do for Malyanna's latest toy to escape back into the city. The eladrin noble might think the possibility added extra spice to her game, but the mere thought of such an escape drew an acid pang of alarm from Behroun's gut. For a man so young, his digestion had grown painfully troublesome.

His hand automatically reached up to feel the amulet under his shirt. He hated having to wear it concealed, but Malyanna knew he kept the warlock's pact stone within it. The woman's moods were so impenetrable… he was afraid she might simply rip it from him if the thought crossed her mind, even though he was certain she would not figure out how to open it. Mostly certain.

Behroun tramped farther into the dank, niche-lined catacombs. Instead of moldering bones, the shelves on each side were half filled with grape vintages bottled in heavy smoked glass.

Most of it had probably turned to vinegar years earlier, he mused. He allowed his hand to trail across a hand- lettered label, brushing off a decade of dust. What did it say? He grunted in disgust. The script was in a language he didn't know or even recognize the name for.

The bay of the hunting mastiff resounded through the narrow corridor, so loud that he wondered if he had become the quarry.

"By the gods, I wish I'd never thrown in with her!" he muttered. When he'd met Malyanna, she seemed incidental to his plan, an ally of chance. And someone with strengths too potent to ignore. She'd claimed she was an exile from a Feywild kingdom who needed his aid to reclaim her rightful throne.

Lately he wondered if it wasn't she who had found him rather than the other way around. Malyanna had somehow known he was on the cusp of retrieving the relic. She never treated him with all that much respect, even back when he'd thought he was the one calling the shots. And she never talked about the kingdom she was supposedly trying to reclaim either.

Sometime in the last few tendays, their roles had reversed. Behroun couldn't put his finger on exactly when. His abilities were mostly bureaucratic, while the waves of bone-chilling winter that rolled away from her spoke of a strength more potent, one that made him afraid. He should have known what would happen the moment the eladrin noble approached him.

He moved into a larger vestibule. It was lit by rows of candles lining catacomb shelves. A block of cracked stone sat in the center of the chamber. Besides the one he entered through, three other archways opened on darkness.

Behroun paused, not really seeing the chamber. He wondered, not for the first time, if Malyanna wanted the Dreamheart. She'd never said so, but…

He murmured, "I wonder if every word from her mouth is a lie?"

"Talking to yourself again, Lord Marhana?"

Behroun gasped.

A woman reclined on a narrow balcony above the vestibule. Her slender limbs and graceful poise transcended mere humanity. Her white skin glowed like moonlight, and her eyes were coal.

She was an eladrin noble, an entity who surpassed the powers of humans and mortal fey alike. One thing was sure-she was old. By her stray words and stories, he'd learned she had lived hundreds of years at least. She had piled on more winters than her kin in Faerun managed, despite her youthful skin.

"Did you hear my question?" she said, gazing down at him as a sated cat might eye a skittering mouse.

"Ahem," coughed Behroun. He'd been staring at her. "I was considering our problem-"

"Hold!" she interrupted, her voice dagger sharp. "My entertainment is drawing to a close. Do not distract me!"

A scream of hunger splintered Behroun's facade of confidence. It was the sound of a hunting beast, but not one born in the mortal world. Comprehension dawned. "Is that thing loose in here?" he choked out.

Malyanna snorted. "Of course, what else?"

Lord Marhana stumbled to the wall beneath the balcony. He scrabbled for a grip, finding purchase in dusty crevices for fingertips only. He levered himself up half a foot. His left boot discovered a toehold, but his right scratched ineffectually at the smooth stone.

The hungry bay echoed through the chamber again, its volume redoubled.

Behroun pulled himself higher, but a tremble in his left thigh grew quickly into a full — scale shake. He was unused to such effort.

"Pull me up!" he gasped.

The eladrin spared him a glance, her expression unreadable. She didn't move.

Behroun moaned. He was to be the entertainment! "Malyanna, please-"

The woman leaned down and extended a pale hand. Behroun grasped it. Her fingers were icicles, but he didn't let go. She pulled him up with little effort or attention. Her eyes were back on the three lightless exits. She was breathing harder, but he guessed it was from excitement, not exertion. When he pulled free of her grasp, his hand tingled as if waking from frostbite.

A man burst from one of the dark archways. The fellow's eyes rolled in his head like a fire-maddened stallion.

He was panting something, over and over-a prayer perhaps. If Lord Marhana hadn't known the man well, he doubted he would have recognized the crying, scratched, terrified man as Councilor Yenech, the second most feared and hated administrator in New Sarshel.

That could be me, Behroun thought. Before all was said and done, it might be. A sliver of pity flared in Lord Marhana's chest for Yenech.

The councilor ceased his headlong flight through the darkness. Though the light must have hurt his eyes, having come so recently out of unrelieved darkness, the man stared up at them as if they were his salvation.

"I knew the light would draw him here," murmured Malyanna. "Perfect."

Yenech flinched. His gaze slid off the woman and focused on Behroun.

"Lord Marhana!" yelled the councilor. "Help me!" Behroun looked away.

Yenech's scream of terror pulled his eyes back a heartbeat later.

Something else was in the room. A shadow with the outline of a large dog. Its coat was smooth as oil and just as black. But its teeth were white. A growl rent the air. The mastiffs prey soiled himself.

The eladrin had earlier described her pet to Behroun. She said it was a beast that could pursue its quarry no matter how far it fled, even should that quarry cross into realms apart from the mortal world. As long as that realm contained some bit of shadow, the mastiff would find a way in, and from there a path to its target. Councilor Yenech didn't manage another ten steps before the mastiff was on him, bearing the man down to the stone floor. Its jaws seized onto the back of the wailing man's head. It shook Yenech like a rag doll. The wailing scream cut off the moment the administrator's neck snapped.

Malyanna drew in a sharp breath. An uncharacteristic flush warmed her skin. Her eyes didn't leave her pet as it began to feast on the fruits of its kill, but she said, "One less obstruction to your rule in Impiltur, Lord Marhana.

Isn't it grand?"

The smell of blood mixed with the odor of excrement turned Behroun's stomach. More than anything else, he wanted to gag. He closed his eyes instead and tried to gain control of his breathing and thundering heart.

"Yes," he finally managed, his voice hoarse. "When I do so, and you become my, um, queen… then you'll fulfill the requirement of your exile. You'll be able return to the Feywild kingdom and rule once more. Perhaps we do not even need the relic."

The eladrin's laughter was like hail on tile roofing.

"You amuse me, Behroun. I will remember that, when everything is through. But enough with your jokes.

"Tell me, where is the Dreamheart?"

"Thoster has communicated with me-he's still loyal, at least. I think… Anyhow, the captain says the warlock stole it."

"And where is Japheth? Isn't he under your thumb?" "Yes. Well. He hasn't responded to my last few messages.

"But I'm sure it's only a matter of time-"

"Destroy the pact stone," interrupted Malyanna. "Then the Lord of Bats will lead us to the traitor, and thus to the. Dreamheart."

Behroun said, "I could do that, yes. But consider! If we do what you say, we risk Neifion gaining your trinket. Do you trust him not to take it for himself, once he is freed of all constraint?"

The woman's eyes narrowed with calculation. She didn't respond.

He said, "I remain in contact with Captain Thoster. His, last communique indicates the monk from Telflamm, named Raidon Kane, will lead us to Japheth."

Malyanna remained quiet a moment longer, then said, "We shall try your way, Lord Marhana. But I swear by the Citadel of the Outer Void, if you can't locate the warlock i soon, I will break the pact stone myself."