Hand of Fire

Shandril sighed and sat down on her wagon-perch, seeming suddenly small, young, and very close to tears. "Arauntar, you've no idea how many times I've said that these past few months-and how many folk have refused to listen to me and died." She waved a hand at Sarlor, Tarth, and Mulgar and added, "Don't make me add these three fools to my bone-reckoning. Please."

Strangely, no one laughed or scoffed. Arauntar merely nodded and strode hastily off into the night. The three guards lowered their swords and stared expressionlessly at Shandril, who sighed again and idly shaped a sword of flame from her fingertips.

Sarlor eyed it and started to curse softly, but Tarth slapped him to silence. Mulgar deliberately sheathed his own sword, made the downward, spreading gesture of flat, open hands that means "Enough. Let there be peace here between us," and slowly turned around to watch the night again. After a moment, Tarth also turned to take up that watch, but it was a long and wary time ere Sarlor reluctantly took his eyes off the fire-witch.

He looked swiftly back over his shoulder at her twice, thereafter, but she never moved from where she sat on the wagon-perch, head resting morosely on arms clasped around her knees… like many a young girl he'd seen brooding by firelight.

"Well?"

Besmer emitted a little moan and whispered, "Please, Lady, don't… don't toy with me. We must wait here."

"Besmer," the soft voice in his ear asked calmly, "what did you intend to do to me, when we first met? Rob me… or something more?"

The thief started to shake. "Uh-I-just rob you, Lady! Truly!"

"Besmer, you're a terrible liar. What if I'd been ugly, and a man, armored so heavily that your blade couldn't touch me but so trammeled that you could snatch my purse at will? Is stealing coins how you eat?"

"M-mostly, Lady. That and… jobs for the Master."

"How much does such work win you, in a tenday?"

"Sometimes much." She waited, and reluctantly he added, "Sometimes little: a few coppers, a silver falcon."

A slender hand came around in front of his face. Between its fingers were four gold coins. "I pay well for good guides," his captor said calmly, "if they give me no trouble and offer me no treachery. Remember that." The hand vanished again.

Besmer swallowed, and-his mind a-whirl-saw many possible treacheries. He also saw vividly the perils the Master of the Shadows could visit upon him for his guiding this night, or being bested by this mysterious woman, or just on a whim…

"You're thinking of whether you'll survive to spend any coins I give you, after bringing me here," the Lady's soft voice said from behind him. "You're wondering if you can hide those coins and somehow live to spend them-if you can flee Scornubel at all. You're wondering what you can do to me if this damned cord is ever not around your neck. All of these things are as plain as the light of highsun. What I don't know is whether you want to leave Scornubel… or if it's just too much a part of Besmer for you to dare."

Her words hung in the silence between them.

He licked his lips, swallowed-so much sweat was pouring down his face that it was dripping off his nose and chin-and whispered, "I don't want to, but now I'll have to or die. I can see that."

After another silence, he added, in a voice so low she had to almost rest her chin on the back of his neck to hear him, "Will you-take me with you, Lady? I'll do anything…"

"I don't doubt that," she whispered back. "Think on this before you ask again, Besmer: We're almost certainly being listened to, right now-and where I'm going, death will be well-nigh inevitable. In truth, it might be safer for you to throw yourself onto Bradraskor's mercies."

There was another silence before he whispered, "Lady, what are you?"

As if his words had been a cue, the sentinel with the sword stepped back into the passage, said curtly, "Come,".and whirled back into his side-passage again.

"Lead on, guide," the soft voice said gently in Besmer's ear, and the trembling thief reluctantly stepped into the side-passage.

They'd gone barely six paces before a sword thrust through Sharantyr again. She regarded the sentinel with -a raised eyebrow, and he put out his other hand to snatch the cords of her stonemaiden and snapped, "From here on, you go to see the Master alone. Leave me your sword-and your dagger, and every other weapon you have."

Sharantyr's strength held the cords immobile despite his strong tug, keeping the suddenly gargling Besmer alive. She looked straight into the sentinel's stony face and said in exact mimicry of his flat tones, "Let go of my cords-or die."

For a long moment they stared at each other, strength straining against strength and the thief staggering and clawing for air, trying desperately to turn around. Sharantyr raised one eyebrow, and the sentinel let go of the stone-maiden, stepped back a pace, and growled, "Surrender your weapons now!"

"I hired this man as a guide," Sharantyr told him calmly, taking her cord from around Besmer's neck and dropping a handful of coins into his hand. Out of habit the thief looked down at them, and she said to him, "I hope those few coins will suffice. If I need a guide again in Scornubel, I know what alley to expect you in."

Besmer stared at her, clenched his hand around the small mound of gold coins that filled his palm-then turned and ran, rubbing at his throat.

The sentinel repeated his demand, and Sharantyr turned back to him, lifted her eyebrow again, and said, "You seem slow to grasp the fact that I take no orders from you or from the Master. To borrow again the phrasing you seem to love so much, stand aside-or die."

The man's face tightened, and he lunged like a trained sword-master, thrusting his blade-through her harmlessly, as before.

Almost lazily Sharantyr swung the stonemaiden. The sentinel's hand darted up to prevent the cords from being looped around his neck, and both stones struck his head from behind, one on either side.

Limply he sagged to the floor of the passage. Sharantyr sprang over him and walked on.

The passage took a sharp bend, where rusty blades thrust out of the wall to transfix her. She walked through them unscathed, shaking her head, and found herself locking gazes with another man, this one a grim, armored giant. He was more than a head taller than she was, though she overtopped many a man, and almost filled the small, square room the passage emptied into. The passage almost filled one wall of the giant's room, and the other three walls were similarly dominated by doors-all of rusting scraps of salvaged armor, nailed to wood beneath. The two to either side were closed, but the one straight ahead, beyond the giant, stood invitingly open, onto a passage that turned right to lamplight in the distance.

This hulking guard wore an open-faced helm. What Sharantyr could see of his face was a grotesque, fleshy mask of crisscrossing scars.

She smiled at him and said grandly, "You may introduce me: the Lady Tessaril Winter, here to see the Master of the Shadows."

The response was a slow, sneering introduction of a steel war-axe from behind the giant's back. Sharantyr eyed its wooden haft as he hefted it to the accompaniment of a deep, sinister chuckle, decided she didn't want to have bones broken at every blow, and strode nonchalantly into the room, fluffing out her hair like an exasperated courtier. He frowned at her in puzzlement, then swept his axe up and back for a slaughterhouse swing. Sharantyr launched herself at the floor between and behind his legs in a desperate dive that carried her between his tree trunk legs.

The passage floor was cold, damp, and hard, and she wallowed on it for far too long, fighting for breath and kicking frantically. His boot-heel helped her, crashing into. her behind with bruising force as he tried to turn.