Tapasi lifted her hands, crackling with energy—her power derived from a dark goddess, Rodrick now realized—and the crowd turned toward him.
Lais struck Tapasi right between the eyes, then ran into the crowd, lashing out and knocking people down as she went. But there were fifty of the cultists, some of them doubtless trained in the same arts Lais knew.
Why couldn’t she have a more treacherous mind? If Lais had just acted as horrified about Rodrick’s presence as Tapasi had, if she’d leapt back from Rodrick and pretended to be one of the cult, she could have used the invisibility that granted to her advantage. But Lais always acted like exactly what she was: an honest woman, with ample skill for violence. Unfortunately, Rodrick couldn’t send shards of ice and clouds of killing frost into the crowd, because Lais was there, too, and though she might willingly sacrifice herself to stop the Knife in the Dark, Rodrick found he wasn’t willing to make that choice for her.
Lais snatched a torch from a sconce by the wall and swung the fiery end at the cultists trying to press in on her, clearing enough space for her to kick and punch, but it was just a matter of time before someone risked a burn and the rest overwhelmed her.
Rodrick drew Hrym and called up a freezing mist. Cultists began to slip and fall, but so did Lais, of course, though she still kicked and punched from her place on the ground, and even kept her grip on the torch. Rodrick, moving sure-footed on the ice as Hrym’s wielder, reached down and grabbed her free arm, granting her a connection to Hrym and thus the same freedom of movement. A cultist loomed at him from the mist, using some magic to keep his footing—and then shouted as he was lifted off his feet and hauled into the air. Dhyana was getting involved.
That was good. But this wasn’t the careful attack from concealment they’d planned, freezing the entire plaza of cultists solid and then hunting down any stragglers or escapees with Dhyana’s help. If he could drag Lais to a corner of the plaza and get a good vantage point on the crowd, blast them with ice while they were slipping and sliding, then maybe the plan could be salvaged …
Suddenly shouts rose up from the jungle beyond the plaza: “For Nex! For the Arclords!” The roar of tigers and the clash of swords joined the confused shouts of the cultists in the plaza. Rodrick groaned. That must be Grimschaw, with more of her men, trying to follow the treasure map or kill Rodrick or both, and doubtless trailed by the hunters Nagesh had mentioned sending out after him.
“We have to get somewhere safe,” he muttered. Lais pulled away from him, immediately slipped in the slick fog, and clutched at his arm again to steady herself. She glared, but didn’t break contact again. “Listen, Lais, if we can wait this out, Grimschaw and the cultists will kill each other.”
“Coward,” she spat.
“I prefer to think of myself as a realist.”
“And I prefer to think of you as food.” Nagesh appeared from the mist, untroubled by the ice. “It’s such a pleasure to—”
Rodrick slashed the rakshasa across the face with Hrym’s blade, and Nagesh stumbled back. The strike would have split any man’s head in two, but it just left another thin red line in his flesh, the edges crusted with slivers of ice. The rakshasa roared in pain, and Hrym blasted a torrent of ice, the cult leader disappearing into the fog to avoid being struck.
Rodrick grabbed Lais and pulled her along with him, around the side of the temple and out of the fog. The battle raged here, too, though no one took notice of two more running figures. Grimschaw’s black-clad servants of the Arclords were laying about with weapons and magic, fighting off cultists, and vice versa. The groups seemed well matched, with fallen bodies visible from both sides. One facedown corpse, clothed in white, might well have been Tapasi. She’d been so nice to him on the ship, given him advice, told him what to expect in Jalmeray … all while hiding her rot. Maybe she’d even been sent by Nagesh to spy on him. He was glad he hadn’t succeeded in seducing the woman. At least he hadn’t seen captain Saraswati among the cultists.
He chose a direction at random and darted among the trees, Lais finally able to follow on her own as they left the icy fog behind. There were supposedly other ruins in this jungle, and if they could find a place to hide for a while, they could come back later and pick off anyone who’d survived the battle back there. It wasn’t cowardice, it was prudence, that’s all.
After ten minutes, the sounds of fighting now faded into the distance, Lais said, “This is ridiculous. We left Dhyana back there, and you know she’s still fighting, she wouldn’t just run. We can’t—”
She tripped on the corner of a large stone sticking up from the ground, the first time Rodrick had ever seen her do anything ungraceful. He paused to offer her a hand up, which she ignored, rising with great dignity. But the moment’s hesitation made Rodrick notice the carvings etched on the immense flat stone: the same symbols from the temple the Knife in the Dark had overtaken, the wavy lines, the spiral … but underneath those, instead of a leaf, someone had gouged the crude shape of an eye, the stonework chipped and messy. Clearly a late addition—almost vandalism.
“Look at this,” he said.
Lais looked down, frowning. She moved her torch closer to the stone for better illumination. “Probably from the time of the Arclords. Their symbolism does favor eyes. Not surprising to find their mark. They defaced a great many things during their time on the island.”
Rodrick cleared away the fallen leaves and dirt around the stone, and realized it was an obelisk that had toppled long ago. He stared at it. The shape of the obelisk … the combination of the symbols of She Who Guides the Wind and the Waves with the eye of the Arclords … This exact configuration had been drawn on the treasure map he’d stolen from the thakur’s library.
The Scepter of the Arclords was here. He’d inadvertently led Grimschaw almost directly to her target.
Someone shouted, not nearly far enough away, and Lais looked around. She pointed to what looked, at first, like a tumble of vine-encrusted rocks, but upon closer examination proved to be an arrangement of fallen stones that formed a sort of natural cave. Rodrick and Lais brushed the vines aside to duck inside … and instead of finding a dirty hidey-hole, discovered a set of muck-encrusted stairs leading into the ground.
“It must be the remains of another temple,” Lais said. “Or maybe part of the same temple complex?”
“Either way, it makes a suitable sanctuary.” Rodrick led Lais down the stairs, which descended for thirty steps before leading to a cobwebbed stone corridor that gloomed off into darkness.
Heaving a great sigh of relief, Rodrick slid down to the floor. “All right,” he said. “We should be safe for the moment.”
“Did we come into the jungle seeking safety?” she said bitterly. Her face was drawn in the light from the smoky torch. “I came to kill cultists, not run from them. The thakur’s justice doesn’t extend to the heart of this jungle, not usually. We must cut out the rot ourselves. I just wish I knew whether or not you were part of that corruption.”
“It’s fairly clear the head of this cult wants us dead,” Hrym said.
Rodrick nodded. “Be practical, Lais. Maybe Hrym and I aren’t as blameless as we pretended, but we’ve got the same enemies as you do at the moment.”
“You’re thieves and liars.”
“The way you say it, those sound like bad things,” Hrym said.
“You deceive, and insinuate yourselves, and take advantage! How is that different from the Knife in the Dark?”
“We just want gold,” Hrym said. “I won’t pretend we always steal from those who deserve it, but we don’t kill people if we can avoid it. We’re no heroes, but you saw Rodrick fight the demon to save me. Would a treacherous man bother to do that?”
“You’re Rodrick’s livelihood,” she said. “How can you think he cares for you? You’re just another thing he can use.”
“I can’t convince you,” Rodrick said. “There’s no reason you should trust me. Certainly not my words. But if you can believe anything, believe this: Hrym and I would never turn a child against her parents. We would not teach hate and evil. We don’t revel in destruction for its own sake. Words aside, you can trust actions, can’t you? I saved you from that crowd. I could have fled, and tried to save myself, but I owe you a debt, after all this, and I mean to repay it.”
She scowled. “That’s true. You’ve saved me twice, now, when it would have cost you little or nothing to let me die.” She sighed. “You’re not good. But perhaps you aren’t as bad as the Knife in the Dark.”
“High praise,” Rodrick said, though her words stung him more than he liked to admit. “I really do think Grimschaw’s warriors and the cultists will reduce one another’s numbers significantly. We’ll stay here a while, then we can take out any stragglers.”
She nodded, and they waited in less-than-companionable silence for a while—until they heard the flutter of wings and low muttering above. Lais widened her eyes, thrust the torch into Rodrick’s hand, and hurried up the stairs.
She returned a moment later, followed by Dhyana, holding her bow. She gazed down at Rodrick. “Well,” she said. “This isn’t going as we planned.” She wasn’t shouting at him, so maybe she hadn’t heard Nagesh’s speech about Rodrick being an assassin.
“Plans usually don’t,” Rodrick said. “How did you find us?”
“I saw a torch moving through the jungle, and when the fog dissipated and I couldn’t find the two of you, I realized it might have been yours, and came to see. Why did you run?”
“My strong sense of self-preservation had a hand in that,” Rodrick said. “Are the cultists and Grimschaw’s people still fighting?”
Dhyana nodded.
“Then let’s wait a bit for them to reduce one another’s numbers further, and we can ambush whoever’s left.”
“Not brave, but not a bad plan.” Dhyana moved deeper into the corridor, and Rodrick pointed Hrym up the stairs, conjuring a wall of ice to block entry from above. Might as well discourage other visitors.
Lais stood beside Dhyana, peering into the darkness down the passageway as far as her torchlight would let her. Rodrick waited for her to tell Dhyana about his deceit, but she didn’t mention it. He doubted the garuda would take the news as well as Lais had. Apparently Lais felt she owed him enough to keep his secret, at least for now.
“We can rest a bit if you need to,” Rodrick said. “But soon, I want to go looking for the Scepter of the Arclords.”
Lais spun around. “What? It’s here?”
“I think it’s somewhere in the vicinity, yes. That eye scratched on the obelisk outside, below the symbols of your goddess of the waves—those same symbols were all drawn on the map I saw, to mark the treasure’s location.” Rodrick suddenly regretted not kicking dirt over the obelisk. If he’d seen it, Grimschaw might, too. Then again, she probably had plenty to occupy her just now. “Of course, someone else might have looted it before us. But if not…”
“We should search now.” Dhyana rubbed her hands together with fervor. “If we have the scepter, we may be able to use its power to strike our enemies down in one blow, the cultists and Grimschaw’s fighters alike.”
“Do we even know for sure the scepter is a weapon?” Lais said. “I thought no one knows what it does.”
“Why else would it have such a fearsome reputation?” the garuda said. “It must be a weapon, and one of great power.”
Rodrick wondered. If it was a weapon so powerful, why did the Arclords hide it when the Vudrani came to reclaim the island, instead of using it to fight the newcomers off? But he’d already observed that Dhyana thought in straight lines. Weapon or not, the scepter was valuable, and probably instrumental to getting him off the island in one piece, and rich besides. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said, “but we won’t know until we get it. Shall we search?”
* * *
This underground temple certainly hadn’t been looted recently, being full of drifted dirt, spiders, and snakes, a nest of which slithered away when Dhyana strode down a side corridor with the torch. “Those are poisonous,” Lais said, and Rodrick gestured with Hrym and froze the serpents before they could demonstrate their toxicity.
“Another temple full of vermin,” Rodrick said. “At least these don’t wear masks and robes.”
“Do you think there will be gold in here?” Hrym said. “If there’s a secret vault where the scepter is hidden, there might also be gold. What’s the point of a vault if there’s no gold? That’s why vaults even exist.”
After exploring a few passages that led only to dusty old sleeping chambers for long-dead priests, they followed a corridor that ended in a large room, the ceiling disappearing in shadow, perhaps built into a natural cavern. Rows of mostly broken benches filled the room, and something that might have been an altar stood beneath a twenty-foot-high statue of some unfamiliar Vudrani deity, its face broken, with holes where its eyes should have been. There were a few torches on the walls, old but still serviceable, and Dhyana lit a couple of them.
“She probably had jewels for eyes,” Dhyana said. “Looters have been through here, it seems. The scepter might be long gone, in that case. It would be unfortunate if the scepter is hidden in some dead treasure hunter’s attic. Someone is following us.” She said the last in the same low, conversational tone as the rest, and at first Rodrick thought he’d misunderstood her, but Lais picked it up immediately.
“That would be a shame. How many?”
“Just one, I think. Trying to be stealthy, but I have good hearing.” Dhyana drifted toward the left side of the room, torch held aloft. “I’ll look for this sign of the eye you mentioned over here,” she said. “Lais, perhaps you could check the other side of the room?”
“I’ll look by the statue,” Rodrick said, taking one of the new torches. The two women seemed to have a plan to deal with whoever was following them—some creature that had made this hole in the ground its lair, hidden away in some dusty side corridor they’d failed to check thoroughly enough? Rodrick would happily stay out of the way and let them deal with the trouble.
He took the torch, then walked around the statue to its backside, not really looking for anything—but then he saw, scratched into the stone at the base of the statue, a little curved line scored into the rock. He crouched, running his finger over the old grooves, and, yes, it was the shape of an eye like the one on the obelisk, the whole thing no larger than the palm of his hand.
There was the sound of a scuffle, and Rodrick came around the statue to find Lais leading Grimschaw, the latter’s arm twisted up uncomfortably behind her. Lais didn’t appear to be working hard to hold the woman, but Rodrick suspected that if she applied the least bit of pressure, Grimschaw’s arm would be broken or dislocated. Dhyana followed behind, holding Grimschaw’s spear.
“Hello, Grim,” Rodrick said lightly. “Funny we should both end up here. How’d you get past the ice wall?”
“The ice is strong, but the stones were old. I made another opening.”
“Wizards,” he said. “They get in everywhere.”
“Should we kill her?” Dhyana said. “She did attack us, but she also fought the Knife in the Dark, or at least, her people did.” Clearly the garuda was having trouble sorting Grimschaw into her usual black-and-white worldview.
Grimschaw stood as straight and haughtily as she could manage, considering the grip Lais had on her arm. “A good trick, putting that jewel in my pocket so they could track me,” she said. “I lost five good men when the hunters first found me.”
“They couldn’t have been all that good, then,” Rodrick said. “I suppose you followed us from the temple? Abandoned your people?”
“They knew their sacrifice was not in vain,” she said. “Their mission was to help me find … the treasure. I was going to wait and see if you emerged with it, then take it from you, but when you tried to shut me out with ice…” She shrugged. “I wanted to keep an eye on you.”
“‘The treasure.’ So coy. You mean the Scepter of the Arclords. They know about it. Out of curiosity, what does the scepter do, anyway?”
Grimschaw sniffed. “That’s something only the Arclords need to know.”
“Oh,” Hrym said. “She doesn’t know, either. That’s disappointing.”
“You work for the Arclords?” Dhyana said. “You’re not just a treasure hunter?” She didn’t quite point the spear at Rodrick, but it twitched that way. “And you? Do you, too, work for the enemies of Jalmeray?”
If Rodrick’s hands hadn’t been full of sword and torch, he would have raised them in a placating manner. “I didn’t know she was a servant of the Arclords when we met.” He’d suspected, but he hadn’t known. “I am absolutely not aligned with those wizards. I’m not fond of Grimschaw at all, either. I’m not saying we have to kill her, but we can freeze her in place. You might want to gag her, too. I find not being able to talk or move the arms has a calming effect on wizards, and keeps them from causing so much trouble.”
The garuda drew a knife and cut off strips from Grimschaw’s clothes and armor, ignoring her squawks, then shoved a thick wad of leather into her mouth to silence her. Hrym provided shackles of ice for Grimschaw’s hands and wrists, and they sat her on the remains of a broken bench.
“We should continue our search,” Dhyana said. “We must not let the scepter fall into the hands of the Arclords or the Knife in the Dark.”
“Oh, I think I found it,” Rodrick said. He led Lais and Dhyana around the statue and pointed out the eye. The garuda looked doubtful, but when Rodrick put his shoulder to the statue and started trying to push it, she lent her strength. They shouldn’t have been able to shift so much stone easily, but it slid forward four feet as if it were no heavier than a sea chest, cunningly counterweighted in some way, moving on almost invisible tracks. There was an opening underneath, with stairs leading down. “Aha,” Rodrick said. “This could be—”
Shadows moved at the bottom of the steps, and then creatures swarmed out, more than a dozen things the size of cats. Some were roughly human in form, the color of blood-flecked ash or clay, and others had tiny wings and horns. Still others had leathery flesh, and what seemed like masks grafted to their tiny faces, but those masks were snapping jaws made of metal and bone. They leapt, hissing and spitting, the ones with monstrous jaws opening and dripping acid that smoked when droplets struck stone.