Page 26 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“We must let those with tacn have their little superiorities,” said Grön. “It’s better that no one knows the extent of our enterprise.” He coughed and added, “Tell nobody. No taxes this way.”

“I can’t believe the Dreor had the brains to organise this,” said Osric.

“They don’t,” said Grön.

“Who was it?”

With effort, Grön said, “Don’t…know. Chief Seer met them. They offered him a fortune to produce the Pox. He refused. Was murdered in cold blood. Next thing we knew, Dreor were swarming the Tor.”

Things became a bit awkward for Osric then, given that the murderer of the chief Seer was…him.

He held up his hands as Fairhrim glared at him. “It was just a job.”

“Who ordered it?” asked Fairhrim.

“I don’t know. I got a slip of paper with instructions and a price. That’s all.”

At the top of the spiral stair, muffled by the pouring waterfall, came the stamp and rattle of steel sabatons.

“We need to go,” said Osric.

“We can’t leave him here,” said Fairhrim, clutching at Grön’s shoulders.

Grön peered up at them through blood-crusted eyes. “Let my body feed the oak.”

He moved no more.

The lights sputtered off. The Dreor were clattering down from the atrium above.

Osric did not like this. Fyren dealt death; they did not do well with those who were already dead.

“We’ve got to go,” said Osric.

“I thought you were the most dangerous thing here,” said Fairhrim.

“Circumstances have changed.”

He snatched Fairhrim against himself, preparing to shadow-walk back where they had come from. But there was clanking coming from that direction. He raised his tacn and read the shadows across the foyer, where another door led out. There was movement in that corridor, too.

In the darkness, over the thundering waterfall, the scrape of sabatons surrounded them.

“Shit,” said Osric. “We’re trapped. I can’t take on this many Dreor—”

Fairhrim’s tacn glowed white as she held it up. “The waterfall.”

“What about the waterfall?”

“It’s pouring into an underground river. It’s all darkness under there.”

“And?”

“Shadow-walk us through it,” said Fairhrim.

“Are you mad? We don’t know where it ends. It could go on for miles underground.”

“But we know howthisends,” said Fairhrim, with reference to the horde advancing towards them.

“We might drown before I can pull us out.”