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“It’s complete,” he finally said, surprised to see that lamps had been lit in the reordered tent and a wedge of night instead of sunlight could be seen at its entrance.
“Are you certain?” Zaredis eyed the map with an admiring gaze.
Gharek nodded. “Absolutely. With this map in hand and your sorcerer beside you, you won’t need me at all to take the Windcry.” He resisted the temptation to snipe at Rurian for not stopping the ghost-eater from abducting his daughter and Siora. Surely the spell the sorcerer had cast before to drive the entity away would have worked a second time. Disgusted, his lip curled. Useless. The magician put more effort into looking mysterious than actually employing helpful magic when it truly counted.
“Nice try, cat’s-paw.” Zaredis’s flinty regard hardened even more. “But you’ll be accompanying us along with the map. I’ll cut you loose when I have the Windcry in my hands. Not a moment sooner.”
He’d expected Zaredis’s refusal. He didn’t lie when he said the map would direct the general to the Windcry without Gharek’s help, but despite that, he’d remain a hostage until Zaredis had the prize in his hands.
Rurian bent closer to the map for a moment, stared at a section of it, then flipped through the spellbook Zaredis had returned to him.
“What is it?” Zaredis asked as the sorcerer’s attention darted back and forth between the map and the page he’d marked in the tome.
Rurian didn’t answer, instead firing a question of his own at Gharek. “How much of the book did you read?”
Made wary, Gharek shrugged. “Thoroughly? Not much. I skimmed all of it though. Why?”
The sorcerer pointed to a symbol Gharek had drawn on the map, a simple engraving with the look of a child’s artwork decorating the lintel of the door that opened to the chamber holding the Windcry. “This is on your map, the marker for the chamber holding the Windcry.”
“So?”
Rurian turned the open book outward so Gharek and Zaredis could see a replica of the symbol on the map sketched on the page. “The same mark is in the book. It’s a sigil, which means there’s more to the protection than a powerful warding spell.” His somber visage turned darkly grim. “This chamber is protected by a demon.”
The revelation twisted a knot in Gharek’s gut. Thank the gods he hadn’t sought to break the wards and steal the Windcry himself on that first reconnoitering mission into the palace. Even if he’d possessed the ability to break a ward, he was too cautious to try something so risky alone and without a well-crafted plan. He’d never accounted for a demon in this hastily constructed plan, and judging by his companions’ scowls, neither had they.
“I can’t do anything about a demon,” he told Rurian. “I’m not a sorcerer to control such beings. This sort of thing is your expertise.” Though he didn’t have much faith in the sorcerer’s abilities at the moment.
Rurian’s gaze glittered with icy dislike, as if he’d heard Gharek’s critical thoughts. “If the ward is broken, the sigil is broken and thedemon set free,” the sorcerer told Zaredis. “We’ll be dead before we can blink if that happens.”
Zaredis sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “What do you suggest?”
Impatient with this volleying of concerns and desperate to get free of Zaredis’s demands so he could try to save those he actually cared about, Gharek snapped at Rurian. “Don’t you have a binding spell you can mutter to hold it? Siora successfully enslaved two spirits while in the middle of a whirlwind and she didn’t even know she was a necromancer.”
For a sliver of time, Rurian’s face went blank and tiny forks of pale blue lightning danced between his fingers before fading. His features lost their distant menace, softening the smallest bit with a touch of sympathy. “I understand your anger. Your desperation.”
Gharek couldn’t care less if he did. “That’s nice. Now how do you get past the demon?”
Rurian’s sympathy died a quick death. “I can create a ward within a ward. Carve a sanctuary out for us,” he said. “Once we break the existing ward, the demon will attack us.” He pointed again to the map, tracing the air just above it with a fingertip to stop over one spot. “This corridor. It’s the only one leading to the room?” Gharek nodded. “Then it won’t do us much good to lead it there. We’d have to run a gauntlet with it waiting for us. It needs to stay in the Windcry room. I can make use of the chamber’s design and the position of the artifact to build a different ward that won’t be affected by the ward breaker.”
“And if that isn’t enough?” Zaredis asked the most important question of all.
Rurian didn’t hesitate. “I’ll distract the demon while you steal the Windcry.”
Gharek’s eyebrows rose. Rurian’s loyalty to Zaredis must be far fiercer than he first imagined if he was willing to use himself as bait to occupy a demon’s attention while they stole the Windcry. He was torn as to whether the sorcerer was mad, stupid, courageous, or a combination of all three. There was no question regarding his devotion if he was willing to act the part of possible sacrificial victim so Zaredis could have his weapon. “Your bravery is epic,” he finally conceded.
Rurian gave a soft snort. “Speed will serve us better than courage. Demons are fast.”
“I’ve experienced many firsts since my unfortunate capture by your master,” Gharek replied. “A ghost-eater and its ethereal wolves, and now a demon waiting to consume anyone foolish enough to attempt stealing the Windcry.” Before he could face the horror in Midrigar, he’d have to face the horror in Domora, and for once it wasn’t the now-deceased Empress Dalvila. One bright spot in this madness.
With the map complete, Zaredis chose not to wait until the following day to ride to Domora. His councilors tried to talk him out of going with Rurian and the cat’s-paw, arguing that his army needed to see their general among them to keep up morale.
Zaredis had given them all a disgusted look. “My men aren’t children, and I’m not a nursemaid. The majority of my forces made it here under command of my captains without seeing me for months. I’ll be gone for a few days at most. I expect this camp to be ready to march on the capital as soon as I return.”
Gharek understood what Zaredis didn’t say. He wanted to be the one to personally steal the Windcry and didn’t trust another to do so, not even Rurian, who was willing to act as demon bait if necessary so his master could obtain his prize.
The three men left for Domora in the deep of night, taking the main road instead of the drover paths with their rutted byways. Zaredis and Rurian were heavily armed. Gharek was not. His knife had been returned to him but hidden away in his satchel, which was tied to Zaredis’s horse. He rode the gelding Suti once more, grateful for Siora’s quick thinking and her mendacity for saying the animal was hers. Zaredis had allowed her to keep Suti, unaware it had been his funds that purchased the horse from the free traders.
The journey gave him time to think, to plan. Planning prevented him from worrying until his heart froze in his chest or did the opposite and burst past his breastbone from the frantic beat of terror that threatened to swallow him whole.
