Page 116 of Fortune's Blade

I tried to rouse my ride, I tried hard, but he was snoring now and I had no success. But a troll guard came by a moment later, his bootheels ringing on the steps. And in desperation, I leapt from one mind to another.

That was tricky in this guise, but I managed it, only to discover that the troll I’d found was going the wrong way. So, I jumped to a passing duergar instead, but was immediately detected and cast out, with harsh curses ringing in my ears. Leaving me flying over the city and floundering in space, just a disembodied mental echo tumbling through the void and about to lose any connection I had to—

I slammed into someone, several streets over, and grabbed hold thankfully. Until I realized: I’d slammed into something, a large, shaggy something that I couldn’t control, having found no mind to speak of. At least, none that I could understand.

It also did not have eyes or a nose, and was basically deaf as it could only hear through vibrations. It could feel however. I detected the smoothness of the stone path under whatever was passing for its feet, which seemed to have a great quantity of long, scrawling toes that allowed us to shuffle along fairly quickly.

But with no sense of smell, I could not follow Mircea’s scent, if it even existed anymore. It had become increasingly thin the farther we went from the palace, but not because we were going in the wrong direction. But because there were so many other scents now to compete with it, and no hallways to keep it contained.

Instead, I had been bombarded with the smells of people cooking their evening meals, full of strange and odorous spices; others sweating as they hurried back to their homes after the end of a long work day; and others heading off to indulge, with music, laughter and the sharp reek of alcohol emanating from cookshops and taverns seemingly everywhere.

I had been having enough trouble holding onto that thread of scent before this newest problem, and now it was literally impossible! I had to come up with something, and not just for that. But because the epic strangeness of my new ride was starting to make my absent skin crawl, my grip to wither up, and my mind attempt to release its grasp, shuddering away in revulsion, confusion and dismay.

I did not know what this was, only that it was far too alien for me to grasp for long. Instead of a lifeline, I’d found—God, I didn’t know what I’d found! Just that I wanted off, off, off!

But the creature I was riding was being given a wide berth by others, and no one came close enough to identify with such limited senses. Finally, I took a leap of faith and threw myself back into the void although that could have spelled disaster. But instead, I landed on another troll, which I latched onto as strongly as I dared, my mind reeling, and my mental fingers feeling bruised and far too unsteady for my liking.

But they held; somehow, they held! And the troll’s blissfully simple mind was like a balm to my jittery nerves, making the feeling of that other slowly recede as I clung to him. He was also going back in my original direction, but I managed to get him to look over his shoulder for a moment.

And saw what appeared to be a lumbering tree, complete with cascading moss that looked like shaggy gray hair, long, limb-like arms—at least half a dozen of them that ended in fingers so distended that they almost touched the floor—and tentacle-like roots on which it was skittering down the hallway.

I stared after it until it disappeared around a bend, my absent heart pounding. And then mentally shook my head and told myself to focus! We were running out of time!

I needed information, and a moment later, I caught the faintest trace of the scent that might give it to me.

Mircea had come this way, but it had been a while ago now, and worse, many streets converged at this point, dumping the late-night traffic into a central plaza. There was a profusion of interesting smells from all sides as a result, especially from a large central fountain perhaps four stories high that grounded the plaza. Or had done so at one point, before a profusion of ramshackle shops and food stalls had been built on top of it.

It was currently serving as the anchor to a thriving group of businesses providing the street traffic with whatever they wanted in the form of food, drink, shoe repair, toiletries for the needs of a dozen races, woolen outerwear and attractive leather goods. It was like the faire, if all the vendors had piled their shops on top of each other, with rickety ladders and heaps of overstock forming a path in between.

Most of the shops appeared to be closed for the night, although the troll spotted a goblin-like face with long, tufted ears waving something from halfway up the pile. It turned out to be a sausage on a stick, which had my ride pricking up his small ears. And tossing up a coin, after which the vendor threw down the proffered item.

It was a large sausage, but the troll ate it in a single gulp and carried on, past pretty girls of a dozen races lounging in doorways and trying to entice him over to their houses, where laughter and music were emanating from within. Some were taverns, some I suspected had other purposes, but to my surprise, he ignored them all. And headed where I needed to go, exiting the plaza on the other side and striding down an empty alleyway where Mircea’s scent was fresher with fewer ones competing with it.

In fact, everything smelled fresh here, and green and dewy and bright, cutting through the dusty haze swirling in the air everywhere else. That only became more the case when we ducked through a door, down a hallway, and out into a cavernous room, half of which was made up of large, greenhouse-like panels of clear glass. Oh, I thought, staring upward as they curved far overhead to cover half the ceiling, and to let in light under the right conditions for the vast area underneath, which was packed with plants and trees.

I supposed such a thing made sense for people who moved as often as the dark fey court. They had many mouths to feed and having orchards and cultivated ground on board, so to speak, would make things easier. But the gardens, as lovely as they were, were not what held my attention.

That would be what was visible outside of the glass, which for once was not blowing sand. Instead of glittering golden bands, there was the biggest cavern I had ever seen, so large in fact that the massive stalactites and stalagmites edging the great space looked miniscule by comparison. There was water there, too, glimmering in the distance, but I couldn’t tell in the darkness whether it was a lake or river.

Either way, it gave me an uneasy feeling, as Ray and I had almost died in a cave system similar to this one recently. I did not know if the two were connected, and in fact assumed that they were not as this one looked far colder. Icicles hung off the ends of the stalactites and some snow appeared to have followed us in through the cave mouth, dusting the rocky floor ahead.

Gooseflesh broke out on the troll, courtesy of my memories, causing him to absently rub his arms as he crossed the room, taking up what appeared to be a guard station by the windows. He turned around to face inward instead of out, and the spear that had been on his back was now over his shoulder. It won him a cursory glance from a man sitting under a nearby flower draped arbor alongside the Pythia.

Mircea, I thought, my pulse quickening, as the unmistakable form came into focus.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I tried to focus my scattered thoughts, and hoped that Mircea couldn’t see me looking at him out of the troll’s small eyes. Or that the Pythia couldn’t, I thought, remembering her reputation. But she didn’t spare us so much as a glance with the two immersed in conversation.

“I don’t care. It’s creepy,” she was saying, looking upward. I followed her gaze and noticed a ledge, high up on one of walls not composed of glass, which was supporting a shaggy raven’s nest.

“They are everywhere here, save for the palace,” Mircea said, giving it a disinterested glance. “The boarding house I stayed in while trying to gain admission to see the queen had one on the roof. Chicks had recently hatched and they squawked all night, loudly enough to shake the walls.”

“Why are they allowed here?” She looked angry. “Caedmon said that Zeus can see through their eyes, hear through their ears. It’s like he’s bugged the whole of Faerie and nobody does anything about it!”

“Yes,” Mircea agreed, leaning back and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t changed from dinner, and the rich velvet nap of the royal blue doublet and trousers he wore under his robes caught the light as he moved. “But they also spy on Zeus for everyone else, something that he does not appear to have yet figured out.”

“Or maybe it’s us who hasn’t figured it out,” the Pythia said. “How do you know we can trust them?”

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