Azure bonds - Kate Novak [151]
He froze when he caught sight of Alias's face. Her eyes burned with a wild anger, and tears ran freely down her cheeks.
Gods! Akabar thought; Cassana is doing to her what Moander did to me. She has no control of her actions, and she is even more aware of the evil she does than I was. Pity for the swordswoman overwhelmed him, and he dropped his guard completely.
A kick to his jaw plunged him into a spiraling blackness.
Cassana laughed as her puppet stood poised over the helpless body of the Turmishman. "Look, Zrie," the sorceress said, "she's crying. I bet I know who taught her that trick." With a second wave of the wand, the sorceress returned Alias to unconsciousness. The swordswoman collapsed on top of Akabar.
With a lazy wave of her free hand, Cassana signaled the lich. Zrie Prakis let his spell elapse, and the transparent wall turned back into stone and mortar.
Cassana applauded her little play. Olive sat in shock. Every hair on the back of her neck, no, every hair on her body, had stiffened as she watched the beating. The sorceress slid out of her throne and, beckoning the lich, headed down the hallway. Phalse and Ruskettle fell in behind them, but dropped back to confer in private.
"Did she have to…" Olive let the question dangle.
"She's a human," Phalse replied. "Humans tend to be cruel, as we both know." He paused for several paces, then added, "You know she did that for your benefit, as well as his."
"Oh?" The bard was certain that beating up mages had never been on her list of entertaining events.
"Sure. She wanted to point out how lucky you are to be joining our little family. Eventually, the mage will get the same message."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Sorceress Cassana is loath to use magic to get her way with a man," Phalse explained. "But she will use it rather than damage this Akash fellow beyond repair. I think she likes him."
Olive shuddered inwardly at the thought of what Cassana might have done to Akabar if she hated him.
"She could have made the One kill Akash," Phalse pointed out, as if reading the halfling's mind. "But she didn't."
Olive felt the return of the nervous sweat beneath her headband. She forced the idea of money, lots of it, to the forward part of her mind. "You all have different names for… for her.''
"The One? Yes, I suppose we do. Another mistake to be corrected. Cassana calls her Puppet. Moander's priest called her The Servant. The Fire Knives called her Weapon. The lich calls her Little One, as if he were her grandfather or something."
"Who called her Alias?"
"Not important," Phalse replied sharply. "Come, there's much to done."
They were in a simple, two-story merchant's house just inside the city wall. The cellar led to underground passages that delved under the wall and surfaced in an abandoned ruin beyond. Upstairs and down were long hallways with rooms jutting off them. The prisoners were being held in one of the upstairs rooms.
Nearing the top of the steps leading down to the first floor, Phalse and Olive heard Cassana's voice below. She spoke in Thieves' Cant, which Olive had no trouble translating.
"Grandfather, has the task been carried out?"
"All are cared for, milady," replied a thick, guttural voice.
"And you will take their place?"
"Aye."
"Morning, then, we'll complete the pact."
The sound of Cassana's gown swished off in one direction, while the cat-foot patter of the one called "Grandfather' faded away in another. Olive wondered where Prakis had got to. The undead magic-user could move more silently than the most graceful halfling.
Phalse flashed Olive an impish grin. "You understand the Argot?" He took the halfling's shrug as an admission of ignorance and explained, "He was the leader of the Fire Knives, reporting the death of Moander's surviving followers-all the ones that did not hurl themselves from tall places at the death of their god. The Fire Knives will take the place of Moander's minions at dawn when we