Azure bonds - Kate Novak [164]
"That's where you met him," Akahar accused Olive.
The halfling shrugged. "You knew Alias wasn't human, but you never told me." She turned back to the true bard. "Phalse let you live then?"
"That was Cassana's decision. She changed her mind about destroying me. She left me in this chamber, where my thoughts would wander and my strength fade so I would grow more pliable. She wanted my help on other projects and… my company."
"Piggish, isn't she?" Olive said. "Just think, Akash, you could have been co-concubine with an ex-Harper."
Akabar fixed the halfling with a cold stare.
"Well," Olive Ruskettle said with a grin, "she may be a witch, but I can't knock her taste in men-living ones that is. Shouldn't we be leaving soon if we're going to stop this saurial sacrifice?"
"We wait only until moonset," the true bard explained, "To avoid the patrols of Fire Knives."
"You've been babbling away in that cell for a month now. How do you know when moonset is?" Olive asked.
The crafter picked up a drumstick and took a bite of the meat, chewed, and swallowed before he smiled sweetly at her. "You forget, Mistress Ruskettle, a bard never loses count of the measure."
29
The Sacrifice
When Dragonbait woke, he was tethered face up on a cold, stone slab with his tail flattened uncomfortably beneath him. He flexed his claws, trying to cut at the bindings that pulled his limbs toward the four corners of the stone, but little metallic twanging noises told him the bindings were not hemp or leather, but thin, steel wires. A dull ache warned him that the wire was slicing through his scales whenever he moved.
He opened his eyes and, through the great fangs carved of stone that ringed the hillock, saw that the sky was beginning to redden. Just beside the stone slab, in the center of the tanged maw, was a large fire circle filled with day-old ash. He had seen it from the air yesterday-the mound outside Westgate where the worshipers of Moander had waited to receive Alias from their god. The ancient and worn stone they had tied him to was lined with blood-gutters, leaving him no doubt as to the stone's purpose.
Concentrating, he summoned his shen. Mist had come as close as she could when she described him to the others as a paladin. From what he had gathered in his short time on this world, he and his brothers had much in common with that breed of fighter, and they had many of the same gods-given powers. But shen was not quite the same as a Realms paladin's ability to detect evil. With it, Dragonbait could determine all the myriad types of evil that preyed on the soul, the absence of evil, and the grace that nourished the soul. He was also able to judge the strength of a spirit.
The human mage's spirit had begun as an orb of dull yellow-weak, but without malice or arrogance; a little greed, but not much. The change in him had been astounding. His battle with Moander had strengthened his spirit a hundredfold. His soul grew cleaner, though grace was something he had yet to reach for.
The halfling had changed little-a wavering spirit, colored with avarice and ambition, heightened by pinpricks of petty, but deeper, nastiness. Her music helped keep these things at bay, but recently not even that had halted a growing smear of jealousy.
He would not ordinarily have searched two such as these, but the human swordswoman had decided to travel with them, and he took his oath to protect her very seriously. Her spirit was often so weak it frightened him. He was afraid her spirit would falter, not only because he was duty bound to her, but because her soul was touched with a midsummer sky blue of grace. He wanted to preserve that.
Now, though, he admitted