Azure bonds - Kate Novak [99]
Slowly, Akabar rose and looked out across the plains. He caught a flash of moonlight glinting off of Alias's polished shoulder-plates. She was headed toward Yulash.
He spied the map. He picked it up and tilted it until the letters could be read by Selune's light.
Wait here, indeed! thought the mage, tossing the map onto his sleeping blanket with a deep frown. She lugs us all the way up here and when things get really dangerous, when she could use our help, she abandons us to chase after that lizard-who's probably reporting us to his hidden masters, setting up a trap for her to walk into.
His first impulse was to chase after the warrior woman and convince her to return, use force if necessary to keep her from marching into Yulash. He would tell her it was smarter to wait for daylight. But he knew in his heart that once the sun had risen, he would only try to convince her that the nightfall might be a better time after all.
She would never hesitate to go searching for the creature she thinks is a friend, while I, Akabar Bel Akash, mage of no small water, cower behind an overturned merchant's wagon. I am more greengrocer than master mage, the Turmishman thought, ashamed of his fear.
He could wake the halfling, and they could follow Alias together. Olive would have no trouble making up her mind what to do, Akabar realized. You could call her anything except late to looting. Still, taking the halfling did not seem particularly wise. As the old Amnite saying went, when matters are bad, think how much worse they could get if halflings were involved. Akabar didn't want to put her in any risk of running into the Red Plumes.
Standing with his face toward the waning moon, Akabar began to intone a spell. The deep, rich words rolled off his tongue as his right hand sliced through the air. In it, he held a bit of his own eyelash embedded in a resin of tree gum. At the end of the evocation, his left hand came down hard on the tree gum. The sticky pellet flared a bright blue, consumed by mystical energy.
Akabar held his hands up in the moonlight and watched them go transparent, as though they were sculptures of ice. Then they vanished completely. His vision blurred for a moment, then the world refocused for him. He could see normally, save that when he looked down at himself there was nothing to see but a pair of depressions in the grass.
The parchment map rose from the ground, hovered for a moment, then settled next to the sleeping halfling. What Alias had written could apply to both of them.
Then he used his long legs to stride toward Yulash in the wake of the swordswoman. Nothing but a wave of bent grass blades marked his invisible passing.
18
Yulash
A fog began to roll in across the plains minutes after Alias left the campsite. The swordswoman was uncertain whether she should thank Tymora for the weather or not. On one hand, it would make spotting Dragonbait more difficult, but on the other hand, it would cover her approach to the mound. The soft glow of her tattoo was enough illumination to see the ground beneath her feet.
Their camp had only been a quarter of a mile to the base of the hill, but it was another quarter mile climb up to the wall. Alias avoided the roads into the city; there were plenty of footpaths up the slope, and she knew they'd be less patrolled. Twice she thought she heard someone following her and she waited on the path, hoping maybe it was Dragonbait tracking her scent, but no one appeared. The third time she backtracked quickly, thinking perhaps she was being stalked by a sentry, but still she discovered no one.
Halfway up the hill, Alias emerged from the fog. She turned to survey the plains There was nothing to see though; all below her was whiteness. Yulash was an island in the clouds. She climbed farther up the slope.
The great walls that once ringed the cities were breached in more than a dozen places. She avoided the larger, more easily navigated breaks on the assumption that they would be guarded.