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He happened to be near the door when it opened to admit two figures. Late for travelers, Lanudo thought, but he’d never turned away potential guests before—and on such a miserable night, he could charge extra for a corner in the common room. He turned to greet them.

The greeting caught on his tongue.

The bigger of the two figures was a bugbear, bareheaded to the rain and looking as if he’d barely noticed the storm. There was a sprawling scar on his chest, a crude outline of a woman with the tail of a snake and outstretched wings. The sign of the Fury.

The smaller figure wore a magewrought cloak that shed water like a duck’s back. Lanudo expected to find a goblin underneath, but the figure threw back the cloak’s hood to reveal the smiling, nut-brown face of a gnome. Bright eyes fixed on him.

“Ah, innkeep,” said the gnome. “Tell me you can spare us going back out on a night like this. My name is Midian Mit Davandi, historian to the court of Lhesh Tariic Kurar’taarn. We’re trying to catch up to some colleagues: a hobgoblin duur’kala, a shifter, a tiefling, and a goblin mounted on a black worg. Quite a distinctive group. I wonder if you might have seen them.”

The gnome’s manner was friendly, and a lilt in his voice implied that Lanudo would be doing him a huge favor by helping him locate his friends. Lanudo’s gut told him differently. Midian’s bright eyes were hard with a sharp cunning. His smile was cold. The bugbear didn’t smile at all. One hand gripped the shaft of a heavy trident, fingers rubbing the wood. The other hand rested on his belt, uncomfortably close to a dangling clump of reddish hair and orange-brown flesh. It came to Lanudo that he’d been in Arthuun too long if he was able to recognize the scalp of a hobgoblin on sight.

He doubted very much if the gnome and the bugbear were merely trying to catch up with their “colleagues.” A better man than him might have tried to throw them off the trail.

A better man than him wouldn’t have lived long in Arthuun.

“You’ve missed them,” he said. “They stayed a night but rode out two days ago, heading into the Khraal. They didn’t say anything about where they were going in front of me, but they hired a guide, a hunter named Tooth. When he met them here, he looked like he was ready for a substantial expedition. If you want to know more than that, you should go to a tavern called the Rat’s Tail and ask there about what Tooth was up to.”

Midian raised his eyebrows. “Refreshing honesty. I appreciate that. Would the Rat’s Tail still be open tonight? No? How are your rooms, then?”

“Leaky and wet,” Lanudo said bluntly, “but I’ll give you the same rooms your colleagues stayed in if you want to search them.”

“Splendid,” said Midian. “How much?”

Lanudo charged him the same he would have on a dry night and, as the pair of them went upstairs, resolved to sleep in the bed of the handcart that the cooper three doors down kept behind his shop. Just to be safe.

12 Vult

A week after they left Arthuun, they heard the first shrieks in the night. Ekhaas sat beside their small fire and listened to the screams and wails as they rolled back and forth in the darkness. The jungle played tricks with distance. With rare exceptions, when a ridge or outcropping rose above the canopy and gave them a view of the green horizon, their world was limited to a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty paces in any direction. The shrieks had the same thin quality as distant thunder, but they could have been much closer.

“Suud Anshaar?” said Tenquis.

“Varags,” answered Tooth. “We’re on the edge of their territory now. Another day, then we’ll hear the Wailing Hill.”

“Is it possible the howls that are supposed to be Suud Anshaar are really just the howls of varags?” Geth asked.

“All of the hunter legends say there’s no mistaking the wails of Suud Anshaar for the cries of anything alive.” Tooth stirred the fire, then sat back. “Gives us another story, Ekhaas. Something to listen to besides varags.”

Though they’d tried to use false names at first, Tooth