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“You don’t walk, I carry you,” said Makka.

Pradoor pulled his ear hard enough to make him wince. “You serve as I serve!” she said. “I keep the old ways alive. The faithful may seek out shrines from time to time, but they see me and they remember the hold of the Six on their lives. When the city starved, I led the famine march. When the Night of Long Shadows falls, I tell the stories that make the faithful roar and nonbelievers tremble. I feel the mood of the streets and the people.” Her voice sank into a harsh croak. “The age turns. Rhukaan Draal is the axle and I am the pin.”

“Do you mean the war with the elves?” Makka asked.

Rumors had spread through the streets all day, growing wilder and wilder with each telling. Raiders had destroyed clanholds. Fires had consumed eastern Darguun, the smoke blotting out the sun at dawn. Valenar cavalry had crossed the Mournland and were riding on Rhukaan Draal. Darguun would follow Dhakaan into the dust of ages. All of the elves of Eberron had risen to war, determined to exterminate the dar—unless dar marched to destroy them first, which they undoubtedly would because Haruuc himself had returned from the dead to reclaim the Rod of Kings and lead Darguun to victory!

Makka believed less than a quarter of what he heard. Something was happening, there was no doubting it, but it could have been anything from a pitched battle to a mere skirmish. Still, he had seen hobgoblins and bugbears with the look of seasoned warriors checking armor, sharpening weapons, and glaring murder at any elves they saw. War it was, then.

Pradoor’s ears twitched. “The war is a part of it as I am a part of it and you are a part of it,” she said. “The Six give straw to some, clay or steel to others. What we are given makes no difference—we are judged by what we make of it.”

Sudden certainty uncoiled in Makka’s mind. “I am given steel,” he said.

“Yes,” said Pradoor. “You are a warrior called to serve.”

Makka twisted his head so that he could see Pradoor out of the corner of his eye. “What were you?” he asked. “What are you given?”

Pradoor laughed again, her cackle rising above the noise of the street. “No one who has served me has ever dared to ask that question!”

“Are you going to answer it?”

Blind eyes turned to a red sky and the setting sun. “I was a midwife,” said Pradoor. “I am given souls.” Then she pulled back her hand and smacked the back of his head. “Now turn here!” she commanded. “And hurry. We are expected.”

Makka turned and strode along another narrow crooked street. A hobgoblin working the edge of a well-used sword with a whetstone glanced up and gave him a nod. Makka returned it.

Full dark had fallen and the streets had come to life when the tight-packed buildings fell away. A crowd stood in the space beyond. Makka instinctively held back to assess what lay ahead. Pradoor smacked his skull. “Keep going.”

He stepped out from the shadow of the buildings and into an unpaved square over which arched the first trees he’d seen since before he entered Rhukaan Draal. They were twisted, spindly things, much like the guul’dar who lived in the city, with smooth trunks he could have circled with his hands and thin canopies that barely iltered the moonlight. Torches—real burning torches and not harsh magical imitations—had been hammered into the ground around them and wedged into their lower branches. Figures roamed the square in small groups, talking quietly and casting shadows against the smoky flames. There was something at the heart of the square among the trees, something that looked like a dark jumble, though he could make out no more against the torchlight and the shifting shadows.

“What is this place?” he asked Pradoor.

“Somewhere older than Rhukaan Draal, a place that was here before the city and that the city surrounded but could not fully consume. People come here when they are uncertain or when they’re afraid. I always find them here.” She tapped his head again, gently this time, and he continued on toward the dark jumble among the trees.

He had