Marsheila Rockwell - Legacy of the Wolves

That left only one option, short of marching up to the gate, knocking and introducing himself.

He was going to have to go through the warded timbers. Damn.

Greddark waited in the copse until nightfall, sharing a meal of new spring apples and bread with his horse before heading out, crouching and slinking from bush to tree to boulder as he made his way to the stockade. As he neared, he saw that the fortification was not made entirely of wood. Every third timber had an iron strap bolted along its length. Good. That meant the wards were likely tied to the metal, and so would not extend outward from the stockade, but he had to be sure. He gathered a handful of large rocks and threw them toward the timbers, each one a little closer than the last, the final rock landing less than an inch from the one of the wooden poles. When no fireworks ensued, he decided it was safe to approach.

Though he’d seen the wards immolate a small bird, he knew they would cause less damage to a larger creature-the defenses were meant to deter, not kill, and House Vadalis wouldn’t use measures that might cripple their own wayward livestock. But how much damage would touching the stockade cause? Burns, undoubtedly. And probably some sort of paralysis-temporary, but long enough for curious guards to come looking for whatever had triggered their spell. They wouldn’t come for something as insignificant as a bird. The disruption probably wouldn’t even register with whoever was monitoring the wards. A creature the size of a dwarf, however, was going to set off alarm bells and bring them running.

No, he was going to have to avoid the wards completely. And the only thing he had with him that would allow him to do that was his planar doorway-the same one that had gotten Yaradala d’Medani killed and him exiled from both the Tower of the Twelve and Karrnath. Simply creating an ethereal door would not work. It would allow passageway through the timber but would not protect him from the warding spell. The only way to bypass both the physical and the magical barriers was to open a doorway through the stockade and then shift to another plane as he stepped through, returning instantly to the material plane on the other side of the wall.

Easier said than done-he’d been rooming with a sorcerer from Thrane when he’d first come up with the idea, and with Fedin’s help, he’d been able to open the doorway with relative ease. Unfortunately, since Fedin’s focus for the spell had been a rod of flametouched iron, the plane they’d stepped through was Fernia, the Sea of Fire. It had taken the Tower healers several days to heal all their burns and regenerate new skin. After that, Fedin had asked for a different roommate.

But once he knew the planar doorway would work, it didn’t take Greddark long to find another sorcerer to help him, this one an elf from House Phiarlan. With a slim dagger of rare byeshk for a focus, the doorway they fashioned opened onto a peaceful courtyard in one of the floating crystalline cities of Syrania, the plane of Azure Sky.

What Greddark hadn’t realized when he’d lent the dagger to Yaradala was that, while the cities in Syrania moved, the doorway he’d created didn’t , so when the girl had tried to use the portal, she’d stepped through into nothing but air. Even if the fall hadn’t killed her, the wards she set off when she landed on the other side would have. Her charred, broken corpse hadn’t been a pretty sight, and Greddark had since acquired a feather fall token from a colleague in Sharn, in case he ever needed to try the planar doorway again. From what he understood of the token, it should be enough to save him from Yaradala’s gruesome fate.

Should.

He dug the token out from an inner pocket and held it in his left hand. With his right, he plucked the dagger-shaped charm from his golden bracer, a wand bracelet he’d modified to look more masculine and hold twice the number of usual ornaments. The dagger grew in his hand, from one inch to a foot in length. With a brief prayer to Olladra and Onatar, he stepped up to the stockade and thrust the byeshk blade in between two timbers, half-expecting to hear the crackle of lightning and feel the heat and shock as the magic of the wards coursed through him. Instead, he felt a familiar stretching sensation as the invisible portal opened before him. He knew it was working when he saw that the iron on the two nearest metal-strapped timbers no longer sparked.

Taking a deep breath, Greddark walked into the wall.

The sky about him was cloudless and a deeper, more vibrant blue than he’d ever seen. In the distance, a city floated, sparkling in the sunlight like a diamond. Nearby, an emerald-skinned human with large white-feathered wings paused in its graceful flight to glance in his direction, the angel’s beautiful features marred by surprise. For the briefest of moments, Greddark was enveloped in utter, idyllic peace.

And then he was falling, falling through an endless cerulean expanse, his mind coldly telling him that he had nothing to fear, for there was no ground to hit, but his heedless heart threatening to burst from sheer terror regardless. He clutched at the feather fall token, struggling to slow his tumbling descent through perfection, sure he was going to die, just like Yaradala …

… and then his foot hit the ground on the other side of the stockade and he was inside the House Vadalis compound. Still shaken, he barely remembered to summon the byeshk dagger through the portal before it closed behind him. As he replaced the now shrunken charm back on his bracelet, he breathed a sigh of relief and promised a hefty donation at the next Host temple he came across. Of course, considering that he was in Thrane, that could take awhile, but he wasn’t worried-the Sovereigns were patient.

The interior of the compound was dotted with the same low-lying scrub and stunted trees that marked most of the area this close to the lake. The moonlight made the vegetation and intermittent rocks luminous, in stark contrast with their black shadows. It also illuminated him plainly for anyone to see. Digging into yet another pocket, he found a flask made of thick crystal and uncorked it, downing the salty potion with a grimace. It would only keep him invisible until he spoke or made any violent movements, but he wasn’t planning on doing either of those things-at least, not until he found Kyrin.

He’d begin in the barns. They were the most likely place to house something as exotic as a magebred ghost tiger, and if Kyrin was its handler, he wouldn’t be too far away from it. Greddark could only hope they didn’t treat the beast as a pet and let it sleep in the house, but with House Vadalis, you could never tell. Some of them treated their animals better than their heirs. And judging from some of the members of House Vadalis he’d met at the Tower of the Twelve, they had good cause.

From his perch in the tree, he hadn’t had a good enough angle to see far into the compound, so he wasn’t sure exactly what sort of livestock he’d encounter in the open range. He hoped it wasn’t carnivorous, aggressive, or overly curious. The potion’s effects would not hide his scent, and even a brief encounter with a sniffing nose could render him visible before he was ready. As he crept toward the nearest barn, he kept a sharp eye out for cattle or sheep, but while he heard lowing in the distance, he saw nothing. If luck was with him, the herds had already bedded down for the night closer to Lake Arul, their nearest source of water.

The barn doors were closed and barred from the inside, but he was able to move a barrel under a row of low windows and peer in through an open shutter. From the smell, the windows were located directly above a feed trough that hadn’t been properly cleaned in quite some time. Or perhaps the stench came from the pigs he heard snuffling and squealing in their stalls. No tiger here, then-that would be like letting a halfling sleep in the larder.