Bruce Cordell: City of Torment

"Seren," he said, "as I told the captain, I would welcome any and all aid."

She sneered. "That's not my style. Pay me enough, and maybe I'll consider it. Otherwise you're on your own."

The captain laughed and clapped Raidon on the shoulder. "She's out of my employ. Good riddance."

"Seren, if you help me find Japheth and secure what he stole, I can provide you with all the gold you could ever want," Raidon promised.

"How's that?"

"When I've taken care of the warlock, I will devote myself to gathering a great treasure from the plaguelands scattered across Faerun. More than a few treasure vaults of overwhelmed nations lie undiscovered by salvagers and dragons."

Seren breathed out. She scowled, but Raidon saw something kindle in her eyes.

She said, "Tell me more, Raidon."

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) New Sarshel, Impiltur

Behroun Marhana hunched over the small green jewel. The lamp burning beside his desk lent the crystal a malevolent glitter as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. His face was a mask of indecision.

Behroun crouched on the edge of his white leather chair. It was the least comfortable position he might have found on the luxurious seat, but it suited the moment.

"Should I break it?" The man said, his voice hoarse. It wasn't the first such entreaty he'd made that day. "It'd be so easy to hammer you into a thousand pieces of sand…"

The tiny jewel was indifferent to Behroun's threat.

He was the sole owner of Marhana Shipping. He was one of the Grand Councilors steering New Sarshel's destiny. Both positions lent Lord Marhana incredible privileges and power. He was used to making hard choices. Yet this one was beyond him.

Behroun bellowed his frustration. He swept his desktop clear of its parchments, quills, and small devices useful for plotting nautical routes.

The crash and tinkle of breaking glass calmed him.

He got up from his chair and walked to the side of the desk opposite the lamp. He pushed aside an artfully stuffed osprey on a mounting rod. One of its wings hung broken. He bent and retrieved the jeweler's hammer he'd just brushed off his desk.

He straightened, hammer in one hand, emerald pact stone in the other. In the silver — framed mirror by the door, he looked like someone who'd just made an important decision.

"I wonder what you'll say when the Lord of Bats finds you, Japheth, whelp of a Sembian beggar!"

He raised the hammer.

Indecision slithered back onto Behroun's face. His shoulders slumped.

As satisfying as it would be to feel the green stone crack, the act wouldn't ultimately serve him. Destroying the pact stone would rob Behroun of his last pretense of leverage. Not merely leverage over the warlock Japheth, but also with his allies, if they could be called that.

The moment the emerald was smashed, the Lord of Bats would find and destroy Japheth. With the warlock gone, there was no way Behroun could claim the Dreamheart for himself. Only in the act of destroying the stone would Behroun wield power. In that very instant, he'd be the fulcrum.

The next moment, he'd hold a handful of ashes.

Behroun suspected all the extraordinary things Neifion promised in return for the jewel's destruction were fabrications, lies meant to entice, not to be made good on.

On the other hand, Lord Marhana controlled Japheth by threatening to destroy his pact stone. A threat that daily seemed less and less credible.

The threat meant nothing if he could not bring himself to follow through, especially if following through left him worse off than before, never mind its effect on the warlock.

"No. Not yet," he whispered.

Behroun dropped the hammer into his vest pocket.

His reflection in the mirror no longer showed a decisive man. Instead, it showed someone caught between two tempests. The mirror contained a tiny flaw that lent a faint distortion to his features, a blur he'd learned to ignore years before. At that moment, however, his-visage reminded him of a dream he'd had the previous night. He'd completely forgotten it.

He'd dreamed of his half sister, Anusha. An unsettling dream-no wonder he'd put it from his mind.

Anusha was standing in a shadowed space. Hints of pillars tall as mountains shadowed away into the distance behind her. The floor was pocked like a honeycomb. Every surface was slicked with a phosphorescent gleam whose color Behroun couldn't quite recall, but which made him feel sick to his stomach nonetheless. Slimy, snail-like humps crawled here and there, some the size of men, others far larger.

Anusha stood at the edge of the darkness, limned in greenish vapor.

His half sister yelled to him, desperate. What was it? Her mouth moved, but Behroun heard no sound. She seemed terrified. Of what? Was she looking at him? No, she was looking beyond him, reaching for something.

Tears leaked from her eyes. He couldn't hear her voice, but her lips moved as she repeated a phrase over and over. Something about a… key? The vapor behind Anusha churned. He glimpsed something, a single fantastic image of some squirming bulk.

The uncertain shape snatched Anusha back into a void of darkness.

He'd woken, though at first he'd been unable to distinguish the shadows of the dream from his lightless bedroom, so suddenly was he thrust into heart-thudding wakefulness. His trembling hands had relit the candle next to his bed, eager for the reassurance of the warm yellow glow.

And then he'd fallen back to sleep and forgotten the dream entirely.

How had such a nightmare slipped from his memory until now? Behroun shuddered.

It was foolishness anyway. His half sister was safe. He'd bundled her off to the country house, lest some of his adversaries on the New Sarshel Grand Council try to eliminate her.

Not that he would be sorry to see the woman gone. She was a snotty problem who'd given him nothing but trouble. But he'd mourn the loss of what she provided him. Through her, his claim to the Marhana family name had at least the hint of legitimacy. Her death was a complication he didn't need at the moment.

He shook off the dream. Anusha was safe, he was certain. She'd packed her travel chest as he'd ordered. That had been the last he'd seen of her. No doubt his spoiled half sister had already forgotten the reason he'd sent her away.

He reflected on the mystery of how dreams mixed real events with imagined scenes. Horrors such as those he'd glimpsed in the dream were outside his experience… but he could guess the origin of the nightmarish images.

Now that Malyanna had come to live at the mansion, things in New Sarshel had changed.

Behroun left his office. He slipped the pact stone into the locket he wore like an amulet around his neck. It had a secret clasp that only he knew the trick of opening. Its star-iron body would keep any treasure safe, even from a mad eladrin noble exiled from the Feywild.

*****

The hunting bay of a hound echoed through the house.

As Lord Marhana tramped down into the subterranean wine vault, the baying grew louder. The sound indicated Malyanna was at her games again. Despite how her presence strengthened Behroun's position in New Sarshel, her methods sometimes appalled him.

An oak door reinforced with iron bars stood ajar at the bottom of the stairs. Behroun frowned, passed through the door, and closed it behind him. He locked it with a key from his tunic. It wouldn't do for Malyanna's latest toy to escape back into the city. The eladrin noble might think the possibility added extra spice to her game, but the mere thought of such an escape drew an acid pang of alarm from Behroun's gut. For a man so young, his digestion had grown painfully troublesome.

His hand automatically reached up to feel the amulet under his shirt. He hated having to wear it concealed, but Malyanna knew he kept the warlock's pact stone within it. The woman's moods were so impenetrable… he was afraid she might simply rip it from him if the thought crossed her mind, even though he was certain she would not figure out how to open it. Mostly certain.