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.“Tamur can track more than scent.” She thrust her palm forward.“So stop dallying, human.Give me the stone.Now!”“Very well.” He sighed.He knew that whatever happened next, his life was probably over.Behroun lifted the amulet from his neck and held it over his head like an offering.As Malyanna’s eyes followed the movement, he slipped the dagger from its sheath with his other hand.Then he bent forward and extended his knife arm as if he were punching.The dagger stuck the eladrin in the stomach.She screamed and backhanded him.His head snapped to the side as something broke in his face.His cheekbone?Everything was whirling around and ringing.He didn’t think he was standing upright any longer.The shock of the blow began to fade, but burning agony crept in to replace it.He blinked away the spinning grayness trying to smother him.Lord Marhana saw he was lying on his side several feet from where he’d knifed Malyanna.The woman remained standing, but blood ran in a thin rivulet from where the knife still protruded.The shadow hound snarled and slunk toward Behroun.“I said ‘hold,’ Tamur,” said the eladrin, her voice strained for the first time he could recall.“You can feast on his entrails later.After he’s opened his precious locket.”Good, thought Behroun.I hurt her at least.More than most can probably claim.The woman gripped his amulet in one hand.She must have taken it from him while he’d lain stunned.How long had he been out? Long enough for her to figure out she couldn’t open the star iron locket without help.Behroun realized, as he should have before he’d put a knife in Malyanna, that its function was his last bargaining chip.The eladrin pulled the knife out of her belly.She screamed words in a language so foul it nearly knocked Behroun unconscious again.The blood came thick and red now, and Malyanna staggered.Then the flow slowed to a trickle before stopping altogether.Strength returned to the woman with every heartbeat.Though her clothing remained stained and rent, Behroun knew the ancient creature enjoyed some damnable ability to heal herself.She saw he was watching and laughed.“You don’t think I’ve survived all these years by deceit alone, do you?”She shook her head and walked to where he lay.Malyanna tossed the knife aside, bent, and put the amulet in his splayed hand.“Now,” she directed.“Open it.Each moment you delay, I remove a finger.”“IH open it,” he rasped.“But only if you swear on your citadel.the Citadel of the Outer Void!”“You’re in no position to make demands.” She grabbed a pinkie finger and bent it backward.He gritted his teeth, but a scream escaped him when the finger snapped.“If you swear,” he continued, his voice breathy now, “I’ll open the amulet right now.”“Swear what?” she purred as she took hold of his index finger.“That neither you, nor your hound, nor any servant you command will harm me afterward!”She growled like an animal herself, then broke the finger she grasped.He screamed louder this time.The sound seemed to relax the eladrin.She heaved him to his feet and leaned him against a tarp-covered contraption.“Very well, mortal,” said Malyanna.“For the sake of our past alliance, despite how many times you’ve disappointed me, I’ll let you be.If you open this damned contraption now.”“Swear it,” he insisted, his voice a whisper.She collapsed her forearm across his throat so that his breath and blood were cut off for a moment—just long enough for him to panic.Then she released him, smiling.She said, “I vow as a priestess of the Citadel of the Outer Void, as a devotee of the Abolethic Sovereignty, that neither I nor any who serve me will harm you for a period of no less than one year, if you open the amulet right now.”Behroun sagged.He pulled the amulet close and tried to work its secret catch.The pain and awkwardness from the two protruding fingers of his left hand got in the way.He failed once, then twice, to open it.“Are you stalling?” purred the eladrin.Behroun gave a strangled sob and tried again.The third time proved the charm.The halves of the locket popped open.The emerald-hued pact stone lay exposed.Malyanna plucked it from Behroun’s hand.She held the stone up to her eye for a moment, squinting at it with her inscrutable, lambent gaze.Then she tossed it on the floor.The green jewel winked fitfully in the dim light.Malyanna pointed a finger.A pale, cold ray emerged and transfixed the pact stone.The emerald shattered.A flying fragment drew a red line on Malyanna’s check, but she only laughed.Even Behroun was able to see the breaking stone discharge a tiny spark, but dark and shaped like.a bat.The mote fluttered above the ruined stone for an instant, then dived away from the room in a direction that didn’t exist in Castle Darroch.“After it, Tamur!” screeched the eladrin noble.The great hound barked once and dashed down a lane of shadow Behroun hadn’t noticed earlier.Malyanna said, “Until next year, then,” and followed her pet into the shadow between dimensions.CHAPTER FOURTEENThe Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen StarsThe gray slaad tried to bite off Seren’s head.She barked out her most potent ward.Even as the thing’s teeth grazed her temples, radiance burst from her.The force of the concussive spell chipped the slaad’s teeth and flipped it up and backward several feet.The creature tried to get its balance but fell on its back.Before the slaad could rise, Seren snapped her fingers, bidding the called creature to return to whence it came.Neither the slaad clambering to its feet before her nor any of its brethren so much as paused, let alone disappeared in a puff of released summoning magic.She scowled.The pack of hunters had exploited the gap left by her summoning ritual.She couldn’t dismiss them because she hadn’t called them.All she could do was kill them or be killed.Shouts and screams from other parts of the ship grazed her ears.Larger slaads than this gray were ravening, but—The creature leaped at her once more, its rubbery face contorted with elemental hunger and fury.At least it was now leaking ichor.She spoke the opening stanza of Sunless Winter.A blast of chill blue spread from her open mouth, crystallizing from the arcane syllables.Ice rasped the slaad’s hide like sandpaper.It shrieked, but fixed her with its pale gaze.Frost stung her flesh, froze her in place, and sucked the breath from her lungs.How
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