“Is everyone here?” asked Kedra.

  “Yes,” replied Dade. “Seven of us and you.”

  “What about Brand and the others?” asked Rori.

  “Brand was on duty today in Lycea. The others went back earlier,” answered Dade.

  “Gather close please,” said Kedra to everyone gathered around. “If you try to resist this and get left behind, you will be walking to Lycea.”

  “Why would anyone resist?” asked Rori.

  “It’s possible that this one time somebody thought it would be funny if there were people missing when we got to the other side,” said Ian with a grimace.

  “And was it?”

  “Not so much,” admitted Sean.

  While they were explaining, Kedra recited the familiar teleport spell that was her specialty. As she finished, there was the expected, sudden shift and the group was now standing on the teleport sink inside the Lorenthian military compound in Lycea. Brand and the rest of the group were all standing around talking with the other soldiers who were on gate duty.

  “What happened?” asked Brand looking at the tatters of Rori’s clothing. “Rori looks like he was shot full of arrows and stabbed a dozen times.”

  “Rori was shot full of arrows and stabbed a dozen times,” said Nolan without stopping as he moved towards the exit.

  “Hilarious,” said Baxter. “Are you guys trying to get us in more trouble than we are probably already in?”

  The group moved out of the magic circle, down a couple of short hallways and into a nearby meeting room. It was plain and nondescript with only a table and chairs in it. Everyone took a seat, leaving Dade the seat at the table’s head.

  Once they were all situated Dade said, “Okay everyone report on what we’ve learned so far. If anyone isn’t aware, we have been given the okay on continuing our mission, so once we have finished gathering information, we can move out in whatever direction we want. Now we just need that direction. Who’d like to go first?”

  “I will,” said Rori. “The assassin who has tried several times to kill me turns out to be a female elf or half-elf. She revealed that she wasn’t actually hired to kill me but instead someone has put out a general bounty on my head. She claimed not to know who put out the bounty, but she did say that someone named Reiber was her contact with them.”

  “Reiber?” said Wergen.

  “I believe that was the name she used.”

  “She had a tendency to whisper to try and hide her identity. It made her hard to hear sometimes. Why does that name mean anything to you?” asked Nolan.

  “Maybe. I know of a dwarf called Reibar. Might be the same person. Neither is it common as far as dwarven names go. Might be a coincidence, might not. He’s a bit of an ass, but, if necessary, I can try to get in touch with him.”

  “Why was she so chatty? Seems like assassins tend to be more of the silent type,” said Brand.

  “After they thought they had killed Rori by shooting him full of arrows and stabbing him half a dozen times, Rori stood back up and we turned the tables. It seems to have earned her respect. Or maybe it just unnerved her. Or maybe she was stalling for time. Whichever it was, she gave us a little info. Also, I think she may have given up on trying to collect the bounty,” said Nolan.

  “Wait, you guys were serious?” asked Baxter looking again at the holes in Rori’s clothes. “How come Rori isn’t dead?”

  “Some combination of the amulet he wears and the lingering effects of an earlier conversation with the Lady herself.”

  “Rori, is that all you’ve got?” asked Dade.

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, who’s next?”

  “I have a little info on poisons,” said Brand.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “The poison used on Kedra when she was abducted was likely one called Gray Asphodel. It’s not easy to come by and it’s not cheap. But then I don’t believe either of those things is something that would have deterred Cinder Black. I have a few feelers out in a few places I know of, trying to find out if anyone knows anything about Black purchasing some of it. But I do not think much will come of it as one of the main, known providers of it are the phren.”

  “And as the phren wanted Kedra, then it is probable that they gave Black the poison themselves,” said Sean.

  “Exactly,” said Brand. “However, since I was already reaching out to people who knew about poisons, I did a bit of asking about the poison used by the assassin on the blowgun dart that missed Rori and killed the bull.

  “That poison was identified as Dragon Weed Root. Sometimes called Dragon’s Blood. It isn’t actually gotten from a dragon, but from a plant that has a bloom that looks a bit like a dragon’s head. The root of the plant is boiled to make the poison. About the only place in the world that the plant grows in enough abundance to actually have enough roots to make the poison is Umidori.”

  “The assassin who attacked Rori had connections to Umidori,” said Nolan. “I don’t think she was from there originally, but some of the things she said, and her speech patterns made it likely she has been there. It’s possible she trained there.”

  “Any chance we could identify her?” asked Dade. “Maybe she could be convinced to answer a few more questions.”

  “I could ask around,” said Brand. “What do we know for sure about her? Uses a blowgun with Umidorian poisons. Hires local thugs to help her out.”

  “Black hair,” said Sean.

  “Pointed ears and freckles on her cheeks,” said Rori.

  “Talks with a whisper to hide her identity,” said Nolan.

  “It’s not a lot, but I’ll give it a shot. Who knows, we might get lucky,” said Brand.

  “I’ll ask around as well. In fact, I suspect everyone here knows somebody that they could ask.”

  “Good point. Let’s all make it a point to do that. Next?” asked Dade.

  “I have a few things about Manda. If we are done with poisons and Rori’s assassin,” said Kedra.

  When nobody spoke up, Kedra continued on.

  “Both yesterday and today I attempted to contact her with a sending spell. Both times the spell failed outright. That spell can fail in a variety of ways if there is an issue with the person you are trying to contact. However, this did not feel like those sorts of issues. Instead, both times the spell failed in a way that felt similar to attempts I’ve made when I did not know enough about the person I was trying to contact.”

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  “Care to elaborate on that?” asked Ian.

  “In the past I have tried to contact people that I hadn’t actually met and had just heard a little about from acquaintances. Knowledge of the person you are contacting is needed so that you connect to the correct person. It’s easy when you’ve met the person. It’s difficult when you haven’t. You need enough information to bridge the gap. Just trying to cast the spell and specifying ‘a merchant from Lycea’ is too vague to succeed.

  “On another occasion I tried to contact someone that I had been given bad information about. When I cast the spell, I was essentially trying to connect with someone that didn’t exist. This felt a lot like that.”

  “But we know that Manda does exist,” said Rori. “So, what does it mean?”

  “Does it mean she’s dead?” asked Brand.

  “Possibly. It’s hard to explain it, but trying to contact someone who is dead, or even unconscious, fails in a way that feels different from this. I can’t explain it better than to say that instead of reaching out and failing to connect with a person, it was more like reaching out and finding nothing there at all.”

  “Anyone else have anything to contribute on the Manda investigation?” asked Dade.

  “Nolan had us do a bit of poking around,” said Sean. “We’ve spread her description around to as many soldiers and Watchmen as we could. It’s too early to be sure, but so far, we’ve had nobody admit to seeing her in this city or Willowsbrook. But again, we only started asking and it’s not like she was all that unique or peculiar looking. I don’t think we can expect much from our inquiries, but we’ll give it time and see.”

  “There are no unidentified bodies that match her description either,” said Ian. “But to be honest, if you were going to get rid of her body, there are plenty of ways to do it that either will never be found or won’t be found for months or years.”

  “I have also been doing as much asking around as I could on our various concerns and as far as Manda is concerned, I haven’t had any better luck than anyone else,” said Nolan. “Actually, I’ve been mulling something over and I’m to the point where I’d like to see what people think. Here it is. What if Manda was working for Cinder Black?”

  “Was she really?” asked Baxter after a moment or two.

  “I don’t know for sure. As I said, it’s just a theory I’ve been mulling over.”

  “Do you think it possible? The little girl working for Cinder Black?” asked Honoria.

  “If she was just a planted spy, it would explain the misgivings Rori had about her and her lack of general knowledge about the Cunāe,” said Nolan.

  “Kedra had traveled back and forth to the city several times, but it wasn’t until Manda asked Kedra to take her along that Kedra was captured. It might just be a coincidence, but it might not,” said Brand.

  “That would also explain why she stayed with us for so long. She was gathering info for him,” said Sean.

  “But if we accept that she was somehow working with Black, it raises another more interesting question,” said Brand. “Was Manda hiding in one of the Cunāe clans working as a spy for Black so that he could keep up with what those clans were doing, or was she there so that she could help capture Kedra?”

  “Surely it is the first,” said Honoria. “Otherwise, Black would have had to know already that we were going to go to the valley. We ourselves did not even know for sure we would find the valley until we did. How could Black have gotten this information?”

  “Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time an operation of the Lorenthian Army was comprised by an internal spy. We did make regular reports back as to our activities,” said Wergen.

  “Also, there are magical ways of figuring out what is likely to happen next,” offered Trill. I can think of half a dozen spells that might be helpful enough to let Black know where we would end up, before we even knew for sure ourselves.”

  “Why ‘helpful enough’,” asked Rori. “Aren’t they reliable?”

  “They tend to be about as reliable as using spells to speak with the dead. Answers tend to be cryptic and misleading. Also, it often turns out that while the answer was completely correct, your questions were not actually asking what you thought they were,” said Trill.

  “You mean like what you just said?”

  “I’ll give you an example. Your brother is missing and via a divine spell you ask a god to tell you where you can find your brother. The god sends you on a quest which ends at the house of a stranger. It is only later you discover that during your brother’s birth there was some confusion by the midwife and two babies were accidentally swapped. The person you thought was your older brother was not actually related to you at all and the stranger whose house you were led to is actually your brother.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to know that?”

  “Sure, but you still haven’t located the person you thought was your brother. Which was the reason you cast the original spell.”

  “Good point.”

  “Anyone else have anything about those topics or something new?” asked Dade. When it became clear nobody else had anything to say, he continued. “Okay then let me sum up what we’ve got so far and then make a statement or two.

  “We’ve got nothing but speculation about Manda. It’s possible she’s dead or it’s possible she was working for Black. We’ve had no success gathering info, but that isn’t unexpected. People should keep in touch with their contacts just in case something does come up.

  “We’ve identified the poison used on Kedra, but that only seems to lead back to the phren. Kedra’s memories of the time leave us little to go on, so that also seems like a dead end for now.

  “We still know nothing more about the attack on the two clans in the hidden valley, except there was a lot of fire that potentially shot out of an unidentified man. And we haven’t advanced our knowledge of the Cunāe conspiracy at all either. But again, that isn’t unexpected as it is not an easy thing to find new info on the Cunāe in a big city or any city for that matter.

  “Which means we are stalled out on all fronts. Which means we have no direction to move. Does that about sum it all up?

  “And lest we forget, we now also have an assassin trying to kill Rori for a bounty. It’s possible the assassin has given up, but it’s more likely she hasn’t. It is also possible that there are any number of people out there who are also willing to take a shot at knocking off Rori, but as we only have a possible lead on someone who might be able to point us to whoever is offering the bounty, there isn’t much we can do about that either.”

  The group looked around at each other hoping for something more to add, but when it was clear that they didn’t, Dade leaned over the table and began talking in a much less friendly and much more authoritative tone.

  “I thought I had assembled a squad of some of the best and brightest I know. Not just at fighting and killing things, because let’s be honest, this building has hundreds of people who are good at killing things. I thought I had something more than that. But this showing is pathetic, and I’ve begun to doubt.

  “We’ve been given free rein to pursue this, but that freedom will disappear in a heartbeat if we don’t come up with something substantive to do with it.

  “So let me be abundantly clear about what is going to happen next. Do I have each and every one of your attention?”

  There was a mumbling of ‘yes’ and ‘sir’ around the table. Dade shook his head and then slammed his fist down onto the table. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard that.”

  This time with the exception of Nolan and Kedra, everyone chimed back with a loud and firm, “Yes, Sir!”

  “Good. Wergen, you are to do everything short of flood the dwarven cities to find this Reibar. If he knows something, you better know it too. And shortly after that I better know it. Is that clear?”

  “Sir!” said Wergen.

  “Most of the rest of you are going to turn over the two cities to find out anything there is to find out about Cinder Black, Manda, the fire in the hidden valley and the Cunāe conspiracy to overthrow Lorenthia. And I do not want to hear some crap excuse about there not being anyone who knows something. Somebody in this town knows something. Find out what it is! Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Kedra is going to take Rori back to his clan. He’s still under this modified house arrest, so we’ve got to post two people with him. In the beginning it will be Baxter and Trill. Correct me if I’m wrong, but of the group, I suspect that they have the least contacts who reside on the shifty side of the city. If and when one or the other of you feel like you’ve got nowhere left to go, come see me and we’ll swap you out and let them have a try.”

  “Trill this does not mean that you have nothing to do. I’m not going to even pretend to know all about the magic a druid can do, but I do know that some information, even the vague confusing rambling from a deity, is better than no information. So, you spend your time casting whatever spells you’ve got and find out something. If there is a cost involved or a strange reagent needed, just let me know and I’ll have it to you immediately.”

  “Got it,” replied Trill.

  “Rori, I realize you’ve got a clan to lead, but we also need your help in this. Because out of the lot of us you are the one who has the best sources of information when it comes to all things Cunāe. You mentioned the possibility of a conclave and that sounds like just the thing we need. I realize you are not in the military, and I cannot order you to do anything, but I’m hoping you can come through for us.

  “I will do my best,” said Rori.

  “This is what we are going to do until somebody shakes something loose or a better opportunity reveals itself. And let me be abundantly clear that somebody at this table better make one of those two things happen, because if I get Ewedith crawling up my ass in a month because of lack of progress, you can be sure that I will be passing that pain on down the line. Anyone have anything else that needs to be said?

  “I thought not. Let’s go get it done people.”