The Tiers of the Shiverfang

[Diadems of Promethion]

The frost-flowers had yet to wither when Throld stepped out into a dawn of cloudy grey. His breath, hot and heady, steamed from his bristly lips into the mists that wreathed the northbound road. His boots, heavy and resounding, trod a crisp unwavering path towards the foothills on the horizon.

Perhaps ten minutes after leaving the village perimeter, he came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road, sniffing the air like a beast at bay. Beneath the scent of muffled dew, beneath the aroma of the fleeing shadows, he caught the fleetest whiff of something else. Something that had bothered him the evening before.

“I suppose I should thank you for not causing a ruckus in the tavern,” he declared in full voice, tracking the reverberating sound. His travel-sack slipped to the frozen ground, and in the same movement he shrugged a peculiar crossbow-like contraption from his shoulders. “But if you think you have me at a disadvantage now that I’m alone, I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken.”

Heartbeats echoed, wordless and silent. Wispy grey tendrils curled past bushy brows of burnished bronze, all that moved in a world of formless fog. Throld tensed, senses attuned to the slightest change in his environment. When the black-cloaked wraith rose like a summoned spectre from the shadows of a roadside hedge, amethyst eyes flaring like will’o’wisps in a mystic night, his features sagged in exaggerated relief.

“Master Sartet.” The apparition addressed him in a voice more sinister than lyrical, like the first strains of a dirge. One formless sleeve reached up to remove the alabaster mask that obscured his face, revealing pale olive skin and features touched by the ageless youth of elfkind. “We have need of a conversation.”

The air stirred with that vague hint of peppermint that always accompanied dark elf magic. Throld sniffed, then sneezed.

“Oh I recognise you,” he grimaced, the dark folds of his face contorted into something approaching distaste. “The young one in Raiaera, what was your number again... Four? Five? You don’t mind if I just call you Blackie, do you? And, on a serious note, you have to do something about that outfit. For a clandestine hunter-killer employed by the Alerian government, you stand out like an old wine stain.”

“Understand, Master Sartet, please. We asked when you returned to Ettermire, and we asked again via our attache in Gunnbad. We asked again after your journeys to Istraloth. Each time you grinned and agreed. Each time you failed to turn up at the appointed hour. So I am sure you understand that this time we are obliged to accompany you, to ensure that you answer our summons.”

“And?” Dropping the jolly facade, Throld fixed the elf’s paper-thin courtesy with a flinty glare. “Are you going to label me a dissident and toss me in a dungeon?”

The Blackcloak raised both hands in appeasement, though in the same movement he took a step closer to his diminutive target. “We promise. We only wish to know what you know about the rogue artificer and arcanist you encountered...”

Throld groaned, stomach churning with bitter memory. What he would have given never to think of that maniac dwarf-dam ever again! “Then tell your superiors that I know nothing!”

“I am afraid you will have to do so in person, Master Sartet.”

Another heartbeat passed before Throld scoffed one last time.

“Well here I am, refusing to budge.” Bell-shaped frost flowers shattered in muted tinkles beneath his heels, as he manoeuvred against the thick trunk of a Salvic oak. “What are you going to do about it?”

The elf sighed, almost sad... or had he steered the conversation to end in this manner? “You leave me little choice.”

Twin cudgels, trailing thick hempen cord, slipped from the folds of his formless cloak. In a blur of movement that only caressed the thick fog, he trapped Throld against the tree. One truncheon pinned the dwarf’s trigger hand to the bark, keeping the barrel of his dragon-belcher pointed in the wrong direction. The other coiled its rope around Throld’s remaining wrist, drawing as tight as a hangman’s noose.

“I will have to take you there by force.”

But Throld only bared his yellowed molars into the elf’s face: a filthy, mocking grin.

“I rather think not.”

He ducked.