He held out his hand and the fire spirit leaped into existence. The dark thing automatically turned its head to track the apparition.

Gaedynn still felt weak and sick, but not quite so much as before. He yanked an arrow from his quiver and stabbed it into his enemy’s stomach like a dagger.

The creature didn’t fall down or break apart, but its grip on Gaedynn’s chin loosened. He knocked its hand away and scrambled to his feet. The ground tilted beneath him, but then he caught his balance.

The dark thing’s head turned back in his direction. Making sure not to meet its gaze, he pulled out another arrow and thrust, aiming for the spot where a human would carry his heart.

Made of a substance that resembled polished obsidian, the black point punched into his adversary’s chest. The creature stumbled backward, but he had the feeling it still wasn’t ready to drop. He drew his scimitar and slashed three times. That made it fall down and start unraveling too.

He just had time to grin. Then a cold hand grabbed him by the wrist of his sword arm and jerked him around.

He could tell from the arrow still sticking out of its chest that it was the first faceless creature, not slain after all. Even though strips of its body had dissolved all the way through from front to back and it was impossible to understand how the remaining pieces maintained their proper positions with nothing but empty air between them. Its eyeless gaze reached out for his own and, startled as he was, he waited an instant too long to start resisting.

He felt compulsion take hold of him. He was going to look, and the fire sprite, now simply standing and watching the struggle from several paces away, wouldn’t save him a second time.

He shifted the scimitar to his off hand and cut at the dark creature’s head. At the same instant, its power blazed into his eyes, and the world exploded into agony.

When the pain ebbed, he was sprawled on his belly. He looked around. The faceless thing was gone again. For good this time, he hoped.

Suddenly the nausea he was suffering became irresistible, and he retched up the contents of his stomach. It left a foul taste and burning sensation in his mouth and nose, but even so he felt better afterward.

Not well, though. He supposed it would take time for the faceless things’ poisonous influence to work its way out of his system completely.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait. Sick or hale, he had to move or more of his pursuers would catch up with him. He sheathed the scimitar, retrieved his bow, and loped onward. The living flame fell into step beside him.

Though it was difficult to be certain from high above, Aoth thought that he and Jet were looking down at an apartment house. The assassin slipped through the easternmost in a row of doors.

Aoth decided to descend. Sensing his intent, Jet furled his wings, swooped, and set down lightly in the empty, darkened street, far enough away from the apartment in question that no one looking out a window was likely to see them.

Although Aoth doubted anybody was. The shutters were closed, and no light gleamed through the cracks.

“What now?” asked Jet.

Aoth swung himself off the griffon’s back. “I go in after him.” He considered taking his shield, then left it clipped to the saddle. He’d rather have both hands available to grip his spear.

“Is that wise?” asked Jet. “You could watch the place from here while I go for reinforcements.”

“When someone breaks in in force, the enemy will know it. It will give them another chance to destroy their papers and such. If I sneak in alone, it increases the odds of finally getting some answers.”

“It increases the odds of somebody tearing your head off too.”

“We killed a number of dragonborn that night in the garden. There can’t be an unlimited supply hiding here in Soolabax with nobody noticing. Even if one of them spots me, I expect I can contend with however many are left until you get back with those reinforcements you mentioned.”

“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The familiar trotted, lashed his wings, and soared up toward the stars.

Aoth invoked the magic of one of his tattoos, and for a moment the design felt cold as ice on his chest. The charm didn’t grant actual invisibility, but it made the bearer easy to overlook.

Then he skulked up to the door the dragonborn had entered. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side. He tried the handle. As he’d expected, it was locked.

He slipped the point of his spear into the crack beneath the latch and released a bit of power from the weapon. The door made a sharp snapping sound and lurched open.

He peered into an unfurnished hallway with doorways opening off it and stairs leading upward. He neither saw nor heard anything moving, which suggested that no one had caught the noise of his forced entry.

Aoth prowled onward. None of the rooms on the ground floor was furnished or showed any signs of recent occupancy. It made him wonder if he and Jet actually had killed all the dragonborn but one.

In a small room at the back, his fire-kissed eyes saw the square outline of a low concealed panel that evidently connected the apartment with another. He reached for it, and then it started to slide. Somebody was opening it from the other side.

He turned and scrambled through the doorway to an adjacent room. Then he peeked around the corner.

Stooping, a man with bushy salt-and-pepper side-whiskers, eyebrows to match, and a mole at the corner of his narrow mouth came through the low opening, then closed the panel behind him. He wore a slashed velvet doublet with turned cuffs, like a prosperous merchant, and Aoth realized they’d actually been introduced at some point. Although he couldn’t recall the fellow’s name.

Whoever the whoreson was, he walked on without noticing anything amiss. Aoth considered jumping him, then opted to follow instead.

The man headed down the cellar stairs. Aoth gave him time to reach the bottom, then crept down just far enough to see what lay below.

Someone had done a fair amount of work to turn the basement into a proper shrine to Tiamat, the five-headed Dragon Queen. Votive candles burned before a bronze statue of the goddess. One flame glowed red, one white, one blue, one green, and one was a quivering teardrop of shadow. The sculpture’s necks almost appeared to weave in the soft, wavering light.

A portrait depicting the Nemesis of the Gods in her human guise as a beautiful woman with long black hair hung on the wall beside an intricately painted, multicolored pentagram. The smell of bitter incense hung in the air.

Dark scales glinting in the candlelight, the dragonborn assassin stood naked before the pentagonal bloodstone altar. His robe lay discarded on the floor.

He glared at the man with the side-whiskers. “I don’t like mortals in general,” he said. “I definitely don’t like it when they keep me waiting.”

Aoth frowned. Mortals? What in Kossuth’s name was that supposed to mean?

“I have an ordinary life,” the man replied. “I have to devote some time to living it. Otherwise people will get suspicious.”

“Just restore me to myself.”

“I’m working on it.” He took down a robe from a peg on the wall and pulled it on over his other clothing. Its shimmering scales changed color whenever he moved. He slipped on five rings, each bearing a stone the hue of one of the candle flames, and picked up an implement or weapon like a miner’s pick.

Evidently he himself was the wyrmkeeper of this particular sanctuary.

He faced the dragonborn. “Stand still.” He recited sibilant words of power and swung the heavy, unwieldy-looking pick through a looping figure with a dexterity that would have done credit to a juggler. The five wedge-shaped heads of the Tiamat statue seemed to cock forward ever so slightly, although that was likely just Aoth’s imagination.