Stalking Darkness

“You’ll be well rewarded.”
    “I have another letter, as well.”
    “Are you certain no one—” a third man broke in, and this voice carried a strong Plenimaran accent.
    Tym heard movement inside and the voices dropped too low for him to make out. Cursing silently, he kept still, hoping they’d move closer to the window.
    He was just wondering if he should chance opening the shutter a bit more for a peek when some inner alarm sent an uncomfortable prickle down his spine. Gripping the lead gutter with one hand, his knife in the other, he twisted sharply around, scanning back up the steep pitch of the roof.
    There, just to the left of a chimney pot, the black outline of a head was visible above the roof peak.
    More of the figure rose up, moving with uncanny silence.
    There’s something wrong about him
, was Tym’s first thought.
    The other stood in full view now, a long black stain against the starry sky. He looked unusually tall, and he didn’t move right, either. There was none of the ungainliness of a cripple—and what in hell would a cripple be doing up here?—but a queer set to the shoulders of the silhouette, the crooked thrust of the torso over the legs—
    The other suddenly jerked his head in Tym’s direction. The thief could still make out no more than the stranger’s outline, but he knew instinctively that he’d been spotted.
    The figure stooped, bent down as if making Tym a ridiculously low bow. But that was not the end of it, and Tym’s mouth suddenly went dry.
    The other somehow curled himself downward, arms still at his sides, until his hooded head touched the roof slates below his feet. Down he went, and down, sinuous as an eel—chest, belly, legs, all bent at angles chillingly wrong. And like some huge and loathsome eel, the long black shape began slithering down toward him.
    A coldness that had nothing to do with the weather reached Tym, driving a numbing ache into his bones that left his hands as stiff and useless as an old man’s. Still, it wasn’t until the stench hit him that he began to suspect the sort of nightmare that was bearing down on him.
    For the first time in his hard, rough life, Tym screamed, but the ignominious sound came out of his throat as a faint, futile squeak.
    The thing came to a halt scant inches away from where he crouched and coiled upright again.
    Instinct overrode terror. Still clutching his knife, though he could scarcely feel it in his fist, Tym lunged up and slashed at the apparition and felt his hand pass through a vacant coldness where the thing’s chest should have been. The attack overbalanced him on the slick slates and he crouched again, wobbling for balance.
    The black thing hovered motionless for a moment, radiating its icy stench. Then it laughed, a thick, bubbling laugh that made Tym think of rotting, bloated corpses floating in foul water.
    The hideous thing raised long, wrong-jointed arms and he braced for a blow.
    But it didn’t strike at him.
    It pushed.
    Standing faithful watch in the shadow of the alley, Skut saw a dark form topple from the roof. Plummeting down, headfirst, the falling man struck the cobbled pavement of the yard with a dull thud.
    Skut froze, waiting for an outcry. When none came, he crept out to the body, squinting down at it in the waning moonlight.
    Tym was unmistakably dead. His head had been smashed into a terrible lopsided shape. His chest was caved in like a broken basket.
    Skut stared down in shocked disbelief for an instant, then burst into tears of frustration. The bastard hadn’t paid him yet!
    Tym carried no purse, no valuables. Even his long knife was missing from its sheath.
    Wiping his nose on his arm, Skut gave the body a final, furious kick and disappeared into the night.

21
B LOOD T ELLS
    V argûl Ashnazai moved restlessly around Rythel’s tiny room while the smith was making his report to Mardus. So far the man’s spying attempts had turned up little of any significance, for all his self-important airs. But his sabotage of the sewer channels had been brilliantly carried off and, more importantly still, his compilation of the map of sewer channels beneath the western ward of the city. Mardus had it before him now, making a final painstaking check before paying the smith for its delivery.
    Ashnazai’s job was to maintain a cloaking glamour about the two of them; through Rythel’s eyes, they were fair, heavyset men with Mycenian accents. He also had a
dra’gorgos
on watch, ranging the