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."Hey!" someone yelled."Is that part of the Rites?"Nadisu's grasp remained as tight as before, and his gaze shifted to Adon's face."Cyric, the One, the All! Take me back!"Though Nadisu spoke in a thousand voices at once, they were hardly a whisper, so soft that of all the people in the room, only Adon heard what was said.The patriarch reached across his body and awkwardly pulled his mace from its sling."What's he doing?" someone cried.Nadisu's sunken eyes bulged from their sockets.They were as black as a grave and a thousand times as deep.As Adon looked into them, an inky darkness welled up from their depths to swallow him."Stop him!" someone yelled.Adon swung his mace and felt it sink deep into Nadisu's bloated head.Then the gold of his star ring grew so hot it scorched the skin of his finger.He cried out for his goddess."Mystra!"Mystra? Adon heard the word inside his own head, and the voice was sharp and hissing and cruel, one that he recognized from more than a decade before.As you command, old friend-but I warn you, she has changed.My, how she has changed!The voice was Cyric's, of course.No sooner had he spoken than Mystra emerged from the darkness and rushed Adon, her long black tresses swirling behind her as foul and acrid as smoke.She wore a thin black dress that clung to her haggard body like wet silk.Her cheekbones jutted through the leathery skin of her face, while her lipless mouth gaped open to expose two rows of blood-crusted fangs.The hatred in her eyes licked out of her pupils in long writhing tongues, and when she reached for her patriarch, it was with gore-dripping talons.Adon screamed and flung his arms up before his eyes, for he had seen Mystra's true face.Now he recognized her for the murdering trollop she was.She meant to slay him, as she slew all those who learned her secret, and to wipe even the memory of his existence from the face of Faerun.He stumbled back and fell off the dais, his head striking the floor with a sharp crack that silenced the entire chamber.Now you see her as I do, chuckled Cyric.Not so pretty, is she?Adon did not hear the One's words, for he lay on the marble floor, curled into a tiny ball and clutching his bloody mace.The star ring had reduced his finger to a charred stump and fallen off somewhere, and his gaze was fixed far beyond the walls of House Bhaskar.He kept asking, "Why does she hate me? Why?" He did not notice the arm he had broken in his fall, or Vaerana Hawklyn pushing through the crowd to his side."By Torm!" She plucked the bloody mace from his hands."He's lost his mind!"EighteenThe trail of the hell horse-for so Ruha had come to think of the beast she was tracking-ran into the Wood of Sharp Teeth as straight as an arrow.Even from the edge of the forest, she could see a hundred paces down the tunnel it had torn through the underbrush, and there was not a single turn in that whole distance.The horse always ran straight eastward, never veering more than a step or two off course.Ruha turned away from the wood and went to stand beside her companion, a tall and handsome hippogriff rider named Zale.He was kneeling some distance back from the forest, in a crimson circle where the hell horse had made a kill.It had devoured its prey almost entirely, leaving behind only ten long claws, a pair of sharp fangs, and the blood on the ground."How long ago?" she asked, not stepping into the red circle."Six hours, at least." Zale crumbled a clot of crimson dirt between his fingers."This can't be our man.We're riding a hippogriff.No one could be this far ahead of us.""It is him."Ruha fingered her Harper's pin, which now adorned the breast of her extra aba.After being drawn to the stock shed by a scout's signal fire, she had pulled the brooch from a pile of bloody goat dung and sworn vengeance, both for the disrespect shown to the Harp and the Moon, and for the death of the old man lying trampled in the farmyard.The witch and Zale had started after the hell horse at once, but the beast was so swift they had not even glimpsed it yet.From the depths of the forest came a long howl, as ghostly as it was chilling.Ruha looked back toward the murky trail, then at Zale's hippogriff.The beast sat upon the ground in a pose of great nobility, massive wings folded against the flanks of its horselike body, huge eagle's head held high and proud."Can Silvercloud fly through the forest?" Ruha asked."It looks too tangled.""We'll have to go over and drop down to check the trail whenever there's a clearing." Zale glanced toward the west, where the sun was sinking behind the thunderheads that had been creeping behind them all day."But we can't do it tonight.Silvercloud's exhausted, and if that storm catches us over the forest, we'll be in big trouble."Ruha scowled, though Zale could not see it behind her dark veil."If we wait, we will never catch that murderer.Already, he is pulling ahead.""I know," said Zale."And I want to catch him too-but not if it costs me Silvercloud
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