The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

XXXII

The Curse

In which Escamilla must be reckoned with

In the days after exposing Justin Kellis as an Erebossan, Bessa’s play surged in popularity. The Watch made a formal investigation, which meant closing the theater for a few days. Rumors swirled about town, of an eidolon wearing the body of a human working in the city library.

After three days the governor made a formal announcement. He singled out Giantslayers and Shadow Fiends for special mention, acknowledging everyone’s suspicion that Kellis targeted the play for attack.

By now, everyone knew Kellis had invited the theater company to his estate for a private showing, and speculation was rampant about his motives. People were falling all over themselves to get included in the excitement, saying they “always knew” there was something strange about him, and recounting outlandish anecdotes.

The Watch knew enough not to kill Kellis’s human host, but containing him was another matter. The Star Dragons earned their pay, for they had primed the senior officers to expect such a problem.

The Watch expanded their investigation of Kellis, sealing off the library. They quickly discovered the scrolls containing shadow lore were systematically hidden or made obscure, with their tags removed and the scrolls themselves placed in buckets far from their original locations.

This, too, became known, and the governor ordered those scrolls copied to codex form and disseminated throughout the city, especially to the Watch and the schools. Every temple was to have free copies on hand to pass out to any who asked.

Once they banished the eidolon, Kellis’s body was placed on a pyre in the town square and burned. Priests mixed his ashes with blessed salt before consigning them to the sea.

Audiences packed every seat in the theater when Bessa and Brison were allowed to finally re-open. The audience included students and teachers from the schools of sorcery in Karnassus and the officers and soldiers from the Watch. Bessa and Brison received more invitations for private showings than they knew what to do with.

Ziri expressed satisfaction with the prices his scouts reported in the stores and market stalls. Business was booming for all the right people, and prices rose with the demand.

But now Lady Nensela reported turmoil in the emperor’s court.

“Someone tried to kill him,” she said, when they met aboard the Jolly Sylph again. “The assassins struck at night, but it was their mistake not to account for his insomnia.”

Ziri glanced at her. “You have people inside the emperor’s court as well?”

“Aside from Drusus himself, no.”

They looked at her.

Sitting calmly at her place at the head of the table, Lady Nensela wore an expression of utter nonchalance, as if she’d said nothing remarkable at all.

“You know the emperor?” Bessa asked, speaking for all of them by virtue of being the first to find her voice.

“Did I not tell you a day would come when you would stand in his court? The day has come. Convince Brison to go to Valentis before the sailing season closes.”

And so she did. Karnassus had served its purpose; time to move on to Valentis. As it happened, Brison had always wanted to sail to Valentis via the prestigious Karnassian trade fleets.

Unfortunately, the voyage to Valentis did not go well. The choppy sea batted the ship so violently that it listed sharply on its side for several terrifying moments. Winds blew in the opposite direction than normal, blowing them days off course.

Bessa kept her ears open, and learned of the crew’s belief a formidable sorcerer was behind the weather. Or a team of them.

On the eighth day came three sea monsters—krakens—who knocked holes in the ship’s hull with their tentacles. The third kraken snatched up a crewman. The monsters ended their rampage when a sea dragon broke the waves and roared a challenge. In surprise, perhaps, the third monster dropped the crewman back onto the deck. Yelping in pain at first, the sailor made no resistance when his mates carried him away from the creature’s reach. In the meantime, two drakes flanked the sea dragon, and with a roar from him they gave chase. This alone kept the crew and passengers from panicking.

Everyone’s nerves were tested when wild gryphons attacked the sails and masts. Bessa managed to calm the actors when she pointed out gryphons were land-based. If the beasts were on the open sea, then they had to have come from a pirate fleet. Privately, she hoped they wouldn’t think about one particular villain in her play, the sea captain she based on Rozvan Lior.

The actors seized on the pirate suggestion; after what happened with Kellis the thought of mere pirates was reassuring. The realization an eidolon had hosted them still unsettled them. In quiet moments they talked over and over again about whether or not the eidolon had considered them a threat and intended to harm them.

“But why did nothing happen to us?”

This question troubled them so much, Bessa was obliged to call attention to the gems in the costumes they’d worn to Kellis’s house. One of the actors deduced they were amulets.

Before leaving for Valentis, she made a point of having priests come in to cleanse their theater and openly give the actors amulets and spells of protection. Now she put forward the idea that the play was divinely sanctioned, and that this sanction accounted for Kellis’s inability to harm them. Why else would it happen that the costume maker accidentally put real amulets in the clothes instead of the costume trinkets Daphne had ordered?

With the question in the air, Bessa reminded them she wrote her play based on true events, which added weight to her suggestion the gods sided with them. That claim, and the sea dragons they continued to sight along the way, calmed the actors. Brison seized upon Bessa’s explanations as the basis of the pitches he began practicing day and night.

When they finally reached land, they delayed in port so the crew and passengers could make offerings in gratitude to the Sea Lord. Nothing less than ambergris would do, and Brison’s troupe collectively offered up what funds they could to purchase some. Daphne sold her pearl earrings, the first she ever bought when she became successful as an actress. Mingled with Brison’s eager contribution of a pouch of gold, they even added a snow-white aurochs to the offering.

“It’s thanks to you I could even imagine affording ambergris,” Brison murmured, in an aside to Bessa as they formed up around the altar.

For her part Bessa sacrificed the most precious of her toilette: rose oil, an expensive import shipped from Gandhar across the Gold Sea. She had intended to use it as perfume on her wedding day. The bottle itself was precious: shimmering rock crystal fashioned in the shape of a swan. The bottle, too, she yielded up in her offering. In addition, she offered white doves to the Restorer in petition for the injured sailor’s recovery.

Afterwards, they discovered the Star Dragons of Valentis had already prepared the ground in anticipation of their arrival. Word of Karnassus and Red Pointe had reached Valentis by then. The Star Dragons worked furiously to suppress spurious versions of Bessa’s play, even going so far as to engineer episodes of ‘disturbing the peace’ or ‘indecent public acts’ resulting in the arrests of would-be poachers.

This meant demand for the real play was pent up, ensuring Bessa and Brison were met at the docks by the owners of several theater buildings.

Brison brought in priests to place spells of protection on the theater he finally chose, as well as the townhouse offered up as their residence. Nevertheless, they were not without further trouble.

The third eidolon had not been accounted for, after all.

First came the plague of inspections. And fines and new regulations that never made any sense, but carved out a non-trivial amount of their time to comply with. When Brison muttered about having to bribe someone just to piss in peace, he was nearly arrested on the spot by an overzealous official.

Edana came to the rescue. She and the others had made it to Valentis ahead of Bessa. When they realized the officials were waging a campaign against the play, she and the Star Dragons began a quiet investigation. It was the work of a few days to discover the officials had ties to the missing Draco Aether Escamilla.

For months Halie had made it her priority to scout for him, but she had come up empty: “He’s left this world for now.”

Ziri set a watch on Escamilla’s associates. If he did return, they would be the first to know.

Before Bessa’s arrival, Edana tracked down her business partner, Silas Atreus. As she intended, he introduced her to his social circle. Soon enough she became a popular guest at his parties, allowing her to piece together whose fortunes had risen, and whose had fallen on account of her silver business. Of the latter, she learned which of them had been connected to Escamilla, giving the Star Dragons more avenues to pursue.

Now Edana introduced Atreus to Bessa and Brison. Naturally his silver mining venture with Edana increased his distinction amongst the Valentian elite … along with his connections. When he found out about Bessa’s troubles, he made a few complaints to the right people.

The officials backed off

Bessa was not reassured. The Erebossan would try and thwart them again, but how?

Edana awakened suddenly. Shocked into alertness, she tried to sit up.

She couldn’t move. She was completely paralyzed.

In her room at Lady Nensela’s Valentian estate, darkness surrounded Edana. Neither moonlight nor starlight penetrated. The fire in her brazier had long since died out, leaving not even a wisp of smoke from the styrax resin she’d burned to help her sleep. Only the sweet floral scent lingered.

But the darkness was not the familiar dark of a cloudy, moonless night. It possessed a different quality, more oppressive and absolute in a way inspiring Edana to think of the shadow world of Erebossa…and the spirits that dwelt within it.

Something hissed at her feet.

Edana’s heart somersaulted. The memory of her time as a drakaina came rushing back to her, pummeling her with such force that she needed to gasp for breath.

But she could not scream.

Just as that thought sank in, the shadows shifted. And now she saw them.

Two bright, acid green orbs peered at her from out of the gloom. The height where they appeared hinted they belonged to a tall creature.

A creature standing at the foot of her bed.

Still she could not scream.

White teeth gleamed beneath the eyes.

A harsh voice rasped, “No one will hear your screams.”

Edana’s blood froze in her veins. No one would hear her? Was Lady Nensela dead? Ziri? Was she—

“You’re in my realm,” the voice snapped, sounding like a cross between a bark and a whine. As if a jackal were speaking.

Jackal, the beast that prowled ruins and ate of the dead, earning itself an association with desolation.

And death.

Move. Move! But she couldn’t. A horrible familiar sensation came over her, akin to Gallo’s compulsion spell, but blessedly her mind remained sharp.

Without warning, everything shifted. In one heartbeat she became vertical, the blanket and sheets falling off around her as an unseen force lifted her in the air. She floated, closer and closer to the eyes and the teeth, a scream bubbling inside her.

The creature’s breath was hot on her cheeks. It reeked of poison, and Edana’s heart fluttered as memory of Honoria’s poison mist overtook her.

The teeth moved again.

“You cost me what I was due in Valentis. Now you will pay: I know your fears, Edana. You gave them to me as you slept. What you fear most, this night it begins.”

Undoubtedly she would have passed out, but for Escamilla’s iron control of her person.

The teeth parted in a strange way, as if the teeth themselves were lips—they curved, upward, in a ghastly smile.

“I will tell you how it ends…”

The words roiled over her, assaulting her with the cacophony of an infernal language that scourged her skin, the wounds seeping into her very spirit. Once again Edana knew the fear of death.

Swiftly came an overwhelming silence. Edana flew back, swatted as one swats a fly, landing hard in her pillows. However, Escamilla still locked gazes with her, and she could not look away.

At last the screams poured out.

Darkness overtook her, and then—

“Edana! Edana! Edana!”

Edana’s eyes flew open. A chilling sweat drenched her, even as she shuddered helplessly.

Lady Nensela loomed over her, the glowlight in her hand illuminating the gleam of her very human eyes. Eyes she now opened wide in concern.

Edana sat up, with such vigor that Lady Nensela jumped back. For several moments Edana caught her breath, gulping in the fresh air. She flung out her arm, jabbing a finger at the foot of her bed.

“He’s—” She froze.

Escamilla was gone. Only the spymaster Ziri stood in his place, a short sword in his hand, and worry in his face.

“Let the nightmare pass,” Lady Nensela said, taking Edana’s hand in hers. “It’s over. You’ll be—”

“No.” Edana clutched the seer’s arm so fiercely the woman gasped. “Escamilla was here. And now he’s going after Bessa!”

Marshalling every bit of her persuasive power, Lady Nensela managed to convince Edana not to run out into the night to the townhouse where Bessa’s theater group was staying.

“Fine prey you would make, if you ran about when bandits roam,” Lady Nensela pointed out. “Whence comes your certainty Escamilla doesn’t intend for his cutthroats to intercept you on your way?”

Though Edana’s heart was still threatening to break her rib cage, her trembling had stopped. Lady Nensela curled up beside Edana and clasped her arms about her, patting her on the back as Edana recounted the dream. From the chair he had dragged over to Edana’s bed, Ziri listened, rapt.

“Please, we need to go now. This wasn’t a simple dream, the fellshade did visit me.”

“I believe you,” Lady Nensela said. She squeezed Edana’s hand. “Such things have happened before.”

“Time is of the essence; Bessa only has until next dawn. How can you say I must wait?”

“I do not walk onto a battlefield unarmed,” Lady Nensela retorted. “The Erebossan visited you in a dream, because he cannot visit you in the flesh. On his own, he cannot carry out his threats. He needs his men. Ready yourself, Edana. We’ll see to Bessa. At first light we’ll go.”

The house where Bessa was staying was in an uproar when Edana arrived. No one paid attention to her as she darted upstairs.

When Bessa joined Brison’s troupe, Lady Nensela had designated her slave girl, Monica, as their liaison. That is she would stay with Bessa, hidden in plain sight by posing as her slave to pass messages from Bessa to her and the others.

At dawn, Monica sent word.

Bessa could not move. And she could barely speak.

A Restorite healer had arrived only moments before Edana. She met him at Bessa’s door, where Brison was pacing anxiously.

Brison had eyes only for the physician. He seized the man, pinning both arms to his sides. The healer yelped in surprise, but Brison didn’t allow him a chance to talk. Words poured out of him like a river from a burst dam, all about how Bessa had never so much as sneezed before.

A scream of agony cut him off. Brison flung open the door and charged inside.

Monica stood over Bessa, soothing her. Bessa had stopped screaming, but she lay so rigidly straight in her bed that Edana’s own bones ached.

Her body I will leave with you. Her mind I will torment as I please.

Edana shuddered.

The healer, grey-haired and no-nonsense looking, regained his composure. Advancing to Bessa’s side, he looked her over with a practiced eye. Briskly, he checked her pulse.

“Can you speak, young lady?”

“... Yes ...”

Calm yet grim, the healer examined her limbs and checked her pulse again. At a word from him, a flash of light and heat burst over Bessa’s heart. The Restorite narrowed his eyes.

“Seems someone’s cursed you, girl. Keep you from moving or speaking. Do you have any enemies, any rivals?”

A strangled cry from the door drew their attention. A woman with dark brown hair and large grey eyes was staring at them in shock and horror. All color drained from her face.

Brison snarled and stalked over to her. “Daphne—”

“I didn’t—!”

Brison grabbed her upper arms, forcing her to look up at him. “Don’t lie! You swore you destroyed it!”

Daphne made no attempt to free herself. “I did! By Aletheia I swear I got rid of it.” With wet beseeching eyes she looked from Brison to Bessa.

From the corner of her eye, Bessa returned her stare.

“Young miss, you made a curse doll of my patient?” the physician demanded.

The actress only had eyes for Bessa, and Edana saw no hatred or malice in them. Daphne hung her head, her cheeks flushed. With shame?

“Yes, I made a wax kolossos after Brison brought her to us,” she confessed. “I was angry because I thought she had taken…I thought she had taken something from me. But I didn’t go through with it,” she said, lifting her head to look Brison in the eyes. He still hadn’t released her.

“By Aletheia I swear never cursed her,” Daphne continued. “The gods know I wanted to … but I didn’t. And then you found it. And you made me promise to work with Ruby and give her a chance. So I took the curse doll to the Restorer’s temple. They helped me dispose of it without harming her. May Aletheia Herself cast my soul to the Abyssal Serpent if I lie!”

Wrangling free of Brison, Daphne dashed over to Bessa’s desk and seized an iron stylus. With one vicious slash the flesh of her palm opened, sealing Daphne’s curse upon herself in her own blood.

Silence. For a long while Brison stared at Daphne. His nostrils flared, and his breaths came hard and ragged.

Enough. Turning to the healer Edana asked, “What can be done for her?”

For the first time Brison noticed her, and he gave a start. “What are you doing here?”

Keeping her eyes on the doctor Edana improvised, “Ruby invited me here for breakfast. Healer, I will pay for whatever remedy you recommend.”

The physician sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Here’s the difficulty: the average binding keeps a person, Erebossi, or god from committing a specific action. Say a poisoner bound me from curing the victim, like. Other times, you’re bound to do what you don’t want, like marry some pathetic wastrel. For this girl the binding is purely an assault. A cruel one at that.”

“Why would someone do that to her?” Brison demanded.

“Son, my schooling is in mending hearts, not in divining the motives that power them. Does she have rivals? Other than this young lady?” A nod at Daphne, to whom he beckoned.

Before Brison could reply, Edana cut in. “What can we do? How do we end the curse?”

“Find the curse doll and deactivate it,” he replied, pulling out a bottle and strip of cloth from his bag. “With a bit of time I can heal her paralysis and soothe her pain, but the underlying curse will lurk about. And what I do will be for nothing if you don’t find who cursed her, and stop them from repeating themselves.” He began ministering a salve to Daphne’s cut.

Eying Daphne, Brison asked, “What about uh, a counter-curse doll? One that stops the enemy’s curse, and does to them what they’re doing to Ruby?”

A thought struck Edana, and her heart jumped in her mouth as she hurried to Bessa’s bedside.

I’ll stalk her in her dreams.

Bessa’s eyelashes fluttered, as if she were struggling to stay awake. She had paled to a ghostly white, the only outward sign of her battle with Escamilla.

Edana pushed up the sleeve of Bessa’s nightgown, revealing a silver bracelet. Before leaving Kyanopolis Edana commissioned her silversmiths to make bracelets for herself, Bessa, Lady Nensela, and Ziri. All of the bracelets were engraved with an Eitanite symbol that represented life. Though Bessa gave no allegiance to the Sower, she believed in His power. She believed, because she had faith in Edana.

“Don’t take this off,” Edana said, tapping the bracelet. “No matter what happens, keep it on her.”

Brison hurried over. He glanced from Bessa’s bracelet to his own. After Atreus’s intervention, Bessa traded on his notoriety in the silver business as a pretext for passing out more bracelets to Brison and the others. More, she had told them what the symbols meant.

Now Brison turned to the physician, a question in his eyes.

“Ah, effective protection from death powers. Sadly, it’s no protection from the powers that make you beg for death. Find the doll.”

Hope kindled in Edana. Escamilla had sounded so powerful, targeting Bessa’s dreams. Now Edana saw he had no choice: she had barred him from outright killing Bessa.

Only when Bessa focused on her did Edana speak, saying, “Rest now. Dream of me destroying the one who did this to you, and of how I will make him suffer.”

Now she saw it. That look she remembered in Bessa’s grandmother, Matrona Aurelia, the indomitable determination that inspired her nickname, Matrona Iron Eyes. That look blazed in Bessa’s amber eyes, bright and fierce.

And then her eyes closed, sleep overtaking her.

But on her terms, at her choosing.

Suddenly, Monica cried out, drawing their attention. The girl was pointing at Bessa’s vanity table. Perfume bottles and alabaster jars of unguents scented with sweet rush, myrtle, violets, a dash of spikenard and other fragrances, were all neatly lined up against the mirror. In front lay Bessa’s cosmetics and her combs.

“What is it?” Brison asked.

“One of her combs is missing. The one with the nightingale carved on it. I combed her hair with it last night and put it back on the table like always. It’s not here now.” The girl’s lips trembled as she spoke.

Taking the girl in her arms, Edana murmured soothing words. Her mind raced, and the hope inside her sparked a small flame: here was proof Escamilla did require a human agent to carry out his threats. More, Bessa’s decision to go “incognita” kept Escamilla’s minions from knowing her true name, which may have blunted the curse. And if Bessa’s suffering was the blunted version, how much worse would the full effect have been? Edana shuddered.

Brison slammed his fist into his palm. “Son-of-a—! They took her hair. Someone got in here and took her hair. They needed it for the curse, didn’t they?” He turned to the Restorite healer, who had finished binding up Daphne’s wound.

“To ensure its potency, yes,” the physician agreed. “So long as they have her hair, they have a way of striking at her.”

“I’ll set a guard on her room,” Brison said. “They won’t get in again.”

Before she left, Edana took the physician aside. “You could find out what the curse was, couldn’t you? And who set it?”

He inhaled, but said nothing.

“You could. But you can’t now, can you?” she pressed. “You can’t talk to the spirits and ask who set the curse?”

His eyes widened. “How did you know? I thought your people won’t have congress with sorcery?”

“No we don’t,” she agreed. “Still, I know you sorcerers cannot talk to the spirits these days.”

“I’m no exception,” he said glumly, shaking his head. “It’s as if something is blocking me.”

“Something is blocking you. An opposing force. For now, all I can say is to be on your guard.”

Edana hurried back to Lady Nensela’s, where she explained the situation. Immediately, Ziri dispatched one of his echomancers to Bessa’s villa.

“Finding out who stole the comb won’t be a challenge,” Ziri said. “But the physician is right, we need to find the curse doll. Probably it’s in a fresh grave, since that’s where these kind of things are usually dropped. The gods wouldn’t have cooperated with this attack on Bessa, only the lower spirits, the eneroi. So that’s where we’ll start.”

Faultless reasoning, Edana judged. As she understood it, Amyntas would not honor a curse doll intended to harm others, but someone might try to bind Aletheia in order to conceal the truth. Supposedly the Destroyer would aid in retributive curses, but depositing a curse in His temple was dangerous. It was said He was just as likely to turn on the one making the curse if the curse originated in pettiness, spite, or malice.

Ziri divided the Star Dragons into teams of three, to search the usual places for a curse doll to be hidden: the necropolis, the wells, and the sewers.

Edana joined the search. For an entire day she scoured the killing fields of the executed, and the necropolis outside of town. Like a jackal, she thought.

Nothing.

Oh, all three teams found curse tablets and curse dolls, but they were curses intended for other people, as evidenced by the names inscribed upon the tablets or coffins containing the curse dolls.

Worse, Ziri had sent along a sylph to relay a new message from Monica: a new servant at the villa had gone missing. Ziri’s echomancer successfully tracked him down. To a dead end: in his room at an inn, the so-called slave was bitten by an asp. Worse, a crow then flew into the room and made off with the comb. Obviously, Escamilla must have a beast master in his pay.

Edana was shaking with rage and terror as she crossed the threshold into Nensela’s estate. The sky had turned from blue to a gorgeous hepatizon as the sun sank below the horizon. The sun was down. The sun was down, and she hadn’t found Escamilla or the doll.

Come the dawn, nothing would undo Bessa’s paralysis. So gloated Escamilla. Until the day she died, Bessa would be trapped inside herself, tormented in her mind by the fellshade when she waked, and in her dreams as she slept.

Unless you show her mercy and kill her, Escamilla had taunted. And it must be you who kills her.

Edana found Lady Nensela on a terrace overlooking the Bay of Rasena. The seer was inspecting new arrows her fletcher had made for her. She stared critically down the ebony shafts as she checked each one for even the slightest bend.

“We’re on the wrong track,” Edana said without preamble. “Obviously Escamilla’s people did not put a curse doll where any normal person would. All day I kept thinking about the First Infernal having a portal in her home. But none of Escamilla’s people have portals in theirs, so far as we know. Halie said he’s not anywhere on Thuraia, but he can’t materialize from Erebossa to any place he pleases, can he?”

Silently, Lady Nensela offered Edana a cup of wine she had kept beside her. Edana gladly drank it. Consumed by her quest, she had neglected food, and would have forgotten to drink water if the other Star Dragons hadn’t offered her their flasks. The wine went down smoothly, but for once she was too preoccupied to taste it.

Lady Nensela replied, “No, he can’t appear anywhere; he’s still a progeny of the Abyssal Serpent, and still needs to be summoned. As to where the circle or portal might be? Let’s consider his original goals: we assumed he wanted to make a sacrifice of Valentis. You recall the Red Daggers bound Halie with asrai? An elegant sacrilege, no? Would Escamilla do less with Valentis?”

After a moment’s thought Edana asked, “The Restorer’s temple? Instead of saving lives, Escamilla would be taking them.”

Glow lamps posted at intervals on the terrace bloomed as the sun disappeared on the horizon, allowing Lady Nensela to continue her inspection of her arrows.

“Yes, I thought of that,” she replied. “But I am not sure. Valentis was founded a good, oh, five or six hundred years before the Fourth Cataclysm? Yes, in those days. The people we now call Valentians arrived here, carrying their little bronze axes.” Moving on from the shafts, she now began to examine the fletching on her arrows. The feathers shimmered a bright copper. Wing feathers of the peacock, Lady Nensela’s preferred fletching.

Edana arched an eyebrow. Somehow, Lady Nensela made warlike barbarians sound so adorable. “Did you happen to meet them then?”

To Edana’s surprise, the seer looked surprised by the question. Then she laughed. “No, child. I was not in this part of the world in those days. The founding of Valentis wasn’t even worthy of gossip, so the news did not reach me in Eitan, where I was living in exile. Ask me about it later. What I do recall is that before the Fourth Cataclysm, it was fashionable for would-be conquerors to carry idols of Khratu.”

Exile? Edana arched an eyebrow again, but tamped down hard on her curiosity. If she were to hear of that chapter in Lady Nensela’s life, Bessa should be there for it. Knowing Bessa, she would turn the tale into an epic poem, a sweeping tale of romance and adventure, honor and duty.

But Khratu was the important point. Edana followed Lady Nensela’s gaze to Khratu’s temple, gleaming white in the moonlight from its perch atop the highest hillside in Valentis. A tour guide had told her it was the oldest building in the city, dating to the city’s founding.

“And the emperors of Rasena Valentis are His high priests,” Edana said, her voice rising as her excitement grew.

“Moreover, in the stories of the gods, Khratu is the strategist They turn to in battle. And so …”

Of course it was not quite so simple. Retrieving the doll would not be enough. Escamilla needed to be defeated, thoroughly and utterly.

And Edana knew just how to finish him.