AssassinsAs the two horsemen peered across the moor, they sensed their curiosity darkening toward suspicion.

Barren and rocky, the blasted landscape stretched eastward for mile after mile until, with unexpected suddenness, it reared against the horizon in a line of serrated cliffs. Night was falling quickly. As shadows settled like carrion birds on their surroundings, pallid pricks of palest blue twinkled wanly in the sky. They gave off little light and less comfort.

"Even the stars are dead in this forsaken country," said one rider in a weathered voice. The iris of his good eye dilated with wary consideration; the crystal in the other glinted dully in the twilight.

His companion, dark of skin and cloak, turned a scarred face toward him. "We should never have come here. I've wandered some of the strangest lands in Ellynrie. But this place . . . I've never seen anything like it. There's malice on the wind. I can taste it in the air and sense it in the very bones of the earth." He stroked the hilt of his sword reassuringly and patted his whickering mount.

"Dragons and demons, Sarin," the one-eyed man muttered. "It's cursed, I say. For once the hearthside spinners of threads and tales were right." He paused. "Perhaps we should turn back."

"It's too late for that now," Sarin said. He frowned, stretching his crosshatched scars. "Turncross is an hour behind us. Even if we were to ride at full gallop without resting the horses, the sorcerer would stop us long before we reached the town. His eyes are fixed on us now, One-Eye."

"How can you be sure?" One-Eye asked, shifting the twin rapiers bound crosswise to his back.

"I've spoken with him. I know what he is capable of."

"Damned if I ever take another job involving witchery. I should have stayed in that warm tavern, ordered another round of sweet cork ale, and then turned back on the road toward home."

Sarin's scarred brow rose in a mocking arch. "And what home might that be?"

The rider who had spoken first looked around slowly, his single iris constricting. He gazed across the immolated moor, up the cliffs, and into the sickly sky. "Anywhere but here," he said.

For the first time in years he shivered in fear.