More footage.
Finally, the door slid open and Wilmos strode into the shop, carrying a huge bag with odd bulges that looked suspiciously like weapon barrels stretching the fabric from the inside. Gorvar jumped up and bounded over like an overgrown puppy. Every time I saw Gorvar, he was either menacing or aloof and indifferent. Now he was spinning around in circles at Wilmos’ feet. If I wasn’t watching it, I wouldn’t have believed it in a million years.
Wilmos put the bag down and crouched. Gorvar licked his face. The grizzled werewolf hugged his pet. “This was a long one, wasn’t it? I’m getting too old for this shit. Hang on, I brought you something.”
He reached into his bag.
The doors behind him snapped open. A creature surged into the shop. It was eight feet tall and clad in a tattered dark robe with a deep hood and wide sleeves.
Wilmos yanked a weapon from inside the bag, spun around, planted one knee on the floor, leveled an energy hand cannon at the intruder, and fired. A glowing packet of energy left the barrel with a telltale zing like loose change shaken in a Coke can sizzling with electricity.
The robed figure dashed sideways. Wilmos’ burst missed, hitting the shelves instead. Weapons went flying.
The creature zigzagged, as if weightless. Wilmos kept firing, each burst chewing through the carefully arranged merchandise on the walls.
The intruder jerked its arms up, and for a second, I saw its hands, pallid, bony, with too-long fingers tipped with yellow claws. Wilmos sighted and fired. The energy spark hit the creature dead on. The air in front of it rippled, and the burst died, absorbed. Wilmos tossed the cannon on the ground and yanked another firearm from the bag.
A ball of orange lightning tore out of the intruder’s claws and streaked toward Wilmos. He lunged to the side, but the lightning chased him and splashed over his body. Wilmos convulsed, drumming the ground with his heels.
Gorvar shot forward at the intruder. The robed figure caught the huge wolf by his throat and clawed him, once, twice, almost impatient. Gorvar flailed, his eyes full of rage. The creature stabbed his stomach with his claws and ripped them upward, tearing through fur and muscle. The light dimmed in Gorvar’s eyes. It tossed the wolf aside, almost contemptuously, as if he were a discarded wrapper, and moved over to Wilmos.
The big werewolf wasn’t moving.
The robed figure picked him up by his belt. A shimmering gray bubble streaked with red veins formed around the two of them, lifting the intruder above the ground. The bubble and the two beings inside of it flew toward the door and out into Baha-char. The doors of the shop slid closed.
I motioned to the inn, rewinding the recording to the spot where the creature raised its arms, and paused it at the precise moment the ball of orange lightning broke free of its fingertips. The tattered robe, the bony hands that could have belonged to a corpse, the yellow claws, and finally the lightning. There was no doubt. It was just like Michael. I looked at Sean and saw the confirmation in his eyes. He remembered the fight as well as I did.
We were looking at another corrupted ad-hal.
“He was targeted because of us,” I said.
“It’s too early to tell,” Sean said. “Wilmos has his fingers in a lot of pies.”
I pointed at the screen. “A corrupted ad-hal, Sean?”
He didn’t say anything.
“If Wilmos even suspected a corrupted ad-hal was around, he would’ve come to us immediately. He fought Michael with us. He knows what they’re capable of. And it didn’t kill him. It took him.”
Wilmos was bait. We both knew it.
“If Wilmos is bait, and this is a trap,” Sean said, “then we’re meant to follow. The trap only works if we walk into it.” He looked at Karron still looming above us. “How are we supposed to follow it there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it expects us to die trying.”
“Why?” Sean frowned. “Seems too elaborate. Why is it even targeting us in the first place? Does it want revenge for Michael?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s chancy. If it were me, I would just wait and ambush us at the shop. We fought one of these assholes, and it almost kicked our asses. Two or three could finish us. Why not take Wilmos out of the equation, wait for us to show up, and then...” He hit his left palm with his right fist.
“I don’t know.” I got up. I was tired of not knowing. “A communication screen, please.”
The inn helpfully sprouted one for me on the wall.
“Who are you calling?”
“Someone who knows more about Karron than I do.”
“Another innkeeper?” Sean frowned.
“No.” Innkeepers didn’t care about Karron. There was absolutely no chance that one of its residents would ever make a stop at an inn. No, I needed someone with an in-depth understanding of the galaxy. I knew just the person.
Now we just had to figure out what it would cost us.
The galaxy was full of nations. Some were republics, some were empires, others were democracies, anocracies, autocracies and other forms of government not found in human dictionaries. At any given time, many of them were in conflict with each other. Interstellar battles were expensive and required a prohibitive amount of resources, and most nations recognized the need for peaceful adjudication, which was where the Arbitrators came in. They tried to resolve disputes between cosmic powers before they flared into devastating wars.
The Office of Arbitration was an ancient and mysterious entity, and the Arbitrators themselves were beings of unprecedented power, carefully chosen from a variety of species. They possessed encyclopedic knowledge of the galaxy and commanded great respect, and they were to be treated with the utmost courtesy at all times.
“You look like one of your corpses,” I said.
On the huge screen George dragged his hand over his face. Normally he resembled one of Tolkien’s elven princes, tall, lean, golden-haired, and elegant in an ethereal way. He liked when people underestimated him, so he often pretended to have a limp and walked with a cane. I had it on very good authority that he was a superb swordsman. He was an even better necromancer. That, I had witnessed personally. Seeing thousands of undead claw their way out of the barren soil of Nexus was something I would never forget.
The George I saw today was entirely different. His long blond hair had broken free of his ponytail and hung around his face in greasy strands. Dark bags clutched at his eyes. He looked haggard, and his silk doublet, which must have been as white as fresh snow at some point, now resembled snow after a week had passed and most of it melted into mud.
He stared at me, his blue eyes distracted. “Hello.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
The Arbitrator pondered the question. “Some time ago.”
He didn’t seem like he was altogether there. He must’ve been extremely sleep deprived. Judging by the blue tint in the white of his eyes, he had taken a lot of boosters to keep himself awake, probably one after another. Whatever the problem he was facing, he’d smashed his computer-like brain against it, and it left him stumped.
“You should shower, George. And then sleep.”
He raised his finger. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
He thought about it. It was almost as if his brain was on a five-second delay. “Valkkinians.”