02 Faces of Deception by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Realms, Forgotten]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T14:58:10.791000+00:00

"Come quickly!" Paying no attention to Yago's expression, Timin grasped the ogre by the wrist and tugged him toward the door, saying, "You are needed." Yago scowled and glanced toward Atreus. Atreus nodded and said, "Do as he asks." The ogre shrugged, then ducked through the door behind Timin. Atreus glanced at Rishi, who was coming down the stairs to investigate the uproar. "Go with them," Atreus said to the Mar, pointing out the door. "Hurry... and keep an eye out for Tarch." Rishi paled. "Tarch? I thought there was no way--" "There isn't," said Seema, and Atreus finished for her, "But this is a strange coincidence." "And if it is more than a coincidence?" Rishi demanded. "What do you expect me to do about it?" "The same thing you did at the icefall," Atreus said as he shoved the little Mar out the door. "We'll be along as fast as I can run." "Run?" Seema asked, shaking her head. "You are not even ready to walk, and the Caves of Blue are at the far end of the basin, very high up the slope." Atreus started out the door after his friends. "I'll crawl if I have to," he promised. In the end, Seema borrowed a yak and led the way toward the Caves of Blue. Had Atreus's thoughts not been consumed by visions of Tarch abducting the beautiful girls of the valley, the journey would have been an enchanting one. The trails were lined with soaring birch and fir, many so large that even Yago could not have closed his long arms around the trunks. The ground itself was blanketed with a bounteous undergrowth of blossoming rhododendron that arched out over the trail sprinkling pink petals on their heads as they passed. Every now and then, they would come to a golden stream snaking its way down to the big river in the center of the basin, or cross an open meadow of long green grass where a small herd of yaks grazed con- tentedly. After a time, they reached the terraced slopes surrounding a small hamlet similar to the one where Seema lived. Here, they were besieged by distressed women who began to fill in the troubling details of the rockslide. Timin's father had awakened that morning to discover his eldest daughter, a young woman of seventeen, missing. Discovering two set of footprints leading away from his hut, he had set off at once to catch the pair. Not long afterward, the rumble of a nearby landslide had shaken the hamlet. Timin had followed the dust plume to a slope of talus--a jumbled scarp of loose rock--beneath the Caves of Blue. There he found his father trapped under a huge boulder. There was no sign of his sister or the mysterious man with whom she had left Atreus was astonished by the utter innocence of the villagers. Had a similar event occurred in Erlkazar, the father would have assumed the worst and set off with a company of armed men to hunt down the abductor.

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