For a moment, nothing made sense. Then Sefu realized that he and Leyli were lying twitching and entangled on the floor. She looked sunburned in spots and patches, and bits of her robe were smoking.

His spastic, helpless shuddering subsided, and to his relief, hers did too. "Are you all right?" he croaked.

"I think so."

"Stay down." Following his own advice, still shaking a little, he looked around for Olhas. The gillman was drawing himself to his hands and knees. Behind him, the window frame was gone, and little flames danced around the splintered hole where it had been. There was a similar hole in the ceiling.

"Lightning bolt," Olhas groaned.

"I know," Sefu said. He'd seen the effects of such spells during naval combat, when mages tried to blast each another's ships to pieces.

Plainly, Domitian and his followers had somehow tracked Leyli, Olhas, and him to the tenement. Spotting his quarries through the window, the rakshasa had hurled the thunderbolt. Fortunately, since he was on the ground and the flop was on the third story, the angle was bad. The lightning hadn't hit any of its targets squarely.

"Can Domitian throw another one?" Sefu asked.

Olhas shook his head. "I don't know."

Sefu turned back to Leyli. "How many ruffians does Domitian have working for him altogether?"

"Maybe a dozen?"

"We shouldn't stay here," Olhas said. "That door won't keep anybody out for more than a moment."

"I know," Sefu said. "Give us some cover."

Olhas faced the remains of the window and rattled off a rhyme. On the final syllable, he flicked his fingers like he was flinging drops of water. Thick gray fog puffed into existence in the center of the space.

"Now, up there." Sefu pointed at the hole in the ceiling.

Olhas flashed a grin. "Right." He jumped, caught hold of the ragged edges, and hauled himself up. Sefu lifted Leyli up to his friend, then jumped and clambered through the hole himself.

At the moment, this flop was unoccupied. Good—they had enough to worry about without a terrified tenant demanding explanations.

"They'll know where we went," Leyli said.

"But they'll need a moment to think about it," Olhas replied, "and during that moment, they'll be vulnerable. Step back from the hole."

Sefu hurried to the door and pressed his ear against it. On the other side, rushing footsteps thudded on the stairs, and then something crashed. Someone had kicked in the door to the room below.

Behind Sefu, Olhas whispered. After all the battles in which they'd stood together, Sefu understood what the gillman had in mind. At the moment their foes gathered underneath the hole and peered up, he'd step up to the edge and drop an attack spell on their heads. It would work if his timing was good.

Meanwhile, Sefu drew his sword, eased open the door, and stalked down the stairs toward the third floor landing. When the screaming started, he broke into a run, bounding down the remaining risers three at a time.

He burst back into the flat he and Olhas had rented to see that Domitian hadn't ascended the stairs himself, nor had he sent every ruffian at his command. The first wave consisted of five half-orcs. One was on his knees shrieking with his hands clapped over his eyes. A second was rolling on the floor in an effort to extinguish the yellow flames leaping up from his clothing.

That left Sefu to contend with the other three. The first one was easy enough. He was still turning around when the Wave Rider dropped him with a cut to the head.

But Sefu wasn't fast enough to kill the others before they came on guard, and as they did, he recognized Red Eyes and the Runt. Maybe they'd volunteered to break into the flop because they wanted to finish what they'd started on the Avenue of the Hopeful.

"Come on, then," Sefu said, retreating toward the landing. If he made it out the door, the half-orcs would have to come at him one at a time.

But they didn't let him get that far. They bellowed and rushed him.

The deceptive, evasive footwork, alternately gliding and explosive, that was a mainstay of many a swordsman's game and had served Sefu well in the Irorium was impossible here. The flop was too cramped. Fortunately, he'd learned a less elegant but still effective style of fighting on the decks of pirate ships, squashed in among dozens of other frenzied combatants with scarcely room to shift an inch. He parried Red Eyes's head cut with his blade and, not caring if he cut himself, grabbed the Runt's scimitar just as the latter was starting his attack. He snap-kicked Red Eyes in the knee, and the larger half-orc stumbled backward.

The Runt pulled on the scimitar. Sefu had to let go, otherwise the edge would have sliced his fingers to the bone or severed them entirely. But he cut while the ruffian was still yanking his weapon backward. The broadsword sheared into the Runt's chest. The half-orc's knees buckled, and he collapsed.

By then, Red Eyes was limping forward again. Sefu met him with a feint to the flank that drew a sweeping parry, then slashed his throat. The half-orc fell backward.

That should have been the end of it. But amazingly, the ruffian who'd been rolling on the floor had succeeded in putting himself out, and he was still game. He rushed Sefu with an axe raised high. Sefu half-severed the half-orc's weapon hand with a stop cut to the wrist, then braced himself to keep his foe from knocking him over when they slammed together. He succeeded in bulling the tough backward instead, and dropped him with a cut to the flank.

Making sure they were all really dead or incapacitated, Sefu took another look at the half-orcs. Then, blood dripping from his off hand, he strode back out onto the landing. Nobody else was coming up the stairs, not yet, but after a moment, Olhas and Leyli hurried down.

"Your hand!" his sister said.

"It's nothing." Sefu looked at Olhas. "That was a good start. But there are still only two doors in or out of this building, and you know Domitian's watching them both."

"So what do you think?" Olhas asked.

"Take the fight to them. Before they realize the lightning bolt didn't do any serious harm to either one of us, and that we killed the first troupe of clowns they sent in after us."

Sefu grinned. "We're still outnumbered and have no idea what other tricks the rakshasa can play. But those petty quibbles aside, I like it."

"Let's go, then."

"Wait." Leyli scurried into the flop and returned with a dirk, no doubt pilfered from one of the fallen half-orcs. "I know I don't know how to fight," she said, "but just in case I have to."

"Just try to stay away from them," Sefu said. He led his companions down the stairs.

He half expected more foes to intercept them before they reached the ground floor, but nobody did. "Front door or back?" he asked.

"They may be expecting the back," Olhas said, sliding a scroll from his sleeve.

"The front it is, then. Start reading, and I'll yank it open."

When he did, no one was in view. But when Olhas recited the final syllable of the trigger phrase, the two half-orcs who'd been pressed against the exterior wall to ambush whoever stepped through both flopped to the ground, overtaken by magical slumber. Sefu stabbed one of them in the chest as he rushed outside.

A voice bellowed, "They're here!" The call almost covered the clack of a crossbow, but not quite. Sefu threw himself to the ground, and the quarrel whizzed over his head.

He cast about, spotted the half-orc who'd shot at him, scrambled up, and charged. Realizing he couldn't cock and reload in time, the ruffian drew his sword. Sefu beat it out of line and cut to the chest. The half-orc dropped.

Sefu looked for the tough who'd shouted, and found him just as Olhas's darts of green light plunged into his torso. The half-orc fell, and he was the last foe in sight. Sefu wondered if he and his companions might actually be able to get away without any more fighting, and then, summoned by their comrade's cries, more enforcers ran around the corner of the building.

Sefu saw with a pang of dismay that there were at least half a dozen. Leyli's estimate had been low.

Despite the magic he'd already expended, Olhas proved to have enough left for at least one more potent attack. A red spark flew past Sefu into the midst of the half-orcs. There it boomed into a burst of flame that tore one of the men apart and flung two more through the air with their forms ablaze.

The rest faltered, and unwilling to let them recover their nerve, Sefu went for them. As he moved, he felt a sort of tingling rawness in the air around him, and caught a smell like the advent of a storm.

He leaped to the side. Another lightning bolt blazed past him while he was still in the air. Standing with his arm outstretched at the thunderbolt's point of origin, Domitian popped into view, the charm of invisibility that had hidden him until this moment dissipating with the force of his attack.

Sefu slammed down onto the ground. Hot pain burned his skin, and his muscles jumped and clenched. Refusing to let that stop him, he floundered to his feet.

"Get Domitian!" Olhas called. "I'll handle the others!" He chanted words of power at the top of his lungs, drawing the half-orcs' attention, making sure they understood he was about to cast a spell.

Sefu lunged for the rakshasa.

He half expected Domitian to throw a third lightning bolt, but perhaps that magic needed a moment to renew itself, or maybe the rakshasa had simply lost faith in his ability to kill this particular foe with magic. For instead, he lifted his scimitar into a high guard and dropped his mask of humanity.

With its bared fangs and four glaring, slit-pupiled eyes, Domitian's true form was even more hideous than Sefu had imagined. But if the rakshasa expected the sight of it to make him falter, he was doomed to disappointment. It only made Sefu angrier.

He sensed Domitian's mind trying to pierce and twist his own, but that didn't work either, not anymore. It never had, really, and now it was just an annoyance, like a buzzing fly.

Sefu plunged across the distance and cut at the cat head on the left. The broadsword rang and rebounded from an invisible shield. Domitian's curved blade whirled at the Wave Rider's midsection. Still in the lunge, Sefu parried, then cut at the rakshasa's groin. Again, an unseen something interposed itself between the sword and its target.

Sefu gave a snarling cry, more expressive of determination than frustration. He recognized this magic as something Olhas sometimes used. And so Sefu understood that the conjured defense wasn't impregnable. It could be penetrated just like the guard of a common warrior.

Recovering forward, he feinted high, then low, then slashed at the cat face on the right. This time, the shield failed to jump in the way.

Unfortunately, it didn't have to. A stroke with all Sefu's strength behind it, a blow that should have sheared through bone to cleave the brain inside, merely sliced a shallow gash on Domitian's low, broad brow and skipped aside.

Domitian riposted with a chest cut. Sefu just managed to parry, then slashed at the rakshasa's extended sword arm. The broadsword tore the creature's sleeve but glanced off the skin beneath without leaving any mark at all.

Domitian laughed, his mirth ghastly in the high, inhuman voices of the cat heads. Then, perhaps deciding that he'd now taken Sefu's measure, he came on the offensive.

Though competent, Domitian wasn't as able a swordsman as his foe. But with his invisible floating shield and his innate resistance to harm, he didn't need to be. Screeching and spitting, contemptuous of anything Sefu did to try to stop him, he attacked relentlessly.

Sefu had to retreat one step, then two, then another, while rage burned hotter and hotter inside him. He would not let this loathsome creature win. But he also had no idea how to prevent it.

The scimitar flashed at his lower leg. Sefu jumped back, but a hair too slowly. He felt a sort of thump and fell on his side.

Domitian yowled and raised his blade to deliver the killing stroke—and went rigid instead. As Sefu scrambled to his knees and jerked his sword into some semblance of a guard, he saw Leyli behind the rakshasa, and the hilt of her dirk protruding from the creature's shoulder. Though it had by no means delivered a deathblow, the knife had penetrated the thing's hide.

Sefu's mind raced. Sailors' tales were full of mythical monsters that could only be killed in certain ways, or by specific types of weapons. Despite his own strength and a career soldier's barrage of pricey charms, his broadsword had done nothing—yet Leyli's dirk had bit through.

Well, if the edge of his blade couldn't slay a rakshasa, maybe the point could do the job.

Domitian whirled toward Leyli. She was too close for him to use the scimitar, so he raked at her throat with the talons of his off hand. She flung herself backward. The claws missed with barely an inch to spare.

"Get away!" Sefu gasped. "I can take him!" He heaved himself to his feet.

He discovered at once that his wounded leg didn't want to bear its fair share of his weight. He was going to limp.

He was also going to be using his heavy blade in a manner for which it was ill designed. A broadsword was a cutting weapon. Many warriors never used the point at all, except to administer the mercy stroke to a fallen, helpless foe.

But to hell with all of that. He now knew how to kill his adversary, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Trying to look like he could barely stand, Sefu exaggerated his hobble. Domitian took the bait and cut. Sefu parried; the blades clanged together, and the jolt shivered up his arm. He feinted low, then extended and exploded into a lunge.

The tip of the broadsword pierced Domitian's chest, at the spot where a human carried his heart—and, if the gods were kind, a rakshasa did, too. Then something clipped the underside of the blade; it was the rim of the invisible shield, which was jerking upward in an effort to knock the sword away. Pain stabbed up Sefu's lead leg—the wounded one—as his foot came down on the ground, and he toppled sideways.

But neither Domitian's attempt at defense nor the loss of balance mattered, because the broadsword drove deep. Once Sefu finished falling and lifted his head to look, he saw the rakshasa sprawled motionless with the blade sticking up out of him and swaying slightly from side to side.

That meant it was safe to look around the rest of the battlefield. Just visible in the dark, a half-orc was running away down an alley. The other ruffians lay dead or incapacitated with Olhas standing in the center of them. Sorcery alone hadn't been enough by the end. The gillman held his own bloody sword in his hand.

"Are you all right?" Olhas called.

Sefu inspected his leg and clamped a hand over the gash. Leyli came scurrying to help him, tearing a bandage from her robe. "I need a healer," he gritted, feeling the gnawing pain in a way he hadn't before, "but I'll live. What about you?"

"Fine." The gillman grinned. "No thanks to you. You did notice that there at the end, I was heroically fighting twenty foes while you diddled around with one."

Sefu snorted. "'Twenty?' I suspect it'll be a hundred, the next time you tell the tale. Why don't you make yourself really useful and go hire a litter? Or at least borrow a wheelbarrow."

"A wheelbarrow?" Olhas laughed. "Who do you think you are, the Primarch?" Positioning himself beneath one of Sefu's shoulders, he directed Leyli to take the other, and together they lifted Sefu until he was standing precariously on his good leg.

"Come on, soldier," Olhas said, "let's get out of here before anyone starts asking questions."

Together, the three of them limped down the road, and off into the night.

Coming Next Week: A long-awaited sample chapter from Winter Witch.

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

The waning moon had passed its zenith and was slipping westward, and although a city like Absalom never entirely slept, only a few scattered lights glowed amid the darkness, while the perpetual background drone had subsided to the faintest of hums.

Olhas peered down the silent street that led to Domitian's manor, rolled tension out of his shoulders, and said, "Ready?"

"If you are." Sefu hesitated. "You know, you don't have to do this."

Olhas raised his eyebrows. "Are you planning to work the magic yourself? That should be interesting."

"I mean, maybe I can bring her out just by being stealthy."

"And then what? Look, I understand all the ways this can go wrong. We could get killed breaking in or end up with the Graycloaks hunting us afterward. But if we stick together, we should be all right."

"All right, then. I owe you."

The gillman grinned. "You certainly do." He pulled up the black scarf around his neck to mask the lower half of his face. The rest of his clothing was just as dark and thus well suited to housebreaking.

Sefu tied on his own improvised mask. Then he and Olhas crept down the street toward Domitian's manor.

Olhas raised his hand for a halt, drew a vellum scroll from his sleeve, and unrolled it. Like the Wave Riders' somber clothing, the parchment repository of magic was something they'd purchased specifically for this enterprise. Though Olhas was a competent sorcerer, his innate power had its limits, and he wanted to conserve it to cleanse Leyli of Domitian's influence.

Eyes that could see deep underwater could also make out a trigger phrase even in the gloom, and Olhas read it in a whisper. The ink made a tiny crackling sound as the magic bound in the words discharged, and the writing crumbled into powder.

Meanwhile, Sefu peered at the window under the gable. He couldn't see the lookout at all, let alone discern whether or not the half-orc had succumbed to the spell. "Is he asleep?" he asked.

Olhas rerolled the scroll and slipped it back into his sleeve. "I guess we'll find out."

They sprinted toward the wrought-iron gate. Sefu didn't hear anyone shouting an alarm, and when they climbed over into the courtyard, it took them out of the lookout's field of vision. He hoped that when the half-orc woke, he'd imagine he'd simply drifted off naturally.

Keeping low, the Wave Riders crept on to the front door. Olhas squatted and whispered into the keyhole. The lock clicked, and the door swung ajar.

Sefu peered through. The foyer was unoccupied and, with the oil lamps extinguished, even darker than the night outside.

He and Olhas prowled up the stairs. They were proceeding on the assumption that Domitian's followers slept in the bedrooms, although Sefu actually wouldn't have been surprised to discover that the god-to-be kept his poor abused flock in the cellar.

It turned out that he didn't, although he apparently required them to lie on the floor instead of in the beds. The worshipers tossed, jerked, twitched, and moaned in their sleep. Squint as he might, Sefu often found it impossible to make out their features in the gloom, but he trusted Olhas to recognize Leyli when they came to her.

A floorboard creaked. Sefu pivoted. A half-orc was leading a woman—Sefu thought it was the cultist who'd been made to pull her own teeth, though he wasn't sure—down the hall toward him, Olhas, and the room they'd just finished inspecting.

Sefu nearly snatched out his sword before realizing the ruffian wasn't showing any sign of agitation at the Wave Riders' presence. Apparently, thanks to their black garments, he's mistaken Sefu and Olhas for two of his fellows.

Sefu gave him a little wave. Then he and Olhas stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. He hoped it was an unremarkable thing for one of the half-orcs to do.

Apparently it was, because the tough didn't come in after them or shout for help, either. Footsteps padded by, and then, farther down the corridor, another door opened and closed. Sefu suspected it was the one that he and Olhas had decided likely led to the master bedroom.

As they moved on, he tried not to imagine all the special degradations to which Domitian might be subjecting the woman in his private chamber in the middle of the night. Then a pair of high, perhaps inhuman voices began to yowl. The eerie cries echoed through the dark house, but if they woke any of the cult leader's followers, Sefu couldn't tell. Perhaps the magic that trammeled their minds kept them from hearing.

"By the Eye," Olhas whispered, sounding unsettled for once, "what is that? What's he doing to her?"

"I don't know," Sefu answered. "But our task is still to find Leyli and get her out of here."

And eventually they did find her, after climbing up to the third floor. Leyli lay sleeping beside another female cultist in a room that had evidently once belonged to a child. Ghostly in the trace of light shining through the open casement, clowns juggled, ropewalkers balanced, and bears danced in the mural on the wall.

Whispering, Olhas cast a second spell of slumber to make sure Leyli's roommate didn't wake. Then Sefu picked up his sister and set her on her feet. The gillman's magic had taken hold of her as well, and she slept on obliviously. Sefu supported her with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.

"Ready?" he asked.

Olhas removed the preserved tongue of a serpent and a bit of honeycomb from a hidden pocket in his belt. "Go."

Sefu shook Leyli. Meanwhile, holding both magical foci in his left hand, Olhas swept them through an S-shaped pass and whispered sibilant words of power.

Leyli stiffened in Sefu's grasp, then started to squirm and struggle. Olhas reached the end of his incantation and said, "Listen! Domitian sent us. He wants you to go with us and cooperate with us in every way."

Leyli stopped fighting. Sefu cautiously uncovered her mouth, and she didn't scream.

"Let's get out of here," Olhas said. He smiled at Leyli. "Quietly, please. Domitian doesn't want us to disturb the others."

She nodded slowly, in a dazed way that gave Sefu a pang of guilt. He'd come to restore her mind, not add yet another level of confusion and compulsion. But Olhas had assured him the effect was only temporary, and it really was the easiest way to sneak her out.

They all crept back down the staircase into the foyer. With the door to the outside world in view, Sefu felt himself relax at least a little.

Then a shaggy lupine beast stalked through one of the doorways on his right.

Sefu was more familiar with the creatures of the sea and coast than those of the forest and plain. Yet his instincts shouted that the creature was something more than a dog or even a wolf, and an instant later, it proved them correct by speaking.

"What's this?" it snarled.

The beast was a worg, then, a man-eating predator of near-human intelligence. And if it was serving as Domitian's watchdog, that was yet more evidence—not that Sefu needed any—that the god-to-be was a dastard of the vilest sort.

What Sefu did need was a way past the brute. Maybe he and Olhas could bluff it like they'd bluffed the half-orc in the hallway.

"Somebody wants to play with this skinny bitch," he said, trying to sound as coarse as any half-orc ruffian. "The Reaper knows why, especially at this hour. But he sent gold, so Tsadok and me have to deliver her."

The worg grunted, then snuffled. Sefu realized it was taking his and Olhas's scents. But before he could do anything about it, it lifted its head and howled.

Sefu whipped out his sword and rushed it. The worg broke off its cry to spring back and avoid his first cut. Maybe, if the Wave Riders were lucky, that bit of ululating wailing had blended in with the yowls still issuing from Domitian's bedchamber, and no one had noticed it.

In any case, Sefu had to deal with the beast, and quickly. He slashed at its head, but it sidestepped the stroke, then sprang.

Its front paws slammed into Sefu's chest and smashed him to the floor. Slavering jaws plunged at his throat.

Behind him, Olhas rattled off a word. Darts of green light stabbed into the worg's muzzle and shoulders, and it faltered at the shock. Sefu let go of his sword's hilt and grabbed it partway up the blade, so he could stab with it at close quarters. He thrust it between the creature's ribs.

Blood spurted. The worg shuddered, then collapsed on top of him. He lay panting under its rank, dead weight for a moment, then rolled the carcass to the side.

Leyli blinked. If she truly understood that a fight to the death had just taken place, no one could have told it from her demeanor. "Did you call me a name?" she murmured.

"No," Sefu said. He rose and yanked his sword out of the worg's body.

"We need to go now," Olhas said.

They boosted Leyli over the wrought-iron gate, and then the three of them hurried away down the street. Sefu kept glancing over his shoulder. As far as he could tell, no one was in pursuit, so after a time, he and Olhas took off their masks. There was no point in looking like thieves to whomever they might meet along the way.

Of course, he couldn't do anything about the worg's gore staining the front of his clothing, but fortunately, he and his companions didn't have far to walk. He and Olhas had rented a flop in a tenement just a couple blocks from the manor. The flop was a squalid little room, with a dank smell hanging in the air and roach droppings crunching underfoot, but it was a place to go to ground while the gillman did his work.

The flop contained a sagging cot with a no-doubt-flea-infested straw tick and a single rickety chair. Olhas set the latter in the middle of the floor and motioned for Leyli to take a seat. "Please," he said.

She sat.

The gillman murmured a rhyme, crooking and uncrooking his fingers all the while. Then he walked around and around Leyli, peering at her from every angle.

After what felt like a long time, Sefu asked, "Are you doing anything?"

"I'm learning everything I can about what Domitian did to her, so as to have the best possible chance of undoing it. If I'm working too slowly to suit you, my abject apologies."

"I just want you to get it done before the spell that's making her biddable wears off."

Leyli slowly rubbed her temple with her fingertips. "What? A spell?"

"It's nothing," Olhas said. "Just relax." He looked at Sefu. "I believe I'm ready." Shifting his hands from side to side like he was placing stones in an invisible mosaic, he chanted a longer incantation in a language Sefu didn't recognize. On the final syllable, he planted his right hand on her forehead.

She gasped and bucked at his touch. Then she went limp.

"Did it work?" Sefu asked. "Is she all right?"

"Let's ask her," Olhas said. "Leyli, how do you feel? Do you understand what's been happening to you?"

Blinking, she looked up at her rescuers. Then she jumped up and threw her arms around Sefu. "I'm sorry!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry!"

"It's all right," he said, patting her back. "I know you weren't in your right mind."

"And the Graycloaks need to know it, too," Olhas said. "If they understand that Domitian uses magic to enslave his 'followers,' they'll move against him." He grinned. "As opposed to arresting your brother and me for breaking into his house and killing his dog."

"But I don't know if the Graycloaks can stop him," Leyli said. "I don't know if anyone can."

"I can understand why the man seems powerful to you," Olhas said, "but—"

"You don't understand," Leyli said. "He isn't a man. I know because sometimes he let me see him as he truly is, to terrify me, and then made me forget it later."

Sefu frowned. "Then what is he, really?"

"A demon! He has two heads, each the head of a cat, and his hands are twisted around on his wrists."

"That's why we heard two voices crying out," Sefu said. Imagining the creature Leyli described forcing himself on the woman the half-orc had taken to his bedchamber made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Yes," Olhas said, "but he's not exactly a demon. He's a rakshasa."

"A what?"

"An evil spirit given flesh," the gillman said. "A kind that takes particular pleasure in degrading and defiling people. The backward hands are a giveaway. And actually, this is good. The Graycloaks may not like to interfere with actual religious leaders, even unscrupulous ones, but they'll certainly—"

The world blazed white.

Coming Next Week: Strange fiends and desperate measures in the final chapter of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

Unlike most of the gods-to-be, Domitian didn't actually live on the Avenue of the Hopeful, or anywhere particularly near. Sefu and Olhas had to walk across a goodly portion of the Ascendant Court, passing such landmarks as the raucous wooden mead hall sacred to Cayden Cailean and the red limestone statue known as the Iomedaenne before reaching the quiet side street where the cult reportedly occupied a manor, at which point Olhas held up his hand to signal a halt.

"What?" Sefu snapped.

Olhas arched an eyebrow. "You might want to watch your tone. If that's how you snarl at a friend, how will you speak to Domitian?"

"Sorry," Sefu said. "I'm in a hurry."

"I noticed. But I want to talk before we come under observation. When we're about to head into the charlatan's presence, I'm going to cast a spell. Something that may give us some insight as to why Leyli holds him in such regard. It would be nice if no one noticed me casting it."

Sefu nodded. "I'll make a distraction. Was that all you wanted?"

"Except to recommend again that you hold onto your temper. You're still glowering like you want to kill somebody."

"Because I do."

Olhaus sighed, but resumed walking.

Domitian's manor was a large three-story house built around a central courtyard, a fitting residence for a prosperous merchant or aristocrat. Perhaps a worshiper had donated it. Black bunting painted with obscure white symbols draped the facade, marring the structure's otherwise handsome appearance.

"Apparently a fellow can make a good living off misery and guilt," Olhas murmured. "Notice the lookout in the window under the gable?"

"Yes." The sentry in question was a half-orc watching the street.

"Maybe you're not the first brother or father to pay a call with murder in his heart."

Yet even if Sefu wasn't, Domitian didn't have an armed ruffian tending the wrought-iron gate that opened on the courtyard. That duty had fallen to another black-robed worshiper, a skinny, unwashed wretch with a receding hairline and the eyes of a dog that spent its days tied up and ignored.

As with Leyli, though, that appearance of dull-witted suffering was in one respect misleading. The gatekeeper proved himself capable of judgment and decisive action when he studied the visitors and then said, "I'm sorry. The Lord of Penance isn't receiving petitioners today."

Staring the gatekeeper in the eye, Sefu unbuckled the pigskin pouch on his belt, took out a silver weight, and held up the coin for the man to see. "I recommend you accept this offering and let us in. Otherwise, we'll come in anyway, and give you something new to regret."

The cultist swallowed. "Wait here." He retreated into the house.

Sefu waited as long as he could bear it. Then he said, "To Hell with it." He gripped the top of the gate and lifted his foot to climb, and then the door on the far side of the courtyard opened again. Somewhat to his surprise, it was the gatekeeper who emerged and not the household guards.

The functionary conducted them into the courtyard, a garden of sweet-smelling red and yellow roses with a gurgling white marble fountain in the center. Bees droned among the flowers.

Sefu glanced at Olhas, and the gillman gave him a slight nod in return. Sefu clapped his hand to his neck and shouted, "Ouch!"

Startled, the gatekeeper jerked around. "Sir?"

"Something hit me!" Sefu snarled.

The balding man cast about and drew the obvious conclusion. "There are bees. Perhaps one of them—"

Sefu lunged and grabbed him by the front of his shapeless, grubby garment. "Or perhaps one of you idiots is throwing stones."

"Sir, I swear, no one would do that. Our master has agreed to see—"

Sefu interrupted by shouting in the other man's face, and on every beat of that cadenced bellowing, he gave him a bone-rattling shake. "I do not be-lieve you!"

It unquestionably riveted the gatekeeper's attention. Sefu hoped it was holding the interest of any other observers as well, so no one would notice Olhas hurriedly whispering his incantation.

He kept up the bullying for another moment, and then the sorcerer gripped him by the shoulder. "Stop," Olhas said. "I saw it. It was a bee."

Sefu grunted like he was reluctant to let the matter drop. That wasn't so far from the truth, even though the rational part of him knew the gatekeeper wasn't to blame for Leyli's predicament. But he shoved the man away and said, "Take us on in, then, and be quick about it."

Most manors had a great hall, and that was where the gatekeeper appeared to be leading them. As they crossed the foyer with its imposing staircase and lesser doorways, Olhas glanced around. The action looked casual, but Sefu assumed his friend was taking in every detail like the expert scout he was.

Sefu peered around, too, but saw nothing that seemed particularly revelatory. The space just looked like the entryway of any rich man's home. It sounded different, though. Somewhere on one of the upper floors, someone was weeping, and leather slapped flesh with a steady smack-smack-smack. Sefu told himself Leyli was still out begging. It wasn't her crying or taking the beating, either.

The great hall smelled of sandalwood incense, and there were votive candles burning. A pair of half-orc toughs flanked a high-backed, ornately carved wooden chair on a pedestal, and on this throne lounged an exceptionally handsome, muscular man with shoulder-length white-blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and a silver goblet in his hand. He was naked except for a red silk robe loosely tied with a sash of the same material.

To that extent, the place was pretty much what Sefu had expected. But the two worshipers who'd apparently been receiving their fledgling deity's personal attention constituted more of a surprise, and not a pleasant one.

A pretty, middle-aged woman sat cross-legged on the tile floor with a pair of pliers in her hand and several teeth lying in front of her. Bloody drool streaked her chin.

Across from her, a man even skinnier than Domitian's average worshiper slumped twitching and trembling at a little table set with a cup and a plate laden with apples, figs, grapes, and pears. He clearly yearned—and needed—to drink and eat, but wasn't doing either.

The acts of self-mortification brought an insult to Sefu's lips. But when he looked Domitian in the eye, the obscenity faded away unspoken, along with the spasm of outrage that had drawn it forth.

He'd noticed before that Domitian had the kind of good looks and commanding presence that no doubt helped a fraud dupe the vulnerable. But now, as though his eyes had just finished adjusting after coming into this shadowy place from the summer sunlight, Sefu felt like he was truly seeing the man for the first time. And what he beheld was a piercing kind of perfection. A flawless face radiating compassion and wisdom so profound that they might well partake of the divine.

Suddenly Sefu wondered what right he, a simple fighting man, had to barge into a holy place with malice in his heart and judge this noble spirit and his teachings. Maybe Domitian would pass the test of the Starstone someday. Maybe the path he offered, stringent though it seemed, was the way to peace and clarity for some. Maybe Leyli—

But the thought of his sister walking that path, going dirty and hungry, whoring, submitting to beatings and maybe doing even worse things to herself, brought him up short. Prompted by sheer instinct, he reached down through the confusion that had overtaken him to the anger still seething underneath and sought to feel it in full measure. Afterward, he realized he was breathing as heavily as he had after brawling with the half-orcs. But his thoughts were clear, and his resolve restored.

Domitian smiled sardonically, like a fencer might if an inferior but lucky opponent avoided an attack that by all rights should have scored. Or maybe he didn't. The expression, if had been there at all, came and went in an instant, and then his face was grave and kind.

"Sefu and Olhas," he said.

"Someone ran home and told you to expect us," Sefu said.

"No," the cult leader replied. "Nobody had to. I'm only a shadow of what I will one day become, but already I'm more than a man. I don't mean it to sound arrogant, but it's a fact. I have ways of knowing what others lack. Even you, sorcerer, with your magic poking and prying at me. Is it telling you anything you can understand?"

Olhas smiled. "I take it that despite our attempt at misdirection, someone spotted me casting a spell in the garden."

"No, but I don't blame you for assuming that. Darkness is false comfort, but until we're ready to face the light, it can be the only comfort we have."

"We didn't come here to listen to your gibberish," Sefu said.

"No," Domitian said. "You came to take Leyli away from the only source of comfort she's found since her life turned to grief and despair."

Once again, there was something in Domitian's gaze, and in his deep, rich tones, that eroded Sefu's certainty like waves washing away a drawing in the sand. What if—

No, curse it! No, no, no! He closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the sight of Domitian's magisterial face with its expanse of forehead and long, narrow nose, and that made it easier to think.

"Her family can comfort her," he said.

"Clearly not," Domitian said, "or she would never have sought me out in the first place, and if you did somehow succeed in taking her away, she would only return at the first opportunity. Such being the case, surely it's better to leave her to the life she's freely chosen. That way, you won't poison the love she feels for you."

It made an ugly kind of sense. Sefu hated admitting it, but it did. He might even have said so, except that just then, with a sudden, spastic flailing, the man seated at the table overturned it. The cup clanked and spilled the water inside, and fruit tumbled across the floor. The cultist buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Domitian turned to one of the half-orcs. "I believe Ioseph has tested his willpower sufficiently for one day. Help him back to his room, and give him his usual supper at sundown." He looked back at Sefu and Olhas. "Where were we?"

The interruption had startled some of the unaccustomed defeatism out of Sefu's head. He took a breath and exhaled the rest of it. "You were saying that if I took Leyli away, she'd just run back. But she couldn't if you refused to take her back."

"Why would I do that?" Domitian asked.

"Because I'll pay you. I have some savings, and my mother does, too. It won't be a fortune, but it will be more than Leyli brings in begging and... doing whatever else on the street."

Once again, if Domitian smiled a mocking smile, it was the merest flicker of an expression, too ephemeral for Sefu to be sure of it. "But I don't care about money."

"Then why send your followers out to get it?"

"Supporting the faith is a part of their purification."

"I don't believe you. You don't want to shut Leyli out because it might cause the rest of your victims to doubt you. Or because it gives you too much sick enjoyment to mistreat her."

"I suggest, my friend, that it is you who have found joy in hurting others—first your opponents in the Irorium, and then the pirates you've hunted across the Inner Sea. I hope you understand that just because the latter task is necessary doesn't mean your motives for performing it are pure."

Sefu faltered, uncertain, but this time only for an instant. "Maybe you're right. Because I'd certainly like to tear out that lying tongue of yours and—"

"Enough!" Olhas said.

Sefu blinked. "What?"

"This conversation isn't serving any purpose," the gillman said. "The man is scum, but the Graycloaks have apparently decided he isn't breaking the law, and you evidently can't bribe him to force Leyli out. So she'll have to decide for herself that she wants to come home."

"Indeed," Domitian said, "and I promise she will when the time is right."

Sefu glared at him. "You—"

"We should go," Olhas said, and though he hadn't raised his voice, there was an insistence in it that made Sefu heed him and keep walking even when he thought he heard Domitian chuckle at his back.

"What was that all about?" he demanded once they were away from the manor. "Were you worried I was going to attack him and bring every ruffian and cultist in the place down on our heads?"

"A little," Olhas replied, "but I mainly wanted to get you out of there because of the notion that would inevitably have occurred to you after that one."

Sefu cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"Domitian asked if my magic was telling me anything, and actually, I did perceive arcane forces at play around him. But I already knew something unnatural was going on because I could feel him trying to tamper with my mind. Couldn't you?"

"I... think so. There were moments when I couldn't help being impressed, and feeling half persuaded, even though I had those two poor, suffering fools right in front of me to show what kind of bastard he really is."

"Fortunately, your anger armored you, and a sorcerer's will shielded me. But Domitian wasn't just trying to manipulate us. He was reading our thoughts. It's the only way he could have known my name. It was never spoken during our altercation on the avenue, and Leyli has never heard of me, has she?"

"No." Much as Sefu loved his family, he'd never been much for writing home.

"There you are, then. I needed to get you out of there before you hit on the idea that I knew would come to you. Your anger might have kept Domitian from seeing it in your head, but we couldn't count on it."

"The idea that you knew would come to me." Sefu shook his head. "Which would be... if Domitian uses magic to control his followers, then Leyli really isn't there of her own free will! And if we carry her off, you can use your own powers to restore her to herself!"

The gillman nodded. "It's at least worth a try."

Coming Next Week: The fine art of kidnapping in Chapter Three of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

Sefu studied the gaunt, shuffling girl in the shapeless black robe, and when he was certain, he winced.

"Is that Leyli?" Olhas asked, his brown hair plastered to his long, narrow skull. Wary of the dehydration that could mean debilitation and even death to his race, the lanky gillman had just moments ago paused at a fountain to dunk his head and hands.

"Yes," Sefu said. She was horribly changed from the grinning, teasing imp of a little sister he remembered, but still, yes. "Maybe I should talk to her by myself."

"I wish you would," Olhas said, the ruddy slits in the sides of his neck dilating and contracting. "Nothing's more boring than other people's family problems." Which hadn't kept him from insisting on accompanying his friend on this particular errand.

Dodging camel-drawn wagons and a fat man bouncing along on an axebeak, Sefu headed across the Avenue of the Hopeful, named for the self-proclaimed gods-to-be who preached, worked dubious miracles, and generally made pests of themselves along the busy thoroughfare. Meanwhile, Leyli took up a position in front of a market stall offering religious medallions to worshipers of every stripe, from folk who venerated the Dawnflower to those who abased themselves before the Prince of Darkness. As her brother neared her, she held out her bowl to passersby and started chanting in a monotone for alms.

Just seeing her at a distance pained Sefu. Up close, it was worse. The raven hair she'd once spent endless hours tinting and curling hung lank and greasy. She had the yellow remains of a bruise on one sunken cheek, and seemed to stink not just of sweat but also of infection. Worst of all was the deadness in her eyes. For a moment, he wondered if she even recognized him.

Then she sighed. "Sefu."

"Yes," he said. "This..." He waved his hand at the begging bowl, her dirty winding sheet of a robe, and everything else. "I don't understand. What are you doing?"

"Didn't Mother tell you?"

It was at least a little encouraging that she realized their mother must have written to him and implored him to come home to Absalom. It meant that—despite her blank, somehow hollowed-out appearance —her mind was still working.

"She said you're worshiping one of the charl—I mean, the folk who claim that when they're ready, they're going to take the Test of the Starstone and become gods."

"Yes," she said. "Domitian, god of penance."

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can worship anyone you like. But you don't have to do it like this. Come home. Mother needs your help in the bakery."

"No, she doesn't, and I do 'have to do it like this.' All of the master's followers live in the temple. It's the only way we can undertake the rituals of atonement."

"What do you have to atone for?"

She stared at him. "Don't make me say it."

"You're going to have to if you want me to understand what you're talking about."

She grimaced. "All right, then. The deaths of my husband and unborn child."

He felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. "Leyli! Tell me you don't believe that. How could either of those be your fault?"

"I was greedy. I had spiteful thoughts. I lusted for other men."

"And you think the gods punished you for it by pushing Melaku off the scaffold and making you miscarry? If the world worked like that, there wouldn't be a person left alive." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You're not thinking straight, and small wonder after what you've been through. Come home for a day or two—"

"Hey," someone growled.

Sefu turned. Three tattooed half-orcs, with the burly frames, greenish hide, and protruding lower canines of their kind, were sneering at him. Intent on Leyli, he hadn't noticed their approach. Unlike her, they were dressed in decent clothing, but its somber color suggested that they too followed Domitian.

Trying not to look obvious about it, Sefu shrugged back the short sea-green cape of his Wave Rider uniform, exposing the bronze sword pin underneath. He'd won it fighting in the arena when he was a foolhardy adolescent, and in his own estimation, it was a trivial thing compared to the honors he'd earned since serving in Absalom's sea cavalry. But to ruffians from the city's gutters, it might convey a good deal more.

It didn't cow the half-orcs, though. They looked like they still thought they were the intimidating ones. "You're keeping her from her work," said one with crimson eyes. "Drop a coin in her bowl and move along."

"Or, if you want her," said a second, whose badly broken nose resembled a swinish snout, "we can talk price."

Sefu's mother hadn't warned him that Domitian had turned Leyli into a streetwalker as well as a beggar, probably because she hadn't known. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm Leyli's brother," he said.

"That's all right," said the smallest and most human-looking of the three. "We don't judge." His companions laughed.

Sefu supposed it would be a mistake to start a brawl. He felt on the brink of launching himself at the half-orcs anyway.

Behind him, Olhas's pleasant baritone voice said, "Something's plainly funny. How about letting me in on the joke?" He gripped Sefu's shoulder, silently urging him to stay calm.

"You're going to be the joke," Red Eyes said. "You and your friend, if you don't run along."

"That's possible," the gillman said, stepping forward to stand beside Sefu. "I can do some funny things. Let me show you."

He murmured three rhyming words and swept his hand in a slow horizontal pass. His fingertips left a trail of gray vapor swirling in the air.

Hoping that the minor display of sorcery had daunted the half-orcs, Sefu said, "We are leaving. But Leyli's coming with us." Without taking his eyes off the ruffians, he reached out to her.

But she didn't take his hand. And the half-orc runt—who was nonetheless as tall as Olhas and as broad-shouldered as Sefu—said, "I'm going to be nice one more time. Go away. Otherwise..." He reached down and pulled a length of ash—a cut-down spear shaft, perhaps—from his boot. His companions produced their own clubs.

A cudgel could kill, and Sefu would have felt justified in drawing his broadsword. But those who'd paused in the midst of their own business to watch the confrontation might think there was a significant difference between a civilian's blunt hardwood and a soldier's sharp steel.

"Think about what you're doing," he said to the half-orcs. "There are people looking on."

"To Hell with 'em," said the Runt, and then he and his comrades charged. The gawkers scurried to distance themselves from the imminent violence.

Sefu sidestepped and hooked a punch into Red Eyes's kidney. The half-orc grunted, stumbled to a halt, and turned. Meanwhile, Sefu had time to see the other two ruffians spreading out to flank Olhas, who hadn't drawn his blade, either. There didn't seem to be any strange glimmerings, writhing shadows, or other telltale signs of magic around the gillman, but Sefu hoped his friend had managed to cast a charm of protection anyway.

Then Red Eyes came at him again.

The half-orc advanced more warily this time, feinting with his club—virtually a mace with an iron knob on the end—in an attempt to draw reactions and learn how his opponent preferred to defend. Sefu was sorry to see that. It was unfortunate that the cultist had a weapon, a longer reach, and, by the looks of him, superior strength. It was worse that the brute knew how to use them.

Red Eyes raised the cudgel as if to strike Sefu's head. Sefu lifted his hands as if to protect it. The half-orc made the same threatening action a couple moments later, then whirled the club down to smash his foe in the ribs.

And if Sefu had reacted as he had the first time, opening up his lower body in the process, the trick might have worked. Instead, guessing what Red Eyes intended, he lunged, and though the half-orc's arm thumped his flank, the club only cut through the air behind him.

He drove a punch at Red Eyes's throat. Red Eyes flinched, and the blow caught him on the jaw instead. Pain flared in Sefu's knuckles, but the cultist reeled backward, too.

As he did, Sefu caught another glimpse of Olhas's part of the fight. The Runt was floundering on the cobblestones, trying and failing to stand back up in the midst of a patch of glistening gray grease. Meanwhile, Snout drove Olhas backward. But as the gillman retreated, his mouth moved—reciting a spell, almost certainly. When it was done, he stopped retreating, and, caught by surprise, Snout blundered into striking distance. Olhas punched him in the chest.

The gillman wasn't much of a boxer. The art was useless in his undersea home, where water cushioned every blow. But magic must have compensated for his lack of skill, because Snout's knees buckled, and he collapsed.

Red Eyes recovered his balance, bellowed, and rushed Sefu. The club lashed back and forth in wide arcs that left him open at the end of every swing. As Sefu gave ground, he smiled. Anger had made the half-orc sloppy. He simply had to pick his moment—

Weight landed on his back and nearly pitched him forward into the Red Eyes's next blow. Arms wrapped around him, seeking to pin his own limbs to his sides.

Sefu threw himself backward and down. It kept the club from bashing in his skull and also slammed his new foe against the pavement. The arms around him loosened. He wrenched himself free, rolled away, and saw that it was Leyli who'd grappled him.

It amazed him that she'd actually tried to help someone hurt him, but he didn't have time to fret over it. He was on his knees, and Red Eyes was already looming over him. Hoping he could manage it before the club hammered down, he gathered himself to tackle the cultist.

"Stop!" someone shouted. "In the Chamber's name!"

The bass voice carried the ring of authority, and, furious though he was, Red Eyes backed away from Sefu. A few feet away, Olhas and the Runt, who'd finally escaped the patch of slippery ground, also stopped fighting. Everyone looked at the half-dozen guardsmen in the gray woolen cloaks, for of course it was their glowering corporal with his close-cut salt-and-pepper beard who'd shouted the order to desist.

Breathing heavily, Sefu drew himself to his feet. His knuckles throbbed, and he tried to shake the ache out of them. "I'm glad to see you," he told the corporal. "These bastards attacked my friend and me."

"That's a lie!" snapped the Runt.

Olhas waved his hand to indicate the ring of spectators. "Here are witnesses to say what really happened."

For a moment, no one seemed eager to do so. Then a boy with a satchel of rolled-up prayers for sale, prewritten supplications the illiterate could lay on altars, burn in ritual fires, or toss into the chasm surrounding the Starstone Cathedral, said, "The half-orcs started it." Other folk muttered in agreement.

"All right," said the Runt, "I admit that one of us may have struck the first blow. But only to defend this young woman. The Wave Riders meant to kidnap her."

"That's ridiculous," Sefu said. "Leyli is my sister."

"Whoever she is," said the Runt, "she's of age, and she didn't want to be dragged away. She even fought the Wave Riders alongside my friends and me."

The corporal looked at Leyli, who, like Snout, was picking herself up off the ground. "Is that true?"

Leyli looked down at the cobbles and swallowed. "Sort of. I told Sefu I didn't want to leave, but he wouldn't listen. And then, when people were fighting, I had to try to help my brothers in penance."

"Your 'brothers' who struck the first blow," Olhas said. "Your 'brothers' who fought with weapons while our hands were empty."

"You used magic," said the Runt. "That's a lot more dangerous than a couple sticks."

"All right," the corporal said. "I'm not going to arrest anybody. This time. But I want to see you Domitian people walk off in one direction and you navy boys go in the other."

"You must be joking!" Sefu waved his hand at Leyli. "Six months ago, she was healthy and happy. Normal! Look at her now!"

The Graycloak shrugged. "She says she's where she wants to be."

"Olhas and I serve Absalom, the same as you do—"

"That's why I haven't arrested you already," the corporal said. "Now, all of you, clear out."

The half-orcs grinned in a way that made Sefu's fists clench again. Olhas took him by the arm and hauled him away, past vendors of incense, idols, and other religious paraphernalia, as well as a god-to-be demonstrating his alleged divinity by eating fire and swallowing swords.

"Well, you tried," said the gillman after a while. "I suppose you'll need to spend some time with your mother before we head back to Escadar."

Sefu scowled at him. "This isn't over."

"My friend, I understand your feelings, but the Graycloak had a point. Leyli has a right to follow this Domitian if she chooses."

"She's not in her right mind! Grief already had her teetering on the brink of craziness, and then he or his cultists did something to push her over."

"Maybe. But still, if she won't listen to you—if she believes those stinking half-orcs are her real brothers—what can you do about it?"

"I can go see Domitian himself."

The sorcerer sighed. "Then I suppose that means I'm coming, too."

Coming Next Week: Arguments with a would-be god in Chapter Two of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson