It was nearly sundown when he saw it in the distance: a thin sliver of land appearing on the horizon. It grew, the land of the Northern Kingdom becoming closer by the second. King Ravin stared at it hungrily.

Soon, it would be his.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Renard stood partway up a volcano, in front of a sheer rock wall that had to be fifty feet high, surrounded by the masked forms of the Hidden. Ahead lay the wall, and somewhere beyond that, an item that was both valuable and dangerous enough to draw him into all of this. He suspected that a more self-aware man might have seen that as some kind of metaphor for his life, but Renard had always made a point of dodging self-awareness the way he dodged watchmens arrows.

The volcano itself was probably only a small one as such things went, but even so, it towered over Renard, stabbing up into the sky like a broken dagger thrust at the heavens. Around him, there were pools that steamed with water that stayed hot with the places heat, while thin slivers of burning orange high above said that this was not the sleeping giant that he might have wished for.

The mausoleum sits above, Void said. There were stairs once, but now a man must climb to the entrance. Within, there will be defenses to prevent grave robbers.

And Im to get past them and get to the item you want, Renard said.

Yes, Void said. He passed Renard a bag. Your tools.

Thank you. Just one question.

No questions! Wrath snapped from the side.

This is kind of an important one: what does the item actually look like?

We believe it to be an amulet, Void said, while Wrath looked at him with undisguised hate. Worked with dragon designs, no bigger than a mans hand.

Renard nodded. And what about

You are trying to delay, Verdant said from his other side. Delaying will not work, nor pleading, nor anything else. Begin your work, thief, or I will fill your flesh with vines that expand through it.

Renard had no doubt that she could. He swallowed. All right.

Renard focused his attention on the wall before him. It was vertical, but craggy and gnarled. Aside from the spots that looked glassy and sharp, the climb did not look difficult. Wrapping his hands in lengths of cloth to limit the potential for damage, Renard threw himself at the cliff and set off upward.

Hed climbed many things over the years: trees, walls, once an ornamental trellis when an angry husband had returned unexpectedly. This rock face was one of the easier ones, and Renard scampered up it almost as quickly as walking it.