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piranha lizards dropped from the branches above them. The flesh had been stripped from their bones in the seconds it had taken Teclis to cast the fiery spell that had turned their killers into shrivelled exploding corpses.
    Others had simply deserted, vanishing in the night, never to return. Tyrion did not blame them for that under the circumstances.
    Leiber had not vanished. He was just as obsessed with finding the city of Zultec as the twins were. Of course, he had his own reasons. For Tyrion and his brother, Zultec was the last known possible resting place of Sunfang, the mystical blade forged for their ancestor Aenarion by the archmage Caledor Dragontamer during the wars at the dawn ages of the world.
    For Leiber, it represented a trove of gold and mystical secrets that he hoped would let him reclaim the ancestral lands he had lost back across the wide ocean. He claimed to have penetrated to the very heart of the city once and to have spent the past few years trying to find a way back.
    Tyrion was not sure how much he trusted the man or the remainder of his companions. They were desperate rogues even by the standards of the rough crew you met in the makeshift human camps of the Lustrian coast. They had the look of casual killers. Most of them were descended from the same Norse folk that had raided the coasts of Ulthuan for centuries: big, wild-looking, blond men with braided hair and beards. Their eyes were the blue of painted Cathayan ceramics. Their manner was bluff and fierce. They swore by the names of strange Kurgan and Hung gods. These ominous deities reminded Tyrion of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and he would not have been surprised to find out that they were related.
    All of the humans except Leiber glanced at the two elves as if considering murdering them for their gold and scampering back to the old, decaying port of Skeggi, the only real permanent settlement along the whole coast. No one there would ask them how they came by the money, or what had happened to those who had went off into the jungle with them. Skeggi was a city of pirates and robbers and mad dreamers.
    Tyrion was not troubled. There were only five of the humans now and he could handle them himself even without the aid of Teclis’s magic. Providing, of course, they did not cut his throat while he was sleeping. He smiled nonchalantly.
    ‘You find something funny, sir elf,’ said Leiber. His voice was a harsh croak well suited to his guttural native speech, so unlike the liquid tongue of the elves.
    ‘No, Leiber, I am merely happy,’ said Tyrion in Reikspiel, the common language the humans used. It was true too. There was something about this desperate venture that gladdened his heart. He was rarely happier than when off on some quest in the company of his wizard twin.
    ‘You find all of these deaths cause for happiness? I had heard elves were cruel, my friend, but I had not thought to find you to be an example of that.’
    ‘You are confusing us with our kinfolk, the druchii, whom you call dark elves. The deaths give me no happiness. It is the adventure I enjoy.’
    He did not know if he could explain himself to Leiber or whether he should. At times like these, he felt as if he was living out one of the hero tales he and Teclis had loved when they were boys.
    It seemed to him that their lives had turned out exactly the way they would have wished them too. He was a warrior who had fought in the service of the Phoenix King and made himself wealthy trading and raiding the coasts of Naggaroth. Teclis had served his apprenticeship in magic under Lady Malene in Lothern and was now a student at the White Tower of Hoeth in Saphery. He was the youngest Loremaster in generations. His twin was widely acknowledged as possibly the most brilliant wizard Ulthuan had produced since the time of Bel Hathor.
    He was going to need to be. Both of them knew it was only a matter of time before the daemon N’Kari, the most ancient enemy of their family, returned