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only take a moment to sort out, he rose, strapped his falchion across his back, and picked up the long spear that served him as both warrior’s lance and wizard’s staff. Then, pausing to exchange pleasantries with various acquaintances along the way, he headed for the door.
    Outside, the night was clear and chilly, the stars brilliant. The buildings comprising the castle—massive donjons and battlements etected in the days of Thay’s wars of independence against Mulhorand, when the vale was still of strategic importance—rose black around him, while the peaks of the Sunrise Mountains loomed over those. He headed for the south bailey, where Brightwing was quartered, well away from the stables. Otherwise, her proximity would have driven the horses mad and put a strain on her discipline as well.
    A soldier—tall, lanky, plainly Mulan—came around a corner, and an awkward moment followed as he stared down, waiting for Aoth to give way. The problem, Aoth knew, was that while he claimed Mulan ancestry himself, with his short, blocky frame, he didn’t look it, particularly in the dark.
    He was easygoing by nature, and there was a time when he might simply have stepped aside, but he’d learned that, looking as he did, he sometimes had to insist on niggling matters of precedence lest he forfeit respect. He summoned a flare of silvery light from the head of his lance to reveal the badges of a rider of the elite Griffon Legion and the intricate tattooing and manifest power of a wizard.
    Not a Red Wizard. Probably because the purity of his bloodline was suspect, none of the orders had ever sought to recruit him, but in Thay, any true scholar of magic commanded respect, and the other warrior stammered an apology and scurried out of the way. Aoth gave him a nod and tramped onward.
    The masters of Thazar Keep housed visiting griffons in an airy, doorless stone hall that was a vague approximation of the caverns in which the species often laired in the wild. At present, Brightwing—so named because, even as a cub, her feathers had been a lighter shade of gold than average—was the only one in residence. Her tack hung from pegs on the wall, and fragments of broken bone and flecks of bloody flesh and fat—all that remained of the side of beef Aoth had requisitioned for her supper—befouled a shallow trough.
    Brightwing herself was nine feet long, with a lion’s body and the pinions, forelegs, and head of an eagle. Her tail switched restlessly, and her round scarlet eyes opened wide when her master came into view.
    “It’s about time,” she said.
    Her beak and throat weren’t made for articulating human speech, and most people wouldn’t have understood the clacks and squawks. But thanks to the bond they shared, Aoth had no difficulty.
    “It’s scarcely been any time at all,” he replied. “What ails you?”
    “I have a feeling,” the griffon said. “Something’s moving in the night.”
    He grinned. “Could you be a little less specific?” “It’s not a joke.”
    “If you say so.” He respected her instincts. Heeding them had saved his life on more than one occasion. Still, at the moment, he suspected, she was simply in a mood. Maybe the beef hadn’t been as fresh as it looked. “Is ‘something’ inside the walls or outside?”
    Brightwing cocked her head and took a moment to answer. “Outside, I believe.”
    “Then who cares? The Sunrise Mountains are full of unpleasant beasts. That’s why Tharchion Focar still keeps troops here, to keep them from wandering down the pass and harming folk at the bottom. But if something dangerous is prowling around outside the fortress, that’s not an emergency. Somebody can hunt it down in the morning.”
    “Morning may be too late.”
    “We aren’t even part of the garrison here. We just deliver dispatches, remember? Besides which, there are sentries walking the battlements.”
    “We can see more than they can and see it sooner. I mean, if you’ll consent to move your lazy