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dripping from his cloak, he turned to Dalzhel and reported, “Alrik is missing from his post.”
    “You’ve looked for him?” Dalzhel demanded, laying his scabbard back on the table.
    “Aye,” Fane replied, hardly daring to meet Dalzhel’s gaze. “He’s nowhere to be found.”
    Dalzhel cursed under his breath then said, “Assign another to his place. We’ll deal with Alrik come morning.” He turned away, indicating the audience was over.
    Fane did not leave. “Alrik isn’t one to desert,” he insisted.
    “Then double the guard,” Dalzhel snarled, turning back to the sergeant. “But don’t let the men grumble to me about it. Now go.”
    His eyes betraying irritation. Fane nodded and backed out the door.
    As the sergeant left, Cyric realized that he had turned on Dalzhel for a minor infraction. It was not a smart thing to do. Without exception, the men were cutthroats and thieves, and he needed Dalzhel to watch his back. It would not do to have his bodyguard angry at him.
    By way of apology, Cyric said, “Everything depends upon those messengers.”
    Dalzhel understood the explanation for what it was and accepted it with a nod. “It shouldn’t be as difficult for the messengers to avoid Cormyrian patrols. The storm must have muddied the roads and slowed their pace. It seems that Talos the Raging One is against us.”
    “Aye,” Cyric replied, dropping back into his chair. “All the deities are against us, not just the God of Storms.” He was thinking of five nights ago, when he had been spying upon Midnight’s camp and a group of zombie riders had appeared. It was possible they had been just another aspect of the chaos plaguing the Realms, but Cyric thought it more likely a god had sent them to capture Midnight and the tablet.
    “Not that it gives me fright, understand,” Dalzhel said, watching Cyric closely. “But this business hardly seems the affair of common soldiers. It makes a man curious.”
    Cyric kept his silence, for any man privileged to know his intention might try to usurp his place.
    “The blood between you and the three we seek must be bad indeed,” Dalzhel pressed.
    “We were once… friends, of a sort,” Cyric responded guardedly. He saw no harm in admitting that much.
    “And what of this stone?” Dalzhel asked. He tried to sound nonchalant, but his interest was more than casual. Cyric wanted the fiat stone the trio carried as much as he wanted them. Dalzhel wished to know why.
    “My orders are to recover it.” Cyric tried to intimidate Dalzhel with an angry stare. “I don’t care to know why.”
    Cyric was lying. Before the battle of Shadowdale, he and his companions had helped the goddess Mystra attempt to leave the Realms. The god Helm had refused to let her pass unless she presented the Tablets of Fate, which had been stolen from Ao, the mysterious overlord of the gods. Cyric knew little else about the tablets, but he suspected that Ao would pay a handsome reward for their return.
    Cyric had spent most of his life putting bread in his mouth by thieving or fighting, always without a sense of destiny or purpose. For more than a decade, this shiftless existence had seemed an empty one, but the thief had been unable to find a higher purpose in life. Every time he tried, the matter ended as in Shadowdale, his efforts unappreciated. Often as not, Cyric found the very people he had tried to help chasing him from town.
    After Shadowdale, Cyric finally realized that he could only believe in himself - not in the abstract concept of “Good,” not in the sanctity of friendship, not even in the hope of love. If his life was to have a purpose, it had to be his own best interest. After deciding this, Cyric began to formulate a plan that not only gave meaning to his life, but one that would literally allow him to choose his own destiny. He would recover the Tablets of Fate and return them to Ao in return for a reward that would doubtlessly make him as wealthy as any king.
    Without