Heights of the Depths Read Online Free PDF Page B

her. She’s a Mort. A human. Why ride away with her if they didn’t have some use for her?”
    “I don’t want to give them time to put her to that use, whatever it might be.”
    “Well, you’re not really going to have a choice about it. The only choice you’re going to have is whether you are going to have the chance to catch up with her, and that opportunity in turn is going to rest on me. I will bring you to her. In return, if my health lapses, you will be able to attend to it. I want to remain in a position where you need me alive and well.”
    “That is unacceptable to me.”
    “And undesirable to me. Yet here we both are. What do you intend, then, to do about it?”
    “I—”
    His voice trailed off as he realized he really didn’t have any choice.
    “Very well. But this business goes two ways, Trull. If I see any flagging in your cooperation…if I believe even for a minute that you are endeavoring to trick me or prolong our association beyond the point of necessity…then the last thing you see will be my back as I walk away from you while you’re in your death throes. Do we understand each other?”
    “I believe we understand each other better than you think we do,” said Eutok.
    Karsen considered that. “I have no idea what that means.”
    “Worry not. You will.”
     
     
     

the spires
     
    I.
    Nicrominus had genuinely no idea what to expect from the Overseer when he had put forward his admittedly radical theories.
    The aged and wise Firedraque—arguably the finest mind of his people—had been taken forcibly from Firedraque Hall in Perriz and relocated here to the towering city simply referred to as the Spires. A lesser Firedraque would have been overwhelmed by the scope, the architecture, the sheer magnificent achievement of the Mort population in constructing this admittedly awe-inspiring city. But Nicrominus was who he was, one of the greatest and most senior Firedraques in the history of his people. There was very little that he was unable to take in stride.
    However, even for all his experience and wisdom, Nicrominus had found himself in a situation that went far beyond anything he had ever known.
    The Travelers, the right arms of the Overseer himself—the ultimate power in the Damned World—had come to him and given him a mission. They had demanded that he come up with a theory to explain why the hotstars, the primary power source of the Banished—not to mention of the Elserealms from which they had been banished—appeared ,to be slowly diminishing in power. Eventually, after much research—not to mention some notions put forward by his gifted albeit fainthearted disciple, Xeri—Nicrominus had developed a working theory. At that point he had been whisked away via Zeffers to the Spires, and had found himself addressing none other than the Overseer himself.
    Nicrominus had never before laid eyes upon he who had been placed in charge of the Damned World by their home dimension. He did not, in fact, know anyone who had. Certainly no one aside from the Travelers had done so, or at least lived to tell the story. Yet here had been Nicrominus, finding himself standing in what seemed to be a vast theater, with none other than the Overseer listening in silence. It had always been Nicrominus’s assumption that the Overseer was a member of one of the races who had dispatched the Banished to this enforced planetary prison. But the design and build of his armor was such that it was impossible for Nicrominus to determine which race he belonged to. For that matter, Nicrominus had no reason to conclude that he was in fact faced with a male of any kind. The creature in the encompassing armor could have been male, female, or anything in between.
    The Overseer had been lowered from overhead in a massive throne, down to the proscenium at the front of the amphitheater. There he had remained in stony silence as Nicrominus had resolutely ignored his own uncertainties and laid out for him what he felt were