Amantis found it ironic that even though Corago was gone and no one was trying to force him to give up the soreav, the business he'd inherited kept him so busy that he rarely had time to check up on Ctonos and the training of the new spears.  So he was a little concerned when Mosond and Taelik showed up on his doorstep wanting to talk about them.

"Welcome.  Come in," he said, directing the elders to a side room.  "Would you like some refreshments?"

"Uh, sure.  Thank you," Mosond said.

"Troekis!" Amantis called out over his shoulder.

"Some of the city elders have expressed concerns over how your spear force is being used," Mosond called out from across the large room, raising his voice slightly to be heard.

"Are they concerned that they are too violent?" Amantis laughed as he stood in the room's entrance and leaned out into the hallway.  "Troekis!" he shouted.

"No.  Nothing like that," Taelik said.

"Ctonos is still drilling them in Straton's field isn't he?"

"Yes, well, most of them," Mosond answered.  "It's the others that we've come to speak to you about."

"I wonder what they're up to now," Amantis muttered to himself.  "Troe—!" he stopped as Ponta came around the corner.  "Ponta!  I have a couple of elders here and I'd like to give them some refreshments.  Could you have Troekis bring us some drinks?"

"I haven't seen him, but I'll do it myself," she said and hurried off.

Amantis flopped down on one of the couches.  "Now, how may I help you?"

"We have heard you are using the city's spear force for personal gain," Mosond said.

"Personal gain?  How?"

"Are you not using them to build warehouses and granaries?" Taelik asked.

"Oh, that.  I assure you that's just a temporary exercise.  We find hard work helps build hard muscles," he said thinking fast.

"You're having them build your buildings for exercise?"

"Yes, well, we are also helping them build their leadership skills as well," Amantis said, remember the problems they were having with the Calbreav, which had started this whole thing.

"Leadership?  I thought you were training them to fight."

"Er, we feel that if they learn to work together on a difficult complex project, they will also learn to fight together."  Stupid!  He thought that excuse wouldn't convince anyone.

"Perhaps they can come down to the docks and learn to unload my ships together.  I'm having a hard time finding dockers because of your spear force."

"This is just temporary," he assured them.  "We have had a batch of new spears to train.  As soon as they are up to speed on the basics, we'll be staging some large-scale fights to practice mass combat."

"You're refreshments gentlemen."  Ponta walked in carrying a pitcher of beer and some drinking bowls.

"Have you seen Troekis?" Amantis asked Ponta.

"No."

"Tell him I want to see him immediately."

"Very well.  Let me know if you need anything else." Ponta smiled to the group and left.

The elders stayed and drank while Amantis worked to convince them he was not abusing his power.  He had mostly succeeded when the subject circled back around to his warehouses.

"You know, you will be very grateful for those warehouses next year."

"We will?" Taelik asked.

"When the famine starts, you're going to wish you had stored more grain," Amantis said.

"Yes, well, at least we have the river," Mosond smiled.

"It won't be enough.  The famine will last for years, the fish will not," Amantis assured him.

"If that is the case, could we have stored enough grain?" Taelik asked.

"I may have enough stored away, but it will have to be rationed very severely.  We will also need to go out and gather all the food we can find from the surrounding koria.  When the famine starts, they will horde what they have.  Since the city of Nur cannot produce enough food for itself, if it is to survive, we may have to use the spear force to go collect it."

The elders frowned.

"What an appalling thought." Taelik shuddered.

"Let us hope it never comes to that," Mosond said.

Amantis sipped his bowl of beer.  He already knew how he would do it.

-=====|==

After the elders had left, Amantis stormed through the hallways looking for Troekis.  He could only assume the man was deliberately avoiding him and he wondered, idly, if any more golden bowls were missing.  As he swung by Charissa's room, he saw Troekis standing outside her door with a hand on the latch.  Suspicion flared within him and he recalled the man's odd behavior over the last few days.

Every time Charissa emerged from her self-imposed exile in her bedroom, Troekis always seemed to be near her.  When she came out to eat, Troekis always hovered at her elbow making certain her drinking bowl was full.  And here he stood outside the door, but was he entering or leaving?  Were they having an affair?  This would certainly explain Charissa's coldness toward him!

Amantis stomped down the hall burning with rage.  "Troekis!" he shouted.

The man jumped guiltily and snatched his hand from the door, his eyes growing wide in horror.

"Did you think you could hide from me forever?  Did you think I wouldn't find out?" Amantis said.

Troekis dropped to his knees.  "I'm so sorry!  I don't know how it happened.  I didn't mean to do it!" he pleaded.

"Didn't mean to?  How could you do something like that and not mean to?"

"I spilled it by accident," he cried, his eyes running with tears.  "I cleaned it up as best I could, but something else must have got in and changed it."

"Huh?  What?  Explain yourself."

"I spilled the medicine you gave me!" Troekis wailed.  "I was pouring it in his drinking bowl and it spilled everywhere.  I cleaned it up as carefully as I could and put it in his bowl, but something else must have got in and spoilt the medicine!"

Realizing Troekis was talking about poisoning Corago, Amantis looked up and down the hallway to make sure no one was nearby listening.  "Sssh! Sssh!" Amantis tried to quiet his noisy confessions.  "What are you doing here outside Charissa's door?"

"I wanted to tell you," he sobbed, "but I didn't have—have the courage.  I thought she could help me tell you!"

Amantis put an arm around him, not so much to comfort him, but to pull him away from the door.  He hurried Troekis down the hall, hoping no one would discover them as he hurried the sobbing man towards the kitchen.  He knew he had to calm the man down before he confessed everything where someone might hear and put two and two together.  Troekis needed a drink he thought and steered the sniffling man towards the cellar.  Then he remembered the whispered command from the shape in the whirling dust.

Troekis sniffled.  "Where are we going?"

"You need a drink," Amantis told him.  He grabbed a clay keleos oil lamp, stoked up the coals in the kitchen fire, lit a match stick and lit the lamp before leading the way down the stairs to the cellar.  Breaking the wax seal on a new jar of beer, Amantis dipped out a bowl of beer with a ladle and handed it to Troekis, watching as he slurped it down.  "Feel better?"

Troekis nodded.

Amantis refilled his bowl and glanced back up at the top of the stairs, making sure the door was closed.  "Have I ever shone you the seeing stone with which the Lord of the Mountain speaks to me?"

"No." Troekis said.

"Would you like to see it?" he asked.

Troekis blinked in surprise.  "Yes."

Amantis pulled out the large empty jar blocking the passage to the back of the stoma.  "Come with me," he said and crawled through to the space behind.

"I never knew this was back here," Troekis said in wonder as he crawled through the shelf.  "Where does this lead?"  He followed Amantis through the hole in the wall into another stoma.

"I'll show you." Amantis led the way down the winding tunnel.

"This is amazing!" Troekis gasped as they came to the end of the tunnel and stood before a dark underground lake.  "Is this a cistern?"

Amantis held the lamp aloft but the shadows only hinted at the far wall of the stoma.  "I wouldn't be surprised if it had been used as one in the past, but it is quite natural.  I've seen no sign of tool marks.

"Is this where the seer stone is?"

"No." Amantis smiled.  "I have it with me, but we must keep it in perfect darkness so that means I have to blow out this lamp," he said and blew it out.  The darkness clapped across their eyes like a heavy black hand.

"Er, how will we find our way out?"  Troekis asked nervously.

"Don't worry about it," Amantis said, putting the lamp down in the darkness.  "Just watch."  He fumbled with the pouch and poured the stone into his hand.  "Tell me when you see something."

The first pinpricks of light appeared and Troekis gasped.  "Is that it?"

In moments the pinpricks grew in number and intensity until Amantis' hand was clearly lit, though the stone itself remained a flat round irregularly shaped pool of absolute blackness.

Troekis leaned in close, his face lit from below as he stared in wonder.

"Would you like to hold it?" Amantis asked.

Troekis looked up.  "May I?"

Amantis tipped the stone into Troekis' cupped hands.

"Be careful.  Don't drop it."  Amantis stepped back and picked up a large rock, returned and placed a hand beneath Troekis' cupped palms.  "Wouldn't want it to roll into the water," he warned.

"Huh?" Troekis said, preoccupied with the stone.

Amantis clenched his hand around Troekis' hands throwing the stoma into a weird flickering twilight as he smashed the rock against Troekis' head.  Troekis dropped to his knees.  Amantis hammered him again on the back of the head, driving him to the ground with a sickening crunch.  Amantis dropped the rock, collected the seeing stone and stepped back.  Troekis lay motionless, face down on the ground, blood oozing blackly from his hair in the shadowy light. 

Amantis paused to catch his breath, then planted a heel on Troekis buttocks and shoved him into the lake.  Troekis slid half-way through the mud, raising a billow of fine silt to cloud the water.  Amantis knelt, put a hand to the soles of Troekis' feet and shoved him the rest of the way into the water and Troekis disappeared beneath the surface, sending up only a brief stream of small bubbles.

Amantis sat on the shore listening to the quiet.  He searched his feelings thinking he should probably be disturbed at taking a human life with his own hands.  Well, no, there was that farmer boy he had fought.  Not that it was much of a fight.  But this was cold-blooded murder, the very idea of which would appall most people.  The murder didn't excite him.  He didn't get a thrill out of it, but then it didn't bother him either.  It was like taking out the trash.  It was just something one had to do.

A spluttering gurgle came from out in the lake.  Amantis jerked his head up, reaching backwards for his rock, wondering if he was going to have to wade out there to finish Troekis off.

A lumpy shape broke the surface of the lake, sloughing off water and mud.  It rose, changing shape until it looked like a head and a pair of shoulders fashioned out of mud.  Cavities formed where eyes and an open round mouth should be.  The mouth spewed a stream of muddy water in a gurgling hiss.

Amantis felt another presence looming over him.  It was different, somehow, than what he felt from the seer stone.  The presence seemed to exist outside the thing in the mud yet controlling it like a man manipulating a puppet.  His heart lurched in his chest and he found it hard to breath.  "Who-Who are you?"

"n'phesh Nur," came the slow hissing and gurgling response.

The air itself increased in pressure as if the rock or something else overhead were pressing down on him.

"What do you want?" he asked cautiously.

More muddy water gurgled up from out of the depths and spewed from the thing's mouth.  "Command me."

The pressure around him had nearly become unbearable.  His head felt as if it would implode and he wondered if he could flee back to the open surface before the thing could catch him.  He looked at the seer stone which lay cold and heavy in his hand like ice.  The lights whirled in a fast-spinning spiral of dark light.  "Strike the ground," it whispered in his head.

Amantis looked back at the thing in the mud and its melted mockery of a face.  "Strike the ground," he repeated.

"It is done."  And the thing sank down into the mud.

Immediately the pressure started to ease, while at the same time, the lights in the stone began to fade.  Amantis hurried toward the cellar hoping to reach the stairs before the darkness claimed him