He tried hard to not think of the man's family, children perhaps, waiting for a father that would never return.
Danica, too, sat quietly, deep in thought, at the small boat's prow. More accustomed to battle than her somewhat innocent companion, the young woman was more concerned with what had precipitated the vicious attack.
What had brought the Night Masks upon her and Cadderly?
Cadderly took up the oars and gave a single stroke, reversing the drift and pushing the boat farther out from the imposing bridge. He let the oars hang in the water and turned about on the bench seat to face Danica.
"Night Masks," Danica muttered grimly.
Cadderly looked at her; the name meant little to him.
"From Westgate," Danica explained. "They are among the deadliest killers in all the Realms. We were fortunate to escape them, and I now believe I have escaped them twice."
Cadderly's expression showed that he still did not understand.
"On our journey down from the library," Danica continued, "the dwarves and I were attacked by a band of five."
"Many bandits have been reported on the roads during these troubled times " Cadderly remarked.
Danica shook her head, certain that there was a connection between the attack on the road and the one in Cadderly's room.
"Why would an assassin's guild from lAfestgate come after us?" Cadderly reasoned.
"Us?" echoed Danica, "No, they are after me, I fear. It was the Night Masks who killed my parents, years ago. Now they have come to finish the job."
Cadderly didn't believe a word of that explanation. He sensed that - if Danica's theories about the identity of the killer band were correct - there was more at work here than the completion of a decade-old vendetta. Cadderly contemplated his own experiences of the last few days, thought of his meeting with Rufo in the hearth room and the presence of the invisible wizard. And what had happened, he wondered, back in his own room that night?
He looked at Danica quizzically. "I found you on the floor, terrified. Tell me about your dream."
"I do not remember much," Danica admitted, and her tone revealed that she did not really see the point of it all. Cadderly was determined, though. He thought for a moment, then took out his crystal-centered spindle-disks.
He held them up before Danica's eyes and set them spinning. Even in the dim light, the crystals flickered with reflective fires. "Concentrate," Cadderly begged the woman. "Let the crystal into your mind. Please, do not use your meditative talents to block me now."
"What will this tell us?" Danica argued. "It was just a dream."
"Was it?"
Danica shrugged - it was a dream that contained references to the Night Masks, after all - and relaxed, focusing her gaze on the spindle-disks. Cadderly watched her intently, then closed his eyes and thought of the sacred tome, heard the song playing the words to a simple spell of hypnosis.
Danica sank deeper, her shoulders visibly slumping, as Cadderly quietly chanted. His words became prying questions that Danica heard only subconsciously.
Cadderly, too, allowed the hypnosis to fall over him, used it to achieve complete empathy with Danica.
The questions rolled out of his mouth, though he was barely aware of them. And Danica answered, as much with her posture and her facial expressions as with mere words.
Danica blinked her eyes open; Cadderly followed her lead. Neither of them knew how much time had passed, but Cadderly understood then, beyond any doubt, that Danica's nighttime experience had indeed been an important clue.
"It was not a dream," he announced.
Cadderly recalled what Danica had imparted to him under the hypnosis: the sense of departure from a black sphere that the young priest knew represented her identity. The image reminded the young priest vividly of his own telepathic experiences with the imp Druzil and the wizard Dorigen. Might those two be behind all this?
Cadderly dropped a hand into his pocket to feel the amulet he had taken from Rufo in Shilmista Forest, an amulet that Druzil had given Rufo to improve telepathic contact between the two. With the amulet, Cadderly had been able to sense the imp's proximity, and he took comfort that it had not signaled Brazil's presence in many weeks, not since the large battle in the forest.
But who then? he wondered.
Dorigen remained a distinct possibility.
"Possession?" he muttered, using the word as a catalyst for his thoughts.
Another image struck Cadderly then, an image of Nameless, the beggar on the road, and the horrible, shadowy shapes writhing atop his shoulders. He remembered, too, that night when Brennan had come to his room, projecting the same vile aura. Perhaps the song of Deneir had not lied to him; perhaps the attempt on Danica was not his enemy's first try at possession.
Cadderly winced, remembering Fredegar's worries that young Brennan had not been seen since that night. He tried to recall clues as he took up the oars for another single stroke against the drift.
"What is it?" Danica asked. Her tone revealed her understanding that Cadderly's mind had unlocked some of the secrets.
"They have not come for you," the young priest answered with certainty, looking over his shoulder. "They were here before you, around me, close to me." Cadderly exhaled deeply, fearing for Brennan and Nameless, and let his gaze drift across the water to the gray outline of the great bridge. "Too dose."
Danica started to reply - something comforting, Cadderly knew - then she stopped and cocked her head curiously.
Cadderly began to turn his whole body about, to fully face Danica, understanding that something was wrong and fearing that the young woman had come under some mental assault.
Danica spun about, rocking the boat so suddenly that Cadderly, though he was seated near the center, almost went over the side.
"Stubborn!" Danica cried. Her hand snapped in front of her just in time to grab the wrist of the man who had tried to drive a dagger into her back. Holding tight, Danica leaped to her feet, stretched her attacker's arm to the limit, and pulled him farther over the bow.
She gave her attacker's arm a quick, violent twist and brought her free hand over the back of his fingers, jerking the man's hand back toward his wrist.
Cadderly tried to get about in the rocking boat to go to Danica's aid, but all he wound up doing was stumbling over the boat's center seat and slamming himself on the side of the head with one of the oar handles.
He realized that the stumble was a good thing, though, as a knife soared up over the side of the boat and whipped across above his head. Reacting instinctively to the threat, Cadderly forearmed the oar, freeing it from its lock to tumble into the water near the unseen attacker.
The young scholar got his spindle-disks looped onto his finger. The boat rocked, and he looked back the other way, across the boat, to see still another assassin coming up over the side.
Danica held her balance easily in the rocking craft. She continued her vicious press on the caught man's hand, finally forcing him to release his dagger.
She wasn't done with him yet.
Danica's foot snapped out wide, coming back around the man's head and forcing his chin over the prow rail. Holding him tightly against the wood, Danica yanked his arm back out over the water. She locked his elbow so that he could not bend the limb and pressed straight down.
The man's eyes bulged as the bow pressed his throat up under his jaw.
Cadderly's off-balance throw soared lower than he had hoped, but while he did not get the man's head, he did get a few fingers - and the top plank of the boat. Wbod splintered, the remaining oar flew off, and so did the assassin, clutching his blasted belly as he fell away into the lake.
Free of the weight, the boat rocked back so far that Cad-derly feared its other side would dip under the water-where the knife-thrower waited.
The young priest realized how vulnerable he was, and how vulnerable Danica was! They needed a distraction, something to allow them to get their bearings.
Water did come in over the broken side of the boat when it rocked back again, but Cadderly took no note of it, intent on the wounded man fumbling in the water with the floating oar. The shape of the oar caught the young priest's attention.
With one foot planted in the rocking boat, and with the choking man struggling frantically against her, Danica amazingly held her balance.
The struggling killer tried to come up over the side, but Danica jammed his arm down mightily, dislocating his shoulder.
The man could not even grimace at the obvious pain. His face went blank, weirdly serene. Danica understood. She brought her foot back around, released its hold on the man's head, and let him slip under the water.
Her sensibilities returned to her then, her sheer rage at the presence of the Night Masks temporarily sated by the reality of the kill. Others were about - Danica realized for the first time that others were likely about!
She turned, and to her horror, saw Cadderly disappear under the water in the grasp of a killer. Another boat, with several men in it, approached from behind; Danica did not know if they were friend or foe - until a crossbow quarrel cut the air beside her face.
Instinctively, she dove to the floor of the boat. She knew she had to get to Cadderly, but how? If she went under the water, how could she hope to stop this approaching menace?
A scream to the side turned Danica about, to peek over the broken plank. There floundered the wounded Night Mask, the one Cadderly had hit with his spindle-disks, fighting desperately to free himself from the clutches of a long, thick constrictor - a snake about the same size as one of the boat's oars.
The man somehow broke free and began swimming with all speed toward the approaching boat. The snake slithered off in pursuit, slipping under the water as it went.
Despite the peril, Danica could not help but smile. She knew that the appearance of this snake was no natural coincidence; she knew that Cadderly, and that mysterious power, had struck again.
Danica got up to her knees. The other boat was closer now; she could see a man in the prow leveling a crossbow her way. She jerked up, as though she meant to stand, then fell flat and heard the whistle of the high-flying bolt.
Now she had time to get over the side, into the water after Cadderly. Before she moved out of the boat, though, the water churned and the Night Mask appeared, his face contorted in terror and the second snake, the second oar, wrapped about his shoulder and chest. He reached for the boat, then slapped at the water and the beast.