The Warded Box

by Guy Antibes

  Corina shrunk when she recognized them. “Eastern Ridge. My former compatriots.”

  Jack shot water into the window, surprised at how effective the bracer proved to be. The flames turned to smoke. A few men on that side of the inn turned.

  “It’s the traitor!”

  “I’m no traitor,” Corina said.

  The insurgents rushed them. Helen supported Corina while Tanner quickly disabled the men.

  “We will have to work our way to the front. There are more flames,” Tanner said.

  When they reached the front, a fight was going on at the front of the inn. The common room was ablaze, and fire licked the roof of the stable yard.

  “Marchand,” Corina said. “Why use your magic against these people?”

  The wizard, evidently part of the Eastern Ridge insurgency, turned toward them with sticks in both of his hands. The ends were burned. Jack could see the murder in his eyes and didn’t waste any time in striking him down. The fight continued while Helen protected Corina. In long moments, the attackers were put down.

  Jack ran into the inn. The fire burned inside, but another magician with metal rods was sprawled on the stairway. Jack did what he could with his red bracer, but there was already significant damage. He raced upstairs, but after he calmed the flames, the upstairs was a charred mess. Nothing was worth saving unless it was made of metal.

  Lark and Ralinn stood outside, faces blackened with smoke. Lark’s wand was held loosely at his side.

  “He was stronger than me,” he said. “Ralinn prevailed while he was distracted, or we would all be dead.” Lark looked at the stables.

  Jack followed his gaze and ran into the yard. All the horses were destroyed. He defeated the remaining flames, but the damage was done. Tanner followed him and made sure no horse had to suffer. They all were badly burned.

  “He deserved to be killed,” Jack said. “What madness is this?”

  “I told you about riots? This is what happens.”

  “Now what do we do?” Ralinn said.

  “We walk out of the city, and if we can find horses to buy, we will do that,” Tanner said.

  “Our money is gone,” Lark said. He leaned against the wall of the inn. “We have no resources.”

  “Metal didn’t melt,” Jack said. “The rooms should be cool enough. I suggest we go upstairs and salvage what we can before leaving the city.”

  “Tomorrow at dawn?” Tanner said, glancing at Corina with a smirk.

  “Yes. I’m ready right now.”

  “Is there anything you need at your house?”

  The woman brightened up. “There is. I will need an escort.” Her eyes lingered on the corpses of her former associates, especially the wizard.

  Tanner, Helen, and Jack took the woman to her house, now a burned-out husk.

  “Marchand came here first,” she said. “At least my neighbors weren’t burnt.”

  She scoured her house and found a metal box of coins under a charred floorboard. “I can help fund our trip with these,” she said. Tears formed in her eyes. “This was my home for ten years.” She let out a shuddering sigh and fell into Helen’s arms.

  They heard shouts in the street. Corina picked up a wooden rod that had escaped destruction. “I didn’t want to fight, but that was then. This is now,” she said with tight lips.

  They stepped carefully through the debris and saw a group of wizards sauntering down the street. The shouts they heard were peals of laughter. Jack could see they were up to no good. It was plain to see that Yellowbird was a lost city. He spotted gloves and pointed caps among the group.

  “Black Fingers,” he said. “You go on ahead. I’ll take care of them.”

  “No,” Tanner said. “We have to help you.”

  “Then stay out of the way of their bolts.” Jack stepped out into the street. “Stop right there,” he said with his sword and wand ready to use.

  “You think you can stop us?”

  A wizard bolt splatted against Jack’s breastplate. It wasn’t strong enough to do any damage. Jack raised his wand and willed the bolt to hit the wizard who had attacked him in the chest. The wizard fell. The cap fell off showing that Jack had killed a woman.

  Jack reeled at the revelation, but he took a deep breath. She had tried to kill him. Who knew whom else she had killed?

  A flurry of wizard bolts followed, but they were all as weak as the first. The Black Fingers were too far away for their bolts to punch through armor.

  Jack raised his sword and called on Takia’s fire. He bathed the wizards. The ones in front dropped and rolled with the flames; the others ran in the opposite direction. A few brave Black Fingers tried in vain to extinguish the flames on their fellow society members.

  Jack turned. He had seen enough. “I really didn’t want to do that,” Jack said. “But I’m convinced they would have killed us all.”

  He looked at the guard on his sword. He had used too much and had burned out the tip where he had imbued the power of Takia’s fire. Jack didn’t want to look back, so he walked past the other three, not wanting to talk to any of them.

  Jack continued into the inn. The innkeeper had found a door to put in the front. His staff was still cleaning up the stable and had to borrow someone else’s horse to drag the dead horses out of their stalls. He rummaged around, but his tack was in little better shape than the deceased horse. He stalked into the inn and climbed up the stairs. Some rooms were charred and others filled with smoke. Jack noticed that the flooring wasn’t particularly stable.

  Jack found his bag to be charred but not consumed by fire. The wizardry manual and Fasher’s warded box were intact as were most of his clothes, other than reeking of smoke. His new purchases were ruined, since they were closer to the windows. There was little to salvage, so he descended into the common room. The innkeeper had put bread and ale on the bar. Jack helped himself and took a long draught of ale. Their plight wasn’t over in Yellowbird. They had no horses, no blankets, and no place to sleep.

  The others had small piles of possessions at their feet as they sat in the remains of the common room.

  “It looks like we will have to hike out of Yellowbird today,” Lark said.

  “No,” Corina said. “We will spend the night at Eldora’s temple. They will take us in.”

  “Can you be sure of that? Most of the fighting will take place in that square.”

  “No one will touch the temple,” she said. “I’m a former priestess. Ralinn is nearly the same, but it is Jack who will get us in.”

  “Of course. He is Eldora-kissed,” Ralinn said.

  Corina nodded. “An Eldora-kissed male will impress them even more than my gift from the goddess. Let’s go now.”

  Tanner shrugged. He turned to the innkeeper. “I wish we had the means to compensate you for the damage,” he said.

  Corina put two gold crowns on the table. “Take this. I am sorry to have caused the destruction.”

  “I won’t argue with you, ma’am,” the innkeeper said. “Come back, and I’ll give you a nice room.”

  Corina managed a smile. “Now that I have no home, I may take you up on that.”

  The six of them grabbed their possessions. Ralinn lost just about everything, and the remains were wrapped up in a sheet the innkeeper gave her and Lark. Tanner, Helen, and Jack had their bags in corners that escaped the worst of the conflagration. Corina carried her coin chest in a smoke-darkened pillowcase.

  No one paid them much attention. They weren’t a large enough group to attract the roving bands of insurgents, and they were too well armed to appear as easy prey for the local looters. They reached the main square in Yellowbird. Insurgents fought pockets of Loyalist and Panderite troops, Lark pointed out.

  With swords out, they picked their way along the side of the square and tried to enter the temple. The door was closed. Jack pounded on the door with the pommel of his sword. A grill opened revealing a young feminine face.

  “We ask to be let in,” Jack said.<
br />
  “No,” the woman said.

  “A group has spotted us,” Lark said.

  Corina pleaded with the woman.

  “I don’t know you,” the sister said.

  Jack pulled down his veil. “I am Eldora-kissed. I demand entrance.”

  “Come closer,” she peered at Jack’s face. “Oh, please forgive me.”

  “I will if you let us in now.”

  Tanner and Helen stood on the steps below with their swords pointed at the insurgents headed their way.

  The door opened, and Jack stayed behind, shooting wizard bolts to keep the men from advancing until he, too, could duck inside the temple. He helped the woman shut the thick wooden door and made sure the latches were secure.

  He turned. The nave was filled with people.

  “Come this way, please,” the priestess said.

  They followed their guide through those seeking sanctuary from the violence outside. Jack noticed that there were all kinds of people inside from the wealthy looking to the poor.

  The press of people stopped at Eldora’s statue. They walked past the goddess and through a door behind, guarded by two sisters. Jack had kept his veil down.

  The same priestess that had given him Corina’s name rushed to the woman and hugged the former sister.

  “What has happened?”

  “I am officially separated from the Eastern Ridge insurgency,” she said with her eyes welling with tears. “They burned down my home. I worked so hard to get it.” She sobbed on her friend’s shoulder, getting the sister’s robe darkened by soot and tears. “Marchand tried to kill me!”

  “Your brother?” the sister asked.

  She nodded and sobbed some more.

  And to think she still came with them. Jack felt awful, but as he thought back on the scene, he had no choice. What a poor woman. Eldora might have had her hand in the woman’s destitution with assistance from Jack.

  ~

  Jack was grateful for the hot soup given him.

  “A chicken gave up its life for that soup,” Ralinn said.

  Her spirits had improved now that they had settled in for the night. The sisters gave them a meeting room to share for the night along with blankets. Corina had spent her time with the sisters and returned wearing the robes of a priestess. They all sat around the table in the room.

  She sat next to Jack. “Don’t worry, I haven’t joined the temple. This is a disguise as much as anything.” She patted Jack’s knee. “My brother and I weren’t that close, but it was he who convinced me to leave the order and join the insurgency. I was the Yellowbird spy, but that meant nothing when I told them I was leaving for Gameton. They called me a traitor. All that I had done for them,” she waved her arm, “tossed out the window. I hadn’t expected them to beat me and burn my house down. Marchand was especially vindictive.” Her eyes began to water again. “Still, a brother is a brother.” Corina took a deep breath.

  Jack put his arm around the woman like he would his mother. “We will get through this. Eldora will protect you.”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I?” she said with a sob. She took a deep breath and wiped a tear from her face. “I wouldn’t be if I hadn’t met you. So what now?”

  “No change,” Tanner said, “but we won’t get to Gameton so quickly. The sisters have told us that no one will sell us horses and they might be confiscated anyway. The land is thick with villages between Yellowbird and Gameton so we will find something, but I’m not so sure we should be using the main road.”

  “The canal path?” Corina said.

  “What is that?” Jack asked.

  “There is a waterway that links Yellowbird and Gameton. It has fallen into disuse,” she said. “Water only flows from Gameton to Yellowbird when it rains, so we can’t take a boat, but it is less well traveled.”

  “It is a haven for thieves,” Lark said. “We can’t take that.”

  “Most of the thieves have joined the insurgencies,” Tanner said, “so the priestesses say. We can walk all the way and not have to worry about being in the middle of a battle.”

  Tanner rolled out the map he bought of the lands between the two cities before the chaos started.

  “This line,” Tanner said running his finger from Yellowbird to Gameton. “The villages that supported the waterway still exist. Now they are smaller, but the villages still support the farming in the area. See the insurgency lines? You can bet those are changing by the day.”

  Jack could see five small insurgencies spread like ink blotches on the map. “Maybe they have moved north to Yellowbird.”

  “Some, for sure. Everyone is in Yellowbird right now,” Corina said, perking up a bit.

  “We won’t be for long,” Helen said. “Does everyone have walking shoes?”

  Ralinn looked a bit worried. “I’m not sure mine will last the trip,” she said.

  Corina peered at her feet. “I’ll find something for you and something for me. It might have to be a trade.”

  “I’ll trade,” Ralinn said.

  “Good, that is settled. The sisters are already working on getting us packs of some kind. We can’t go traipsing about the countryside using sheets to carry our things.

  “I’m good, Jack said. “My fancy clothes didn’t make it, but as long as I am breathing and intact when I reach Gameton, I’ll feel good enough.”

  Chapter Twenty

  ~

  T hey assembled just as dawn was about to break. The sisters fed them bread and more of the previous night’s soup to fill them up before they set out.

  They took a back door out of the temple onto a wide alleyway and headed south. The city still seemed to slumber, but Jack felt a sense of exhaustion more than rest as they passed the few people out at that hour. Smoke filled the city making their walk unpleasant.

  No one challenged them in the gloom until they reached the southern gate. The huge wooden doors that protected Yellowbird were shattered, leaving a gap, but guards were warming their hands on braziers. Jack couldn’t tell what faction they belonged to. They had blankets wrapped around them just like Jack and his friends, hiding their weapons. The helmets were in the handled sacks that were filled with the remains of their possessions.

  Tanner walked up to the guards.

  “Papers,” one of them said.

  “We were burned out of our inn last night. Some of us have papers and some of us don’t,” Tanner said.

  He gathered the papers from each of them except Corina and Ralinn and handed them to the guard who sniffed them.

  “You are right about being burned out. Is that all you have?”

  “That’s it,” Tanner said. “Horses were burned up in the stable. We stayed in the stable yard for as long as we could.”

  “You are headed for?”

  “Gameton,” Lark said.

  The guard pursed his lips. “No one should be going to Gameton right now,” he said.

  “The two women without papers have relatives there. The rest of us are from Corand,” Lark continued.

  “You sound like you are from there,” the guard said, rubbing his stubbled face. “Three men aren’t going to change anything. Go on. If you’d be trouble here, it is just as well you are trouble elsewhere.”

  The guard waved them through.

  “He could have just as soon kept us in the city,” Lark said.

  Tanner shook his head. “He made the right decision for him and his family.”

  Jack grimaced at Tanner’s comment. He was right, of course. There were only four guards. They wouldn’t have lasted long in a fight. If egress out of Yellowbird were important, there would be more than four men at the gate.

  The six of them didn’t waste any time picking up the pace and heading down the road for an hour before they came to an abandoned crossroad.

  “Left here,” Tanner said, just as the sun was already above the fields around Yellowbird, and the blankets were getting hot.

  After another half hour, they arrived at the waterway. Th
e bottom of it was filled with dry, cracked mud. The remains of water plants decorated the shore and added to the feeling of abandonment and neglect that Jack felt.

  The path was broken in places, but they had made their decision. Tanner had them roll up the blankets and took out cording the sisters had given them so they could sling the rolled-up blankets over their shoulders. Jack took out his water bottle and swallowed half of its contents.

  The sisters said their hike would take them ten days, and Jack wondered if it would take them ten months. Corina and Ralinn kept up with the pace Helen made in the morning, but after a hasty lunch, they began to fall behind. Jack brought up the rear.

  Corina shook her head. “I’m not used to all this walking, but I am trying not to complain.”

  “Was that a complaint?” Jack asked.

  She laughed. “Actually, yes. Perhaps we can slow up a bit.”

  “I think we already are,” Ralinn said. “You aren’t alone, Corina. Riding a horse is different than walking.”

  “Except for her.” Corina looked at Helen. “She is very fit.”

  “She is always on the move,” Jack said. “Let’s hope there are horses in the next village.”

  By the time they reached the village, which was nearly a mile from the waterway, Corina and Ralinn were a few hundred paces behind. Tanner had waited while Lark and Helen went ahead in hopes the village had an inn. Midway to the village from the waterway, Helen and Lark met them.

  “No rooms, but there is a tavern that serves snacks. Is that good enough?”

  “I need a place to sit for a while anyway,” Corina said.

  They reached the little tavern, two cottages built together with the joining wall partially removed. As they ate, the tavern owner pulled up a chair.

  “What is going on in Yellowbird?” he asked.

  They told him they were headed to Gameton and didn’t want to deal with insurgents traveling back and forth along the main road between the two cities.

  “You made a good choice. Not many travel along the waterway. Even if you had horses, you wouldn’t make much better time, since the pathway gets a bit rough in places. If you wish to stay for a few hours, I have some regular patrons that know it well and can help flesh out that map of yours better than I can.”