A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

  “Aye.” Nix looked up and smiled. “I have some thoughts on it, that’s all. Besides, no one has ever gone in and come back out.”

  “And that’s the draw,” Egil said, nodding.

  She looked from one to the other, a question in her delicately furrowed brow. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, gentlemen.”

  “Ha!” Egil said. “Gentlemen overstates things, too.”

  She smiled at Egil and now it was the priest’s turn to color.

  Nix tried to explain what Egil meant. “Milady, some men were put on Ellerth to write poetry, or discover lost lands, or start new religions, or do whatever it is that their gift impels. Egil and me, we were made more simply than that. We were put here to get in and out of places and situations people say can’t be gotten in and out of.”

  Egil nodded again as the two friends tapped mugs, put back a slug.

  “And that’s your gift? Your purpose?” She smiled. “I admit I like that.”

  “Gift, purpose, both seem a bit much, don’t they? All I know is that we’ve managed to keeps things lively.”

  “I should think,” she said. “May I have one of those ales, also?”

  While Nix called for an ale, Egil cleared his throat nervously and eyed Enora. “May I ask after your relationship with Drugal? You said a dear friend and I wondered…?”

  “And speaking of getting into interesting places,” Nix murmured, but the priest and professor ignored him.

  Enora smiled at Egil without shyness. “Just a friend and a colleague. Nothing more.”

  Egil exhaled and leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning under his bulk. His eyes never left Enora’s face.

  “In that case, I’d be pleased to have your company for the evening.”

  “Listen to you,” Nix said. “So polite.”

  “That sounds delightful, Egil,” Enora answered.

  Nix had slammed back his ale, excused himself, and left them to it.

  —

  The rain fell so hard it felt as if it would drive Nix into the mud. He crouched down, shielded his satchel with his body, and riffled through it. The sky rumbled, a hungry thunder.

  “For souls once lost, ne’er come back,” he said.

  “What’s that, now?” Egil asked.

  “Just saying I hope we don’t get lost,” Nix answered.

  “Aye.”

  “Take a look around, would you? Just make sure things are clear. I don’t want anyone else getting caught up in this by accident.”

  “All know your spells never go awry,” Egil teased.

  “Fak you,” Nix answered, smiling.

  While Nix took the few things he needed from his satchel and ran through the steps of his plan, Egil stalked around the intersection, poking into alleys to ensure there were no drunks passed out nearby.

  “No one about,” Egil said when he returned.

  The rain, having spent itself, abated to a stubborn drizzle. The wind, too, died, and sudden calm felt ominous. A thin mist rose from the muddy earth. The stink, of course, remained. Minnear had risen.

  Nix took six of the finger-length sticks of magically treated tallow and pitch from the satchel and handed three to Egil.

  “Candles?” the priest asked.

  “Not candles. And don’t smell them.”

  Of course the priest sniffed one and immediately recoiled. “Gods! What’s in these?”

  “Didn’t I say not to sniff them? They’re made from something awful. You don’t want to know.”

  “If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Fine, then. They’re made from pitch, a binding agent, and the rendered fat from the corpse of a man who died in regret.”

  Egil stared at Nix for a long moment, his eyes heavy, his expression unreadable. “Regret?”

  Nix nodded and said nothing, knowing “regret” cut close to the bone for Egil.

  The priest spit into the mud. “Fakkin’ gewgaws.”

  “Aye, and speaking of,” Nix said, and pulled from the satchel an ivory wand and a fist-sized egg of polished black volcanic glass etched with a single closed eye. The latent magic in both caused the hairs on his arms to tingle. He rummaged for the special matchsticks he’d need, and soon found them.

  “Dying with regrets seems a bad way to go out of the world,” Egil said, his tone thoughtful.

  “They’re all bad,” Nix said. He closed his satchel, looped it over his shoulder as he stood. “So let’s avoid it for a while yet, yeah?”

  Egil’s gaze fell on the items Nix had in hand: the shining eye, the matchsticks, the shafts of tallow, the wand, which had a bestial mouth meticulously carved into one end. A boom of thunder rattled the Warrens.

  “No more rain,” Nix said to the sky.

  “Let’s get on with this,” Egil said.

  “Aye.”

  Egil followed Nix to the mouth of one of the intersection’s alleys.

  “Use those tallow sticks and scribe a line down the sides of the buildings on either side of the alley mouth,” Nix said. “Like this.”

  He dragged the tallow stick vertically down the corner of the building, starting at about the height of a door. It left a thick black line caked on the wood.

  “Just lines? They need to be straight or…?”

  “Just lines. They don’t need to be perfect, just continuous from about door height to the ground. And make them thick. We need them to burn for a while. We’ll need sigils, too, but that’s what the scribing wand’s for.”

  “Wait, we’re going to burn the lines?”

  “Aye.”

  “You’ll burn down the Warrens, Nix.”

  “It’s all right.” He held up the matchsticks. “They don’t burn with normal flames. They’ll consume only the lines. Couldn’t burn wood if I wanted them to.”

  Egil looked at the matchsticks, the lines, back to Nix. “And you think this will summon it? Blackalley?”

  “We’ll see,” Nix said.

  They moved from alley to alley, lining the sides of the alley mouths with borders of corpse fat and pitch. Nix followed up with the scribing wand. He spoke a word in the Language of Creation to activate its power, and felt it grow warm in his hand. He stood in the center of the first alley, aimed it at the wet earth, and spoke another word of power.

  A tongue of green flame formed in the wand’s carved mouth. With it, Nix wrote glowing green sigils that hovered in the air, the magical script stretching across the alley mouth between the tallow lines he and Egil had drawn. He scribed one set of summoning sigils across the alley at the top of the lines, and one set at the bottom, just off the ground. When he was done, the lines and the sigils formed a rectangle, a doorway. He stepped back and regarded his handiwork.

  “None too bad, I’d say.”

  Egil grunted.

  “You still stuck on regrets and death?” Nix asked his friend, trying to make light of it, but Egil made no answer.

  Nix checked the sky. He could no longer see Kulven’s light through the clouds, but Minnear put a faint, viridian blotch on the clouds. Had to be getting close to third hour.

  “We fire the lines now?” Egil asked.

  “Not yet,” Nix said, putting the wand and remaining shafts of tallow back into his satchel. “Now we wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For Ool’s clock to ring three bells. Then we light them.”

  “Three bells,” Egil said absently. “Walk not the streets but fear the Hells.”

  “Aye,” Nix said. He held his blade in one hand, the matchsticks and smooth oval of the shining eye in the other. He handed a few of the matchsticks to Egil.

  After a moment Egil cleared his throat and asked, “How do you know he died in regret?”

  Nix was focused on the hour and at first didn’t take Egil’s meaning. “Who?”

  Egil held up the stub of the tallow stick. “The man whose fat is in this. How do you know he died in regret?”

  “Hells, Egil,” Nix said. “Who d
oesn’t die in regret?”

  “Truth,” Egil said softly. “Some more than others, I suppose.”

  Nix could imagine the line of Egil’s thoughts—his wife and daughter and their deaths—but he said nothing. Speaking of it only picked at the scab of his friend’s pain, so he just stood beside him in silence.

  The summoning sigils cast an eerie light on the intersection. Time seemed to slow. Nix pushed his wet hair off his brow and moved to the nearest of the alley mouths.

  “When the clock sounds, we light them. The smoke should help draw it, as should the sigils.” He thought back on the night he’d seen Blackalley, thought of the sudden, inexplicable sorrow he’d felt, thought of the way the mournful teamster had wept. “I think it’s attracted in some way to sorrow or hopelessness.”

  “Ergo, the tallow sticks of regret,” Egil said.

  “Aye. And that’s why I think it shows up in the Warrens more than anywhere else.”

  Egil glanced around. “Hopelessness and regret aplenty. Nasty bit of business, this Blackalley.”

  “That it is.”

  Egil tested the weight of his hammers in each hand. “Any idea what we’ll find inside?”

  “None. But when has that ever stopped us?”

  Egil ran his hand over the tattoo of Ebenor. “Never.”

  “Right. Besides, my concern isn’t getting in or what we’ll find inside, but getting out.”

  “You said you had a theory about that, though.”

  “I do.” Nix shrugged. “But it’s just a theory.”

  “A theory’s more than we usually have.”

  “Truth.” Nix looked askance at the sky. “The threat of rain bothers, though. The lines, once lit, are to show our way back. I don’t want the rain putting them out.”

  Egil looked up at the sky. “I think the worst of it’s already fallen.”

  “So you say,” Nix said. “We could wait a night, I suppose.”

  “We could, but how long can the professor survive in there?”

  Nix shrugged. “No one has ever come out. He could already be dead. We don’t even know that there’s a there there. We could just…die the moment we cross.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a portal.”

  “Then so do I.”

  Nix hoped his friend’s faith was not misplaced. “You light those two alleys and I’ll light those. Light the left line at its top, the right line at its bottom. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Nix shifted on his feet. “You know, the more we talk about this, the more ill-advised it seems.”

  “Aye,” Egil said.

  Ool’s clock started to chime three bells, the gong of the great timepiece booming over the city.

  “Remember,” Nix said. “Left line at the top. Right line at the bottom. And don’t hit the sigils with your body.”

  “Fakkin’ gewgaws!” Egil called over his shoulder, as he stalked toward the nearest alley.

  Nix did the same, and struck his matchstick with his thumb; it flared to life, a green flame dancing on its end. He put the magical flame to the lines in the manner he’d described. The line did not catch fire all at once. Instead only a small flame burned on the end of each line, emitting a steady column of stinking black smoke that trailed back down the alley.

  As Nix watched, the flame moved incrementally down the left line and up the right, just a blade width, as if the lines were a pyrotechnic fuse. Satisfied, he ran to the next alleyway and repeated the process. Soon all eight lines were lit and the chime of Ool’s clock was nothing more than an echo in the heavy air.

  The two comrades retreated to the center of the intersection.

  “Those lines will burn for about an hour at that rate,” Egil said.

  “Aye,” Nix agreed.

  They’d have to be in and out of Blackalley by then.

  Nix ran his forefinger over the etching on the shining eye he held in his hand. He took out Drugal’s small journal, given him by Enora, and sprinkled a compound of enspelled pyrite on it. He spoke a word of power and the powder flared and was consumed. He tucked the book back into his tunic, close to his chest.

  “Nothing to do now but watch and wait.”

  The two men stood back to back in the eldritch glow of green magefire and sorcerous sigils and the mage’s moon, eyeing the alleys, waiting to walk through a sorcerous door that everyone else tried to avoid.

  Nix watched the green flames move along the tallow lines, not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that Blackalley hadn’t yet appeared.

  The rain picked up. The magefire sizzled and danced in the drops as it burned its way through the tallow.

  “Fakking rain,” Nix said.

  “Nix,” Egil said.

  “What?”

  “Look.”

  Egil’s tone pulled him around and there it was: Blackalley. It looked much as Nix remembered it. Darkness as thick as spilled ink filled one of the alleys, a black wall that stretched between the lines they’d drawn. Nix’s sigils floated in the air before it, their light illuminating nothing. The journal in his tunic warmed, meaning they were closer to Drugal.

  Nix felt as if he were looking into a hole that went on forever, and he felt a disconcerting lurch, as if he were sinking, falling into the hole, into the dark, lost forever. His thoughts took an abrupt turn. He flashed on himself as a boy, knifing an old man as they fought over bread. The shame of that murder reared up in him, overwhelmed him. He realized he was weeping, just like the teamster. Just like the teamster. The teamster.

  “Shite.”

  He shook his head, came back to himself, grabbed Egil by the shoulder and shook him.

  “Egil!”

  Egil stared into Blackalley, his expression pained, haunted.

  Nix grabbed him by the face and pulled him around.

  “Egil! Keep yourself! Egil!”

  The priest’s eyes cleared. He shook his head, focused on Nix.

  “Fak. That’s…disconcerting.”

  “Aye.” Nix stared into Egil’s blunt-featured face. “We still going?”

  “Nix, if he’s still alive in there…”

  Nix nodded, patted the journal through his cloak. “We can’t leave him to that. Fine. Good. Well enough.”

  Nix spoke a word of power to activate the shining eye in his palm. Sparkles of light formed in its depths. He tapped the etched eye on its surface.

  “Wake up. And go bright.”

  The eye opened and emitted a beam of white light. For the nonce, Nix aimed it at the ground.

  “Ready?” Nix asked Egil.

  Egil nodded. “Aye.”

  “Isn’t this one of the moments you’re always talking about?” Nix said to him. “Shouldn’t you pray or chant or something?”

  “My whole life’s a prayer. Let’s do it.”

  “Well enough,” Nix said, as they turned in unison to face Blackalley.

  The black wall shimmered. Nix aimed the light from his crystal and the beam illuminated nothing, was merely swallowed by the dark.

  “Shite,” Nix said. “It’ll weigh down on you. Don’t let it.”

  “Aye,” Egil said. “Link up.”

  They locked arms as they walked toward Blackalley.

  —

  The clamor of the Low Bazaar leaked through the tent’s dyed canvas: the beat of drums, the ring of a distant gong, the thrum of conversation, raucous laughter, an occasional shout, the music of buskers, and the occasional outbreak of applause.

  Merelda smiled. She’d spent the first twenty-two years of her life imprisoned by her own brother, her life made artificially tiny, her experience of the world trivial. She loved the Low Bazaar so much because it felt so wild, big, and unpredictable. In that regard she supposed it reminded her of Egil. He, too, made her smile, though she sensed the sadness in him.

  She and Rose had adapted to their new lives quickly. Egil and Nix had been helpful, even solicitous—allowing them t
o room in the Slick Tunnel for as long as they needed, providing them with coin when necessary—but Rusilla insisted they not come to rely on the two adventurers.

  “We make our own way,” Rusilla always said.

  And they did. They’d rented a stall on the outer fringe of the Low Bazaar, a smoke-leaf stall on one side, and a seller of wool on the other. They dressed themselves in ornate but cheap jewelry, robes, and headwear, and told fortunes for silver terns.

  Patrons came in for a reading and a shallow read of their minds told Rusilla and Merelda what they wanted to hear. The patron left pleased and Rose and Mere dropped another tern or three into the small coffer that held what they earned.

  “For a home, in time,” Rose always said when she deposited the coins.

  At first, in order to get paying patrons, they’d had to busk the customers of the smoke-leaf and wool stalls. But their reputation had grown quickly—quickly enough that they soon had a score or more customers per day, and many regulars who returned weekly. In fact, the “seeing sisters” had gotten well-known enough that they’d cut into the custom of the four Narascene readers elsewhere in the Bazaar, the oldest and wrinkliest of whom gave Merelda and Rose the Witch’s Eye whenever they crossed paths. So far things hadn’t gone any further than that, but Merelda worried they might.

  She pushed back her chair and stood back from the cloth-covered table, wincing at the headache that had rooted in her temples. She rolled her head from side to side, dabbed her nose to check for blood.

  None, thankfully.

  She stretched, her movements constrained by the gauzy, layered robe she wore. She bumped her headdress on a candelabrum and cursed. She spent most of each day covered in beads and cheap crystals and grease makeup and heavy cloth and she was well and truly tired of it. She imagined she felt a bit—just a bit—like the girls who worked for Tesha in the Tunnel. They, too, layered on clothes and makeup and false emotions and pretended to be someone else while they worked.

  She reached out for her sister’s mind. Have you talked any more with Tesha about us buying half her interest in the Tunnel?

  The mental projection deepened her headache.

  Rose’s mental voice carried from behind the wooden screen that separated a third of the tent from the rest. They kept a moth-eaten divan and table back there, as well as their coin coffer, and they used the tent’s back flap to come and go unobserved. Merelda imagined Rose lying on the divan, resting.