by Paul S. Kemp
"Lovely, you say?" Nix said.
"Dog," spat Baras.
"We're not healers," Egil said. "Talk to the priestesses of Orella."
"Or maybe we can offer healing," Nix said slyly. "But only if you take off–"
"Spare me such nonsense," the voice said, taking on a sharp edge before going dull once more on false sincerity. "I know quite well what you are. You're mere thieves and robbers."
Nix tried not to feel offended by the "mere."
"My sisters' sickness isn't of this world. They're cursed and it's the curse that caused me to seek you out."
"We're not wizards, either," Egil said.
"No doubt," the man said. "Further, the curse makes them… dangerous, to themselves and others."
Mention of a curse and danger piqued Nix's natural curiosity about things magical. "How'd they come to be cursed?"
Once more the sharp edge to the voice, and louder this time. Nix imagined the man standing directly over him, staring down daggers.
"How, you ask? You? Here is how: the actions of ignorant miscreants caused it. Their mess is now mine to clean."
"I have a fondness for miscreants generally," Nix said with a shrug. "Not so much for messes."
"Nix…" Egil cautioned.
"I told you, my lord," Baras said. "He never stops."
The man continued: "You may find that your fondness for low things one day puts you on the wrong end of blade or spell."
"Aye, that," Nix conceded with a tilt of his head. "Happens oft enough already. This very moment, for example."
"That's truth," Egil said.
The man inhaled deeply, as if calming himself. "The curse must be lifted before Minnear is full."
"That's not long," Nix said. "Or?"
"Or… my sisters will die."
"A sad, sad tale," Nix said. "Well, a sincere wish of good luck to you and them. There's nothing we can–"
A cuff to Nix's head from one of the guards quieted him. Probably came from Baras. Not hard enough to have been Jyme's hand.
"Even when your life hangs by a hair you jest and make light?" the man said.
"Habit," Nix explained. "One bad one of many, I admit."
"Your purpose remains unclean," Egil said. "What help can we be to your sisters? And why would we offer any, given the lumps on my skull and the bag over my head?"
"I can only lift the curse if I possess a certain item, a magical horn."
"A gewgaw," Egil sniffed.
"What horn?" Nix asked. "How can a horn lift a curse?"
The man ignored Nix's question. "My research reveals that the horn can be found in the tomb of Abn Thuset."
"Research?" Egil asked. "What are you? A sage?"
"Oh, I see now," Nix said. "You need tomb robbers to procure this horn for you." Nix shifted on his backside, feeling more in control of matters. "Abn Thuset was, of course, one of the greatest wizard-kings of ancient Afirion. But his tomb is lost to history and sand. Many have sought it, but no one knows where it is. Unless…"
"I know where it is," the man said.
"Unless that," Nix said, though he was still skeptical. "How do you know you've found it?"
"And if you have, then go get this horn for yourself," Egil said. "As I said to your man back at the Tunnel, we're not hirelings."
"I'm not offering you employment," the man said, his tone cool. "I could, however, order you to do it."
"Order us?" Egil said with a chuckle. "And just who in the Pits are you to order us?"
A long pause, then a hand seized the burlap sack around Nix's head and tore it off, taking a few hairs with it. Nix blinked in the lantern light. Jyme held the bag and leered at him, all pockmarks, bad breath, and poorly groomed facial hair.
"Bottom rung on top now, eh?" Jyme said.
"Maybe for now," Nix answered.
They were in a dirt-floored warehouse filled with barrels, amphorae, sacks, and crates. A block and tackle, and a net for loading transport carts hung from the ceiling. Nix looked for any trading coster marks, but saw none. It was probably a rented warehouse used to move illicit goods.
Egil was on the ground near Nix, and Baras pulled the bag from his head. Like Nix, the priest blinked in the lantern light. Nix eyed the man who'd been speaking, the man who purported to have authority to issue them orders.
He wore a tailored shirt of silk and trousers of velvet, with a high-collared fur-ruffed wool cape thrown over the whole. A thin sword – a nobleman's blade, not a warrior's – hung from a wide belt with a silver buckle. His narrow face, combined with his sharp nose and the widely spaced, deep-set eyes, gave him a reptilian cast. His short brown hair had a part in it as sharp and straight as a plumb line. Dark circles stained the skin under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.
"You're the Lord Mayor's sorcerer," Nix said, recognizing the man's face. He searched his mind for a name, couldn't quite find it.
"I'm the Lord Mayor's Adjunct," the man corrected, and then Nix had the name.
"Rakon Norristru."
Rakon held the ivory and pearl wand Nix had taken from the tomb of Abn Thahl, the wand with which he'd accidentally shrunk himself and Egil.
Seeing it, Nix winced with embarrassment. Rakon pointed the wand at Nix.
"My men say you know a bit about sorcery. History, too, I gather, from your knowledge of Abn Thuset."
"I had a year at the Conclave."
Rakon's thin eyebrows went up. "Really? And how might you have afforded such an education?"
Nix did not bother with the sordid story that ended with him stealing an education from a dead man. "Well, that's a tale long in telling. I managed, let's say."
"Hmm. And you dropped out after a year?"
"No!" Nix said, trying to stand and nearly toppling himself sidewise in his irritation. "Dammit! Why does everyone assume I dropped out? I was expelled after a year. Expelled."
Rakon nodded, not really listening. He tapped the wand on his palm. His hands were small, the fingers long.
"Well, in that year you seem to have learned only enough to endanger yourself. I looked through your satchel. It's filled with magical trinkets you're probably too stupid or undereducated to use properly."
"Listen, if you're trying to charm me with kind words…" Nix said.
"A bag of gewgaws," Egil breathed contemptuously.
"Unhelpful," Nix snapped at him.
"Perhaps you should stick to plying the many blades my men removed from your person?" Rakon said.
"Perhaps," Nix grumbled. "I'd give much to have one in hand right now."
"I'd wager you would," Rakon said. He bent down and held the wand before Nix's eyes. He tapped the pearl tip on the end of Nix's nose. "You see that?"
Nix went cross-eyed. "Well, no, not really."
"That's an inversion notation, written in the Mages' Tongue. You missed it, I assume, unless you intended to shrink and weaken yourself and the priest?"
The guards chuckled.
"Probably you thought it would make you stronger, larger?"
Nix felt himself color. Egil had the good grace not to mock him.
"Leave off, Adjunct," Egil said.
"Lord Adjunct," Baras corrected.
"Adjunct is what he gets from me," Egil said again, and stuck out his jaw.
Rakon did not look at Egil. He stood up straight, looming over Nix. A dark look came into his reptilian eyes.
"The wand is Afirion, is it not? How did you come to possess it?"
"As you'd expect," Nix said.
"You stole it?"
"'Stole' is a strong word. We took it, and other things, from a tomb in Afirion."
"The tomb of Abn Thahl," Rakon said softly. His knuckles were white around the wand.
"Aye. How would you know that? Abn Thahl is an obscure, minor wizard-king of the nineteenth dynasty who ruled only three years."
"There are many things I know," Rakon said, his jaw clenching, as if he were biting down on more words he'd
like to say. "Were there… guardians in the tomb?"
Nix had no idea where the questioning was going. He looked to Egil but the priest shrugged, his expression puzzled.
"Were there?" Rakon pressed.
"Answer him," Baras said.
"Of course there were. There always are with Afirion tombs. There were walking dead, deadfalls, an acid trap, a devil."
Some of the guards smirked with disbelief, others went wide-eyed.
Rakon kneeled, jabbed at Nix's cheek with the wand as if he would stab him through the eye with it. "Killed devils, have you? Have you?"
Nix leaned back, bewildered. Anger brewed behind Rakon's eyes, and Nix had no idea what had put it there. Whatever control he thought he'd had over the discussion had just been lost. At the moment Rakon looked capable of anything.
"I… don't know what to say."
He could not bring himself to call Rakon "my lord."
Rakon inhaled and stood. Staring down at Nix, he snapped the wand between his fingers. It died in a puff of smoke and green sparks.
"Say nothing, Nix Fall. I've heard all I need to hear. You two are the men I want for this task. So you're the men I'll have."
"Is that so?" Egil said, his tone threatening. "I guess we'll see about that."
"Egil…" Nix began.
"Oh, I know threats would be idle," Rakon said.
"Depends on the threat, I suppose," Nix said thoughtfully. "Egil is terrified of–"
"So I'll make none. But you'll do what I wish nevertheless. You know I'm the Lord Mayor's personal sorcerer, yes?"
Nix nodded.
Rakon smiled at him, took a step back, and looked to Baras. "The priest first. Then the talker."
"My lord," Baras said, and he, Jyme, and a third guard took station around Egil.
A vein rose in Egil's brow, thick and pulsing, but he did not gratify them with fear or a pointless struggle. Instead, he stared straight at Rakon, his eyes holding a promise of eventual violence, as he awaited whatever was coming.
"None of this is necessary," Nix said. "Whatever this is. You want our help. We'll give it. Egil, tell him you're reasonable."
Egil spit a glob of phlegm at Rakon's shoes.
"Among the hill people that's a sign of friendship," Nix tried.
"Shut up," Jyme said.
"This will be uncomfortable," Rakon said to Egil, and began a recitation in the Mages' Tongue, the language sharp-edged, ragged.
"Shite," Nix muttered, squirming against his bonds to no avail.
The magical words seemed to have a physical existence as they exited Rakon's mouth, the syllables pelting Nix like hail. He could not follow the incantation, could only blink against the growing magical energy. Even Rakon's guards – even Jyme – looked uneasy in the presence of the sorcery.
The energy in the room gradually intensified, manifesting as a distortion in the air that snaked behind the sorcerer's gesturing hands. When Nix finally recognized the nature of the spell, the hairs on his neck rose.
"There's no need for this," Nix said, struggling with his bonds to no avail. "Shite, shite."
"Nix?" Egil asked, looking at him sidelong.
"A compulsion," Nix said. "A spellworm."
Egil cursed, kicked at the guards around him with his bound legs. The men, cursing, pushed him flat onto his back.
Jyme secured his legs, Baras held him down at the shoulders, and the third guard lay across his chest. Rakon stepped over to Egil, still incanting, the energy trailing his gestures in a finger-thick rope of reified magic.
Nix shouted to Egil in Urgan, Egil's native tongue, the language of the hill folk of the north. He hoped no one else in the room understood him.
"Focus on Ebenor, Egil! Look to your faith! You have to preserve a piece of your will. Your life depends on it! Focus on Ebenor!"
The energy in Rakon's hands solidified into a wriggling worm of power. Still chanting, he took the worm in his hands and crouched over the prone priest.
Baras drew a dagger and stuck its tip into Egil's mouth, scraping teeth, forcing the priest's jaws apart. The moment it was open, Rakon loosed the spellworm headfirst into Egil's mouth.
The priest gagged as the worm wriggled down his throat. Egil thrashed his head from side to side, nicking his cheek on Baras's dagger, a froth of spit and blood foaming his mouth. The spellworm squirmed in further, finally disappeared down his throat.
Egil went still, his eyes wide. The men holding him looked at one another, nodded, and released him. Egil only lay flat on the ground, chest heaving, staring up at the rafters.
"Whoresons!" Nix said, straining against his bonds. "Fakking whoresons!"
Rakon turned to Nix, his expression fixed and hard.
"Get him ready," the lord Adjunct said, and began to incant anew.
Nix's mouth went dry; sweat poured down his back. The three guards left off Egil and seized Nix by the arms and around the legs. He could barely move. He might as well have been in a vise. Baras brought his dagger toward Nix's cheek.
"Not necessary," Nix said. "But I meant it sincerely when I called you whoresons."
"Let me," said Jyme, brandishing a dagger of his own.
"Shut up, Jyme," said Baras, then to Nix, "Sorry it went this way."
Rakon moved toward Nix, incanting, a second spellworm forming in the air between his gesturing hands.
Nix took a deep breath and ignored the chant and focused his mind inward. He had to preserve a mental refuge within himself, isolate a bit of him from the magic of the compulsion.
I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin, he told himself, attempting to counter Rakon's chant with a chant of his own. He pictured the Heap, the cawing gulls, the layer of shite. I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin. Nix Fall of Dur Follin.
The spellworm solidified in Rakon's hands.
Baras tapped Nix's cheek with his blade. "Make it easy, eh?"
Nix closed his eyes and opened his mouth.
The spellworm slipped into his mouth, as slick as a string of mucus. It slithered down his throat and wriggled into his guts. He gagged, spat, and heaved, but the worm went deeper, sinking into his guts and diffusing through his body, sorcerous tendrils wrapping themselves around his will, rooting in his mind. He resisted, teeth gritted, but still it expanded in him, trying to fill him up, conquer his mind.
I am Nix Fall of Dur Follin.
He thought of Mamabird, the smell of her onion stew. He thought of the mask he wore to cover the frightened boy at his core, the pith of him a secret even from Egil.
I'm Nix Fall of Dur Follin. Of Dur Follin.
The muscles in his body, head to toe, seized all at once. He bit his tongue again and blood filled his mouth. The men lowered him to the ground while spit and blood ran down his cheeks. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling, breathing, breathing, as sorcery stole his will.
Nix Fall of…
"Sit them up," Rakon said after a time, and rough hands sat Nix up. His head lolled on his neck, a marionette without strings. His eyes wouldn't focus. Rakon was a blur before him.
Nix Fall. Nix Fall.
It seemed insufficient. Rakon's spell bent him, twisted his will, made it the sorcerer's own, and when Rakon spoke, his voice, redolent with power, echoed in Nix's braincase like the words of a god.
"Nix Fall and Egil of Ebenor, you will travel with me and my men to the tomb of Abn Thuset, enter it when I say, take the Horn of Alyyk from within, return, and give it to me. Do you understand?"
The words pulled a response from Nix the way a fisherman pulled a hooked fish from the Meander. Egil echoed him.
"I understand."
Rakon crossed his arms over his chest, satisfied. "Bring them, Baras. We leave with the dawn."
"Yes, my lord," Baras said. "But…"
"But?"
"I think they may have helped without use of a spell. Is this the best way to secure their aid? I wonder if this was necessary."
Rakon stared at him. "You wonder, do you?"
Baras
lowered his head. "I'm sorry, my lord."
"Do you think they wouldn't have run the moment opportunity presented itself?"
Baras looked from Nix to Egil, back to Rakon. "I… don't know. Probably."
