Did he dare use magic to put Mavrus to sleep? He reminded himself to keep his goal to destroy magic foremost in his mind. His conversation with the Gauntlet of Ventyr had prompted his decision to kill Aniirin. He wanted that gauntlet now, so that he could use it to systematically draw away all the magic from the world. There would be no second chances of this sort to kill Aniirin.
The desire to heed magic’s pull was strong in the basha every second of every day. He had been vigilant against its enticements. It would have been a simple thing to give in when a fire needed stoking and there was no servant to tend it, or when his tasks took him by foot to the other side of Qindaras on a frigid winter day. Yet he knew that casting even one simple cantrip might prod him into greater enchantments. Then, before he knew it, he would be back under magic’s spell. But he knew the danger now, knew what to watch for. He could control further urges, if using magic now brought him closer to destroying magic. Lyim was nothing if not in control.
Is it in conflict—or poetic justice—to use magic to destroy magic? the basha pondered. Only a diamond can cut a diamond. Besides, the goal is all that matters. As for the means to reaching it—never explain, never defend.
Mavrus was stirring the fire, his back turned. Lyim’s slender fingers curled around the deep red rose blossom. He gave a sharp tug, and the fragrant petals fell into his palm like feathers. The manservant didn’t notice Lyim pluck the rose. He couldn’t hear over the crackling of the flames as Lyim muttered the easily recalled incantation to induce sleep, hardly more than a cantrip.
“Vexe dorema,” Lyim breathed. The words flowed like water over his tongue. The old, familiar tingling began at his scalp, made his stubble of hair stand up. The delicious sensation spread down his body in raw waves. It had been so long.… He felt woozy, drunk on the effect of one simple spell.
Do not let it control you, he warned himself.
Lyim came back to himself with a jerk. Mavrus sat in his chair as before, but his eyes were closed peacefully. The basha held a hand under the manservant’s nose, detected slow, even breaths.
“Mavrus?” he whispered. The man didn’t twitch.
Lyim ran to the door and slid the bolt in place to ensure that no conscientious servant would enter and try to awaken the sleeping manservant while he was gone.
The basha couldn’t recall how long the spell would last, but he knew he hadn’t hours before Mavrus would wake up. That eliminated traveling on foot to find the potentate. He would have to think of another spell to transport him to the appointed site. Teleportation was the only method he knew that could accomplish that. It was a difficult spell. There were rules regarding recent memorization, particularly for complex spells. Gods, how he hated rules that were not of his own devising!
Lyim looked at Mavrus and grew conscious of the passage of precious time. He banished the irritation that occupied his mind and let his thoughts roam free. He had invoked the spell to teleport often enough. It shouldn’t be impossible, if he concentrated.
A spellbook’s worth of arcane words came to him all in a jumble. Lyim calmly sorted through them, arranged them, then rearranged them until he had a combination that felt just right. He created and held in his mind a picture of the back alley in Amir Garaf’s district, where the slaying was arranged to take place.
“Lethodor, ithikitalkus maldifidii locitium.” The air around him shimmered. But instead of feeling the coolness of a late autumn night in the Plains of Dust, Lyim remained in the potentate’s stiflingly hot quarters. His eyes drew to slits as he contemplated the words he had uttered.
“There’s the catch,” he muttered when he realized what he had done wrong. He repeated the incantation, slightly altering the final word’s pronunciation.
The air shimmered again. In the blink of an eye Lyim stood in the coldness of a dark alley overflowing with garbage. Cheap wooden crates lined the walls, spilling rotten produce. The air stank of human and animal wastes. Dogs picked through the trash, sniffing at piles Lyim came to realize were unconscious—or dead—vagrants. The alley was otherwise empty.
Lyim’s skin was shocked by the cold, as if he had jumped from a fire into an icy pond. He had foolishly left without a cloak.
“Get!” Lyim’s shout scattered the dogs. Looking over their shoulders, they skulked toward the smoky lights that marked the ends of the alley.
He rushed over to the first vagrant and rolled him, half expecting to find Aniirin’s corpse. Lyim snorted in disgust. He was a she, and still alive, though she stank of the decay that preceded death. Her fingers were closed about a large, crimson-stained rock. Lyim considered her filthy cloak, but rejected it. He would not walk about in too-small woman’s attire.
On the next body, the basha found a suitable dark cloak with a concealing hood. This man was dead, his head bashed in and oozing blood—which explained the rock in the woman’s hand. Lyim wrenched the man’s arms from his sleeves, relieved that the poor sot had at least had the courtesy to not bleed all over the cloak. He slipped the threadbare woolen thing on.
Lyim headed for the alley door to the inn where Salimshad had intended to lead the potentate. The noise hit him in the face, along with a wave of eye-watering smoke caused by a chimney with a bad damper. Lyim remembered at the last instant to cinch up the hood of the cloak, exposing little more then his eyes, nose, and mouth. He kept his head low as he pressed through the bodies who, for lack of empty chairs in the packed inn, stood. A tipsy dwarf staggered back from his group and into Lyim’s path, splashing the basha with ale. In days past, Lyim would never have suffered such an affront, but tonight he let the incident pass without a word.
Lyim spied an empty corner where he could scan the crowd unobserved. It took but a moment to realize Salimshad was not at the inn; Lyim knew the elf’s stance, even in disguise. There was no sign of Aniirin, either, though Lyim spied Amir Garaf laughing and drinking with a crowd. The man caught Lyim’s glance, but the basha looked away too quickly to be identified.
Annoyed, Lyim pushed his way out the front of the inn. Outside, the curving street was bathed in the odd blue light of a cold harvest moon. A stout woman in a black wool cape scurried past, head bent against the bitter wind. Oblivious to the cold, two teenage boys rushed past Lyim in short-sleeved tunics, laughing, taunting each other to enter the inn in search of women. Lyim wasn’t surprised to find no one else nearby on the market district street after dark.
Now what? The plan did not call for stops at any other establishments. Lyim’s mind flashed on a memory of Mavrus asleep back at the palace. How long would Lyim have before the man awakened on his own?
Abruptly, a door slammed open, followed by the distant sound of loud, drunken voices. Lyim hurried up the street, following the sharp curve. Around the bend, a large sign hung above a wooden door, bearing a carving of a storm-tossed cargo ship—the Pitching Cog Inn.
The potentate has a capricious nature.
Lyim flung back the door on a hunch and stepped inside. He knew instantly what had kept Salimshad.
Aniirin was dressed as a common citizen, his head wrapped in layers of cloth to hide its odd shape. The disguised potentate was holding court of a kind to a circle of men near the blazing hearth. Lyim could see from their scruffy faces that the men were entranced. The basha’s heart skipped a beat. He pressed in, head averted, to hear if the potentate had given himself away.
“Believe this if you can, my good friends, the guards bring in a wooden chest, simple of design but strong, and quite large. The sort of chest one might expect a potentate to have in his palace, I suppose.
“And then the lid of the chest is flipped open as casually as you please. The amirs and their wives and all the other painted peacocks in the city are leaning in as close as can be, to see what fabulous treasure lies inside such a box.” The crowd, of course, was now leaning in to hear what Aniirin would say. “What do they see? The amir, torn to pieces and then gnawed to shreds by wild dogs! And his face, artfully arranged atop the grisly heap,
is painted in the loveliest cosmetics, as if he had come to the party as an honored guest. Which, I suppose, he had. And that, my friends, is how my master survived a treacherous plot.”
The crowd roared at the story, obviously entertained at the thought of an amir begin treated so. Lyim was reassured. Even if Aniirin had openly claimed to be himself or let a hint slip, no one would have believed the man with the oddly-colored eyes and oversized head was Qindaras’s potentate.
“Aniirin is still a slow boat, if you ask me,” Lyim heard a younger man bray. “He’s got no wind in his sails, and never has! His hands are always warm, his belly always full! He ain’t got no idea how we suffer.”
The basha caught his breath, certain Aniirin would not tolerate the insult, however ignorantly delivered.
Aniirin did, in fact, rise to his own defense. Still, he surprised Lyim. “Perhaps Aniirin III has not been the best of potentates, but—”
A loud round of derisive snorts swept the assembled crowd, cutting Aniirin’s excuse short. The potentate paused, clearly puzzled, while the men leaned back and drained their mugs of ale.
Lyim scanned the dark corners of the inn and recognized Salimshad, though disguised, by the elf’s stiff, slender pose. Near him, but not too close, were Rofer and Lorenz, two of Lyim’s most trusted men. All three were dressed as peddlers.
The elf’s eyes, locked on the potentate, looked a little desperate; Lyim could not hope to draw them to him. Neither could he stroll over and converse openly, for fear of drawing all eyes.
With a simple, inaudible utterance, Lyim broadcast a silent message directly to the elf’s mind. Salim’s head snapped up as he recognized his boss’s voice. Locating Lyim in the inn, both relief and fear crossed Salim’s fine, elven features at his unexpected presence.
Salimshad had joined Lyim long after the mage had sworn off using magic. Lyim refused to pacify the elf’s anxiety by revealing either his methods or his mood. He merely jerked his cloaked head, an almost undiscernible motion, toward the back of the inn. Have one of the guards warn Aniirin he has many enemies here. Tell him he must leave immediately by way of the alley. Instruct the guards to stay inside. You wait for Aniirin in the alley, but do nothing until I get there.
Salimshad bowed his head to the order and did as instructed without delay. Lyim watched as Salim stepped up to the bar to order ale, the prearranged sign for one of Lyim’s hand-picked men to do likewise; the elf did not drink spirits. Recognizing the sign, Rofer, a burly blond fellow with the thick neck of a warrior, approached the bar. Empty mug in hand, he pushed it across the polished wooden surface to the elf’s right. Only a knowing eye could have recognized that a message passed between the two strangers. The innkeeper returned the filled mug. The warrior dashed it back with one long pull, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then returned to Aniirin among the circle of listeners.
The crowd had thinned already, many having tired of the potentate’s outrageous stories and moved on to other conversations. When Aniirin leaned back to catch his breath between tales, the warrior dropped something to the rush-covered floor. Bending to retrieve it, he whispered briefly to the potentate.
The color flew from Aniirin’s pudgy face, and his shoulders tensed. He vaulted to his feet, knocking over his stool in his haste. Lyim could see Aniirin’s off-colored eyes darting everywhere at once, searching for telltale, hateful glances. He excused himself clumsily from the circle and began to press his way toward the back door.
Lyim knew he must not be seen following Aniirin to the alley. He waited for the potentate’s slouched form to slip through the back door before slithering like a shadow through the front. Time oppressed him—Mavrus could already be awake.
Lyim sprinted up the street, turned right, then right again at the alley. Two forms were bathed in the moonlight. Aniirin’s back was turned to Lyim; he was stooped, examining the bodies Lyim had found earlier. Salimshad kept quiet, listening to the potentate’s tirade even as he watched for Lyim’s arrival in the alley.
“These people are dead!” Aniirin cried, pulling back from them in distaste. “Is this common, people just dying in the streets?”
“It has been known to happen,” Salimshad said.
Aniirin straightened abruptly, his mind already past their plight. “I’m chilled to the bone. What are we waiting for?”
“Aren’t we all just waiting for death?” Lyim posed.
Aniirin spun around, his face full of surprise. “That’s an odd thing to say to a stranger.”
Lyim walked slowly toward the potentate. “Some of us have less time to wait than others.”
Aniirin showed a mounting horror. “Who are you?” he demanded, taking a tentative step backward.
Lyim’s face was concealed by his hood. His steps were slow, silent, in tempo with his carefully measured words. “None of us really chooses the time or place of our deaths. Is it the gods, or just plain bad luck that decides for us? Perhaps it’s simply another man with more power at the moment.” Lyim chuckled. “That would be the ultimate in bad luck, wouldn’t it, Aniirin?”
“Why do you call me that? I am nothing but an old merchant,” whimpered Aniirin. “Why do you try to frighten me this way?”
Lyim kept walking until he was within arms’ length of the terrified man. “We both know the truth of your identity, Aniirin. We also both know that I would not have gone to such lengths to frighten just anyone.”
“I tell you, I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t even know who you are!” Aniirin took another slow step back and darted a desperate glance around the alley, relieved to find Salimshad nearby, until the elf slipped behind the potentate to block his escape.
Aniirin spun around to stare pointedly at the shrouded figure before him. Lyim uncinched his hood and let it drop to his shoulders. His face was bathed in blue light.
“Basha!” cried Aniirin. Paling further, he drew back again, only to bump against Salimshad’s muscular form. “But I trusted you above all others!”
Lyim’s broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Another bit of irony for this night.”
“The rumors … Amir Rusinias …”
Lyim gave a wry smile. “A funny thing about rumors; there is often a grain of truth in them.”
Aniirin shook his head over and over in silent denial. “But I don’t understand! The position would come to you soon enough. I made you my legatee, my heir!”
“I don’t recognize your right to grant me anything,” snapped Lyim. “I have never met the nobleman who deserved the power and privileges to which he was born.” The basha’s mind flashed to another man of higher birth who had stood between Lyim and his goals. At least Guerrand had been a worthy adversary. “You are the greatest example to prove that rule yet.” He laughed at Aniirin’s misshapen head, his odd-colored eyes. “You are an accident of birth, a joke played on Qindaras by the gods. But tonight I will set things right.”
Aniirin was terrified. “Hel—!”
Salimshad’s gloved hand clamped firmly over the potentate’s mouth, cutting off any further sound.
Lyim’s hand slipped down his thigh. His fingers met with the hilt of his dagger. He had sharpened it out of habit to a razor’s edge this morning, never guessing the use to which it would be put.
“Make haste, master!” hissed Salimshad, glancing around fearfully at the distant sounds of drunkards in the street.
Lyim’s hand came up. The silver blade caught the blue light, then plunged into the potentate’s thick chest three times.
The elf dropped the potentate’s dead body next to the stiffened forms of the vagrants Aniirin had found so distasteful.
Lyim wiped the potentate’s warm blood from his hands onto his coarse, borrowed robe. His hands shook, but with excitement, not fear.
It was done. He was potentate. Now Lyim could don the Gauntlet of Ventyr and direct it to absorb more magic than its makers had ever dreamed. The Council of Three couldn’t touch him without breaking the treaty. They were too
sanctimonious for that. Perhaps, the new potentate of Qindaras mused, there are gods of justice after all.
Beakers of mysterious, colorful liquids bubbled on burners in the narrow room, part of numerous ongoing magical experiments. Guerrand sat among the vapors and the variously sized skulls and dusty spell tomes in his laboratory. The mage’s right index finger traced the arcane words of a spell entry, while the left hand adjusted the too-high flame beneath a beaker that was beginning to boil over.
Control weather enables a wizard to change the weather in the local area.
“That’s just what I’m looking for,” Guerrand mumbled aloud.
Components are burning incense and bits of earth and wood mixed in water.
Those items were easy enough to come by. The wizard whirled about in his chair to check the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind him in the room. He quickly spotted the amber apothecary jar marked “incense,” next to “incendiary oil,” right where it should be.
Unlike the wizard laboratories of stories—dark, spider infested, dusty places smelling of damp stone—Guerrand’s lab was meticulously organized and usually brightly lit by direct sunlight Years in the sunless, windowless space of Bastion had caused him to claim as his own the glass-lined gallery facing the sea on the third floor of Castle DiThon.
The view of the sea to the south was less distracting, more conducive to the concentration needed in spellcasting and study. Guerrand still found the landward rush of dark waves soothing, as he had in his youth when he had contemplated the nearby shores of Southern Ergoth from a small cove on the heath. Winter or summer, spring or autumn, only the weather altered the sea—angry black during storms, whorls of soft blue and green in pleasant weather.
Today, the sea was anything but pleasant. Huge, gray waves crashed upon the sands far below Guerrand’s bank of windows. The gallery was uncharacteristically dark because of the storm, forcing Guerrand to light lamps even at noon.
The Seventh Sentinel Page 11
