by Jeff Crook
He dashed under the relative protection of Palisade Lane’s balconies. For a moment, he considered hiding in the shadows here, in the mad hope that the minotaur might pass him by, but he knew better than to trust his luck. He hurried along, reaching the street’s end where it met Horizon Road. There he heard the minotaur bellow and, glancing back, he saw to his dismay that the distance between them had been halved.
Cael’s one thought was to somehow circle back the Dark Horizon, while at the same time losing the minotaur in the twisting streets of night-darkened Palanthas. He knew that the best place to lose him was Smith’s Alley. He turned onto Horizon Road, headed for the gate there, beyond which lay the northern entrance to that noisome lane.
Now for the last leg of this race, he thought, seeing the massive gate towers rising before him into the storm-lit sky. He forced himself into something resembling a sprint. In his left hand he carried his sword, in his right, beneath his rain-soaked cloak, he clutched the silver dragon Reliquary. The gates loomed darkly before him. He hurried down the road.
A light flared before him. In a sheltered glow beneath the gate, two Knights of Neraka warily observed the darkly cloaked interloper. Seeing him rushing toward them with drawn sword, one dashed through an open door into the tower, while the other drew his blade and prepared to meet the elf’s charge. A bell clanged somewhere above. Down the short gate tunnel, more torches flared as Knights poured from the guardhouse built on the New City side of the gate.
Cael slowed, but upon hearing the familiar roar behind him, he renewed his pace. The young guard performed a Knight’s salute, and in that foolish moment, Cael veered through the open tower door.
His dash surprised the guard. The man fumbled at his sword, gaping at the elf, who vaulted up the tower stairs. The Knight started after him, but a cry of pain brought him around. Before the young man could raise his sword in defense, Kolav burst into the chamber and in one slash of his massive sword cut him down.
Cael reached the first landing of the stair and paused. He glanced quickly around, seeing that the stair continued upward, vanishing in the shadows above. To his left was a stout wooden door, barred from the inside. He knocked the bar free, kicked open the door, and dived through.
Once through the doorway, Cael found himself atop the city wall. There was nowhere else to run. To his left he was offered a plunge of thirty feet or more to the nearest rooftops, to his right a crenellated battlement overlooked the trench between the inner and outer wall. The trench was filled with soft dirt turned to deep mud by the violent autumn storm. Ahead, the wall curved gently to the south in the direction of the Temple Row gate, where more Knights of Neraka waited. Behind him, the tower door burst open. Kolav ducked through and strode out onto the rain-lashed parapet. Lightning illuminated his monstrous form. His tulwar dripped with the blood of the man he’d just slain.
“I barred the door below so that we should receive no more interruptions,” the beast growled as he limped toward the elf. From somewhere below, Cael heard the Knights pounding on the tower door and yelling angrily. He backed along the wall, keeping his naked blade at guard while carefully watching his footing.
“It is time we settled this, you and I,” Kolav continued. His tulwar whistled through the air above his head.
“Indeed,” Cael agreed. Everything depended on one perfectly timed, perfectly placed lunge. He released his hold on the Reliquary, letting it fall from his cloak. It landed at his feet.
A deep growl rumbled from the minotaur. “A thief to the last, I see,” he said.
Cael readied himself. Kolav limped closer. Another wary step, another.
“No longer can you hide behind that beard,” Kolav said. “I shall cut out your heart and eat it raw.”
Cael lunged. His sword sang through the air. Kolav blocked the attack and trapped Cael’s sword against the crenellated wall with his own weighty blade. A sledgelike fist sent the elf sprawling back dangerously near the parapet’s edge. His sword flew from his hand, slid a few feet over the rain-slick stone, then toppled over the edge. The clang of steel against stone below sounded the death knell.
Cael struggled to his feet. He drew the throwing dagger from his belt, the one he’d stolen from Oros’s desk. The minotaur advanced upon him, relentless as the sea’s tide.
In a flash of lightning, Cael saw a hunched figure on the parapet behind Kolav. It held something in its hand, something raised to throw. Cael’s eyes widened in surprise, and seeing his reaction, Kolav half-turned to confront the new threat.
It was too late. With a fierce cry of “Nevermind!” the figure launched its weapon. A smooth metallic cube it appeared to be, but as it flew, it unfolded in the air. Kolav threw up his hands in defense, to no avail.
The minotaur staggered back, clutching at the hideous steel spider affixed to his horned head. He bellowed in agony as, with a sickening rending noise, his flesh and sinew struggled against springs of steel and levers of tempered iron. One black horn tore free from his skull, firmly gripped in the metal spider’s jaws. Kolav screamed as blood gushed over his face.
With a flick of the wrist, Cael sent his dagger winging to lodge in the beast’s throat. Kolav staggered, clutched at the dagger, then toppled backward over the parapet wall. Thirty feet below there was a dull crunch as the minotaur landed in the muddy trench. Slowly he sank, the black mud sucking him down, as he clawed weakly at the wall. In moments, he was gone.
Cael reeled, exhausted, and fell into the waiting arms of his rescuer. A stench more vile than any he had ever encountered greeted him.
“Gimzig!” he cried. “How can it be? You are alive?”
“Of course I am alive, no thanks to the gully dwarves who found me, I nearly died under their gentle ministrations,” the gnome answered. “You’ve grown a beard, it looks superb on you, I never could abide those abominable, youthfully smooth cheeks, nothing like a proper beard to give you a certain nobility….”
“But how, Gimzig? Alynthia saw you dragged away by a sewer monster! How did you survive?” Cael asked as he clutched his small friend.
“I’ll tell you, but first let’s get down from here, I do enjoy the view, but this is no place for the telling of tales, just follow me, I have a self-extending ladder just over… oh dear!”
The tower door slowly swung open. A gray-robed figure strode out onto the lightning-lit battlements, a long straight sword in its fist. Cael gasped, recognizing it as his own sword.
“Thank you for returning the staff, Cael Ironstaff,” the Thorn Knight laughed. “It makes a truly marvelous sword. I shall enjoy exploring its powers.” He tossed the sword playfully into the air.
Cael pushed the Reliquary into the gnome’s grimy hands. “Stow this safely in your pack, Gimzig,” he whispered.
The gnome nodded. “Let me handle this chap,” he muttered as he slid his pack to the ground and opened it. He reached inside, removing another of his folded spiders.
“No,” the elf said, shaking his head. “This is between Arach Jannon and me.”
“Now we shall finally discover who is the better man,” the Thorn Knight said calmly.
“You have the advantage of me, however,” Cael said.
“Ah, yes. You lack a sword. Never fear. I am an honorable man.”
Sir Arach drew a short stabbing sword from its hip sheath and slid it across the battlement to the elf. Cael stooped and lifted it, testing its weight and feel in his left hand.
“Not much of a match against that,” Cael commented, pointing at his own sword.
“No, I suppose not,” the Thorn Knight answered. He swung the blade, whistling, through the air. “It is wonderfully balanced, sharp as a witch’s tongue. Too good for the likes of you, I’m afraid.”
“We shall see,” Cael said as he advanced slowly across the battlement, the short sword held before him.
“Yes, we shall,” Sir Arach said with a laugh as he charged. He lifted the sword over his head and brought it crashing down. Cael deflected it,
then used his injured shoulder to press the Thorn Knight against the wall. They struggled there for a moment, growling, spitting curses atone another, before Cael leaped away.
Sir Arach spun to attack again, then caught sight of the weapon in his hand. It was his own short sword! Returned to his hand as though by magic. The elf’s sword, once firmly in his grasp…? He looked up, stunned, to find it back in Cael’s hand. The Thorn Knight backed away, a spell forming on his lips, but in a lunge too quick for the eye to follow, Cael’s blade split him from shoulder to hip. The short sword fell from nerveless fingers, the spell died on his lips. Sir Arach fell in a heap at Cael’s feet, a look of surprise frozen on his face.
Gimzig rushed to the elf’s side and helped him to stand. Cael collapsed against the wall. He clutched his bloody sword to his chest.
The gnome lifted the Thorn Knight’s body onto his stout shoulders and shoved it over the battlement. Arach Jannon’s corpse landed in an awkward sprawl atop the deep mud between the city walls. Slowly, the mud devoured him.
As the new day dawned, Palanthas came out to inspect the damage caused by the storm. Here and there in the Bay of Branchala a ship or galley listed to one side. Their crews were busy pumping seawater from their holds and mending the damages to their rigging and hulls. The cobblestones of Bayside Street were littered with flotsam, seaweed, and puddled foam. Tiny white-and-blue crabs scuttled underfoot, trying to find their way back to the safety of the water, while gulls chased after them, occasionally dueling each other over some particularly choice bit of the bounty of the sea.
Two figures strode wearily along the waterfront. One figure leaned heavily on a tall black staff. His much shorter companion limped along beside him, his misshapen back bent. The tall one spoke in hushed tones, the other chattered volubly in response to his companion’s questions.
“Well, as a matter of fact the sewer monster did bite off my foot in the first attack,” the gnome said in response to an earlier question. “She took me down for a death roll, but my bones weren’t strong enough, my foot came off in her mouth and she swam away, as you can imagine I was in a terrible fix as I had all those heavy metallic devices in my pack dragging me to the bottom of the sewer, and my foot down the gullet of the beast, when what do you know… she came back to finish me off!”
The gnome paused for a breath. “She attacked me from behind again, I tell you it was like being rammed in the backside by a minotaur pirate galley, but this time she clamped down on my pack instead of me, lucky thing too, well, you know the delicate nature of the things back there, crikey, but there was a tremendous poing, and then a sharp tug brought me up short, blood, guts, and I don’t know what else flowed around me, and what did I see but my own foot go floating by my own nose. I tried to catch it but…; here we are, this is where you said Dark Horizon was moored.” They mounted the steps as Gimzig continued.
“As I was saying I tried to grab it, but it was already out of my reach, and something was holding me firmly in the water, I looked back over my shoulder, and what do you think had happened?”
Cael would have ventured a guess, if the gnome hadn’t talked on unabated. “The self-extending ladder, or laddapult as I call it, extended right through the sides of the pack inside the monster’s mouth and ripped her clean in half like a loaf of bread. One side was pinned to one wall of the sewer and the other side pinned to the other and, crikey, but I was in an even worse spot than before. Let me tell you I nearly drowned before I was able to wriggle free of my pack.
“I nearly died anyway under the indelicate care of the gully dwarves who found me, a pox on all aghar and their fumbling ministrations, it is a wonder I survived them. I think I might have fared better in the belly of the beast!”
“But you lost your foot.”
“Mechanical one,” the gnome grinned through the mat of his beard. He wiggled his booted foot for the elf to see. It creaked. “This one needs oil but it’s better than the original in many ways and I have several ideas for further improvement, detachable toes for one thing, and…”
Cael smiled and looked up, but his smile quickly faded. Gimzig followed his gaze, his voice trailing away.
Dark Horizon was gone.
Cael stared at the empty mooring for a long while, his face grim. The gnome shook his head in dismay.
“Gimzig,” Cael said at last. “Can you get me back into Thieves’ House?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Alynthia stood before them, her head sagging against her chest, tears of frustration streaming down her face. A tight gag muted her sobs, and her arms were bound cruelly behind her back. Her seven fellow Guild captains glared silently at her across the dimly lit room. The pale-eyed captain from Sancrist wore a grin of triumph, while sadness etched the features of the raven-tressed Abanasinian captain.
Alynthia cared little what the others thought. What broke her heart most was the man sitting directly before her.
“Shall we begin?” Oros uth Jakar asked.
They stood in the same high vaulted room where Cael had been judged and doomed. Captain Oros sat upon his thronelike seat, his back rigid, hands tightly gripping the arms of the chair. To his immediate right stood an empty chair that had once belonged to Alynthia, to his left was the dark alcove where shadows brooded. Alynthia glanced up into that black niche, feeling the customary presence, a pair of unseen eyes that burned her with their gaze. Or did she see something else? She blinked, wondering if a shift in the deep shadows of the alcove were not a trick of the dim light.
“What are the charges?” asked a voice from the alcove. She shuddered involuntarily.
Slowly and with a show of reluctance, Oros removed a roll of parchment from his breast pocket and opened it He read aloud, “Disobeying a direct order of the Guild. Endangering the Guild by needlessly risking capture while carrying out an unsanctioned entry into the dungeons of Palanthas. Assisting in the escape of a prisoner of the Knights of Neraka. Harboring a fugitive wanted by the Knights of Neraka. Sharing Guild secrets with the uninitiated. Failing to report her activities and location in a timely manner. Illegal and unsanctioned entry, theft, and wanton destruction of a protected entity, namely the Lord’s Palace of Palanthas. Illegal and unsanctioned entry of a Guild property on two occasions, namely my own abode, as well as the ship Dark Horizon. And the most serious charge of all—aiding and assisting in the escape of a freelance thief under interdict by the Guild.”
He rolled up the parchment and slipped it back into his pocket.
“These are indeed serious charges,” Mulciber intoned from the shadowy alcove. “We have been sorely disappointed in the actions of Captain Alynthia Krath-Mal. She knew full well our temper concerning this elf, and bore with her the price of his doom should she allow him to escape. That she aided in his escape and that her action indirectly cost us the life of one of our most beloved members, the minotaur Kolav Ru-Marn, pains us. She has forsaken her duty to us, and we cannot forgive her.”
There followed a long grave silence.
Mulciber continued, “Since she has been found guilty of these crimes, she is not allowed to speak in her own defense. Will no one now rise and say a word in her favor, before I pronounce her doom?”
No one budged. Alynthia looked into the faces of her fellow captains and saw each turn quickly away. They know, she thought. They know and they say nothing. They are afraid.
Her gaze settled on her husband. She wanted to be looking into his eyes when Mulciber pronounced her sentence.
“Very well. It is the command of the Eighth Circle that Alynthia Krath-Mal should die,” said the voice from the alcove.
Alynthia tried to break free and rush at her husband, screaming unintelligible curses through her gag. Her guards easily caught her and dragged her back.
She’d seen his lips move. As she had gazed intently at her husband and listened to her sentence, she had seen his lips move ever so slightly, forming the words that Mulciber spoke!
Oros rose from his chair,
and said with a voice choked with grief, “Take her away.”
Mulciber spoke again from the alcove, halting the guards before they’d reached the door with their prisoner. The cracking, ambiguous voice seemed changed somehow, less old and weary, less like stone grating against stone.
“As master of the Guild I exercise my right to commute the sentence of this woman.”
All but the captain from Sancrist leaped up in delight at these words. Oros spun and faced the alcove, his eyes narrow slits of alarmed suspicion. “What trick is this?” he growled.
A figure stepped from the shadowed alcove. A gasp went up from the gathered thieves. Not one of them had ever actually seen their dread leader. But he appeared exactly as they had always imagined him—ebon robed and heavily cowled, leaning on a staff as black and mysterious as himself. The hand that gripped the staff was pale and long fingered but looked young and strong. As one, the Guild captains fell groveling on the floor. Alynthia’s guards released her and joined their leaders in prostrating themselves. Only Oros remained standing, Alynthia behind him, dumbfounded.
“What is more,” Mulciber said from his hood. “I accuse you, Sir Oros uth Jakar, disgraced Knight of the Rose, of betrayal, subterfuge, and obfuscation.”
“Get up, you lot of fools!” Oros shouted at the others. “This isn’t Mulciber. This is an impostor. It has to be!”
“Why must I be an impostor?” Mulciber asked. “He will not tell you, so I must.” The Guild master drew back the cowl of his robe, revealing the pale red-bearded face of Cael Ironstaff.
“Because there is no Mulciber,” the elf said.
With a scream of rage, Oros drew a dagger from his belt and rushed him. Cael easily parried the blow with his staff and sent Oros staggering backward.
The other Guild captains had regrouped. Half seemed indecisive, the others looked ready to attack the elf. Alynthia’s guards scrambled up, hands nervously gripping their weapons but taking no further action, awaiting orders.
