Light of a Distant Star

by Unknown

  It was then that I noticed the door.

  I rushed to the spot, running my hands over the smooth walnut paneling. How could I have failed to see this, day after day? Sliding my fingernails in the cracks between panels I gave a light tug, to no avail. I tried another panel, while Mordimor sniffed along the crease where wall met floor. There was no give at all in the wood, and I stepped back, exasperated.

  And then, as certain as my vision of the door had been, the logic ofits opening came to me.

  It was a dark burl of wood, low down along the wall but not uncomfortably so for someone of the dwarf’s stature. A hard push was all it took. With a click, the panel before me popped away from the wall and swung gently outward. Pulling it open all the way, I could see a dark, slant-ceilinged hall running deeper into the house.

  Mordimor chuffed in surprise.

  “I know, Mord. I can’t see how we could have missed it, either.” I stooped to scratch his head, and a glint of light on the back of the door drew my attention. There, a little below chest-height for me-but eye-level for a dwarf

  was affixed a kind of prism. Leaning down, peering into the thick, green glass, I could see almost perfectly through the thin door, despite it being smooth and solid on the other side.

  So, I had been watched. The spy had herself been spied upon.

  Since I had come to rely on Gundsric’s potions entirely, I had stopped even bothering to cast my own translation spells. Thus I had fallen back into the daily habit of preparing the simple magic I used to speak with Mordimor, something we both looked forward to for a few minutes every day. Conversing with an animal in such a way is never as straightforward or precise as people imagine, but after years of mutual experience Mordimor and I have come to understand one another quite well.

  I cast the spell now, the words spilling out of me in an old familiar rhythm, the gestures nearly automatic. A successful casting is always recognizable, and I immediately felt the power flood through me, a comforting yet invigorating wash of energy. I told Mordimor to wait in the shadow at the base of the narrow stair and call a warning to me should the dwarf emerge from his basement laboratory. Not for the first time, I envied wizards and their uncanny bond with their familiars . But perhaps this lack of true integration, this reliance on a spell to bridge the gulf of incomprehension between two beings so inherently different, is the price Mordimor and I pay for retaining our individual selves.

  My badger friend grumbled in mild consternation, told me to be careful, and rubbed his whiskered snout against my hand in a gesture that needed no spell to translate. He then bounded off down the stair, a black-and-white ripple of fur. With one last look over my shoulder, I entered the secret hall.

  It was long and low, and faced on one side with a shelf littered with artifacts. Here and there I recognized objects and texts that I had worked with in my little room. This, then, was the path Gundsric took to carry materials in

  and out of the workroom. The path he used to creep up to the door to spy on me, for whatever suspicious reasons of his own. I could hardly resent the fact or hold it against him, given my own intentions.

  The first room I came to was the mirror ofmy workroom, though cluttered with a disarray of manuscripts and tomes on leaning shelves . My impression of Gundsric as an organized, orderly dwarf suddenly needed revision, for this place was clearly the product of a chaotic, almost careles s mind. Or, perhaps , one preoccupied with other matters. Dark as it was-the carbauxine lanterns here maintaining but the merest flicker-! could still make out the steep stairs leading up to the third floor in the black portal at the far end of the room. Pausing briefly to listen for any telltale warning from Mordimor, I stifled the apprehension that had been threatening to overtake me since I first opened the secret door. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm my racing heart. This was what I had come for, I reminded myself Not the research. Not

  the translation. This.

  I moved to the stairs , and upward. For all I knew, the journal of Jan Lortis was lodged in one of the leaning piles in the room I had just passed through, along with a dozen other unguessed rarities. But I did not have time to check every spine and catalog. Already a plan was formulating in my mind, one I thought worthy of my new profes sion, and one I hoped would allow me to return to these rooms at my leisure in the near future.

  Just ahead, the light increased, though the air grew yet more oppressive with heat and dust. The first room on the third floor was a jumble of old armor and antique weapons, objects once cared for and now given over to neglect. A silver-chased breastplate of Cheliax’s old empire lay dusty in a corner where it had fallen from an armor stand. An Aldori dueling sword, its hilt encrusted

  with emeralds and pearls, hung dingy and forgotten from pegs on the far wall, the blade’s once-fine steel freckled with rust. A dozen other such treasures languished here, as if imprisoned for the crime of daring to approach perfection. It was an armory that would make any prince envious, but it seemed more the hoarding of some kleptomania cal goblin chieftain than the collection of a wealthy dwarf, a race that prized metalcraft above almost any other art.

  The next room told a similar tale of disregard in iron, bronze, and polished stone, containing as it did an extraordinary array of Ulfen ritual vessels engraved with Skald runes. I fought the urge to linger, moving quickly, hoping to find what I was looking for before my nerve gave out or Mordimor signaled me. Two more rooms , two more neglected treasure-troves, and I finally came upon

  what I sought. A window.

  I slipped over to it, remaining alert to the room’s contents. Here for the first time I was seeing evidence of Gundsric’s profession. The room was laden with glassware in a myriad of esoteric shapes, as well as racks of carefully labeled solutions in every color imaginable. One whole wall was dominated by a system of small drawers, and the pungent odors of a thousand reagents danced in the thick air. Another wall was pinned with dozens of curling parchment maps, yellow and brittle with age, each bearing heavy notations around the irregular shapes of an underground tunnel system. In front of the room’s only window, a small table held a gas burner beneath an armature designed to hold containers above the flame. Here, at least, was some semblance of the careful mind I had always ascribed to the dwarf, and it seemed the disregard with which he treated his collection did not extend to the alchemical tools of his craft.

  At the window, I tugged hard at the shutter’s bolt. It was stuck fast, no doubt having remained locked for years. Straining, with both hands wrapped around the rust-furred toggle, I wrenched at it. Once, twice, three times-I may as well have been trying to pry a stone lose from the house’s foundations . I had to make this work, had to open it now , as I knew I would never have the bravado to attempt this again. Whatever chance I-or more to the point, Kostin or Shess-had to break into this house later and search it more thoroughly depended on opening this bolt. Opening it right now.

  Almost without noticing, I caught a sound barely louder than the pounding of my own heart. It was Mordimor’s warning bark, far below.

  With a savage jerk I flung myself at the bolt, forcing it open and crashing to the floor. In an attempt to arrest my fall, or at least minimize the noise I was making, I had grabbed unsuccessfully for the nearest handhold, knocking a small box off the table. I stood up quickly, pulse racing, hardly feeling my scraped palms, and scooped the rectangular box-about as large as a loaf of bread-off the floor and replaced it on the table.

  Something about the box stole my attention. It bore the same star-shaped rune as the translation elixirs, and I noticed for the first time the similarity it held to a Thassilonian sihedron, though Gundsric’s star was composed of ten arms of disproportionate and unequal length. Something about it twisted at my gut, and even as I yanked my eyes away, I felt it calling them back, dragging my attention toward it. Sweat broke out on my forehead as I forced myselfto look elsewhere.

  More of the translation potions stood on a rack next to the gas burner. Without thinking, I gra
bbed one of the vials and slipped it into my pouch.

  But I had no time to spare on exploring this further. Still feeling the box’s siren call, I turned and raced back the way I had come. Again Mordimor’s warning bleat reached me, and my fear at being caught, at ruining my chances of ever finding the journal ofJan Lortis, paled in comparison to my concern for Mordimor’s safety. In only a few minutes my evaluation of Gundsric had changed,

  and now I saw the bitter, angry dwarf as something other than pitiable. Whether it was my fear that suggested this to my already hyper-stimulated mind, or perhaps my own intuitive understanding of his character brought on by the glimpse at Gundsric’s private rooms, I could not say. What I did know with a sudden, undeniable certainty was that I had been underestimating the alchemist-perhaps dangerously so.

  I sped through the dust and the jumble of the third floor rooms, and down the stair as fast as I was able. I was hot, dizzy, all my fears given a sickening, vivid edge by the potion. Once again, I heard Mordimor’s cry as I entered the secret corridor, though this time it was punctuated by Gundsric’s own shouts. Dashing down the hall, I experienced one of those moments when time seems to slow, when even the simplest things seem fraught with difficulty, and in that short corridor I endured an eternity’s worth of dread.

  Emerging from the passage after what was in reality but a few seconds, I was relieved to see the workroom empty. But the noise of Gundsric’s cursing and Mordimor’s bleating had grown louder. I spun, slamming the secret door in my haste to get it closed. Wincing at the thud, I lunged toward the stair, just as Mordimor shot up and out of the darkness of the stairwell and into my arms. He was trembling but unhurt.

  “Torag take you, vermin! ” Gundsric clambered up into the room, eyes red and bulging. His lips and chin were smeared with bright blood. Seeing me, he roared and shook his fist. “Your damnable skunk bit me! ” he ranted, his words transitioning into a bloody, hacking cough that robbed him of all speech.

  Still clutching Mordimor, I squeezed past the coughing dwarf and took the stairs two at a time. I could not stay in this house another minute-! was shaking as badly as poor Mord. Over my shoulder I said something about having to leave early, making some sort of inarticulate apology. I do not truly remember what I said, but I still recall the tremulousness of my own voice and my fear that the dwarf should notice it.

  He stumped after me, slant-shouldered, moving like some poorly made, clumsy-limbed golem. His hacking cough boomed off the walls and filled the close spaces

  of the house-a metronome tracking the rhythm of his dying.

  I fumbled at his front door, Mordimor clinging to my shoulder. The sensible thing would be to talk, ease the dwarf’s suspicions . He was angry at my badger’s unlawful wandering, at being bitten, but Gundsric knew nothing of my own explorations. The rational part of me screamed to slow down, to smooth things over as I had done so often before. But I could not-my perception of the dwarf had altered, and without being able to say why, I now regarded the thing that hacked and gurgled in the corridor behind me as a monster.

  As I worked the last bolt in a panic, his bloody hand closed over mine.

  My flesh rebelled at his touch. He gave off heat like a forge fire. So close, I could smell the brimstone stink of him, the riotous mingling of odors both sour and sweet that surrounded him like an aura. Paralyzed, my body screamed silently to push him away, to draw my knife. To kill him if I could.

  With a snarl, he threw open the last bolt and flung the door wide.

  “Get out,” he said, voice husky and crackling with mucus .

  I slipped around him, not daring to look. The humid street air that greeted me was like a breath of spring after my ordeal. I hastened to be on my way, body aching and tense, tendons like the snare-strings of some sprung trap.

  At the end of his street I paused, daring to look behind me, still cradling Mordimor. Gundsric stood in his door, a dark silhouette, crooked and still as any broken thing. The sun was barely past noon, and the air was as rank and stifling as any other mid-Erastus day in Riddleport. But standing there, looking at Gundsric, I felt a chill as cutting as the windward shadow of the Winterwall steal over me. Shivering, and with the black shape of the dwarf still watching me, I turned and lost myself in the comforting anonymity of the crowd.

  Chapter 3

  The Char Street Clippers

  To think that lurking in the shadows of some moldering old casks with a con man, a wizard, and an Ulfen mercenary would feel like familiar, safe territory to me is a strange and, perhaps, wonderful thing. But after my fright with Gundsric that afternoon, this was exactly where I wanted to be.

  Even Mordimor, generally on record as disapproving of these kinds of things, seemed eager to take part in the culmination of Kostin’s big heist. Granted, all that the plan entailed was to wait for an invisible Shess to slip out of the

  Char Street Clippers’ headquarters with the scepter, and then for all of us to steal away into the dark. Our presence, Kostin assured me, was merely a form of insurance.

  But, as I well knew, these things never go according to plan. The logic of our story demanded it, and as Master Shaine would say, even our simplest choices have the power of prophecy. I had chosen to live an adventure, and I knew somewhere deep in my bones that I was going to have one that night.

  We were hunkered down between a sagging, tin-roofed shed and the upturned hull of an old skiff, positioned nicely in the dark space behind the aforementioned casks. The reek of tar was in the air, as was the ever-present salty stink of Riddleport’s harbor. We were in the eastern section of the Wharf District, south of Rotgut and not very far from Gundsric’s fortress of a house, almost up against the jagged hills that marked the city limits, smack in the center of a cluster of rundown buildings that had been abandoned once this little neck of the harbor had silted up. The shallow, almost stagnant water that still filled the channel was hardly enough to buoy a rowboat at high tide, and thus the docks and piers that lined the inlet had fallen into disuse and ill repair.

  Of course, no building remains unoccupied for long, and the Char Street Clippers were only too happy to make a home in the derelict warehouse that bordered the northern tip of the inlet. The gas lamps that lined the more traveled byways of the city were but a distant glow this deep into the slums, and the moon was the merest sliver. But the stars were bright and clear, and Castrovel glittered like a faraway emerald directly above us. A single bat flapped in zigzag circles about the reeking inlet, no doubt having found a rich source of insect life. Mercifully, the night was a cool one, the wind blowing in from the gulf having banished the swelter of summer for the time being.

  “I can wait no longer,” Aeventius said, squatting uncomfortably along the edge of the shed rather than risk soiling his fine clothes by sitting on the street itself “As it is, I will already be late for this evening’s performance at the Sable Flag.”

  Kostin shot back with a choice Varisian curse. “You’re seeing this through. Your ‘play’ can wait.”

  “Scaerelli is performing Vestments Unseen. I hear it is quite critical of House Thrune, and do not wish to miss it.”

  I looked at the fourth member of our group, the disheveled Ulfen warrior Gyrd, whom I had fought alongside in Magnimar. His bloodshot gaze met mine and I rolled my eyes at Kostin and Aeventius. Gyrd, expressionless as always, turned back to survey the dockhouse.

  “You forget who you’re talking to, Aevy.” Kostin, voice rising in irritation, turned around and wagged a finger at the wizard. He was dressed in the black leather I had seen him in the day before, though with the addition of a fine matching set of longsword and dagger at his waist. “I know all the bookmakers in the Wharf I know where the money goes, and you’ve got more than a few crowns going on Dashak in tonight’s games. So don’t try to tell me you’re going to some theater instead of slinking off to Zincher’s Arena.”

  Aeventius’s eyes narrowed. “A man can have money on the games and still attend some other engag
ement. Where I go is none of your concern anyway, you trumped-up guttersnipe.”

  Kostin grinned. It was a smile I’d seen before, whenever he was about to fight. “I do have to wonder how obvious it is to all the bluebloods up on the Summit why the Reates family doesn’t have two coppers to pinch together. Maybe

  the heir has a gambling problem?”

  “Abadar blast you!” Aeventius snarled, voice rising beyond all levels of caution.

  “Not holding my breath on that one,“Kostin said, smirking.

  “This from a man whose devotionals sway between a drunken lout and a moth-winged wanton.”

  “You’re just mad that Desna never smiles on your wagers.”

  I was about to say something to stop their bickering, but a warning bark from Mordimor drew our attention back to the Clippers’ warehouse.

  Six figures had approached the warehouse and hailed the guards. They moved with a lanky shuffle, hunched men and women hooded in black. Two of them bore a heavy sack between them, nearly dragging it along the street, each man holding a rope-end that bound the bag closed. In the weak light of the guard’s lantern it was difficult to get an impression of the new arrivals, save that each had a

  lean and hungry aspect associated with criminals of the most dangerous sort.

  “Shess never said anything about this,“Kostin whispered.

  Many of the Clippers were gone this evening, engaged in some work for one of the minor Rotgut bosses that didn’t want to get his hands dirty or risk offending the real powers of the city. The strange thing about the Char Street Clippers, Kostin had explained to me, was that they had so far been able to flout the authority of Overlord Cromarcky and the other crime lords of the city. They had gotten away with overstepping their bounds again and again, their

  own power increasing at an unprecedented rate as a result.

  “They’re going in,” Aeventius said, exhibiting no trace of his earlier petulance. “This may make things difficult for the gnome. We should observe more closely.”