Light of a Distant Star

by Unknown

  Ignore it, Taldara. Push it aside. My father’s words rang in my mind. Everything is won or lost in the head, not the body. Without focus, you’re no better than your human blood. I had always challenged him when he said such things about humanity, but he would laugh and make a joke of it, claiming he only said them to rile me, to challenge and push me. He was right about focus, though, and a great deal more, even when he was so infuriatingly wrong. I sometimes suspect my rebellion against him was his object all along-my final graduation from his academy of life.

  I kept my focus. The pain, the panic, the fear-these were like old memories. Ducking the wererat’s next strike, I turned my momentum into a forward roll, drawing my boot knife in the same motion. I came up in a crouch next to my attacker, well inside his guard, and drove my blade into his guts. Black blood spurted from the wound as he f lailed at me, and I struck again. He jerked back, collapsing in a twitching heap, his rat screams mingling with the chaotic din of the basement.

  I sprang to my feet in time to see Gundsric raise the pewter flask he wore around his neck to his lips.

  More rats converged on Shess and me, blocking my view of the alchemist. The gnome spun and darted among them, a maddeningly nimble and unpredictable opponent. I fought defensively, with knife and fist, my back to the wall.The rats were enraged now and, in their half-human forms, they seemed disinclined to draw their weapons, fighting instead with claws and teeth.

  “Keep them off me! ” Shess yelled.I turned my head in time to see her repel her attacker with a quick chop to the thigh. In almost the same movement she tossed her sword to me.I barely caught it in my off-hand, then threw my own dagger over her head, at the wererat nearest her. Taking her short sword in my newly freed right hand, I stepped forward to cover the gnome.

  Shess’s sword was as light as my boot knife, and keen as a razor.I slashed, backing the rats off, ignoring a glancing blow to my arm. There were three wererats left, though the one Shess had wounded was keeping his distance, hobbling along the edge of the combat and looking for an opening to throw a knife. I kept slashing, more to create space around us than to do damage. And in that moment, I noticed the change that had come overGundsric.

  He was broader and taller, the muscles bulging beneath his dirty clothes like those of some Shoanti barbarian fresh down from the Storval Plateau.The remnants of a potion stained his lips, mingling with the bloody sputum of his black lung that ran down his chin.The insane light of his eyes was as bright as a lamp now. As bright as a bonfire. As bright as-The basement exploded in multicolored light, a rainbow of blinding force. I had been ready for it, but even stillI found myself temporarily blind. Shess’s child hand closed over my wrist and dragged me to the right, while the snarls and shouts of our enemies reverberated in our ears.

  “Come on! ” Shess shouted asI tripped over the first of the stairs. “Straight up this way.”

  I ran blindly up the stairs, the world black as night after the blast of blinding color from Shess’s spell. We came to a landing, and then a small room whose walls I could see as faint blotches of gray in the dark. Shess guided me to the door, taking her sword out of my hand as she did so, andI squinted to bring the world back into focus. The afterimage of the spell was wearing off quickly, but even still it was as ifl had been staring at the sun before plunging into a dark cave.

  There was light in the short hall we entered, and I realized it was from the lantern in the common room of the Forty Fathoms. We darted down the hall quickly, arriving in the alehouse’s dusty front room, and I vaguely recognized the furnishings through my blurred vision. Behind us someone was clambering up the stair.

  “Stick to the left wall,” Shess told me.

  We were almost at the door when it burst open, slamming against the wall and rattling the thick glass in the alehouse windows.

  “Hrushgak! ” Shess said cheerily. “And I see you brought Idrek.”

  The half-ore wasn’t the first thing I would have wanted to see with my restored vision. Almost as big as Gyrd, he was leaner, sharper-featured, but no less muscled than the Ulfen warrior. He wore a scarred black leather vest with rings sown on to it, but his thick arms were bare save for vambraces of silver-chased steel and pale scars like worms tracking over his greenish skin. Protruding from his piggish face was an asymmetric jumble of dirty fangs.

  He clutched a dripping axe in his right hand. In his left, held up by his black hair, was the head of the gleam addict Idrek.

  “He said you would be here, little thief.” Hrushgak flung Idrek’s head contemptuously into the room, where it struck the floorboards with a sound like dropped sack of meal. More thugs were pushing into the room behind him, all tough-looking half-orcs-Boss Croat’s drug trade enforcers. “I never liked you, gnome.”

  Shess began to protest, her feelings clearly-and strangely-hurt. And then Gundsric stomped into the room behind us.

  He looked more a monster than a dwarf. Grotesquely muscled, his body now sprouted mottled thorns like the spikes of some shelled sea creature. At his shoulder Carchima spread his wings of skin and shrieked. The alchemist’s eyes burned like Riddleport’s beacon tower.

  “I will kill every one of you,” Gundsric said, his voice flat and emotionless.

  Hrushgak smiled, baring his jumble of wicked yellow teeth. “I was just about to say the same thing.”

  Both sides moved at once, with Shess and me caught in the middle. Hrushgak

  feigned a strike at me and I leapt back as he barreled past, intent on Gundsric. One of the half-orcs went after Shess with a spiked club, but she deftly maneuvered him over to the trapdoor. He dropped through with a yelp, smacking his head on the lip of the f loor as he did so.

  An explosion tore through the room, knocking me forward in a wave of heat and force. Another alchemical bomb. I caught myself on the wall, one of Hrushgak’s thugs inches away. He thrust a knife at me and I slipped to the side, but he caught me across the forearm with a wild backswing. I was unarmed now, and the knife wielding half-ore probably weighed twice what I did. Shess had her own problems in the shape of a nearly naked maniac with a short-hafted axe in each hand.

  I kept my arms out, hoping to catch my attacker’s wrist or else turn aside his thrust. I was close to the door-a well-timed roll could take me past him and out into the street.

  The half-ore chuckled, noting the direction of my gaze. Weaving the serrated blade in an intricate pattern between us, he licked his lips. “Ain’t no one gonna save you now, sweet meat.”

  A streak of black and white burst through the open door and proved him wrong. Mordimor, snarling and yipping, launched himself at the half-ore’s legs. Blood flew and the half-ore screamed and staggered. I lunged forward, catching his knife hand in both of mine, and drove the weapon through his eye. He collapsed heavily to the floor, the bone-handled weapon lodged in his face to the hilt.

  “I was worried about you, Mord,” I said. Mordimor looked at me in the way he does, adorable despite the bloody froth that ringed his muzzle.

  Shess had finished with her own attacker and the way was clear, the rest of the thugs having converged on Gundsric and one of his remaining henchrats. We darted out of there-Shess handing me one of the axes she had taken from the berserker-just as another explosion shook the place.The windows of the Forty Fathoms blew out into the street.

  “Let me go in first next time, Tal,” Shess said breathlessly next to me as we turned back to watch the alehouse from the cover of a nearby alleyway. The

  muddy street was littered with glass, glistening in the afternoon light like ice. Inside the Forty Fathoms, flames blossomed.

  Mordimor looked up from his cleaning and chuffed agreement, wiping his bloody face with a moistened paw.

  “I’ll insist on it, Shess. In fact, I think you’ll get the chance within the hour.” She looked at me in surprise, one green eyebrow quirked upward.

  Was I really thinking about doing this? With Gundsric busy fighting Croat’s thugs-or, even better, dead at their ha
nds-now seemed like the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was exhausted, wounded, frayed to my last nerve. All this sneaking and fighting, the gangs and their squabbles, Gundsric’s own hideous plot in supplying drugs to the city for whatever strange destructive revenge this would grant him-it was all secondary to my purpose.To the story as it had to be told. I could almost see Master Shaine shaking his head; in amusement or disappointment, who could say?

  “We’re going to break into that crazy dwarf’s house and finish this for good.” It felt good to say it-more, it felt ri,ght somehow. Shess added her own enthusiastic agreement. We spent some time tending our wounds, my own minor healing magic knitting the slash on my shoulder closed and hopefully rendering it free of the bad humors associated with wererats. I told Shess of my real purpose in finding employment with Gundsric, finally telling her the whole truth. She relished every detail, excited not only at the prospect of stealing

  treasure, but at rediscovering the lost adventures of a famous Pathfinder.

  Gundsric’s house was close, only a few squalid blocks from the tavern, but Shess and I made the journey with deliberate caution, wary of encountering another group of half-orcs, or survivingClippers, or Desna knows what else. We made a brief detour when Shess spied an odd jobs man pushing his tool cart through the street. For a ridiculous sum I bought a length of rope from him, frayed and tarred, and Shess picked up a few stout nails she said would help her climb. With a wink he unrolled a square of oilcloth to expose a worn set of thieves’ picks, but Shess declined. Clearly the man catered to all sorts of clientele.

  Part of our caution was also due to Gundsric’s ravings about his home being surrounded by the forces of Croat and Cromarcky. I didn’t want to be seen approaching by any suspicious guards. HowShess andI would manage to get around a patrol and somehow climb to a third floor window-a window that was hopefully still unlocked was somethingI was not prepared to worry about just yet. If the last few days had taught me anything, it was to take things one step at a time.

  The place was indeed surrounded, and more thoroughly than I had imagined. Black-clad half-orcs with an array of brutal weapons shared the space around the heavy stone walls of the house with Cromarcky’s uniformed gendarmes. Together they shouted off bystanders and smacked around the occasional too-curious passerby. They glared uneasily at one another, hands always upon their weapons. Their truce was an uneasy one, and no doubt whoever was to eventually win the right to Gundsric’s home would be something decided at the highest levels. So until the bosses made their decision, the guards would continue to pace belligerently back and forth outside, spoiling for a fight. Shess was already proposing we distract them before climbing up-either with an illusion, or a fire, or a barrage of fish. Her suggestions grew steadily more absurd, but

  I wasn’t paying attention. Instead, I stared in disbelief at the figure moving easily among the guards. I could only shake my head, not even daring to guess what his presence meant.

  Kostin Dalackz strutted and joked with gendarmes and half-orcs alike, a ready smile on his face and the scepter bundled in an old cloak at his side.

  Chapter 6

  Child of a Distant Star

  The sounds ofrioting outside had grown louder. The crowd-a collection of wastrels, afternoon drunks, pirates, and the unemployable-was growing larger. I had thrown another bolt on one of Gundsric’s windows, this time at the front ofhis house, and by opening it just a crack I could see the tumult outside slipping further into pandemonium.

  “I have to wonder ifKostin knows what he’s doing,” I said.

  “Well, it did get us inside,” Shess said, stuffing a platinum-inlaid Ustalavic icon into her already bulging pouches. The room was rich with neglected treasures, like the ten or so others we had made cursory inspection of

  since clambering through the window I had left unlocked yesterday-a yesterday that seemed a thousand years ago.

  “But will we ever get out again?” I asked, just as I caught site of Kostin again in the crowd, this time with Gyrd next to him-the warrior must have somehow gotten word that Shess was here. Kostin had been alone when he responded to Shess’s whistle, a code the two ofthem had used in the past, after our arrival at Gundsric’s house an hour ago. Slipping away from the combined guard forces of the half-ore drug dealer Boss Croat and the official police force of the corrupt but unassailable Overlord Cromarcky, Kostin greeted us with a warm smile and a quip about my appearance.

  To be sure, my filthy clothing, rent and bloody shirt, and bruised face certainly hinted at a story, but Kostin was not going to get it from me. Not yet. Irritated by the joke-a jape incongruous with the look of concern in his eyes, which only irritated me all the more-I clamped a hand over Shess’s mouth as she started to excitedly relate our adventures. “What the hell are you doing here, Kostin?”

  He laughed. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to ask you? Well, I’ve been enjoying the fruits ofour labors, putting the scepter to good use.” He patted the bundle at his side, the lines of the artifact visible in the old cloak that wrapped it. He had tied a rope to the ends ofthe bundle, and wore it over one shoulder. “Once I was done bilking dicers, securing loans, selling bargain ships and titles of nobility, and … well, after all that I remembered what you said about the alchemist.”

  “What did I say about the alchemist?”

  He recounted my conversation with Shess the night before-he had been paying more attention to it that she had, it seemed. Gundsric was a drug manufacturer,

  the man behind gleam, and I was going to have nothing more to do with him-all ofwhich sounded emphatic and certain with Kostin relating it back to me. When I had first said it, though, a little drunk and completely exhausted, scared for my health and confused about what I had learned, it had all seemed more like thinking aloud and not some recitation of cold, hard truth.

  Well, Kostin had gone ahead and acted on my cold, hard truth, selling the information to both Croat and Cromarcky in les s time than it took for Shess to finish a plate of pickled herring.

  He could see the annoyance in my eyes. “Look, the money is ours. I looked for you this morning, and you weren’t at the Shark. I couldn’t ask you anything and … and I was worried. A bit. You said you were done with the bastard, and these guys all want his head. After what he did to you, I’d happily sell his head at a discount.”

  “Kostin, I need to get in that house.” I told him about the unlocked window around the back, and about my real purpose in Gundsric’s employ.

  His smile vanished. “Ah. I see. In that case … we could always use the scepter to make them let us in, but then we’d have to hold them with it for as long as we were inside.” He paced the alley, tapping the scepter in its cloth wrapping. Behind him I could see Gundsric’s house looming up like a great slab of weathered stone. “Alright, I think I could distract them, pull them away from the back long enough for you and Green to get inside. She climbs faster than anyone I’ve seen, and that looks like enough rope to do the trick.”

  It had been enough rope, but barely. Kostin hadn’t been wrong about Shess’s skill at climbing, and once the guards had been lured away by Kostin’s disturbance “just a little tus sle” he had said-we quickly made our way up the wall and to the third-floor window that had, luckily, remained unlocked.

  But with me and Shess no closer to finding the journal of Jan Lortis, Kostin’s “tussle” in the street outside was teetering on the edge of a full-scale riot. I could see him now edging along the margins of the crowd, a worried look on his face that would have been comical ifl could laugh at the situation.

  He had had the same look when we agreed on the plan and parted ways, Mordimor reluctantly going with him, Kostin trying to mumble out some apology for his stupid comments the night before. He stood there, sheepishly fumbling for words.

  “Don’t,” I said, wanting him to stop talking, wanting him to understand that if he owed me an apology, then I owed him one in return for shutting him out these last few weeks. He met
my eyes, and suddenly it was that night on the ship all over again, with the others still asleep belowdecks. Kostin and I had shared a bottle of Chelish red he had rescued from Gyrd’s drunken predation. Riddleport was in our future, as was all ofGolarion to hear Kostin speak of it. The moon had turned the sea to silver, and we talked of our childhood together, almost as two strangers comparing parallel lives. Then we had spoken a different language, one that needed no words.

  “Kalashar the Unvanquishable, Deadliest Blade in All Casmaron, apologizes to no one,” I said, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him gently away. “Go on already before I lose my nerve.”

  Kostin grinned, nodding his head. “Kalashar does, however, make the occasional exception for Great Tazza of Arcadia, explorer of sea and land.” Mordimor padded over to him, his face a mirror ofKostin’s own concern. “Be safe,” Kostin said before trotting off, the scepter already in his hand.

  “Tal, you know you have a lot ofroom in that pouch still.”

  Shess’s voice brought me back to the present, and I turned to see Shess, her every purse and pocket already bulging with stolen objects, trying to squeeze a disk shaped Mwangi sky calendar down the front of her tight leather armor. “Maybe we could come back later?”

  The banging on the door downstairs was all the answer we needed to that question, and together Shess and I hurried through more rooms, racing past yet more forgotten glories. How many years and how much coin had the dwarf spent on this collection, only to let it fall into ruin? We came back to the room on the second floor that contained Gundsric’s library, a room full ofbooks and scrolls tossed negligently into shelves and boxes.

  There was so much more ofthe house to inspect, but here was a room too ripe with promise to ignore a second time. I began to scan the volumes, ignoring bound ones as best I could. The journals would be a loose collection, the pages