Arm Of Galemar (Book 2)

by Damien Lake

  He wrestled with his sword. Several jerks failed to break the cord binding hilt to scabbard. The lady assassin, shrewd as a fox, quickly used the opportunity to strike.

  Marik danced backward while the first blow cut the air before him. He gave a mighty tug on the hilt. The sword came free of his back still clad in its leather sheath. Bound together as one, the blade was suddenly clumsy and unwieldy.

  She slashed again. Marik’s reflexes were too slow. A ragged gash ripped open his shirt’s belly, exposing the chainmail.

  He lunged. With his covered blade in both hands, he might be able to club her down. His biggest problem was the length of her knife, designed for close-in work, so he could not step inside the blade’s arc to reduce its danger. That would only increase it drastically. On top of everything else, his spine buzzed like an angry wasp swarm. Marik pounded his brain for a tactic he could use to end this quickly.

  A shout from behind drew her attention for the barest instant. “Marik!” Good, so Dietrik had heard his shout earlier and followed.

  Marik reacted the same moment she averted her eyes. She instantly refocused on him, but not in time to dodge. He put all his strength behind the right hook he pounded into her jaw.

  Had he utilized his strength working, he might have completely fractured her skull, if not snapped her neck. Pain shot through his fist when he stressed the flesh injured during his showy demonstration earlier. She rocked back, her eyes rolling up. Marik could hear Dietrik approaching while he rubbed his swollen knuckles.

  “No!” he shouted at his friend. “Don’t go near her! She has some kind of magic working for her!”

  He turned…and saw Landon instead. The archer replied without looking away from examining Hilliard. “Then you handle her. Kerwin! Help me carry him. He’s passed out cold.”

  Marik found Dietrik standing close by. “We were all chinning when you shouted,” he explained when Marik questioned him with his eyes. “Ah, what a crackling bloody mess! Do you happen to have any idea what is going on?”

  “No. I only felt her do something. I haven’t felt strange like that because of magic for a long time, so I figured whatever it was, it wasn’t good.” Marik saw no need to admit he’d nearly ignored the warning for what it was until nearly too late.

  Dietrik stared at the half-naked woman. Her dress’s top half bunched around her waist. “If she’s one of your type, then why did she attack you with this, mate?” He picked up her knife. “And come to think of it, how did she get it into the house? We weren’t searched as we were invited guests, but I know Sestion’s servants would never let a courtesan into the house unsearched, no matter how highly priced she is. The nobility’s lost too many members that way.”

  “Ask the stiff stick at the gate. But you’re right about the knife. I don’t understand that. I don’t see any decorative weapons hanging on the walls.” He studied the unconscious form at his feet. She certainly possessed beauty, a fact she no doubt played upon to lure young Hilliard away. Despite the moment’s tension, his eyes were drawn to her bare breasts. Marik berated his green behavior. Bad enough he had almost allowed Hilliard to be killed. Now he let himself become distracted.

  Tearing his eyes away, they came to rest on a golden bracelet around her wrist. It had meant nothing to him during the frantic rush. An inch wide, it was covered with tiny hooplike links. From each link dangled a small, golden charm.

  “Wait a moment,” he said to no one in particular. Something... Something… This charm bracelet snagged his eye, a minor detail about it off-center from every other charm bracelet he’d ever seen. After a moment, he realized what.

  “Look at this,” he said to Dietrik. The bracelet came free of her wrist with hardly a tug. “See this? All these little metal shapes look like weapons. Don’t women usually load up their bracelets with rabbits and horseshoes and four-leaf clovers?”

  “That is my experience, mate,” Dietrik agreed. “Is there anything to it?”

  Marik opened his magesight and quickly distinguished faint twists in the etheric energies of the mass diffusion surrounding the golden circle. “Something’s to it all right. But I don’t know what. I think this thing is what I sensed. She’s only an assassin, either going after Hilliard direct or trying to damage Sestion’s reputation.”

  “If this had been a solitary occurrence,” Dietrik admitted, “then I might be tempted to believe Keegan wanted to tarnish Ferdinand’s image. But I don’t believe in coincidences that astronomical.”

  “Neither do I,” Marik agreed as Landon returned. With him walked Ferdinand. The mercenary anticipated an angry demand from the noble to know exactly what in the hells was going on. Apparently Landon had already explained the basics.

  “Is she still alive?” he asked.

  “Quite,” Dietrik responded. “I imagine you will call the cityguard to take her away.”

  “Of course,” Ferdinand responded. A building rage burned in his eyes. “What’s that?” he demanded, gesturing to the bracelet in Marik’s hands.

  “I don’t know,” Marik responded. “But whatever it is, it’s a magical item.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Because it has magical residue all over it. I don’t know how this works, but I’d wager my pay it’s an assassin’s tool.”

  Ferdinand studied Marik anew. With an air of fiery pride, he declared, “I will have no assassins in my house, nor anything reeking of magic. Take this foul thing away from me.” He stepped to the door. “A carriage will be waiting by the time you escort Lord Garroway to the front entrance.”

  Marik winced while Ferdinand departed. “I think we slung mud on Hilliard’s reputation,” he muttered. For an instant, he wondered if being a mage was as distasteful to the noble as being an assassin.

  “Not at all,” Landon countered. “In the hallway, I told Sestion that we needed to be on our way. With Hilliard dead drunk, and an attack directed on him, Ferdinand assured me he quite understood.”

  “Where’s Hilliard?”

  “A few rooms down with Kerwin. It was empty.”

  Marik shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They left the room while four men Marik recognized from the smaller parlor entered. He guessed Ferdinand had conscripted them to guard their sudden prisoner. They entered the empty room near the stairs.

  Landon and Kerwin each supported Hilliard when Ferdinand reappeared. “A carriage is waiting.” He focused on Marik. “I will also be informing the cityguards that you have taken…custody…of this…artifact.”

  “I don’t intend to keep it.”

  Ferdinand nodded once before vanishing.

  They received quite a number of stares as they trundled down the steps and into the hallway. When they passed the room containing the beauty Marik had spoken with, he saw she was still there. She read no longer, involved as she was in a heated conversation with Ferdinand in the far corner. The gabbling, half-drunk nobles crowding the hallway stole their words from his ears.

  His duties demanded his attention so he forced himself onward, saddened that he had missed the opportunity to talk with her.

  * * * * *

  Judging by the pale light sifting through cracks in the shuttered windows of Swan’s Down’s common room, Marik guessed pre-dawn must finally be lightening the world in shades of gray. After wrestling Hilliard into his bed, oblivious to everything around him, Marik had only managed two marks worth of troubled sleep. Disjointed dreams and a dark sense of danger provoked him from his rest.

  He spent the remaining time after abandoning further sleep on a tall stool at Walsh’s bar. An earlier patron had left the collection of Tavern Puzzler cards scattered over the bar’s surface. Marik scooped them together to shove them back into their little wooden box so he could ponder the evening’s events without further distractions. The topmost card caught his eye in the dim light before he shut the lid. Instead of a brain-bending puzzle or logical problem, it read:

  I have four wings, but
cannot fly,

  I creak and moan, but never cry;

  On the same spot I'm always found,

  Toiling away, round and around.

  Marik snorted. He hardly needed more riddles bouncing around inside his head. Hilliard presented quite enough already for his tastes.

  To his mild surprise, Walsh had kept him company until nearly dawn. The innkeeper usually spent most of the morning asleep, letting his cook have the run until lunchtime crowds filled the common room.

  Walsh had been concerned, and eager to know the details of his champion’s troubles. Marik related the situation only in part, describing the cloud hanging over the young man in general terms. Though well-meaning, the innkeeper had been a distraction. In the faint illumination from the night lanterns, Marik wanted to concentrate on picking apart the puzzle of Hilliard Garroway.

  Out of respect for his troubles, Walsh left him with a wine bottle. The mercenary had never been attracted to wine, preferring instead the simple ale that flowed so plentifully in Kingshome. His few experiences with wine left him unimpressed. He had long since decided that the drinks of the aristocracy were best left to those who measured a drink’s worth by its price tag rather than its taste.

  The vintage Walsh insisted he partake of was gradually changing his opinion. A red wine, with a name he could not recall, and smoother than the other wines he knew, lacking the bitter under-taste. In fact, a faint sweetness hovered in the background that remained obscured until after the mouthful had been swallowed. On the whole, Marik decided that it made a pleasant change.

  He dipped his fingertip into the wine and ran it around the thin glass’s rim. Walsh had shown him how the glass could be made to ring in a silvery tone. Accomplishing the feat still lay beyond Marik. It had not looked very difficult. Absently, he kept at it while his mind worked.

  A rooster crowed in the faint morning light. Who would keep a farm animal in the city proper? The blasted thing must annoy everyone within blocks.

  Down the stairs came a shadowy form. A moment later, Landon pulled out the stool next to him in the eerily empty common room. He glanced at the bottle.

  “I take it you didn’t sleep long.”

  Marik nodded once. “No, not much. I’ve mostly been trying to figure out what in all creation is going on.”

  Landon ducked his head in acknowledgement. “Starting with that?” He gestured to the golden bracelet sitting on the countertop beside the wineglass.

  “I wanted to start with that, but Walsh turns out to be an overly-inquisitive night owl. He only just left a bit ago.” He lifted the object. “I know this is magical, but I can’t figure out what it does. And I can’t figure out if it is important or not.”

  “It is valuable, at the least. The Crimson Kings are bound to hand over all magical objects they discover during the course of their contracts.”

  Nodding, Marik said, “Anything containing magic is rare, I know that much. I know that binding a spell of any kind to a physical object is ten miles beyond difficult. Enchanting an object so it stays enchanted on its own is much harder than even that. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”

  “This could prove a valuable clue for us, especially since we know for certain.”

  “Somebody’s after Hilliard, I’m convinced of that,” Marik agreed. “But that only leaves an entire city out there where they could be hiding. We don’t know for sure exactly who our enemy is, or how many, or what type!” He slammed the bracelet down with a loud thunk. “I thought I might be able to pry information out of this, but I don’t have a gods damned clue what I’m doing! I’m not a real mage by any standard that matters.”

  “Do we need to know anything about it other than what we already do? We recovered it from an attempted assassin. Such a person in possession of a dubious object of a magical nature might give us the starting point.”

  “Yeah, a starting point. And where is that exactly? Is the point here in this district, or across the city? Is it back in the Thirty-Seventh near the One Soul’s chapter house, or maybe out in Tourney Town? Or all the way back in copping Spirratta? If we can’t even find the starting point, then it’s no good to us!”

  Landon sat impassively, sensing Marik’s frustrations had not yet been fully drained.

  “There’re too many mysteries. They had a trap already set for us the first day we arrived. They tracked us to the chapter house and attacked us again. They waited eightdays without doing anything until last night. Dietrik’s investigation only netted us a list of shady shops around the city, and that’s next to worthless.”

  “Still, we haven’t acted on that list yet.” He held up a hand as Marik made to retort. “I know. If any leads from the latest attack prove to be blind alleys, we can always return to that. We will need to plan our strategy beforehand to exercise proper caution.”

  “If the place we’re looking for actually is an alchemy shop, which is still only conjecture, simply walking through the door won’t tell us if we found the right one,” Marik replied. “We can’t simply go in and ask if they have any connections to dark guild assassins!”

  “Which is why we haven’t bothered yet and also why we need to plan our actions well in advance. If we do pursue that course, we must decide the best questions we might ask.”

  Marik continued as though the archer never spoke. “That’s why I’ve been puzzling over this bracelet. Knowing it’s magical doesn’t actually tell us much. Except that our assassin was well-funded. I’ve been hoping that, if I can figure out exactly what it is or does, it might reveal whatever we need to know.”

  “And has it?”

  “No.” Marik paused a breath before adding, with extreme reluctance, “In fact, I was wishing Tollaf were here.”

  That surprised Landon. He laughed briefly before stopping, drawing an irritated look from Marik.

  “This is what he does! The old fool’s always picking things apart in his workroom, figuring out how they work!”

  “It’s unfortunate we don’t have time to send it to him for analysis.”

  Marik shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll have this very long. Ferdinand said he would tell the cityguards. I’ll be surprised if they don’t show up today to demand it. In the meantime, we need to learn everything we can about it. Here.” He tossed it into Landon’s lap. “You have as much chance of uncovering its secrets as me.”

  The archer rotated it in the low light. Thinking aloud, he observed, “Nothing unusual. At least from a casual inspection. Let’s name all we know about it first.”

  “Which isn’t much. Other than the fact an assassin had it, what else is there? I’m convinced it’s a killer’s tool, but I can’t prove how.”

  “A killer’s tool, yes…but a mage’s? It is magic made, but made for whom? Another mage? Or a magicless user?”

  Frowning, Marik said, “I don’t think she was any kind of mage. That’s only my instinct, though.”

  “So magic is not the required key for activating whatever this does. It must be simpler.” Lips pursed, Landon suddenly slipped the bracelet over his hand.

  “Hey! Landon, that’s not smart!”

  After a brief squeeze over his fist, the oversized circle slid onto his wrist. Marik waited, tense. Nothing overt occurred. “You moron!” he exclaimed while Landon waved his hand around. “No wonder you get along so well with Kerwin! You’re as much a gambler as him!”

  “It had no effect on the lady assassin.”

  “Yeah, but it might have been triggered specifically to her!” Marik actually had no idea if that might be possible, but why take chances? “It could have been set up to kill anyone else who put it on. Might still be, in fact!”

  After prodding the bracelet on his wrist, Landon removed it. “I don’t think so. From what I understand, anything magical can usually only hold one type of spell. At any rate, simply wearing it doesn’t seem to force the magic to work. I felt nothing different. Did you?”

  “Nothing I noticed,” Marik admitted. He had
wondered earlier if putting it on was required to trigger it. His reluctance had held him back.

  “It can’t be complicated,” Landon decided. “An assassin in the middle of a job can’t afford to waste time on complications. At the same time, the payoff for bringing this must be worth the effort of utilizing it.” He began examining the bracelet’s details closely, searching for cracks or joining lines.

  “I think,” Marik offered, “that the charms must be a key element. Last night I thought they were only a camouflage to disguise the bracelet as an ordinary trinket.”

  “Look here,” Landon said. He pointed to one section. “This one loop is missing a charm. Did you search her body for other items?”

  “No,” Marik admitted. “Ferdinand turned frosty and I was thinking about Hilliard. I didn’t notice then.”

  “Perhaps there is a second piece to this. Could there be a separate charm? One that activates the magic once it is connected to the empty link?”

  “I suppose so. Hells, probably you’re right. I’ve never studied magic like this before.”

  “These aren’t locked in place,” Landon continued with his testing. “They slip right off.”

  “Remember the order,” Marik suggested when Landon began twisting the small charms off their links. “Maybe arranging them in a certain order is the key.”

  “I wouldn’t think so in this case. Remember, it can’t be complicated or time consuming if we have guessed right. But I was wondering what she might have done with this.”

  “If we ever figure it out, we’ll know.”

  Landon smiled slightly. “You misunderstand me. She obviously did something to activate the magic since you felt it half a building away. You don’t feel the same way with it sitting right before you as you did last night, do you?”

  “No.” Marik frowned.

  “So what you must have felt was the activation of the magic. But when you found her, she was about to kill Hilliard with a knife. And a typical thief’s long knife at that. A definite clear message to the duke if Hilliard were found with that stuck into his body. Knives may be standard for an assassin, but if the spell she invoked was not meant to kill him directly, then what was it meant for?”