by Watson Davis
“Yes, sir,” Lunan said, bobbing his head. “Of course.”
Dyuh Mon grinned.
Gal-nya’s Tower, the temple of Basaliyasta, loomed up into the smoky haze of cookfires, kilns, and forges that hovered over the city. A fetid wind blew down the street, swirling as it moaned, carrying with it the stink of too many humans in too small an area, of tanneries and slaughterhouses.
Out over the sea, rays of sunlight broke through the clouds and glittered on the choppy surface. Rain fell in the distance, obscuring the horizon, and it appeared to be headed toward Basaliyasta.
Dyuh Mon reached into his pouch, extracted some oracle bones, and shook them in his hands. He opened his palm and read the bones, along with the strands of magic connecting them to the many realms, gauging the forces being exerted around them. He shook his head and said, “There’s not supposed to be rain.”
Lunan darted forward, catching up with his stride. “Excuse me?”
“Follow me.” He slipped the bones back into his pouch and turned down one narrow alley, then another, through a maze of twisting streets, until he exited into the square by the Nightmare’s Gate.
Bishop Diyune of Basaliyasta, his mouth a thin line, the lips turned down in a cruel frown, his eyes narrowed into merciless slits, stood speaking with Rector Tolyo of Ofo before the door of a chapel. His moustache hung down in elegant ribbons to his chest.
“Bishop,” Dyuh Mon said, his voice cheerful. “You appear to be in good health. The Empress is pleased.”
Diyune paused a moment, meeting Dyuh Mon’s eyes before bending into a deep and subservient bow. In a rumbling voice, he said, “You honor me, your grace, I exist to do Her will. It is always a pleasure to be honored with your presence. I was informed of your coming, but not the time, or I would have sent an honor guard and a carriage.”
“And miss another stroll through this cesspool of a city? I wouldn’t dream of it.” Dyuh Mon gestured toward Lunan. “I believe you know my escort.”
Diyune nodded his head toward Lunan. “Rector.”
“Bishop.” Lunan bowed first to Diyune, and then to Rector Tolyo. “Rector.”
Rector Tolyo, her robes indicating her skill at healing and fire magic, bowed even deeper than Diyune, retreating to Lunan’s side with her hands clasped and her head bowed.
“Shall we proceed to the temple?” Dyuh Mon said, stepping away from them and striding down the street, leaving the others to rush to catch up.
Diyune gestured toward Rector Tolyo and said, “Rector Tolyo has been telling me of a shepherd girl—”
Dyuh Mon raised his hand and said, “The rector of Ehseaft was murdered by one of your old students, Lunan’s sister. Perhaps you remember her?”
“The liar?” Diyune nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back, staring down at the pavement as he walked. “I knew she would come to a foul end, both her and her idiot boyfriend. We were lucky Lunan warned us of their scheme.”
“She has always been difficult,” Lunan said, injecting himself into the conversation.
“I believe you have one of the previous rectors of Tuth-yoo in your service,” Dyuh Mon said, pausing for a moment to look back at the citizens they’d just passed on the street. “I would like to inquire about her health at the moment.” He shook his head and continued walking.
Diyune’s face clouded, his brow furrowing for a heartbeat before relaxing with realization. “Che-su?”
“The very one,” Dyuh Mon said.
“She is a bother,” Diyune said. “We have her drawing water for the acolytes’ baths, cleaning the kitchens, helping with the laundry. If it were my choice, I would put her down immediately.”
Dyuh Mon grinned and spread his hands. “She is but an old woman.”
Diyune raised his eyebrow. “Only if you are also an old man. She knows nothing useful about the soul she brought into this world. Keeping someone with her knowledge and power locked in the embrace is dangerous. Her mind is too strong to remain glamored for too long, even with the collar in place. We should have drained her magic and sacrificed her years ago.”
Dyuh Mon arched his eyebrows and turned his head, giving Diyune a sidelong glance.
Diyune gasped and drew himself up. He bowed and whispered, “If you do not mind my saying so, your grace.”
“You are forgiven.” Dyuh Mon snorted and came to a stop by the fountain in the plaza of three seadragons. He fished a coin from his purse and tossed it in. “Gartan wanted to drain her soul in Tuth-yoo, but now I think the wisdom of keeping her alive will become apparent.”
Diyune exhaled and licked his lips. He inclined his head once more. “How so?”
Dyuh Mon grinned. “Bait.”
SHIYK’YATH AND BA-FANKS pressed their foreheads to the pavement, but Sifa looked up as soon as the priests passed. Her heart pounded in her chest. She stared at Rector Tolyo’s back, fearing the woman would look her way.
A spidery-looking priest with a round belly and long arms and legs stopped and turned, looking back toward Sifa.
She ducked her head.
The spidery priest said, “I would like to inquire about her health at the moment.” And the four walked on.
The people around Sifa pushed themselves to their feet and she followed their example.
Ba-fanks leaned in toward Sifa and Shiyk’yath, making a show of putting his hand beside his mouth as though that would keep anyone on the street from hearing their conversation. He winked. “Are you wanted by the empire?”
Shiyk’yath backed away, shaking his head. “Kid, you ask too many questions and they’re the wrong damned questions.”
“Shiyk’yath,” Sifa said with a frown, touching his forearm.
“Perhaps, my new friend,” Ba-fanks said, raising his index finger and wagging it. “But I have knowledge of people who have knowledge of people who are also wanted by the empire, people who have need to escape, and people who want to change things. Which might you be?”
“Right.” Shiyk’yath arched his brow. “We’re so lucky to have accidentally met the one person in all of Basaliyasta with connections to the rebels and the underworld and The Magpie.”
“The Magpie?” Sifa asked, laying her finger across her lips. “One of the bounty hunters mentioned that. What is it?”
“He’s just a myth,” Shiyk’yath said.
“The Magpie?” Ba-fanks shrugged and spread his hands. “It would cost a half-spirit, but I could introduce you to the very man himself if you wished.”
“I’m done with you.” Shiyk’yath snatched Sifa’s arm and dragged her down the street. “This kid is just a waste of our time and would be a waste of any money we gave him.”
“But it could help to have someone who knows the city helping us,” she said.
“I’d prefer to trust the feeling in your heart than that little booger,” Shiyk’yath said. “Besides, it’s not like I have much money to give him. Which way do we go now?”
“It’s over there, so I guess we can turn at this alley up here,” Sifa said, pointing to their left. She glanced back behind them. Ba-fanks followed them a few steps behind, weaving in between people walking through the street, skipping along from one side of the street to the other, darting in and out, his bright eyes always on them, clasping his hands behind his back.
They walked into the alley, but it was a dead end, with lines strung across the alley and clothes hanging down, and a door into a glass-blower’s shop at the end.
Shiyk’yath sighed and with his hand tight on Sifa’s arm, they walked back out into the street. Ba-fanks leaned up against the corner of a building, tossing an apple in the air and catching it with his right hand, looking up at the sky and whistling as they passed.
“Let’s try this next one,” Shiyk’yath said, gesturing with the staff.
Ba-fanks giggled. “Dead end.”
Shiyk’yath whirled and pointed at him, saying, “I didn’t ask your opinion.”
“I do not know where you think you’re going,�
�� Ba-fanks said, shaking his head, “but you appear to be taking the worst way to it. If you want to go west, then take the big cross-street at the plaza with the three seadragons.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Shiyk’yath said, hobbling forward, pushing Sifa ahead of him, away from Ba-fanks.
They continued down the street, ignoring the various alleys and lanes heading west, until they reached a round plaza with a fountain with three sea dragons. Water sprayed from the mouths of three vicious-looking sea-serpents into a basin shaped like a giant clam shell. They followed Ba-fanks’s directions and turned west.
A large temple complex came into view, a temple with its own walls, higher even than the walls of the city, but the gates stood open. Statues of men and women, soldiers and mages, priests and priestesses, adorned the gates. Statues of such detail Sifa shivered, wondering if they were people who’d been turned to stone by some monster’s gaze.
Ominous towers soared into the sky at five points along that interior wall, with a sixth tower, twice as large as all the others, in the very center, with five temple basilicas at its base.
They entered through the gate, into a calm grove of carefully planted and groomed trees, with a lawn of grass and flowers in between the wide paths leading to the doors of the five basilicas at the base of the tower.
Priests and citizens ambled through the park. Beneath one shade tree, a few people gathered, discussing some issue. A man pushed a cart of pastries past them.
“Which way now?” Shiyk’yath asked.
“Um.” Sifa pointed to the right, to a path along the inside of the wall. “That way?”
“That way?” Shiyk’yath looked around. “I thought we were heading west?”
“No.” Sifa gulped, her mouth dry, and she nodded to the north. “This way.”
They walked around the perimeter of the plaza, Sifa with her head bowed, her eyes unfocused, her heart pounding, her breathing coming harder. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, no?” Shiyk’yath asked.
But Sifa walked on, past a fearsome tower with two guards outside the door, hurrying until she stopped at the south gate and looked back the way they’d come.
In the plaza outside the gate, a rug merchant stood by the front of his shop with a pile of colorful rugs at his feet, the pile reaching to his shoulders. At the shop across from him, a man sold vegetables and fruit from boxes. A man and a woman played a game of thrones at a table beneath an awning on the street before a crowded restaurant.
Shiyk’yath asked, “Which way is your heart telling you to go?”
Sifa looked back down the path, peering up at the tower with the guards, and said, “Up there.”
SIFA CROSSED HER ARMS over her chest and sighed. Stepping to the side of the gate, she stared up at the tower.
Shiyk’yath bowed his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know, if we had half a brain between us, we would get on the first boat to Morrin and forget all this ‘feeling’ nonsense.”
“This is my problem, not yours,” Sifa said, her voice soft. “You can go. You can get on a boat and head to the barbarian lands if you wish.”
Shiyk’yath scratched the back of his head. “I can’t let a little girl wander around a big town like this on her own.”
“Besides, they have your images at the docks and the guards would arrest you,” Ba-fanks said.
Sifa yipped, jumping to her left, away from Ba-fanks’s voice. Shiyk’yath jerked and scowled down at the boy by his side, raising the shepherd’s crook like he was about to strike him.
“I’m surprised you got through the Nightmare Gate at all,” Ba-fanks said, shaking his head. “But the guard there is lazy.”
“Where did you come from?” Sifa asked, putting her hand on her chest and slowing her breathing.
He smirked. “So you need to get into the jail tower to save someone, is that it?”
Shiyk’yath shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“You can’t get us into that tower.” Sifa furrowed her brow. “Can you?”
“For three-quarters of a spirit I can.” He looked up at them, appearing as pleased with himself as a dragon splashing through a mound of gold coins.
“If you can get us in there,” Shiyk’yath said, “I will give you a whole damned spirit.”
“This way!” Ba-fanks waved his hand, motioning for them to follow, and he sprinted through the northern gate, back out into the city.
“I don’t trust him,” Shiyk’yath said, standing before the gate, leaning on the staff. “We should just let him go.”
“Oh, shush yourself,” Sifa said. She strode past him but turned, walking backwards, as she spoke. “If he knows a way in as he said, I’m going to take it. If he doesn’t, what harm is there? Like I said earlier, this is not your problem; you are free to leave. Go to Morrin or Shria or wherever.”
Ba-fanks waited at the opening of an alley just past the restaurant, craning his neck, looking for them to follow. Sifa waved at him, smiling, and after checking her hood, she marched out the gate toward him. He disappeared into the alley.
Sifa hurried to the alley, and peered down it. The walls of the buildings pressed in from both sides, seeming to lean in toward each other, leaving a strip of blue sky with wispy clouds visible through the narrow gap above. Sifa stepped aside to let two women exit the alley.
Ba-fanks stood on a box by the opening of another alley near a bend, this new one leading westward. Sifa waved once more, and again he disappeared.
Sifa jogged forward, splashing through a puddle of rainwater, careful to step over a flower that had grown between the cracks. She reached this new alley and stared down it, stretching her neck, squinting. Ba-fanks bounced on his toes and waved his hand in the air at the end of the alley.
“Wait for me,” Sifa said, but he disappeared into the building. Sifa sprinted down the deserted alley and through the door into the building, into a dark hallway with a door on either side, and a short distance away, another opening into a courtyard. “Ba-fanks?”
“Where did the little shit go?” Shiyk’yath said behind her, his breathing hard as though he’d been running to catch up.
“I guess out here,” Sifa said, striding forward into the courtyard, wrinkling her nose at the smell of cat piss, squinting her eyes. A colonnade surrounded the courtyard, with a dead tree in the middle with its branches and trunk reaching up into the sky like a skeletal hand. Stone and mortar benches huddled around the tree, one of them cracked, another completely broken, with chunks of the gray concrete on the stone walkway encircling the tree. Four stone walkways led up to the tree, one from each of the sides of the square courtyard, with square patches of brown dirt in between them.
But no Ba-fanks.
Sifa stopped at the base of the tree, peering through each colonnade into the shadows, through the archways leading out from the colonnade into the building, searching the shadows for his shape. “I don’t see him, but we’re surrounded by people and they’re coming toward us.”
Shiyk’yath snorted. “At least he didn’t take all our money with him. Let’s get out of here.”
“He didn’t take all your money?” a voice asked. A burly orc, a young male, ambled out of the northernmost archway, a bludgeon in his hand, long square spikes of iron sticking from the rounded end. His black hair hung down the sides of his gray-skinned face in greasy curls. “Guess we’ll have to take it and give it to him. Well, his share at any rate.”
Shiyk’yath swore and whirled about. More young men, women, and orcs appeared from the doors of each colonnade, bludgeons, cudgels, and daggers in their hands.
“Oh, for Maegrith’s sake,” Shiyk’yath said, throwing the shepherd’s crook to the ground and putting his fists on his hips. He shook his head. “I don’t want to say I told you so, but look around.”
“I’m sure there’s been a mistake,” Sifa said, stepping toward the orcish boy who’d spoken first. “We met a nice boy named Ba-fanks who said he’d get us int
o the jail tower in the temple complex. We were following him, and got lost. If you spoke to him—”
Hearing laughter, Sifa stopped and peered up to the second story of the building. Ba-fanks sat in a window, his legs dangling over the bricks, a huge grin on his face. Sifa took a relieved breath, and pointed up to him. “Ba-fanks, please speak to these nice people.”
“I said I could get you into the temple for a spirit, and I will,” he said. He leaned forward, a sneer on his lips. “You’re wanted by the church. I know that. I’ve seen the images of the people they’re searching for and I’ve seen the reward, too.”
The line of humans and orcs approached them, readying their weapons.
“Please, don’t do this,” Sifa pleaded, squeezing her hands together, her eyes flicking from one angry face to the next. The courtyard grew dim as dark clouds gathered over the apartment.
Shiyk’yath cracked his knuckles and then slid his dagger into his hand. A chill wind swirled down into the courtyard. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the sky. But something struck the back of Sifa’s head and everything went dark.
Prisoners
SIFA GROANED. HER HEAD pounded and her eyes ached. She shifted her body, trying to find a comfortable position on hard stone. She couldn’t move her wrists and her ankles. She choked back bile.
“Yes,” a woman’s voice said, a voice Sifa recognized, or would have were her mind functioning. The woman sounded both happy and disgusted. “It’s them. Be careful, she almost killed my succubus. The poor thing still has headaches.”
“And the reward?” a gruff voice said. “We lost people capturing them.”
Cold fingers touched Sifa’s face. Sifa forced her eyes open a crack, letting in the light, too much light. She squeezed her eyes shut once more.
The fingers moved up her head, probing the base of her horns.
She squinted, peeking through her right eye. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes.
A man studied her, the spider-like priest from the road earlier in the day. His thumb grabbed her left eyelid, forcing it open. He stared into both of her eyes, looking from one to the other. He grinned, displaying frightening, unnatural pointy teeth. “You’re not angel-spawn at all, are you my dear? Che-su aimed quite a bit higher, it seems.”
