by Layton Green
“You think this is easier than pounding rock out of a mountain until you die from exhaustion?”
“Good point,” Will muttered.
“Never been to the Ninth, have you? The Protectorate built a few byways, but most of it’s wild. A whole new world. Treasure, Will. Mountains and valleys and caves full of treasure. And the Barrier Coast, rucka. I’ve heard all kinds of tales about that. Gypsies are out there, of course, but that’s fine by me. Gypsies leave you be unless they’re trying to pick your pocket. Except the Black Sash gypsies, now they’ll slit your throat from ear to ear.”
“Have you ever been to the Ninth Protectorate?”
“My da and I crossed the Great River once, on a Queen’s Day ferry. Just a quick out and back, but I’ve heard the stories. Believe me.”
One of the tuskers shook his flail at them, and Will quieted. He wished Val were here. He would figure something out. Or Mala—she would just reach into her pouch, find something to help them escape their chains, then lead a slaughter of their captors.
But they’re not here, buddy. Caleb’s a pacifist, and Yasmina’s still wearing a T-shirt.
This one’s on you.
Around midday a cloud of black smoke blotted the sky in the distance. The goblins stopped to confer, then sent one of their scouts ahead to investigate. After the scout returned to confer with Grilgor, the party resumed its pace, heading straight towards the ashen horizon.
An hour later the forest broke, revealing the smoking remains of a village nestled by a stream. The tuskers led the captives to the center of town, then halted the march to rummage through the charred remains. Will could tell the village had once been attractive, a collection of brick and thatch-roofed homes surrounding a leafy central square.
“Notice what’s missing?” Will said to Dalen, blinking through the tears caused by the lingering smoke.
“Bodies.”
“Exactly. And the tuskers are bringing sacks of coins out of the houses. Why wasn’t this place looted by whoever burned the village?”
“Good question, Will From The North,” Dalen murmured.
After the tuskers finished looting the ruined settlement, they spurred the steeds into action. A few minutes outside the village, on the banks of the stream, Will found some insight into the mystery—and wished he hadn’t.
Swarming with carrion birds, piled in neat rows next to the stream like stacks of human firewood, were the corpses of the missing villagers. The wind shifted, causing him to recoil as the smell of decomposing flesh drifted to his nostrils.
Yasmina vomited behind him. He glanced back and saw Caleb staring at the pile of bodies, rubbing his bound hands together as if kneading a pile of dough.
“By the Queen,” Dalen muttered.
Later that night, Will lay on his side, eye to eye with Caleb. Yasmina was facing away from them, already asleep. Almost a week had passed since their capture, and the tuskers had picked up four more prisoners.
“So, genius,” Caleb said, in a voice too low for anyone else to hear, “you thought of a way out of this yet?”
“Some genius,” Will said. “My main intellectual achievement was memorizing the entire contents of the AD&D Monster Manual when I was twelve.”
“It’s better than bar menus.”
“Glad to see you still have your sense of humor,” Will said.
“I’m not as frail as you think, little brother. I’ve been around longer than you, remember. Got a few more gray hairs.”
“Three whole years? And the day you find a gray hair is the day you have a nervous breakdown and check yourself into the Mayo Clinic.”
“Beware, brother mine, of jealousy. ’Tis the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ ”
“Who said that? Stephen King?”
“Yeah . . . that would be Shakespeare,” Caleb said.
“Since when do you read Shakespeare?”
“I had to say something when my ex stole my iPhone. She was a literature major. I looked the quote up.”
“Didn’t she catch you cheating?”
“So break up with me. Don’t steal my iPhone.”
Will rolled his eyes. “This world isn’t ready for you.”
“They won’t have to put up with me much longer.”
Will’s voice turned serious. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I heard you talking to Dalen about the tuskers taking us to some slave mines.”
Will couldn’t deny the truth of that, so he decided not to talk about it. “How’s Yasmina?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ve been filling her in on what we know about this world. Mainly she listens and stares straight ahead. I think she’s taking it in, but . . . I don’t know, Will. She’s a tough girl, from Brazil and all, but she’s middle class like us. Her parents were teachers.” His eyes slipped downward. “I was the one who suggested that campfire.”
“I took the key from Salomon, Caleb. This is on me.”
“You did what you thought was best at the time. Dad brought this on us, if you want to blame someone.”
“Don’t,” Will said.
“Why not? Why is it such a sacred memory? All he did was lie to us our entire lives and leave us at the mercy of Zedock.”
“He left us the weapons and his diary. We don’t know all the details. He did what he could.”
“Did he?” Caleb said. “I don’t doubt that he loved us, but he came to our world for a reason, and I don’t think it was Netflix and thin crust pizza. When you play with fire, Will . . . you know the deal. It’s one reason I’m a pacifist. Violence is a never-ending cycle. And it usually carries on to the next generation.”
“Really? You’re blaming Dad instead of Zedock?”
“Dad was a wizard. A member of the Congregation. I loved him, too, but do you think his hands were clean?”
Caleb turned to go to sleep, and Will lay on his back, staring at the stars. He didn’t do well with shades of gray. He wanted the world to be black and white, good and evil.
Especially when it came to people he loved.
“Psst. Will.”
He shifted to see Dalen on his side, peering at him. Except for a few sentries too far away to hear, no one else seemed to be awake.
“We need to figure something out. A plan.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “We do.”
“I think I’ve got a way out of these chains.”
Will almost shot up, but he forced himself to look asleep.
“But lucka, it has to be the right time,” Dalen continued. “Have you seen the guard with the missing tusk, the one who unlocks the circle every morning?”
“Sure.”
“Every few nights he drinks too much grog and falls asleep with the keys around his neck.”
“Can’t you just,” Will flicked a wrist, “bring the keys over here? Once they’re asleep?”
Dalen looked embarrassed. “I haven’t quite mastered that spell.”
Will wanted to say, isn’t that about the easiest spell in the book? But he held his tongue. He didn’t know anything about how magic worked. “So what’re you going to do?”
“Tools of the trade,” Dalen said mysteriously. “But I need you to take care of the tusker once I lure him over. Can you do that?”
I’ll do it or die trying. “You better believe it.”
“Good. I’ll unlock the four of us, then leave the key for the next person while we slip away.”
“What do we do after that?”
“Lucka, Will. We run.”
Will woke stiffer than usual the next morning. Talking to Dalen had given him a glimmer of hope, though his stomach churned at the thought of having to take on a tusker by himself, weaponless, with his hands chained.
He spent the morning recalling the lessons in hand to hand combat Mala had given him. The thought of her brought a pang of memory.
She had sacrificed herself for them. For Will.
What he wouldn’t give to see
her alive once more. He would find a way to prove himself, to make her look at him despite the fact that she probably dated six-foot-five Viking warriors who looked good in tunics.
No, he thought. Mala was too smart for that. Too cool.
He put his hands to his temples. What are you doing, Will? She’s dead. They’re all dead. Mala, Hashi, Fochik, Alexander. Maybe even Lance and Val. They’re all dead and they’re not coming back.
The lowland forests had ended some time ago, and they were traveling through a region of dry grass, bare trees, and undulating terrain. After crossing a stream and rounding a bend, the path led into a shallow canyon. Not far in the distance, a line of tall hills appeared like brown gumdrops beneath a roiling sky.
Soon after they filed into the canyon, the tusker steeds started making a noise halfway between a grunt and a whinny. A few of the prisoners gasped and pointed to Will’s left. He turned to look and then paled.
Standing atop a low bluff about fifty yards away, guarding the approach to hill country, was a group of enormous humanoids dressed in rough cut animal skins. They had to be at least eight feet tall, and each one carried a spiked club half as long as their body.
“Lucka,” Dalen breathed in front of him. “Hill trolls.”
-10-
Mala was wrapped in gray.
A leaden mist cloaked the narrow valley in which she stood, the sky thick and hoary as gravy, the forested hills choked with leaves that hung like ashes from the trees.
On the opposite end of the valley, she could just make out the outline of a few low structures. A farmstead, she guessed.
The air was cool but not cold, still but not dead. No sun in the sky. The valley smelled like mushrooms and wood smoke.
There was no grass, just a bluish-gray ground surface with the slick texture of clay. Perhaps it was clay.
The curiosities of this world were a distant item of interest compared to her survival. She grasped her amulet and slid her fingers into the grooves of silver, ready to re-enter the Place Between Worlds and retrace the passage to her own world, hoping the astral wind had passed.
Nothing happened.
Mala stared at the amulet in shock, then remembered the words of the fence she had consulted in Londyn.
With an amulet of power such as this, my dear gypsy explorer, it is impossible to predict how many charges it holds. And this type of item has limits. Perhaps its magic will function once, twice, three times. Perhaps it will work once an hour, once a day, once a year. Only the Magecrafter who fashioned it can know.
Did her amulet need to recharge, she wondered, or was its power spent? Might she be stuck in this place forever? Heart fluttering in her chest, her short sword and curved dagger appeared in her hands as if by magic, and she crouched to survey the barren landscape.
No sign of life. Not even a birdcall to break the silence.
Just as she decided to scout the homestead from the safety of the trees, a hole in the air opened and closed in the blink of an eye, and her majitsu oppressor tumbled onto the ground.
Mala whipped another dagger out of her boot and hurtled it at the warrior mage, almost as fast as the portal had opened. She was hoping to catch him off guard or, better yet, perhaps the laws of magic did not work the same on this world.
She had no luck on either account. The majitsu reacted in time to use his magic to harden his swarthy skin, and the dagger bounced off him as if striking a stone wall. His smile appeared like a paper cut beneath his shaved head and sturdy nose.
He leapt forward with the distinctive movement of the majitsu, a cross between hurdling and flying, each step covering five paces. Mala whirled her weighted sash into his face. That bounced off him too, and she tossed a few ineffective fire beads before turning and sprinting for the forest, knowing if he caught her he would shove his fist through her heart.
She could feel him behind her, grinning, confident in his superior ability. She hated him for it.
Ten feet separated them. She rolled to the side, coming up with both blades at the ready, poised to engage. The majitsu turned to face her, hands loose at his sides.
She feinted and backpedaled. As he lunged for her, something steel gray and slithery shot out of the air and attached itself to the majitsu’s wrist, jerking him backwards and then coiling around his body at an impossible speed, rendering him immobile.
Mala spun to the right, just in time to see a huge hag-like creature point a crooked finger at her. Another gray tendril shot out of the hag’s fingertips. Mala tried to evade the missile, but it landed on her arm with the soft impact of a snake dropping from a tree, then coiled around her faster than she could react, tightening her arms against her sides and causing her to topple over, just like the majitsu. The coils felt slimy and thick against her skin. What type of strange magic is this?
One of the coils covered her mouth, muting her shouts but allowing her to breathe through her nose. She turned towards the hag and saw two similar but smaller creatures standing behind her.
They were hideous things, taller even than the majitsu but squat like toads, with arms and legs disproportionately short for their torsos. Each wore shapeless, loose fitting wool smocks with pouches sewn into the middle, and their exposed skin looked like chewed gray leather. They wore no shoes, and the six wrinkled protrusions at the end of their feet resembled knuckles more than toes. Each had six stubby fingers as well.
The larger hag had a nest of white hair that sprouted in all directions and hung past her shoulders, a squashed nose with three nostrils that covered half her face, and a choker made of bark and affixed with a series of ivory hooks holding live, two inch-long worms. As the invertebrates wriggled in place on her neck, the hag barked a command in a language Mala had never heard. It sounded like raspy gargling.
The two other hags, one bald and one with pale red hair, waddled over to Mala and the majitsu, then carried them back to their mistress as if they were sacks of grain.
The lead hag tore off one of the worms around her neck and popped it into her mouth, then hunched over Mala and probed at her face with a clawed finger. Mala recoiled from the slimy touch of the worms dangling against her skin. The hag’s powerful odor washed over her, rot and disease and some pungent but unidentifiable herb. Mala choked back her vomit as the thing babbled in its guttural language.
After lifting off Mala’s amulet and placing it around her own neck, the hag muttered something to the other two creatures, then took a spongy root out of one of her pouches and passed it under Mala’s nose.
She swooned.
When her eyes opened, Mala found herself looking at the underside of a peaked thatch roof. Still clothed, unhurt as far as she could tell, she was hanging upside down in a room with rough stone walls.
Her feet were secured to a giant iron hook with the same disgusting ropy tendrils the hag had used to subdue her. The hook was attached to a ceiling beam. When Mala tried to wriggle, she realized her entire body was bound, wrapped like a mummy.
To her right, a small window showcased a gloomy view of the valley.
To her left was the majitsu.
He was hanging upside down from an identical iron hook. His brown eyes bored into hers. “Why didn’t you escape with the amulet? You couldn’t, could you?”
She would tell him nothing. He could simmer in the arrogance of his kind.
“Why would you do such a stupid thing, portaling into an unknown realm?”
Her lips curled. “Better that you kill me in the Place Between Worlds? I think not.”
The majitsu flicked his eyes towards the wooden door. “There are fates worse than death.”
“Perhaps. But I’ll choose an uncertain fate over a certain demise.”
The majitsu struggled to free himself, then stopped and squeezed his eyes shut, as if concentrating. When he opened them again, Mala asked, “Why can’t you break these bonds?” She had not known many things a majitsu could not break.
“Because they’re constructed of a stronge
r magic than mine, obviously. Yet it’s strange,” he muttered, as if speaking to himself, “that I don’t recognize the basic structure. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“I believe that’s why they call it otherworldly.”
“What do you know about other worlds, gypsy? I’m surprised you left your wagon.”
Mala resisted the urge to spit in his face, and then explain in exacting detail just how far she had traveled, the wonders and terrors she had seen that surely dwarfed his limited experiences gleaned from a lifetime of servitude to the wizards.
No, this gadje majitsu didn’t deserve an explanation.
“As if working for a necromancer is a higher calling,” she mocked. “Did you graduate last in your class at the Academy to secure such an honorary position?”
“Watch your tongue, wench. Zedock is an adjunct member of the Congregation.”
Mala didn’t bother with a response. In her mind, the Congregation and the leadership of the Protectorate were so corrupt, so ludicrously unworthy of respect, that anyone who stated otherwise was a fool.
And everyone who propped up their incestuous regime, herself included—they were fools, too.
But again, better to be a fool than dead.
Shuffling footsteps approached from outside. As the door creaked open, Mala’s eyes flicked to the ominous curve of the hook above her head, disliking the train of thought that resulted.
The door swung wide, and the hag mother shuffled through the entrance, the other two fiends crowding in behind her.
-11-
“A gazer?” Val asked, as the horses clacked down St. Charles.
“A gazer. Ye know, a phrenomancer.”
The second term sounded familiar, but Val couldn’t recall where he had heard it. “I don’t think I’m ready to consult a wizard.”
I’d love to consult a wizard, he thought, if I had any faith they wouldn’t kill me or toss me in the Fens.
The carriage driver brayed and slapped his knee. “There’s the laddie I remember, doesn’t know an intelligent monster from a wood rat. Gazers aren’t wizards—well, now, come to think o’ it, I suppose some of ’em are in a fashion, or at least that’s what they say. But they’re certainly not part o’ the Congregation. They can see things others can’t, now that’s without a doubt.”
