The Spell of Undoing

by Paul Collins

  ‘And which one would that be?’ asked Verris merrily.

  ‘The Thieves’ Guild!’

  ‘Ah, that one. Well, let me ask you, Borges, when was the last time we had good pickings and lots of work?’

  Borges stroked his beard, glowering. ‘You know damn well. It was before we stepped foot in this accursed city!’

  ‘But why? We could ply our trade here, could we not?’

  Borges stared at Verris like he was mad. ‘And go where?’ he demanded. ‘We're trapped in this rat cage like everybody else, with no boltholes, and no escape! If we knocked over a big job, the City Watch would track us down in a minute.’

  ‘Exactly my point,’ said Verris. ‘There's no future in it, unless we want to become petty crooks, and that's not my style. So we're branching out.’

  Borges gave him a helpless look. ‘But why this?’

  ‘Because we're good at it.’

  ‘The Venerable Lightfingers won't like it. Some people are happy with the old ways.’

  Verris shrugged nonchalantly. ‘He can have the Thieves’ Guild all to himself. Him and the other beg gars.’ Verris rested a hand on Borges’ shoulder. ‘The rest of us will do very nicely as marines.’

  Borges sighed resignedly. ‘If you say so.’

  Verris looked up at the straining sails. Taut ropes hummed and cross-spars creaked, and the wind whistled through the rigging. They were making good speed.

  Orders had been issued to tack towards a dense cloud bank on the eastern horizon, but only because Verris had pushed the matter and because Captain Bellgard was enjoying the thought that soon he would have a lord at his beck and call, though he hadn't quite decided whether to make the former Prince of Thieves a petty officer, or something even more subservient.

  Bellgard was no fool. He had seized the chance with both hands. He had heard the story of the girl with bad dreams and did not credit it for a second, but Quentaris was undeniably undermanned, especially by experienced fighters. If he won this bet, he would have two hundred extra hands on deck, plus an even larger number of small-time crooks who would probably feel comfortable working under Verris.

  And if he lost, well, they would have another guild on Quentaris but a fighting force just the same. Of course, he would have to put up with Verris as some kind of equal, but really he quite liked the man. He would never admit it, but he had a grudging respect for the man who stole from the rich and, just as often, gave half of it to the poor.

  Bellgard scowled at himself. He must be getting soft.

  Verris and Borges looked out over the portside battle ments. Verris mused that he would be much happier when they drew close to the cloud bank, for in truth he needed Tolrush to attack. And with that thought in mind, he had marshalled his forces.

  Overhead, within easy reach of his signal, was a clog – a small wooden cabin attached by rope to a crane high above, one of several upside machines used to swing sky sailors quickly from one mast or spar to another, in case of emergency. Verris had managed to commandeer three such cranes. With these, his combined fighting force of roughly three hundred men and women could be swiftly deployed to any point on Quentaris’ perimeter.

  Bellgard had found out, of course, and had grumbled and harrumphed a lot, but even he saw the wisdom of it. Fighters need to be where the fighting is thickest, and quick smart too.

  ‘You think they'll fight, if it comes to it?’ said Borges gloomily. For him, no cloud ever had a silver lining. There was nothing at the end of the rainbow except grief. And if bad things could happen, they would.

  Verris laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up, man. I'm sure there'll be half a dozen disasters, enough to please even you.’

  Verris produced a spyglass and scanned the horizon. Still nothing. He looked ahead towards the cloud bank. They were making good time. If Tolrush was anywhere about they would surely try to stop them before they could vanish into what amounted to thick fog.

  An hour later, there was still nothing. In another hour they would be into the clouds. Verris frowned. He wasn't sure how long he could hold together his followers, only some two hundred of which were actually his. The others were a motley collection of petty thieves, muggers and highwaymen short on work; he had convinced them to leave the Venerable Lightfingers’ guild and join his well-paid cause.

  Only action could turn such a mixed group into a cohesive fighting force.

  ‘What's that?’ said Borges.

  Verris pressed the spyglass hard against his eye. ‘Where –?’

  Borges pointed from aft to port. ‘Now will you look at that,’ he said.

  Behind them and a thousand feet above, a dark menacing shape bulged silently from a high cloud. It was long and narrow, and at the front two huge grappling arms opened and closed like pole-cutters. Verris whistled thinly through his teeth as he studied it through the spyglass.

  ‘It's seen a lot of action, by the look of it,’ he said.

  As it slid fully into view, Borges paled. It looked like some demon ship or, as he said afterwards, a ship of the dead.

  High overhead, lookouts in one of the several crow's nests began tolling a warning bell. The alarm spread. People rushed from indoors and scanned the sky, shading their eyes. The alarm had only been sounded three times before, twice when the city had been under attack by aerial creatures, and another time when a grim mountain-top castle had opened fire on them with ten-inch cannons. As terrifying as these were, there were few casualties and little damage, though the cannon balls and grapeshot – totally unknown weapons to Quentarans – had ruined the great canvas sails which afterwards had to be carefully patched up.

  Despite these earlier false alarms, word quickly spread that this time was different.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Verris. ‘It's Tolrush all right.’ He handed the spyglass to Borges who took it reluctantly but put it to his eye. After a moment, he said, ‘She'll not make much headway with those sails. They're full of holes!’

  ‘Take a look at the propellers.’ Borges did so. The propellers were a blur of motion. Verris went on: ‘She's making ten knots, or I'm no sailor. So we've less than an hour till she comes alongside and tries to board us.’

  ‘You guessed right,’ said Borges.

  ‘The girl guessed right. Or saw rightly, whichever it is. Thanks to her we have a chance.’

  Borges lifted his eyes upside and cursed. ‘If our people were up there we'd be travelling a darn sight faster.’

  ‘We might,’ Verris agreed, ‘but then we'd have no one to repel boarders. Quickly now, spread the word. Leave only a skeletal squad to the starboard. They'll swing to our leeward.’

  ‘Unless they keep to the heights and rappel down atop us.’

  ‘They'll not risk losing their propellers and rudders,’ said Verris. ‘Besides, they want us intact. There's no plunder in a crushed city.’

  He was right. But Quentaris wasn't going to make it to the thick scudding clouds in which they might have escaped. Being larger and heavier, Quentaris couldn't hope to outmanoeuvre the Tolrushians. Nor offer a decent fight. Because of the siege, Tolrush would have had its entire populace inside the city walls when it was wrenched through the rift vortex – it would thus outnumber Quentaris by quite a margin. Worse, Tolrush had been a military city-state for over a century, its people groomed for war from when they were toddlers.

  Quentaris lost its lead within half an hour.

  Battle stations sounded, and all hands scrambled on deck or squirmed up the rigging. Citizens grabbed whatever they could: broomsticks, clubs, pots and pans, anything that could be used as a weapon. Magicians assembled on the walls along with Verris’ marines and what sailors could be spared from upside.

  And then they waited.

  Above them, every inch of canvas strained against the wind. Rigging whipped and jiggled, and the masts, with their cross-spars outstretched like arms, creaked under the load. To port and starboard, thick black smoke belched from the array of funnels atop the g
reat engine-houses; and projecting from the sides, the enormous propellers were spinning as fast as they could. Even so, the marauding city rumbled closer by the second.

  Ten minutes later, the predator city came alongside, moving into Quentaris’ wind shadow. Immediately, they dropped sails, and Quentaris shuddered as the two land masses ground into one another, prow to prow. On each side, magicians cushioned the impact with spells that exhausted them almost at once. Despite this, masts shook and rigging twanged. Two sailors dropped to their deaths as the jolt unseated them.

  Then came grappling irons, looping through the air, snagging onto battlement and rigging. Within minutes, hundreds of Tolrushians had leapt across to Quentaris.

  ‘All hands, repel boarders!’ Verris screamed.

  The fighting was fierce, mainly concentrated a long the portside perimeter wall and in the rigging above. Verris was not fool enough to pull all the defences from other key spots though. Tolrushians were known for their devious tactics: they might just take it into their heads to send a lifeboat, charmed to float, under Quentaris and up onto the other side. This meant that fully a fifth of his forces were doing nothing, but it couldn't be helped.

  Nor did he have much time for regrets. Within moments of the two cities joining battle, he was in the thick of it. A mid-sized mountain troll leapt at him wielding a great battleaxe. Verris ducked beneath the arcing blade and thrust his sword up into the troll. The troll gasped, staggered back, and flipped over the parapet, dropping out of sight.

  Then two Tolrushians came at him, trading blow for blow, trying to pierce his defensive swordplay. He parried, thrust, feinted, and parried again. One of the Tolrushians made a misstep, overbalanced, and Verris cut him down then turned all of his attention to the remaining foe.

  A moment later the other Tolrushian was down too.

  Up and down the battlements, the fighting ebbed and flowed. There were screams, cries and hoarse gurgling shrieks, some fading slowly as Quentarans and Tolrushians fell overboard, plummeting thousands of feet to their deaths.

  The air wasn't just full of cries and grunts, it was also full of arrows. Verris saw one man with an arrow in his thigh, another in his shoulder, and a shield with six more sprouting from it. The magicians did their best to take care of aerial missiles, scorching some into flame in mid-flight, or else diverting them so that they fell harmlessly to the ground.

  The frenzied fighting went on for another hour.

  Verris rallied his men, ordered them to weak spots, and made sure the wounded were pulled from the thick of the battle and taken to the healers at the hospital. More than once he praised good fortune that some of Quentaris’ best fighters like Hulk Duelph and Commander Storm had been in a War Cabinet meeting with the Archon at the time of the Upheaval. Their very presence inspired many a Quentaran that day.

  ‘Keep at them!’ yelled Verris. ‘We have them on the run!’

  This was something of an exaggeration, but Verris had seen what few others had spotted so far: that the two cities were drifting closer and closer to the cloud bank. Just a little further …

  At the first clammy embrace of cloud he put his fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle.

  Immediately, a horn sounded.

  Everywhere his men disengaged from the enemy and set about hacking at the grappling lines that bound the two cities together. Sails creaked as they tacked to take full advantage of the wind. Spars cracked and cordage thrummed as the land masses pulled slowly apart. Bodies fell screaming into the chasm between the rumbling monoliths.

  The Tolrushians were taken by surprise.

  As the last grappling lines were cut, Quentaris yawed two points to starboard. Everyone braced themselves as the city righted then surged forward. There were brief cheers, but the fighting hadn't stopped. There were still a couple of hundred Tolrushians on board, and the clash of cutlasses, battleaxes and pikes, and the screams of the wounded and dying, continued for some time before dwindling completely.

  A conch sounded. Every lantern in the city was extinguished; every fire doused.

  Except for the creaking of sail and mast, and the wind in the rigging, there was no other sound, unless counting the far-off muffled shouts of enraged Tolrushians as the floating city searched through the pea-soup fog for Quentaris.

  Verris turned to find Borges standing beside him. He had a bloodied bandage strapped across his forehead. ‘Accursed cloud,’ said Borges grumpily. ‘Just when I was reaching my stride. Why, I could have sent a dozen more Tolrushians to meet their ancestors!’

  ‘Sheathe your sword, friend,’ said Verris. ‘For now, we are safe. So let us find out the damage. There will be little enough time to mend things if Tolrush runs us to ground.’

  Running blind, Quentaris drifted deeper and deeper into thick cloud. A chill clamminess invaded every corner of the city, and sounds took on an odd quality, as though the whole city was underwater. Captain Bellgard ordered the all-clear sound and a thunderous cheer went up from soldier and citizen alike. Quentaris was safe. For now. Even the Archon stood on his balcony and waved languidly to any citizens interested enough to look up.

  ‘A narrow escape,’ Verris said to Borges the day after the battle as he sat in the new and hastily appropriated Marine Guildhouse, not far from the Square of the People. ‘For which we're in debt to that young girl for discovering Tolrush.’ He signalled two of his men, Baldrear and Cafferty. ‘Find the youngling, if she's still alive.’

  An hour later, someone knocked on the door. Lord Verris looked up from his desk. ‘Come!’ He placed the quill in its inkwell and smiled when the door opened. ‘Young Tab Vidler. Where have you been hiding?’

  Tab glared at him. She had a cut on her cheek and her left arm was in a makeshift sling.

  ‘Ah,’ said Verris. ‘I see that you were in the thick of it. I might have known. Here, please take a seat.’ He offered Tab his own chair, carrying it around the desk and depositing it in front of her.

  Verris had food and drink brought and Tab wolfed it down. In all the excitement and danger, she hadn't eaten anything substantial since the battle. When she was finished, Verris asked if she had had any more visions.

  Tab was tempted to tell him the truth, as she had to Philmon. She believed that she could trust this man, this pirate and thief, probably more than most of the so-called honest citizens of Quentaris.

  Yet still something held her back. As they said in Quentaris, you can't unscramble an egg.

  Just then Captain Bellgard was shown in. Tab leapt to her feet, but the captain smiled kindly and waved her to sit down again. He seated himself nearby. Verris gave Tab a nod to speak.

  Tab frowned, trying to remember everything. ‘I saw a big youth, a Tolrushian. He wasn't much more than a boy, but everybody took orders from him. He was very cruel, with fox-like eyes.’ Tab thought for a moment. ‘He had an advisor, someone called Genkis. Oh, and last night I couldn't sleep because my arm hurts. I had another vision.’

  Verris nodded for Tab to continue.

  ‘There's a horrible, black creature – like a kind of big wolfhound. It kept hissing and spitting.’ Tab shivered at the memory of watching it. ‘Anyway, the boy-leader was yelling at some people, telling them they were imbeciles for letting Quentaris get away. He had two of them killed on the spot by a magician who vaporised them into a dark mist. He's … I think he's in desperate need of icefire.’

  ‘That's Kull Vladis you're describing,’ said Verris. ‘He's the blood-thirsty boy-king of Tolrush. His pet's name is Sherma. The Tolrushians use animals as slaves and fighters. What else did you see?’

  ‘Kull blames Quentaris for their plight. He says our army was having no luck with the siege and so we bewitched them.’

  Verris’ lips moved with the merest hint of a smile. ‘Obviously, he doesn't realise we're in the same boat, so to speak. Perhaps that will prove useful.’

  Tab shrugged. ‘Kull is telling his people that we know how to get back home to Amlas. And that we have a sto
ckpile of icefire with which to fuel the propellers.’

  ‘If only that were true,’ said Captain Bellgard wistfully. ‘Our stock is pitifully low. We lose people every time we send a landing party out to find the gemstones.’ He sighed.

  Verris gazed at Tab thoughtfully. ‘I'm going to ask you for a favour, Tab. You are free to refuse, if you choose. It is this – that you keep future visions just for our ears.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Tab. She didn't mind keeping silent, but she was curious.

  ‘Well, you're our secret weapon,’ said Verris. ‘With your help, we have a way to eavesdrop on Kull and his plans. I have no doubt that that could prove enormously helpful.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Captain Bellgard. ‘And that's putting it mildly!’