by Des Pensable
In all cases, below floor level was a pit usually about two paces wide and deep and out one side ran a pipe to carry the overflow down the sewer system. Of course the system was ideal for dumping just about anything that people wanted to get rid of, including dead animals and presumably, in rare cases, pieces of corpse.
It was into one of these stinking pits that Rob slithered and took refuge. For a human it was the worst possible nightmare, but for a Logicon it was a restaurant. It smelled good and he couldn’t resist a taste, which for a Logicon meant using his body to envelop a chunk of the sludge, forming a bubble and ingesting it into his body. Had he been a newman imitating a Logicon it would have probably been too gross to think about, but his Logicon body coloured his thoughts. He was hungry so he might as well eat.
The wait was the hardest of his life. He suspected that they would be searching the sewers, and the Town Watch would be on the lookout for a naked newman roaming the streets. His vivid imagination dreamt up a team of Logicon hunters sliding around all the sewer pipes like a pack of bloodhound leeches, trying to pick up his scent. However, logic suggested that the immense task of searching the entire city’s sewer system made the likelihood of his discovery remote.
He waited until late into the evening, submerging every time somebody answered the call of nature. When all noise and the vibrations of movement died down, he slid out of the latrine hole to find himself in a relatively large basement at least ten paces wide and fifteen long. He shape changed to his human form and found his own smell almost unbearable.
The room was lit by four yellow light balls suspended on wires from a ceiling several paces high. Each of the balls was backed with a silver metal reflector that directed the light down, but left the ceiling dark with shadow.
Rob looked around and saw that there were two other latrines in the room beside the one that he had escaped from. Across the room was a tiled area containing two large barrels filled with water. Next to one of them was a large iron cauldron suspended from the ceiling by a strong iron chain, and on a shelf nearby were cakes of soap. Near the door there was a couch against the wall.
‘Someone’s watching over me.’ he thought and quickly moved to the tiled area, filled a bucket with water, grabbed a brush and some soap and set to work to clean off the stench. He scrubbed himself thoroughly, but then decided he would need to do it again as he was still too putrid. Just as he was fetching another bucket of water he heard the footsteps of several people descending the stairs to the room.
He quickly emptied the bucket, changed to his Logicon form, and slithered up the wall to the darkness of the ceiling. Six young priests and a woman entered the room.
‘Ooow ... it smells horrible in here,’ said the woman.
‘Damn,’ one of the young men remarked. ‘It was Fental’s turn to purify the air down here. He’ll cop it tomorrow. Who can do it?’
‘I can.’ One of the others began chanting.
Soon the room smelled as fresh as a country field, while Rob hugged the ceiling in the dark of the shadows. It didn’t take too much imagination to guess what the group were interested in. Even though his vision was poor, his hearing was acute and he could hear every heavy breath, thrust and grunt as each of the young priests took their turn with the woman on the couch, except one who said that he was too embarrassed to do it in front of his colleagues. They all laughed and called him names, but agreed that he could have his turn after they left.
‘I managed to borrow a small cask of sacred wine from the store a couple of days ago. Why don’t we look after that while our modest friend here does his duty,’ said one of them. The others all laughed, agreed and left in a jovial mood.
The remaining priest initiate closed the door and casually walked over to the woman lying prone on the couch. He sat beside her stroking her shoulder then suddenly moved to grip her around the neck.
‘My sister was a prostitute. She disgraced our family. I killed her. You are a disgrace to your family and need to die.’
The woman fought and struggled, trying to push him away, but he lay across her body with his own to hold her down while choking her.
Rob heard what he said and became angry. A change came over him as he used his magic to eliminate the light in the room; he dropped to the floor with a slopping sound, reforming as a human female with wings, resembling a figure he had seen in one of the city’s books.
‘What’s happening?’ demanded the priest, slackening his hold on the woman’s neck. She managed to break his grip on her and scratched at his face in the darkness.
The light in the room returned and the priest and the prostitute both saw a glowing naked winged woman with cold black eyes standing several paces from them.
‘Miriam move to the side. I will deal with this man,’ Rob intoned in a strangely chilling feminine voice.
The prostitute pushed the priest away from her, climbed off the couch, grabbed her panties and fell to her knees before what she believed to be a holy avenger.
‘You know me? Thank you, thank you gracious lady protector! I thought I was done for. I will donate my night’s takings to honour you. Give him what he deserves.’ And she stood up, kicked the priest initiate who had fallen to his knees visibly shaking in fear, and quickly moved to the door but turned to watch.
‘Forgive meeeee!’ begged the priest initiate.
‘Did you not murder your own sister and just now try to kill another woman?’ Rob asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ cried the young initiate.
‘How many more have you murdered?’ asked Rob.
‘Only four - they were all tainted prostitutes who deserved to die. I hated them all!’
‘He must be the one that’s been killing my friends!’ said the girl. ‘Give him what he deserves Lady.’
‘Leave us, please.’ Said the black eyed Rob and the girl fled through the door.
There was a pulse of mind magic and the priest’s eye glazed over.
‘I leave you to judge yourself as if you were judging another guilty of your crimes.’ Said Rob then returned to the Logicon form and, slithering back up to the ceiling, darkened the room.
The priest initiate pulled out a dagger and plunged in into his heart falling forward into the pool of his own blood.
Rob’s eyes returned to their normal brown colour and he became conscious of the darkened room. Hearing no sounds, he slid back to the floor and dismissed the darkness, to be confronted by the dead priest. He quickly examined the body.
‘Hmm. Looks like this fellow must have been overcome with guilt to kill himself like that. I better go before someone thinks that I’m involved.’ he thought.
He noted that he didn’t stink like he had before. The young priest’s room freshening magic must have cleansed him of the bad smell. The incident reinforced what Granddad had being saying for years. The priests in the temples had grown corrupt. They collected too much in taxes and overindulged in the good life, while the poor and the sick suffered. He had only half believed it before. Now he had witnessed it firsthand.
His job was to escape. He was still naked, so travelling without clothes in the streets even at night would attract unwanted attention. He carefully opened the basement door and saw that there were more than twenty steps up to the ground floor. He edged up the stairs and spotted a pair of statues in the corridor.
All the statues in Granddad’s mansion were guards that set off alarms. He had to assume that these statues would do the same. He considered just trying to run past them, but didn’t know how far it was to the front door, where perhaps an alarm would lock it before he could leave.
As he stood at the base of the stairs he noticed the symbol of the Faith over the door. It was a smiling face looking at a pile of coins enveloped in flames. He thought for a minute and recalled that this was the symbol of the Temple of Spiritual and Financial Harmony.
The followers of this faith believed that the road to happiness was a careful balancing of the financial and spiritual aspects o
f life. Harmony could be achieved if the wealthy donated a proportion of their wealth to the temple to help the poor, while the poor prayed for the sins of the rich. Thus the spiritual devotion of the poor neatly balanced the financial wealth of the rich.
In the afterlife, the poor would be rewarded for their devotion to prayer and the rich for their generous donations. In the unusual situation where a wealthy person was both generous in donations and devoted to prayer, then that one would be feted in the afterlife and secure a good position in the hierarchy of the god.
Rob’s Granddad had mentioned them a few times. Some of the merchant wizards who had become followers had donated all their wealth to the temple on dying, leaving their family destitute. The family, now poor, could add extra atonement for the excesses of the dead wizard by devotion to prayer, ensuring that his donation of wealth would ensure him an extra high position within the god’s hierarchy and that all would be well off when they joined him in the afterlife.
Their High Priest Kelnor was the Treasurer of the temple and Head of the financial committee that ensured harmony was kept between the devotion of the poor and donations from the rich. He was known to be fiercely opposed to mind magic and all its practitioners.
Rob was tempted to go back down the latrine and find a better place to surface but then again he felt that it would be an exciting challenge to escape from here, one that he could tell heroic stories about in the future. As a last resort he could always escape through the latrine.
So he pondered how he might defeat the guardian statues. Then the perfect plan came to him. Fire. They must have some evacuation procedure in case of fire. All he had to do was create a lot of smoke and the statues would sound the alarm. There would be chaos as everybody tried to flee the building and he could escape.
The ideal thing to set alight in the basement was the couch, but he had to find a way to set it alight, and that was more difficult. He didn’t know any fire magic. He thought for a minute or two and remembered that the light balls hanging from the ceiling became quite hot. Perhaps one or two in the couch might do the job. Unfortunately, try as he might he couldn’t get the light balls off the wires that suspended them from the ceiling. In the end he ripped pieces of stuffing out of the couch and tied them around the light balls. This substantially reduced the amount of light in the basement but eventually had the desired effect, creating smoke, and lots of it.
He was deciding when to start the panic when somebody came down the stairs to go to the latrine, discovered the smoke and sounded the alarm. Smoke poured up the stairwell, out into the hallways and up the stairs from there. Within a minute or two there were people everywhere, shouting and jostling each other in an effort to escape. Since many of the priests slept naked, the hallway was full of naked people and Rob had no problem slipping out amongst them.
Outside was an old priest handing out cloaks to protect the priests’ modesty. This had obviously happened before and they were fully prepared. Rob of course gratefully accepted one of the cloaks and discretely slipped away. He was overjoyed. He had escaped and was on his way home.
Three hours later he cautiously approached his grandfather’s estate, hugging closely to any cover he could find. He was tired, footsore and totally sick of hiding at every sound in case it might be someone trailing him.
About two hundred paces away he stopped and waited for a few minutes. It looked clear, but he could see Melanie and two of the mansion guards pacing nervously near the front gate. He wasn’t quite game to travel the final distance, so he looked around for some way to attract Melanie to him. If he could get within ten to fifteen paces of his cousin he could create a mindlink with her.
He looked around and noticed two carriages waiting near the inn at the end of his road, and an idea came to him. He quickly but carefully moved back down the road to the first carriage and told the driver that he wished to meet his sweetheart Melanie, who was waiting for him at the gate. If he could pick her up and bring her to the inn, then he would give him double the usual fare.
The driver accepted and set off for the mansion’s gate. About twenty paces before it arrived; several town guards and an archon raced out and stopped the coach. Melanie darted over to the carriage, expecting Rob to be in it. The guards held her back until they had searched it thoroughly and then let her talk to the driver, who relayed the message that he was to pick up Melanie and take her to her lover.
Melanie immediately realized that it must have come from Rob, but so did the archon. He left the town guards outside the gate and teleported himself and three of the guards to the inn, while the carriage brought Melanie down there as well. She paid the driver and walked around the outside of the inn. She knew Rob wouldn’t be silly enough to go inside, but it was dangerous outside with the archon around. She walked up and down the street until at last he created a mindlink with her.
‘Are you all right Rob? We’ve all been worried sick. We knew that you escaped, as the archon was back here ten minutes after you were captured. He’s hopping mad about your escape and for another reason as well, but I’ll leave Granddad to tell you about that. We think there’s at least another two archons around here somewhere out of sight and waiting to swoop.’
‘I’m alright, just a bit tired,’ Rob replied. ‘I’ve got no money and no clothes, only a priest’s robe that I stole.’
‘Granddad said that if you contacted me I should tell you to go to the vacant house near the sewer exchange spot. Do you know where that is?’
‘Yes Melanie, thanks. I’ll see you soon.’
Melanie casually entered the inn, bought a bottle of brew and walked all the way back to the mansion’s front gate, then stood talking with the guards while drinking. The archon realised that something had happened, but not what, and angrily returned to his hidden position near the building’s entrance.
He settled down to wait, wishing that he could search inside the old wizard’s mansion again, but he had already done that twice today and there was only so much he could do without noisy claims of harassment from the Secretary of the Merchant Wizards’ Guild.
Rob carefully left the area and travelled to the vacant house that was used by a variety of people for black market exchanges. It was only about ten minutes away and when he was within twenty paces of it Granddad appeared out of nowhere, placed his hand on Rob’s shoulder, and teleported them to a small room under the mansion used for clandestine entry and exit.
Granddad gave Rob a hug. ‘Good to see you safe Rob! I’ve all sorts of problems resulting from you and Facit being caught here. Tell me how did the archon recognise the difference between you and Facit?’
‘In the garden his eyes glowed a golden colour and he recognised Facit immediately. He did it again when they took us to the town lockup,’ Rob explained as they made their way to the workshop.’
‘Damn, they’re getting tricky. They’re using people’s spirit auras to identify them. The golden glow around the eyes is a magic effect called Aura Sight. Unfortunately, he’s probably seen your spirit aura and your normal face as well. You’re going to have to disappear for a few months. Tell me, how did you escape?’
Rob gave a quick rundown of his exploits. Granddad’s face turned grim when he heard about the beheaded body, until Rob told him about the smoke trick at the Temple, and that finally put a smile on his face. Rob then asked about Facit.
‘The archon took him to the Logicon Embassy. That’s all I can tell you at the moment’ said his grandfather, his face grim again.
They raced through the mansion and straight to the workshop. Granddad hurried to the room without a doorhandle, mentally spoke a word and the door opened wide. This was the safe room for their magic items. He grabbed a small velvet bag and stuffed all the available powerstones into it. Powerstones were the mind wizard’s equivalent to magical scrolls used by other wizards. Each powerstone held up to three powers.
‘Here, take these with you - they might be useful,’ said Granddad, thrusting the bag into Rob’
s hand. He then mindspoke another word and a panel slid aside, revealing a small opening containing several small bags. He opened one and tipped out some rings, selected four of them, and handed them to Rob to give to Melanie.
‘Melanie’s going too! You’ll need physical protection, and that’s what she’s been trained to do over the last several years. I’ll send Facit to you when we can get him released.’
He opened another small bag and emptied a pile of gemstones into the palm of his hand. They were small and of good quality.
‘Here, take these Rob. You should know their value. They will be lighter to carry and more universal than other currencies.’ He closed the secret panel and looked around the safe room.
‘You’ll need a translator crystal, as they speak a local dialect - trade common - there. Take your second master from the lab and update it with any new word meanings.’
‘Ah yes,’ he said as he grabbed a thick black belt.
‘All right Rob, listen carefully. The archons are no joke. They are exceedingly tough and their word is law. Mind magic may work on them, although I’ve personally never tried to influence one. Never try to fight one, as you will be killed. Surrender peacefully and get word to me and I’ll use my friends to get you out.
‘Now, about your shape changing ability, try not to reveal it to anyone that you don’t trust implicitly. Shape changers are hated everywhere, and often for good reason. I know one of your father’s agents. I tracked him to a remote world where he uses the name Alin Amber.
I have been trying to get in contact with him to help you with controlling your shape changing. I think he knows where your father is hiding. Find him and try to convince him to take you to your father. You may have also inherited another very dangerous talent from him that he refused to disclose to us. You must find your father to find out about it.’
‘I’ll do my best Granddad,’ said Rob, suddenly realizing the importance of the moment.
