Phinneas Phoarty was not certain what he had expected to find upon entering Vod’Adia, but it was not what he got.
After winding through back alleys for a long while the group had reached the Shugak gate where a long line of adventurers was queued up in groups of up to ten, waiting their turns to enter Vod’Adia on ten minute intervals. The city had been Open by then for around two hours. The Sarge led the way to the front of the line holding his ruined hand in a mass of bloody bandages to his chest and waving the Shugak totem stick with its rows of beads and bones in the other. He was in tremendous pain and at best only semi-coherent, but the grim hobgoblins at the palisade gate examined the stick and waved the group through between two others with toothy leers and guttural chuckles. They cared very little if a suicidal band of half-dead humans wished to enter the Sable City, so long as they had paid in full for the privilege.
The other adventurers eyed the group and muttered as they were jumped into the line, but no one stepped forward to ask as to the condition of the limp young woman slung over the legionnaire Ty’s shoulder. The humans did not impress Phin as being any more gallant than the Magdetchoi.
The Sarge and Rickard led the way at a stagger down a straight road of black stones extending through a green field of short grass. The two leaned on each other as the Sarge was hunched over his hand while Rickard had a tourniquet above his knee, though the leg of his torn trousers and the thick sock in a marching sandal were already bright red. The big man Ty was the only one of the three legionnaires who was still hale, and so he carried the woman who had yet to make so much as a murmur. She was slung over Ty’s shoulder and her head and arms swung limply in time with his pace. Phin walked in the rear carrying the only tower shield the legionnaires had managed to take with them when Shugak reinforcements and armored Jobians wielding maces had driven everyone away from the inferno of the Dead Possum Inn.
Phin stared past the others as they moved along the road, now able to make out some details of peaked roofs and thick, square towers above the loom of the city wall. The edges of all were still smoothed by the lingering, gray-white mist. The whole city was all dreadfully more substantial than it had seemed yesterday, and though the legionnaires were hardly setting a brisk pace toward it Phin began to fall behind.
This was sheer madness, some sensible part of Phin’s brain assured him. He was entering Vod’Adia not with a strong party but with three battered legionnaires who were kept upright mainly by pain and fear. Horayachus and his minions were dead, as were two of the legionnaires, and in his mind's eye Phin could still see Gery’s blood jetting into the air after the Centurion called Deskata slashed open his neck. Phin had intended to cast a Sleep spell on the man but when the woman in a black half cloak had appeared and felled him with a club, Phin had released his spell at her rather than risk a wild discharge that might have caught the Sarge or another legionnaire with whom he was supposed to be allied. He was in no way confident that he had done the right thing, but did not feel as though he had.
These legionnaires, besides being renegades from the Empire, were kidnappers. They were taking their prisoner to Ayzantu City to turn her over to the Priests of Ayon, the fiery god known as the Burning Man, the Stormking, the Oathbreaker, and most simply as Destruction. That was what Horayachus had said when he turned her over to the Sarge. That and something about the book.
Despite his bad state the Sarge was still clinging to the leather satchel over his shoulder, containing the large folio he had made Phin read from before hiring him. Though he had perused no more than a few words Phin knew the work had something to do with magical movement of a transcendental kind, or more simply put, with teleportation magic of the kind that allowed people and objects to move instantly from place to place. The legionnaires plainly expected to use the book to take them from Vod’Adia to Ayzantu City, and Phin had a fair idea of just who they expected to work that magic.
He had a number of problems with that. The first was that whether the legionnaires understood it or not, there could be no teleportation out of Vod’Adia. The fog around the city, though thinned, was still a magical veil. One had only to look at it to see as much. No magic could cross such a veil, not the simplest communicative spell nor divination, not the most powerful teleport imaginable. Second, even in the best of circumstances teleportation was wildly dangerous. Within the Circle only specialized Wizards who did very little else ever worked with that sort of magic, and always under tightly controlled conditions. All students at Abverwar soon came to know the horror stories of what resulted when a teleporting mage was just slightly off, and reappeared in the physical world in a space already occupied by a wall, or a ceiling, or by another living thing. They were not the sort of stories that were conducive to one’s appetite.
Finally, even were it possible for Phin to successfully teleport this motley band out of Vod’Adia he had no desire to go to the capital city of Ayzantium, nor to take the unconscious prisoner there. That could not possibly end well for either of them.
Yet the reason Phin did not fall further behind on the road into Vod’Adia, nor cast aside the light-but-awkward tower shield to turn and run like hell, was ultimately because of the woman slung like a sack of feed over Ty’s shoulder. She was alive because that was how Horayachus had said she must be taken to Ayzantu City. The legionnaires’ pay was dependent on it. If Phin ran they would certainly come after him as they needed a mage, but in their present condition he did not doubt he could get away. The problem was that his escape would only leave the woman in their possession as a burden. Phin was sure his departure would condemn the woman to death, and that was something he could not quite bring himself to do. He trotted forward, wincing as he banged his knees on the bulky shield, and fell into line with the others.
The mist did not coalesce around them as they walked as natural fog would have. Instead it hovered in the air as a sharp demarcation, marked on the ground by a line of green grass on the one side and only bare dirt beyond. Somehow that straight edge between life and no life was even more unsettling to Phin than the black city rising beyond it. The Sarge and Rickard hobbled across the line, Ty paused but plunged in as well, and though he had not been of a particularly religious bent since the years he had spent at Abverwar, Phin regretted that he had no particular god to beseech before he took a deep breath and stepped across the line.
The mist was uncomfortably warm and cloying. The others ahead of Phin became indistinct shapes and he hurried to walk directly behind Ty while trying not to bump the woman draped over his shoulder with the tower shield. Phin’s muffled footfalls on the stone path abruptly changed to metallic thuds. He peered around in the mist that made it impossible to see more than a few feet, though he dimly perceived a taut chain as he passed it, made of enormous links and stretched tight at an angle. Phin realized he was crossing an iron-shod drawbridge though he could not make out what it spanned.
The already muted light of the sun faded as the party passed into a gatehouse and the ground was again stone beneath Phin’s feet. He could see nothing but grayer light both ahead and behind, and he shifted the shield to one side and fumbled along Ty’s back, getting a muffled complaint from the legionnaire before finding and grasping the woman’s limp hand. It was soft, and very small. Phin had a fear that all of Vod’Adia was going to be this stifled sort of world when he abruptly stepped out of the gatehouse and the veil with the same suddenness as he had entered. Sights and sounds assaulted his eyes and ears.
All Phin could compare it to was a busy market in Souterm. Most of the first hundred people to enter the city so far had apparently stopped right here in a wide, circular plaza of black flagstones surrounded by grand buildings of the same material, arched porticos covering walkways all along their facades. Between the arches merchants were setting up for business on tables with collapsible legs, unpacking bags and even wheelbarrows of the sorts of things any adventurer might need. There were coils of rope and bundles of torches, extra packs and durable pouches, rations, lamp o
il, water-skins, flint and steel. Prices were marked on chalkboards, and they boggled the mind.
The entrepreneurs hurrahed at Phin’s band as they blundered into the plaza, but their cries faded as the hawkers got a good look at the newcomers. One fellow continued to pace in the center of the plaza, gesticulating wildly and barking in some High Northern tongue. Though his tone was that of any tout in any marketplace in the world the effect was strange as instead of flashy robes he wore heavy chain mail and a tall conical helm with a long nose guard, and bore two crossed axes on his back.
The legionnaires stared around in wonder, then tensed as a young gnome in studded leather bounded at them beaming a wide smile in the depths of his russet beard, shaking a bone scroll case in either hand.
“Welcome to Blackstone, gentle Codians!” he sang in that tongue, taking note of the legionnaires’ armor if not of the state they were in. “Might I interest you in a map? Each is replicated in the minutest detail from the works of Ganhadarik Strong Axe, dwarven adventurer, who at the Fourth Opening brought enough wealth out of the Sable City to live the rest of his long years as a Laird of his people! Find the way to the fabulous noble district! Learn which streets lead to opportunity, and which lead to ruin! Do not wander the streets of Blackstone, friends, but travel them forearmed with perfect knowledge. Save time, and even your lives!”
The Sarge glared at the capering figure. “Get out of the way,” he growled through clenched teeth, but the gnome only went on.
“Buy now, for as men return this way bearing riches the price of everything will only rise!”
“I told you to shove off,” the Sarge spat, taking a step forward and bringing his uninjured hand to the hilt of the sword on his hip.
The wide smile evaporated from the gnome’s face and he snapped his fingers. Phin heard the hiss of a burning match from a nearby portico, and he turned to see four men and two more gnomes training crossbows and muskets in his direction. The short musketeers held smoking fuses close to their flash pans.
“There is no call to be rude,” the first gnome sniffed, opening his coat to replace the scroll cases in already stuffed pockets. “Save your strength for the beasties.”
The gnome strolled back to his fellows, who slowly lowered their aim and blew out their fuses. Phin and the legionnaires only stared at them until Rickard mumbled thickly to the Sarge.
“What are we doing, boss?”
The Sarge looked around the plaza and Phin did the same. The great black structures were all reminiscent of the Tower on Again Island, the First Fort, and the other ancient Ettacean works that survived in Souterm. Looking at the tall buildings drew Phin’s eyes up to the sky, and gave him a shiver. The light on the streets was similar to evening rather than the mid-morning Phin had left outside the city, but it had nothing to do with the height of the sun. Rather, the gray mist formed a vast dome overreaching the city, yet not one so tall that it looked like a cloudy sky. Instead, the very tops of the tallest towers extended up into it and remained obscured. The sun high to the east was only a pale disk which Phin could look at directly without blinking.
“This way,” the Sarge growled as he led the way toward the nearest building with Rickard now deathly pale and leaning on him heavily. A man in full armor stood in the doorway with a drawn sword, and the Sarge veered into a narrow alley next to the place. He told Ty to put the woman down and Phin caught her shoulders so she was not dropped roughly to the stone ground.
“You two wait here with the Duchess,” the Sarge said to Ty and Phin. “There’s a fresh-painted shield sign above that door across the way. If it’s Shanatarians in there they’ll be running a hospital and giving free healing.”
The Sarge braced up Rickard, whose eyes were now fluttering, and started away. Rickard’s feet dragged as he could scarcely raise them.
“We should heal her as well,” Phin called after them, for the Duchess had now been unconscious for several hours and her color seemed bad as Phin looked at her slack face. Though given the quality of light filtering down to the streets, everyone in Vod’Adia had an unhealthy pallor.
Ty had another suggestion what they should do with the woman, and Phin met his eyes with a hard glare.
“There will not be any of that,” Phin said in a whisper, surprising himself as despite his state of mind his voice took on all the menace and contempt befitting a Circle Wizard. Ty blinked, drew back from Phin, and it was a moment before the legionnaire remembered to look fierce.
“Phoarty,” the Sarge said from where he had stopped to look back. The sergeant did not need to put on a fierce face as his carried that look at all times. When he smiled he only looked more dangerous. He was keeping Rickard on his feet by the belt with his one good hand.
“We won’t touch the woman, if it means that much to you. But make no mistake. She is going to the Priests of Ayon. Do not get attached.”
“Why take her there?” Phin decided to ask.
“Because that is how we salvage a payday out of this damned mess. Beyond that, I could give a rat’s ass.”
The Sarge turned and dragged Rickard across the plaza. Phin looked after them with a slight frown, for even with the strange light in this place the Sarge’s eyes had looked gray rather than bright green.
The Sable City Page 65
