The Last King's Amulet pof-1

by Chris Northern

  Dubaku was silent. “And if you obey once, will it be enough for him to own you?”

  “I won't obey, I'll push power into an unknown spell form, knowing that whatever happens cannot yet be called a spell by any sane being. I won't cast a spell, I'll unleash chaos.”

  After a moment he nodded. “Shankara.”

  “What?”

  A faint luminescence grew into the form of a tall woman who stood behind him and wrapped him in her arms, fading into nothing as she did so, and taking him with her.

  After a moment I stirred back to life and went to the door. I waited to be sure he was ready and then opened it.

  The guards became instantly alert. “What do you want?”

  The door had not been locked once since I was put in the room. I hadn't found it odd at the time but why take the chance, I wondered? Part of a game? Or were they so sure that I could not get out? Over-confidence. They had been overconfident with Sapphire and that had cost them twenty-three men so far.

  “What? Oh, food. I'm famished.”

  “And some more beer, eh?” The other piped up.

  “Yes. More beer. Good idea.”

  “Shut the door. We'll see if it is possible.”

  I nodded. “Right. Good.”

  83

  I realized that I was still holding the gifted silver ring in my hand and wondered what it did. Without another thought I slipped it on. Nothing happened.

  Well, that was unlikely. Jocasta was no fool. I looked at my hands and saw it after just a second, a tattoo on the back of my left hand, near the wrist. I pulled back my sleeve to reveal a brawnier arm than I now possessed. The tattoo ran up my arm. It was an illusion. A ring that made me look like… who? A barbarian soldier almost certainly. I looked at the ring. There was no stone. The only way to make such an item was to sacrifice a stone in the making, putting it into the metal. The ring would never do anything else but cast this illusion on the wearer. The cost was high. It might well be useful. If I caused enough chaos and yet had to flee this might make the difference.

  Taking off the ring, I slipped it in my pocket and took a turn around the room, pacing. How much time? Too much. I didn't want to think. The plan, such as it was, was laid. This afternoon I would be brought into the presence of Kukran Epthel. If there were too many with him, I would have to change my plan, if few enough I would act. He would command me to show him a spell, and with the sorcerers' loupe in his eye socket he would watch. I would need stone to do the casting. I would use the form Jocasta had shown me as a base, change it and cast randomly, and as strongly as the stone allowed. It would achieve something, if not something good enough then I would change it again and cast again. Anything could happen. But one way or another I would end this today. I couldn't stand it any more, and perhaps it was as simple as that. I had hit my limit and it was time to end it.

  Stepping through the ward made me wince, but I had become accustomed to the pain. Fewer guards responded to the alarm than ever, and with less enthusiasm. They watched me. I watched them. It would have been simpler to put me in a room without windows. To lock the door. But that had not happened. Something about that bothered me and I worried at it until I saw that Kukran Epthel would not change the terms of the game once they were set. I remembered the nameless girl who had tried to catch me in her fantasy; the door had been unlocked then. The guards outside guarding me in that fantasy, not keeping me from escaping. The orders had been given to set the fantasy and they had not changed. No one had changed them. Kukran Epthel was guilty of rigid thinking. Perhaps, I thought, it is a price paid for his existence. An inability to change his mind, to issue new orders when the situation changed. And underlings tend to mimic the thinking of their master. Inertia, coupled with the tendency to forget that the routine itself is not the purpose.

  Thoughtfully, I wondered back into the room. Could I use this to my advantage? What decisions had been made that he would not think to change? The room I was in, the unlocked door, what else did I know? I thought about the audience chamber, remembering details. Imagining myself there again, trying to recall every detail. Two guards on the door. Were there two guards on every door, no matter the circumstances? It didn't matter now, but yes, there were two guards at the door of the audience chamber. The undead that he kept with him or who were always there, waiting. Did he go anywhere, do anything, without strong motive? His body was dead, it had no needs to be fulfilled. Did he lack purpose? Was inertia part of his nature? Probably. Yes. That fit. It made sense, he needed no exercise, no food or drink. He need not move or act to fulfill the desires of his body as he had none. If that seeped into his thinking then he would be slow to react to anything new. His servants would be the same. All of a sudden it made sense that Sapphire had been able to roam freely, killing as he willed and disappearing and never being tracked down. What was it Sapphire had said? 'If I am not under their noses it's like I don't exist.' The barbarians had lost the ability to respond to change, the culture of inertia seeping into their thinking. They did not band and perform methodical searches in numbers sufficient to deal with the problem. They reacted sluggishly, a stirred nest, then returned to routine as soon as the immediate threat was gone. The new servants, the mages and healers, they were not so moribund in their thinking. Larner had put the ward at the balcony, embedded the stone in my skull, created his monstrous dogs to hunt me should I escape. Ferrian had thought to wonder how I had been found, and sought until he found an answer – the attuning of my stone and that of Jocasta. These were more dynamic minds, not yet steeped in the culture of obedience and inertia. If I was right, Larner would come to fetch me into the presence of the lich, who would still be in the audience room where I had encountered him before. My two doorkeepers would come with us. If I was right there would be two guards on the door outside. The undead would be there, but no one else. Their presence was enough to intimidate. Larner, two guards inside, two outside, and the undead. Plus whatever spirits Kukran Epthel could summon to his aid. And, of course, whatever he had learned from the battle mages in the meantime.

  My short list of enemies suddenly seemed impossibly long. Four guards, eight undead, one battle mage and Kukran Epthel himself.

  Set patterns, inertia, slow to react. To deal with that, do what? Sow the seeds of chaos? How did it advantage me to let them set the pace, to work within the rigid framework Kukran Epthel had set? How had Sapphire put it? 'Spontaneity. Confound the opposition with unexpected actions.' Suddenly I laughed. What was I waiting for? Why was I letting them dictate the pace?

  I fished out my knife from its hiding place. The stone set in my forehead wasn't much, enough for cantrips and little more. But Larner had fixed a weapon in my head and it might be enough.

  Time to act. Chaotically, randomly, spontaneously, to be everything that Kukran could not be. Time to be alive. Time to be creative.

  I was done with waiting..

  84

  “Where's my drink?!” I bellowed the question as I strode boldly across the corridor and came nose to nose with a surprised guard. His arms rose instinctively to push me away and I slipped my knife hand around under his elbow and jerked it hard toward my own chest. It sank deep and must have hit a kidney as he didn't make a sound, eyes widened, face shocked, breath stilled. Not a sound came out of him, his body gone rigid as every muscle contracted, back arched slightly. I let go the knife and dropped my hand to the hilt of his sword, stepping back and pulling it clear.

  His partner had not been completely taken by surprise. “What the..” he had started to say, shutting up when he saw his soon-to-be-dead companion's reaction. He knew what a killing thrust looked like and was pulling his own sword free at the same time as my stolen blade cleared.

  Cantrips are useless but if your beard suddenly ignites it can be a bit distracting. An all over body flinch was enough of a reaction to allow me to stab him in the throat, knocking the emerging shout of surprise right out of him.

  And there I was. A man alone in hostile
surroundings, somewhat tipsy, with a sword in his hand, looking up and down the corridor and knowing that he was absolutely doing the right thing. As long as I kept moving, kept sowing the seeds of chaos, kept the enemy reacting to my actions, everything would pan out. Or not, as Sapphire had said. For the second time I had an insight into his thinking and grinned happily as I strode boldly down the corridor looking for someone to make react to me. Just like pain, winning doesn't matter. Just as life is pain, so too is life action.

  So act!

  85

  Larner couldn't have been more surprised when I took his hand off.

  I had reacted instinctively and so had he. My instinct just had a better result than his.

  At the end of the hall I had opened the door and stepped through without pause, my reactions on a hair trigger. Larner had his hands full, a plate of bacon and eggs in one hand and a jug of beer in the other. He'd dropped the plate as I swung at him and instinctively raised his arm to ward off the blow, crying out in surprise as he did so. By pure chance the edge of the sword had struck his wrist and neatly taken off his hand. A glint of azure flashed from the stone he no longer, strictly speaking, wore. I ran him through, feeling partly guilty and partly angry with myself for feeling that way. He was my enemy and had no right to my sympathy.

  Engrossed in the ugly task of snatching the blade free of his gut, trying not to be too aware of his face as I did it, I was still aware of a shout of alarm. I didn't imagine I would go unnoticed and so was not in any way surprised. I had decided not to react to the enemy, but to make them react to me. I acted on pure instinct with no rigid plan, intent on fluidity to counter their inertia.

  I snatched up Larner's severed hand and ran, picking a direction at random. There were stairs so I took them. Booted feet hammered on the marble floor as two barbarians gave chase. They had cried out an alarm, but were not where I was or where I was heading. Anyone with a weapon who heard the alarm would move in the direction it had come from. But I wasn't there any more. I was on the move. If I could shake them, lose them, then I would be free to act as I wished.

  I glanced at the hand I held, briefly assessing the azure stone set in a gold ring that still graced the index finger. Maybe six carats. Enough candlepower to cast the spell Jocasta had taught me with some strength. All to the good. We would see. Make no plans. Be creative.

  At the top of the stairs was a landing. There were men on the stairs behind me so I didn't pause for more than a glance left and right, then dropped my sword, pulled the ring from the finger, turned, attuned it, pointed the stone and let loose with whatever it was Jocasta had given me. A great gush of boiling oil spewed from the ring and drenched their upper bodies, as though I had thrown a bucket of the stuff from the head of the stair.

  Shocked and disgusted, thrilled with fear and horror at their fate, I kept enough presence of mind despite their incoherent screaming, to slip the ring on my finger, grab my sword and end their pain. It was an ugly business and I tried to hold thought at bay as their bodies slid gracelessly down the stairs. I turned my back on them and moved.

  86

  In the heat of battle I had killed my first man, followed by many others. I had not counted. I had not thought. And the memories had never fully come back to me. I had not tried to remember, in all honesty. I don't like to think of myself as a man who kills people.

  This was different. I was near as dammit sober. The memory of the two men covered in boiling oil and screaming, part in excruciating pain and part in unbelieving horror, tried to fill my mind and hold my attention. I couldn't let it but the memory was a distraction, flashing in to my mind's eye at every pause in thought.

  Keep moving, I admonished myself. Don't stop to think. Be creative. I opened the next door I came to and stepped inside. The shutters were open, light streaming into the room. A naked man lay on the bed, asleep, the covers on the floor in a heap. I paced across the room and killed him. He didn't even wake. One less enemy is one less enemy, I thought. Glancing around I picked out a couple of items that might be useful. He had been a barbarian soldier and had weapons and armor to hand. The only thing that fit me was a belt. I accessed his sword and decided it was as good as mine and came with the advantage of a scabbard. It was the work of moments to buckle the belt, discarding the bloody blade. I would keep the new one. I checked his clothes and found a few coins. They were mine now, if I ever needed them.

  Now what? The ring. I smiled ruefully. The illusion ring that Jocasta had made for me; I took it from my pocket and slipped it on. There. Now I was someone else to the world and could move freely.

  Time to go. Back the way I came? Don't think, I admonished myself. Act!

  87

  There was a lot of noise ahead of me but I didn't pause, instead I hurried up. Grinning, I brought a few words of Gedurian to mind, using the Alendi dialect that Meran had taught me. By the time I was back at the head of the stairs, with several barbarians in sight, I was practically thinking in the language.

  Two men were at the top of the stairs, looking down. One glanced my way for just a moment before looking back.

  “What happens?” I demanded.

  He looked my way again and gestured that I look. “The demon cooked himself dinner.”

  Steaming gently, covered in oil, stinking of cooked flesh, skin red where it wasn't cracked and oozing or covered in blood from the thrusts of my sword, lay the two men I had doused in hot oil. I snorted in disgust. “Didn't stay to eat though.”

  The two gave uneasy snorting laughs. At the bottom of the stairs another barbarian was looking up. “Want to help us move them?” Behind him half a dozen men were in the hall, milling nervously. If there had been less I would have shoved these two down the stairs and gone on from there, but ten seemed more than I could take.

  “You got plenty of help.”

  I was about to move away and find easier prey when Sapphire struck in the hall below. I saw him moving, calm and deadly, short blade flashing in a killing stroke, the mortally injured man grunting even as Sapphire moved on. Two were down before anyone noticed he was there and I twitched out of my reverie, stepped around behind them and shoved my two companions down the stairs. Why had I hesitated? The time for acquiring facts was over, the time to think was past. Now was the time to act, I berated myself. So act.

  Sliding my new sword out of its scabbard I descended the stairs, lopping the arm from the first man I reached; he had caught the banister, arrested his fall and got to his feet just as I struck. Kicking him away so that he fell before me, I carried on down. As chance would have it the second had fallen into the roasted bodies of his dead compatriots, and filled with disgust at their touch had stood, his back to the top of the stairs, only to be struck from his feet by his falling companion, blood spraying from the stump of his arm in measured steady arcs.

  Measured and steady, that was the way Sapphire moved, calm and calculating, aware of everything around him and moving in complete control of the situation, as though he knew what everyone was going to do. The calm concentration he displayed on his face told the story clear. He was in complete control of himself, doing what needed to be done in the simplest most expedient fashion he knew. He could have been digging a ditch, I thought, and tried to adopt his attitude as I moved to dispatch the two tangled men; they were panicked, defensive, trying to get clear, even the one who was surely bleeding to death. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs there was nothing more to do. Sapphire looked all about, never still but showing no sign of urgency.

  “What happened to the plan?”

  “I changed my mind. Confound the enemy with chaos and disorder.” I said.

  He nodded. “Down.”

  I ducked into a squat before I could stop myself and he smiled at me. “Don't lose that attitude,” he said.

  “Down it is. Head for the throne room.”

  “Eleven less?” He was doing a quick head count.

  “Fourteen,” I told him.

  “Good,” h
e walked away, making for the head of the stairs down to the next level.

  As I followed I ran through the route to the audience chamber in my mind. Where Kukran Epthel doubtless awaited us, ready or unprepared made no difference to me at the moment. It wasn't so far and I knew the way.

  88

  It is strange how people react. We entered the public rooms of the building having had only one other encounter that took no time at all. Here the common people were about their business, waiting to see those would would decided their fate, no matter what reason had brought them here. They stood in small groups or alone, a magistrate or two moved among them, questioning and directing them. The normal day to day business of any administrative building. They totally ignored us; not that they didn't see, or turn their heads to follow our movement, not that they were unaware, it's just that they didn't do anything. One or two, I noted, began moving away. Others looked round hurriedly for guidance or for someone else to act. One or two ran. There were those who tugged a neighbor's sleeve and pointed us out. But the rest just watched us pass. Not my business, they seemed to be thinking, not my problem. They moved away where we passed too close but otherwise seemed like sheep watching a sheepdog; fascinated but not feeling the need to react just yet.

  The drawing of steel and a cry to halt came from behind me; I turned and looked, saw he was not close enough to be a threat and moved on. I felt like Sapphire's shadow, going to do what needed doing or die doing it. The same voice gave an alert and then the sound of running footsteps as he came after us. I turned, generated Jocasta's spell form and covered him in burning oil. The screams made people act; they screamed and ran in all directions, petitioners and administrators alike. They all ran away from us in an expanding circle and we ignored them in our turn and moved on, fast but not panicked. Purposeful.