At that, Jekka pulled the spearpoint back. It did seem that he would be sparing the captain, but he wished still to show him a threat display. “What of the eyes, and the book?”
Ensara didn’t answer for a moment.
“Speak, Captain!”
“I don’t know anything about a book! I swear it.”
“They would have been cones.” Mirian’s voice was steely with impatience. “Lizardfolk book cones.”
“Oh! Yes, Rajana had those.”
“And there were some big jewels,” Mirian said.
“Sorry. I didn’t see them.
Again Mirian cursed.
“What do you wish, Sister?” Jekka asked.
She was silent for only a moment. “We’ve got to get Ivrian out of there. I’m just trying to decide how far to trust Ensara. Not real damned far.”
“He fought through his own men to get me free,” Charlyn volunteered.
“Probably to save his own skin,” Mirian suggested.
“And hers,” Ensara pointed out. “This is awkward, Mirian—”
“We are not on a first name basis, Captain. And I’m glad it’s awkward.”
“Fair enough, Captain Raas,” he said smoothly. He slowly lifted his hands and Jekka tensed until he saw that he showed empty palms. “I apologize. I sincerely regret my actions. I fully intended to partner with you, and to return your wand—”
“Save the apologies! If you know the ground around the place you’re holding Ivrian, take me there, otherwise I’ll leave you for the jungle.”
“Mirian!” Charlyn sounded shocked.
“He led people to your house! They burned it down and tried to kill us!”
Ensara closed his eyes, wincing. “Sorry about that. Look, I’ll take you back to the ruined plantation. Give me a sword, and I’ll even fight at your side.”
Mirian snorted. “Keep an eye on him, Jekka. Charlyn, for your own safety I think you’ll have to come with us. I can’t leave you in the jungle alone.”
“I understand.”
Jekka pulled back and watched Ensara climb to his feet. He saw the captain glance to where a bloody blade lay in the brush only a couple of feet from where he’d knelt, but he made no move to pick it up. Likely he carried a knife or three on his person, and Jekka expected Mirian to say something about that.
But she didn’t. “We’ve wasted enough time. Jekka, if there’s any sign this bastard is getting ready to turn on us, stick him. Charlyn, take that sword.”
“If you think so,” she said. Her voice seemed a little shaky.
Ensara described the layout of the old plantation as they moved through the jungle. He whispered, although with all the distant shouting Jekka was fairly sure they could have been as loud as they wanted.
It was an abandoned home, overgrown by the jungle. It had two floors and two outbuildings on the south side where guards had been posted as lookouts. Upon closer examination, Jekka smelled Mzali, and informed Mirian.
“What’s this all about?” Mirian’s teeth gleamed as she turned on Ensara. “You’re working with the Mzali?”
“No,” Ensara protested. “Rajana’s only been working with us. No natives.”
Jekka readied to stab him until Charlyn spoke up. “There were no Mzali before,” she said. “Just pirates.”
Jekka watched his sister, who seemed to be thinking. Finally she said: “I suppose we might be lucky. If the Mzali really aren’t in league with your people, they won’t be expecting an attack themselves. Especially if they’ve just killed a bunch of your men.”
Mirian instructed Charlyn to stay put. “If we don’t come back, you need to hide in a tree bole. Soldiers should be here soon, so stay put and don’t try anything heroic.”
“I’ll help,” Ensara said. “Give me a sword. I swear by Irgal’s axe I’ll come through for you, or die trying.”
“An axe?” Jekka repeated.
Mirian’s gaze was almost blank as she faced Ensara. “You’re honestly telling me that you’re Nirmathi.”
“Aye.”
“A pirate. From Nirmathas. It’s landlocked,” she explained to Jekka.
“I swear,” the man insisted with great fervor. “I have never lied to you, Mir … Captain.”
“You’ve done a whole helluva lot worse.”
“What I mean is that I keep my pledge. And a Nirmathi pledge by Irgal’s axe—”
“I know,” Mirian cut him off.
Jekka would have liked to have heard the rest, but since this little ceremony seemed to satisfy Mirian, he supposed it should satisfy him as well. They would get more pertinent details later. Unlike a lot of humans, Mirian didn’t waste time with verbal reassurances and the repetition of information. It was one of many things he appreciated about her.
“Take Charlyn’s sword,” she said, with the same tone she usually reserved for cursing. She passed over her machete to her sister, then pointed a finger at Ensara, her voice a deadly whisper. “Remember I’m watching you, and I can burn your head off with my wand.”
“I know.” Ensara sounded indifferent.
“Our goal is to get Ivrian out alive. I happen to blame you for his predicament so if you go down saving him I won’t be too upset.”
“Understood.”
“Where was he being held?”
“In the upper story. Around on the other side. That window there … well, you can’t see, but that’s how I got us out. I dropped a rope over the side. It’s probably still there.”
“All right. That’s our way in. First, though, the sentries. If we have to make a lot of commotion we do it on the way out.”
A brief survey showed them four men roving on this side and two at the front of the house.
Jekka crept forward in the darkness. He’d been the chief warrior of his clan, and his step was softer than the wind. The tribesman on guard heard nothing, felt nothing, before Jekka laid a scaled hand over his chin and cut his throat with a human dagger. He lowered him to the ground, then dropped down to all fours and crawled.
As he reached the side of the house, he spotted the rope, and an additional sentry in the shadows of the back door, standing on an open, half-rotted porch.
His elimination wasn’t part of the original tactical plan, but he clearly couldn’t be left there. Jekka slid closer, sprinted two steps to build up speed, and used his staff to spring onto the porch and land behind the warrior.
The man started in surprise and grabbed Jekka’s shoulder with one strong hand, but Jekka thumped him in the head with his staff, then drove the knife up through his chest. Jekka watched him kick as he died, gasping, and wondered if he, too, would meet his end like this someday.
But now was not the time for those reflections. He returned to his original goal.
The rope was just where Ensara had described. Jekka signaled to Mirian, then watched as she and Ensara dashed over.
He left his staff in the care of his sister and started up. An expert climber, he had no trouble locating footholds in the vine-encrusted siding, and in mere moments he was peering into the room beyond. A human would have seen only darkness, but his eyes perceived the gray and silver outlines of the rotted furniture, the knotted rope stretched from the sill to the bed, the darkness of the doorway and the faint light behind.
He scrambled silently through the window, crouched, listening, and thought he heard Ivrian’s voice. Good. He didn’t want the writer dead.
He leaned out the window and waved an arm, caught the staff that Mirian tossed, then advanced to the room’s doorway as she started up.
He heard the babble of human voices, though he didn’t understand their words. Two men were speaking low-voiced in a fast-flowing language he didn’t recognize.
He peered round the corner.
And that was his undoing, for two powerfully built native humans were conversing just inside the doorway, and one faced him. As Jekka readied his spear, he felt the thump of Mirian setting foot into the room behind, but also saw a glowing red object floating
in one of the stranger’s hands as the man turned toward him.
22
QUESTIONS FROM A DEATH MASK
JEKKA
“Is there anything you can do for Venthan?” Ivrian heard the desperation in his voice, hoped it didn’t sound too much like begging. The tribal warrior was unlikely to respect that. “I’ll gladly tell you anything you wish to know so long as you help him—”
Telamba cut him off. “This one?” Telamba looked at the body and spat. “He took money for information. And you would save him?”
“What do you mean?” Ivrian looked at the limp body.
“He told us you were coming.”
At Ivrian’s look, the man laughed. “You think I lie, colonial? Why would I bother? He’s dead and beyond my power, even if I cared. Our shared enemy does not make us allies.”
“It could,” Ivrian suggested.
“Drop the club.”
He did, and it dangled from the rope still tied to his wrist.
The stranger grunted. “Tell me of the woman.”
Ivrian glanced once more at the limp body of Tradan’s assistant. All right, maybe he was dead, and he’d sold out Ivrian and his friends for money. And this Telamba had sent people to try to kidnap or kill Ivrian and his friends.
Yet if Ivrian was to live, and he definitely planned on that, he would have to meet this newest obstacle without flinching.
He faced the fellow squarely. “She’s a noble of Cheliax, and she’s sinister and treacherous.” It pleased him only a little to parrot the words he’d already written of her, because he knew they’d made her angry. “She wants the dragon’s tear for her own.”
“How many men does she have?”
“In the house? Maybe a dozen. But it doesn’t matter, because she’s probably magicked herself away with the treasures you seek. She just about has to have a teleportation spell if she survived the first time we met.”
“So you have faced her before?”
“Yes. I thought she was rotting at the bottom of a well in the Fortress of Fangs.”
“Hah! So she is the type who leaves her men?”
“Yes. She has more.”
“Where? And where would she go?”
“Probably back to the ship she’s using.”
Telamba backstepped to the doorway and shouted down the stairs in a flowing, melodic language Ivrian had never heard before. Someone below answered in the same tongue, then could be heard pounding up the stairs. He stood just out of sight, conversing with Telamba.
After a brief exchange, Telamba returned his attention to Ivrian. “You are right. It is reported that the woman vanished after setting three of my men to sleep. When Chakan awakened my sleeping men, they said she had taken jewels and silver cones. Were any of these the tear?”
“Just signposts to finding the tear,” he answered, then added: “Maps.”
“Your thoughts ring true.” Telamba eyed him. “But I do not sense fear.”
“The only thing I’m afraid of is that I won’t be able to avenge my friends.”
“So you’re a warrior.”
“Something like that.” In truth, he was simply weary, sad, and powerless. He didn’t think he stood any chance against Telamba and there didn’t really seem to be a point to not telling him what he wanted. “What about the other prisoner?” Ivrian asked. “A woman. Have you freed her?”
“My men have found no other prisoner. Where is she?”
“In the room next door.”
Telamba shook his head. “There was nothing there but a rope hanging from the window.”
Ivrian brightened.
“So you think she escaped? Who was she?”
“The sister to Mirian Raas. An innocent in all this,” he added quickly.
Telamba grunted.
Ivrian wondered if he’d said too much. Would Telamba hunt after her now?
Apparently Telamba didn’t care, for his questions returned again to the dragon’s tear. “What do you plan with the stone? You honestly did not know of its power. So why do you want it?”
“We seek the stone so that my friend, the lizard man, can return to his people through a gate in the sea.”
“Your words make no sense. What gate in the sea?”
“That’s where the tear lies, on the other side of a gate, in the midst of a city of the lizardfolk. It will be hard going.”
“I shall find a way. You are a strange man. You speak the truth to me and do not fear. You seek the stone, but not for yourself.”
“Jekka is my friend.”
“And you name a half-Bas’o and a frillback as friend, and do not lie.”
“Why would I?”
Telamba’s quiet regard was sinister under the white skull paint. Yet his words were not. “I begin to like you, Sargavan.”
For all that Telamba said that, there was no outward change in his demeanor. And Ivrian remembered just how brutally the Mzali had struck against the guards at Tradan’s home. Still, he decided to risk asking a question of his own. “How do you even know about the tear?”
“It was foretold by Walkena.” With his free hand, Telamba made a cryptic sign over his chest. “The tears of a dragon shall rain upon the coast. He sent me to look into matters and find the way to the tear so that our people have its mastery. And so we watched and listened for word of it.” He glanced contemptuously toward Venthan. “We have many agents among your people converted to our cause, although some worship only money.”
Ivrian was about to inquire further, but Chakan, lingering in the doorway, said something to Telamba, who replied curtly in his own language.
Chakan shouted suddenly in alarm. Telamba raised his gauntleted hand as though directing it at something beyond, in the hallway.
It was the only chance Ivrian was likely to get. He flipped the chair leg, still tied to his arm, up into his hand and charged as the coal floated upward and began to glow.
Ivrian slammed the chair leg down at the native’s head.
Telamba sidestepped, his concentration disrupted so that the coal dropped back to the glove. Ivrian caught sight of Jekka’s rush as the lizard man drove his spear into Chakan and pushed the dying man toward Telamba. The man in the skull paint backed toward the window even as Ivrian swung again.
Ivrian clipped Telamba’s chin and the native staggered.
Telamba recovered swiftly, threw himself backward through the window.
Ivrian reached the sill just a moment after the lizard man, and was stunned to see the native land on the ground below with ease. Telamba raised his gauntlet.
“Back!” Ivrian dragged Jekka out of the way moments before the flaming net exploded across the window frame. The old wood immediately caught fire.
From the doorway came the sound of a familiar voice.
“Are you two all right?” Mirian asked.
Ivrian turned, smiling in relief, and noticed for the first time that his wrist stung from where it was still knotted to his makeshift club.
Mirian’s eyes swept down to Venthan and then over to the blackened corpse of Narsian, disappointment and disgust flitting briefly across her features.
“Rajana’s got the cone and the eyes,” Ivrian said.
“And where is she?”
“Fled. Teleported, probably, if the Mzali are to be believed. They said she vanished.”
Mirian turned for the door. The burning net had disappeared from the window, probably sucked back to Telamba’s gauntlet. Red flames wreathed the window.
“The Mzali have a sorcerer or something, with a fire net,” Ivrian said as he followed them through the doorway. He stopped short, for he saw Captain Ensara holding the landing at the top of the stairs against two natives, parrying thrust after thrust of their spears with his cutlass. A third warrior was scrambling up behind them.
Jekka leapt effortlessly over the balustrade, landing atop the third man and spearing him through the throat in the same fluid movement. He ducked a spear cast from somewhere below, freed hi
s weapon from the twitching body, then dashed out of sight. Someone screamed.
Mirian’s wand blast tore through the throat of one of Ensara’s opponents, rattling the other so thoroughly that Ensara slashed him nearly in half.
“Let’s go,” Ensara breathed.
Ivrian was all for moving, and he ran with them into the room across the hall. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, but it was Jekka, narrowly avoiding a pair of spears, one of which stood quivering in the top step.
“Since when have we been working with him?” Ivrian thumbed to Ensara.
But no one had time to answer. Ensara reached the window and waved the others to follow. “Come on, come on!”
Jekka went through first, disdaining what Ivrian now saw was a rope and merely taking to the sill one-handed before dropping over.
“Down you go,” Mirian said, then stopped to hold the door against another Mzali.
“Go on, lad,” Ensara told him. “We came back for you.”
Ivrian took the rope even as Ensara waded into the crowding natives. He started down, discovered he was a little more unsteady than he realized, and lost his grip on the rope. He slid for a foot or two, which burned his palms like hellfire, then let go, landing flat on his back and slamming his head into the ground. His vision swam. As Jekka leaned over him, he could have sworn the lizard man had a halo of fire. Somewhere there was even the distant ringing of trumpets, as though a choir of heavenly lizard men were welcoming them to the afterlife. Then he passed through a sea of painful black streaks shot through with starlight, and consciousness left him.
23
THE EYES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
MIRIAN
Tradan’s voice was sharp with anger. “Tell me again why this man isn’t in custody.”
Mirian’s glance slid from the aristocrat standing by the bulkhead over to Charlyn, sitting demurely now on the cushioned bench under the wide gallery window of Tradan’s boat. Mirian could get used to a stern cabin this size, though this wallowing river yacht wasn’t built for swift service like the Daughter.
The sun had risen some hours ago and now glowed on the horizon, just visible over her sister’s shoulder.
Mirian looked over to Ensara, sitting at the ship’s table across from Jekka, and she wasn’t sure she had a good answer. Because he’d risked his life for Charlyn and held the stairs against their attackers? Perhaps that was balanced against everything else he’d done, but it hardly wiped the slate clean.
Pathfinder Tales--Through the Gate in the Sea Page 20
