The Amethyst Angle

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  “Fine,” Haurice repeats, his defeated tone barely loud enough to be heard over the pelting rain. He takes a step away from the shelf, his desperate words directed at Trip. “I confess to taking the will from the vault. I confess to conspiring with the Head Magistrate in an effort to ensure Vayvanette would inherit only what I allowed. I confess to finding the body but not reporting it straight away to the authorities. I will confess to anything else you need to give you the grounds to arrest me, but I do not confess to murder!”

  Reactions abound like dice tossed on a table. The scribe stiffens and turns to Haurice with the look of a wounded animal, the thug raises his blade as if the cold steel can offer something more forthcoming, and the mage, strangely enough, has folded his arms inside his robes once more and stares at me alone.

  Lightning strikes somewhere close outside and in the silence between the flash and thunderclap the mage asks, “And the amethyst?” He still has eyes only for me, and when the thunder subsides I look to Haurice.

  “It wasn’t in the vault,” Haurice says. “I swear my life upon it.” Which, in all reality, he is.

  “You could have taken it beforehand,” I say, feeling control of the situation slip out of my hands. “Or when you took the will.”

  “Impossible.” Haurice manages to stiffen up in indignity. “The vault is secured not only by incant but with a blood-lock. Only Master Herchsten could open it with the proper word and a touch of his blood. When I came upon his body, the vault was already open. I left it as it was, knowing if I closed it then the authorities would surely resort to destructive measures to get it back open.”

  “Blood-lock,” I say to myself, head lowered and fists balled as I turn to my thoughts. That explains the smear I noticed. But I’d examined the body. There were no wounds, no source of the blood. I shake my head in disbelief.

  “Gideon,” Trip whispers, just loud enough to be heard over the storm. “I don’t think he’s lying. He’s guilty, but not of murder.”

  Devil’s balls!

  I look up. “I know,” I admit with reluctance.

  “Now that that’s settled,” the mage says, “we can get on to more pressing issues. Knell, the amethyst if you please.”

  I take a step back, closer to the front doors. This has just gone south in a bad way.

  “Knell,” the mage repeats louder. “We know you have it. Our sources ensure us you do, that you plan on selling it to the highest bidder.”

  Sources which I fed false information to through Julien. All things dark and light, I laid the trap and got my own foot stuck in it.

  “I don’t have it,” I say. “It was ruse, a means to get you here and scare Haurice, force him to admit to murder.” My mind scrambles, running through everything Haurice told us. I try to force confidence into my words. “I’m sure he has the amethyst stashed somewhere—”

  “It’s clear he does not.” The mage withdraws his hands from his robe and my eyes widen when I recognize what he holds. I’ve got one just like it back at my place, sitting next to my new clock. He hefts it and clicks his tongue at me. “You have already proven you have a habit of selling worthless baubles.”

  With that, the mage tosses it my way. The amethyst reaches its peak in the air and I can tell it looks similar to the one I took from Anderest’s room, perhaps even its mirror image. I move to catch it, to verify my suspicions, but it lurches to a stop midflight. Before I can make sense of what’s happening, the air around the amethyst shimmers and as suddenly as it had stopped, it shoots across the room and lands with a heavy slap right in the scribe’s palm.

  “A scribe and a wind mage,” I spit. “Should have known the Aristocracy would have someone in play.”

  “I’m a magistrate,” the scribe says with pride. Her face narrows and her lips pinch together as she whispers an incant. “And this,” she says, looking up after a few seconds, “this is a fake.”

  “As I’ve said,” the arcane mage says in a tired voice. “It seems Knell has played us all. It would be in your interest to stay out of this, Magistrate. The amethyst belongs to the Arcanium, and I have no problem bleeding it out of Knell. If you get in the way, you will find only the same treatment.”

  “No one is bleeding anyone,” Trip says, sword point swiveling from arcane mage to thug and even to the scribe for good measure.

  “It’s three to two,” I point out to the arcane mage, gesturing at the scribe and Trip. “You don’t want to do this.” I draw my six-spell to let him know I mean business.

  “I’m here only to locate the amethyst,” the scribe says, verbally backing out of the fight. “You guys kill each other, all the better for me.”

  Whoever claimed “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” clearly had no friends.

  The arcane mage smiles and glances at his accomplice. The thug’s face lights up with a maniacal grin and he even chuckles. I’m beginning to think these two enjoy their job way too much and I’m about to say something to that effect when a rolling thunderclap rattles the ground beneath my feet.

  Funny, I missed the lightning. Guess having a well-drawn-out plan come crashing down around you can make you miss—

  Another reverberating thunderclap rattles my teeth, and this time I know for a fact there was no preceding lightning.

  “Knell?” Trip asks suddenly. “What’s wrong? You’ve gone white as a sheet.”

  Prayers and curses flood my thoughts as I turn to the scribe. “Did you bring anyone with you?”

  “No,” she says carefully, obviously catching my change in attitude. “I was ordered to report, not to intervene.”

  The floor shakes as the thunder rolls closer, and by the look on Trip’s face, he feels it too.

  The broken wall …

  The fact that an arcane mage stands inside the estate …

  I stiffen as I grasp what’s happening. I should have seen it before.

  Trip takes a cautious step toward me but he stops when I raise my six-spell his way.

  “What in the he—”

  I can explain or I can save his hide, but I don’t have time for both; I loose a windshot at his feet, the blow hard enough to knock him in the air and send him flying back into a table. I don’t get a chance to see if he’s all right, as at that very moment, the front door and half of the retaining wall around it crashes inward in a shower of splintered wood, shattered stone, and wind-driven rain.

  I blink, and find I’m flat on my back, my lungs desperate for air and my ribs protesting my attempt to rectify that situation. I can barely make out the curses coming from the scribe over the ringing in my ears, but it’s clear she could fit right in at table full of drunken sailors. I get my elbows beneath me, lift my upper body up, and knock aside a sizeable piece of what was once the front door from my legs.

  The rain flooding into the foyer from the gaping wound in the house settles the dust and debris, revealing a hulking figure, twice again the height of a normal man, standing where the front door used to be. It has legs like the trunks of ancient elms, arms only a fraction smaller, and shoulders that spread as wide as I am tall. I stare up at the ogre, the indomitable workhorse of Wrought Isles, and despair consumes me.

  23

  KNIFE TO THE GUT

  The ogre comes to a sliding stop about a quarter of the way into the foyer, shuddering his torso to rid himself of stone and wood as an elephant would nettlesome birds. He’s facing the center of the room, an ogre’s pace from the huge centerpiece table, and hasn’t yet seen me or Trip behind and to either side of him. The scribe has wisely clamped her mouth shut and Haurice is nowhere to be seen. The massive creature, wearing muddied horse-hide boots, stitched leather pants and a canvas shirt that’s soaked to his bulging frame, blocks my view of the arcane mage but I can hear his voice cutting through the chaos.

  “Not him, you fool!” the arcane mage cries out to the brute, and as I finally get my feet under me, I get what he’s about. I realize my hands are empty, but don’t dare risk spending the time to fin
d my six-spell. The ogre in the room demands my undivided attention.

  The thug, unlucky enough to be near the center of the room on the other side of the large table, has drawn the ogre’s attention; it slogs forward and grabs the table with both hands. Wood groans and creaks as the ogre lifts the heavy piece of furniture above his head, poised to smash the thug to pulp.

  “I said stop!” the mage commands.

  If the wind and rain weren’t streaming in with such fierceness, I’m sure I’d hear the gears of the ogre’s brain grind to a confused halt as the mage continues to shout. Frozen in thought, the ogre goes as still as mountain, table still high overhead. He’s obviously been brought here to smash some small humans, but it seems he hadn’t been told ahead of time which humans were fair game.

  “Giddy!”

  I turn just as Trip reaches me, keeping a wary eye on the ogre. Trip’s favoring his left ankle and blood is smeared down half his face. The ankle is likely my fault, but it looks like a stone or splinter is to blame for the gash on his cheek.

  He hands me my six-spell, wipes his cheek with a sleeve, and raises his sword. “The bastard brought an ogre to a knife fight.”

  “Well, I’ve got this,” I say, raising my six-spell and wondering if it would harm the ogre or just piss him off. “Thanks,” I add.

  “I’ll confiscate it later,” Trip says, stepping a bit further from me so as not to make us an easy target. He grunts a cynical laugh. “Thought you’d turned on me for a minute there.” There’s doubt cradled in his voice, though, and it’s a blow to my stomach to think he doesn’t fully trust me.

  “Those two!” the mage yells, and I don’t have to have a line of sight on him to know he’s pointing at me and Trip. Like a ponderous ship turning into the wind, the ogre begins to pivot around. A few more seconds and he’ll be facing us.

  “We can’t—” Trip begins, but I cut him off and call out to the scribe.

  When the wind magistrate tears her gaze from the ogre and looks our way, I yell, “Pick a side now, because unless we work together, this isn’t going to end well for any of us!”

  The ogre has come fully about and his saucer-eyes regard me as an easy target.

  To her credit, the scribe sees the wisdom in my words. She says something off to her side, I assume to wherever Haurice is cowering, then brings her hands up. Palms out, thumbs and forefingers touching, she whispers an incant and a small knot of dense air storms its way across the foyer and into the ogre’s side just as he prepares to bring the table down on me.

  I have no doubt that the knot of air would have crushed a man’s rib cage, but it merely knocks the ogre off kilter, enough so that his aim with the table goes wide. The table comes crashing down on the floor no less than a foot from me, cracking down the middle and rattling my teeth.

  I’m still trying to come to grips with how close I came to being about four feet shorter when the ogre rears back, bellowing in pain and grabbing at his leg. A flurry of movement to the side of the ogre catches my eye. Trip’s scrambling away, the tip of his sword heavy with blood, and I breathe out a prayer.

  Score one for the good guys.

  A searing blast of viscous green fire shoots between me and Trip and out through the gaping hole in front of the house into the rain. I blindly point my wand and let loose a windshot in the general direction of the arcane mage. I know I missed because something shatters and crashes to the floor. I curse my impetuousness, but I needed to do something to keep the mage at bay. I’ve got to keep a sane mind and use my remaining shots sparingly, lest I feel like going toe-to-toe with an ogre.

  “Come ’round my way,” Trip calls out to me, and I nearly stumble as I keep an eye on the ogre while clambering over the broken table. Wind and rain pelt me from behind and the ogre comes at me from the front. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the thing has singled me out, and I duck at the last moment, slipping in the gathering puddles on the floor. The ogre’s hand swipes over me, ruffling my hair and scattering the sleeting rain.

  I roll to the side and come up just as the ogre bellows again. I assume Trip lunged in once more while I bravely and deftly kept the creature busy.

  “Move!” the scribe yells from across the room, just as another flash of green fire hurtles our way. I’m scrambling to my feet like a foal on ice when, at the last second, the air in front of me shimmers. The magefire slams into the scribe’s incanted barrier, where it lingers in the air for a moment before fizzling out as the rain works on our side.

  “I’ve got the mage,” the scribe yells to us. “The ogre’s yours.”

  Seconds later, a table and two chairs whip across the room to slam into the arcane mage. The scribe then follows up by hurling several more knots of condensed wind at the mage. If she can keep the mage off our backs, we may make it through this.

  The ogre, now bleeding from two wounds in its left leg, takes a more cautious stance. He spreads his legs and arms and sidesteps closer to the front entrance, corralling me and Trip into a corner. The rain barely muffles the crashing and cursing from the mage battle going on behind the ogre and I pray the scribe has the skill to stay alive long enough for us to take out the brute.

  “Draw his attention again?” Trip asks as our shoulders touch.

  “I’d rather not.” I figure the quickest way to fell the beast is to send fireshot into its face, so I raise my six-spell, train it on the ogre’s head, then let loose.

  The ogre, pelted by wind and rain, isn’t as dumb as it looks. His eyes focus on the wand pointed his way and as I fire, he brings his arms up, crossing them before his face. The fireshot hits and the ogre stumbles, howling. Dark smoke whips around him as his sleeves and hair go up in flames and I gag at the smell of burning flesh and singing hair. I’m thinking the thing’s out of the fight; judging by the celebratory clap on my shoulder, so does Trip.

  But the ogre straightens up, smothers the fire in his hair with his hands, and shakes the last of the flames from his arms. Half its face is charred, steam is rising from its singed scalp, and its exposed forearms look like mutton left too long in the oven. A deep rumble emanates from the thing’s chest, shaking me to the core, and I think I just succeeded in making it furious.

  “Holy hells,” Trip curses, squaring up for another fight.

  The rumbling stops and the ogre drops its shoulders and charges, giving me no more time to spare on something as trivial as thinking. The floor shakes as the ogre runs for us. He backhands a leather chair aside, sending it crashing into a shelf, narrowly missing Trip. Both of us dive the other way and the ogre’s sausage fingers are a breath too slow as they grab at us.

  I nearly bite through my lower lip as I hit the floor, somehow managing to keep a grip on my wand, then flop around as the ogre attempts to change course. Trip’s upper body is tangled in my ankles and I kick his shoulder to get him to move out of the way as the ogre slips on the wet floor and slides back-first into the wall.

  If the integrity of the front wall was in question, the impact of the ogre cleared that up. Loose stone and brick plummet into the puddles on the floor and I roll and scramble aside. It would be a spectacular way to die, I think: hit in the head with a brick while going up against an arcane mage and an ogre.

  My clothes weigh a ton from soaking up an ocean’s worth of rain and by the look of Trip as he stumbles up next to me, he’s not feeling so light on his feet either. The rain and blood have masked his face in crimson and pink and I worry the gash across his cheek may be deeper than he’s letting on.

  “We can’t,” he gasps out with a futile wave of his sword. “No way we can take on an ogre. Not like this.”

  I have to agree. The raging beast is down on a knee but is already rising. The shelves and tables he smashed lay around him, and he paws through the debris to come up with a chair in one hand and a heavy plank in the other. The ogre roars, shaking his makeshift clubs in some primitive display of “I’m bigger and scarier than you.” Before the echoes of his roar die down,
he comes in at us for the kill.

  The chair comes in from the left, the plank close behind. Trip shoulders me out of the way of the chair but is a second too slow to dodge the longer-reaching plank. Wood splinters and cracks against his shoulders and he’s tossed aside like a ragdoll.

  With a curse on my lips, I lift my wand and let loose a fireshot into the ogre’s exposed side. The blast hits and the ogre’s shirt ignites. In response, he hurls the broken plank my way and bats at the flames. I dodge aside and though the plank goes wide, I slip in the rain, leaving myself an easy target. Though he’s still awash in flame, he comes at me, rearing back to prepare for a downward swipe with the chair.

  I’m thinking this is it when a horrible shriek, a wail of some demonic beast, cuts through the foyer and I glance up and over just as a winged creature crashes through the stained-glass window. Wind, rain, and jewel-toned shards of glass sweep into the room as the creature, dark as night and with the face of a beaked tiger, shrieks one last time before diving across the air, folding its wings tight as it heads for the still-burning ogre.

  “No,” I whisper as the airborne creature molds and folds in on itself, reforming at the last moment into a six-legged tiger before slamming into the fiery side of the ogre.

  “Durmet!” I scream over the rain and wind. “You can’t—”

  The chair the ogre had been holding crashes to the ground as the massive thing scrambles to pry the morph-imp from its side. Flames have spread to Durmet’s hide but still my faithful partner clings to the ogre with claws and fangs, ripping and tearing, shrieking and spitting blood and gore. The ogre spins round and round, pounding at Durmet, trying to get a grip on the demonic feline, all the while flames lick up all around them, tasting fur, skin, and canvas.

  Durmet’s vicious and wild, but it’s clear he’s no match for the ogre. The ogre pounds a fist into Durmet and there’s a cringing sound of a broom handle snapping in twain as one of Durmet’s legs cracks and he slides down the ogre’s back, right into the ogre’s grip. With a hearty yank, the ogre rips Durmet from his back in a spray of blood, then grasps him in both hands and begins to squeeze.