by Paul S. Kemp
“Look at you, scheming,” Nix said with a grin. “No wonder you got the Eighth Blade.”
“I don’t think you’d be standing here alone if you thought that,” Egil added. “Out of concern that we’d kill you.”
Rusk smiled and echoed Egil’s words back at him. “Try to kill me. But anyway, since I know what’s in the Vault, and I know that nothing in there would be of interest to you two, I don’t think you’re running a play, though I know I’ve heard only that part of the truth you cared to share.” He held up a scarred hand to stop their protestations. “I don’t need to know more than that. Business is important to me, and good business is good business. I just want you to know that I’ll collect on your promise to me. I consider that the most valuable thing to have changed hands here today. And I should be clear: Not holding up your end would be bad business.” He looked them each in the face, his expression serious. “I don’t like bad business.”
Nix grinned. “Look at him now, Egil, with the implicit threats even. I’m impressed. That crown fits you well indeed, Rusk.”
“We’ll hold up our end,” Egil said.
“Assuming we survive the night,” Nix added.
“I’ll throw a pray to Aster asking for just so,” Rusk said, and managed to mask most of the sarcasm. “Now come on. Walk with me.”
He led them out of the room and through the guild house, taking them through two cleverly concealed doors under stairways that Rusk unlocked with a small key. As they went, he took from his pouch a long glass vial filled with a yellow substance. As he held it, it began to glow and soon shone as bright as a large candle. He took them down several flights of stairs into a series of narrow, low-ceilinged, curving hallways. They saw no one else the entire time. Nix made a point to remember the route.
“We’re under the Meander,” Egil observed, looking up at the ceiling.
Rusk said nothing.
Nix tried to visualize the layout of the hallways they’d traversed since passing through the first concealed door. He realized they formed a figure.
“The halls form the shape of a warding glyph,” he said. “Clever.”
Rusk raised his eyebrows, apparently impressed.
Nix understood why Rusk had brought them alone. “You didn’t know about any of this until that Eighth Blade showed up on your arm, did you?”
“No,” Rusk admitted. “Knowledge comes with the title.”
“What’s that like?” Egil asked. “Having all that pop into your head all of sudden?”
Rusk looked back at the priest, as though wondering if the question was serious. Apparently determining that it was, he said, “Unnerving at first. Like being born again. But then it just seems like you’ve known it all along.”
Egil grunted.
Rusk stopped at the end of a long corridor, before a metal door, the slab engraved with glyphs, the symbol of Aster in relief, and fitted with an elaborate lock and lever.
“Give me the key,” Rusk said, holding out his hand. “If it can dub this jigger, I’ll be truly impressed.”
Nix took the key from his satchel and handed it over.
“Just say some—”
“I know how to make it work,” Rusk said.
Nix held up his hands and backed off. “All that knowledge, I guess, huh?”
Rusk spoke a word in the Language of Creation to animate the key, then held it before the door. Nix imagined the spirit within the key studying the lock and contemplating its payment.
“Give us some celery,” it said.
Rusk looked back to Nix.
Nix had packed a stalk, among the other produce, in his satchel. He handed it to Rusk and said, “You’re getting by easy. Thing was always asking me for obscure shite.”
“Didn’t like you, maybe,” Rusk said, as he fed the celery to the key.
“That’s not possible,” Nix answered.
After the key had taken a few bites, Rusk placed the key into the lock and turned. Tumblers clicked and the lock opened. Rusk nodded and put the magical key in his vest pocket. He turned the lever on the door and swung it open.
Several bottles filled with the glowing yellow substance cast the room in light. Nix was pleased to see that it looked more like a bedroom than a storeroom or true vault. Several overstuffed chairs, a divan, tables, and a thick carpet covered the stone floor, though it smelled of stale must. A row of chests lined one wall, all of them closed and presumably locked. Thick wooden beams set at even intervals reinforced the ceiling.
“A bit too nicely outfitted for just swag,” Nix observed.
Rusk chuckled. “You’re not the first seeking refuge from wizards.”
“Must work well for kidnappings, too,” Egil said.
To that, Rusk said nothing.
Before walking in, Nix said, “If we thought less of you, we might figure your actual play here is that, first, you’d lock us in here, and second, you’d find out who was looking for us then sell us out for more than we paid to hole up here.”
Rusk tilted his head to concede the point. “I’d have been a fool not to consider it.”
“You’d be a fool to try it,” Egil said darkly.
“There is that,” Rusk said.
“And having considered it?” Nix pressed.
“Having considered it,” Rusk said, “it’s not a good play because first, I don’t care for wizards or witches and their ilk, owing in part to what happened in the swamp. And second, an open-ended promise from you two is worth more to me than anything a wizard could pay. And third, at some point, those doing business together have to trust each other. Take precautions, but trust. You’re free to leave. Just me here. No one is stopping you.”
Nix looked to Egil, who shrugged.
“In for a dram,” Nix said.
“In for a drink,” Rusk finished.
With that, Egil and Nix entered the vault. Rusk lingered in the doorway.
“You’ll be safe here. Good business, as I said. I’ll return after nightfall.”
“Make it Kulven’s setting, yeah?” Nix said. “Don’t want to get started too early.”
“Start what?” Rusk asked, grinning.
Nix grinned in return, but said nothing.
“Well enough,” Rusk said. “See you soon.”
He shut the door and the lock clicked into place.
Egil exhaled loudly and took a seat in one of the chairs. He took his ivory dice from the pouch at his belt, absently shook them.
For his part Nix paced the room, examined the furniture. He did not try to open the chests, though he found them tempting.
“Gonna be a while,” Egil said. “Sit. There’s nothing for it now but to wait. And your pacing irritates.”
“Your calmness irritates,” Nix said. “And I think he’s got something in mind for us already. Rusk, I mean.”
“You think, perhaps?” Egil said sarcastically.
Nix stopped pacing and glared at him. “We wanted adventure. Not only do we have some right now, we’re also storing some up. If he didn’t have something in mind, he’d sell us to Kerfallen. I didn’t read that on him.”
Egil smiled and pocketed his dice. “Nor I. Now sit, for fak’s sake.”
Nix nodded and fell into another of the chairs. He was ill-suited to sitting and soon fidgeted, dithering with his knives and daggers, checking the inventory of items magical and mundane in his satchel. He soon grew bored of it.
“I’ve got a few healing elixirs in here,” he said to Egil. “Be so advised.”
“I’m so advised,” Egil said.
“Gods, we don’t even have a way to track time in here,” Nix said. “Fak.”
“Been about an hour now,” Egil said. “And I think we can say with certainty Rusk isn’t selling us out. If he were, Kerfallen’s minions would already have come. Given that, why don’t you start figuring how we’ll get into the Conclave. That’ll keep the boredom at bay. I don’t know it as you do, so I’m of little help. I presume you’ve got some more thi
ngs in that satchel that will be of help?”
“A thing or two more,” Nix said, nodding absently. “But not as much as I’d like.”
“That bodes ill,” Egil said. He crossed his arms over his chest, stretched out his legs, and closed his eyes.
“Key would’ve been handy,” Nix said.
“Maybe next time think of that before giving something away?”
“Aye, but I needed to buy us some time in this room,” Nix said. “I knew they’d find the key tempting.”
“Aye,” Egil said, never opening his eyes. “And anyway, done is done. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
“Aye,” Nix said.
Egil was soon snoring.
Nix turned his mind to the problem of sneaking into the Conclave. He had scant idea of how to do it, other than find a way in, watch for traps, don’t trigger the spell wards, and get out fast. He went through his satchel again, thinking how he might use the items he had to get them in and out of the Conclave. He soon had the beginnings of a plan.
—
In time, the Afterbirth reached the edge of the ruined land and climbed to the top of a windswept ridge and the morning light put long shadows on the terrain and he looked out toward the far horizon and saw the brown line of a wide river that snaked its way toward a large walled city. The breeze picked up, carried on its current the scent of the Great Spell, and he knew it came from somewhere within that city. He had only to find a way in and a time to walk among them without being trapped. He feared no weapons no blows but he feared confinement. Walking the world in despair even if it wasn’t his world was preferable to an eternity spent in a cage so he could not simply force his way through the gates and find and take what he wished. At least not yet.
His eyes went to the river to the fishing boats some of which already plied its shallows the docks and piers of the city jutting like accusations out into the slow-moving water. He watched the boats a long time their comings and goings thinking planning as day turned to dusk to night and soon knew what he would do.
When the moons set, he headed off for the river. He felt exposed as he crossed the open plains between him and the water, seen, watched by the stars and gods and sky of a world not his. Buildings stood to either side of the road up near the walls of the city, roadhouses and inns, and he kept well away from them. A line of wagons awaited entrance before the city’s closed gates. The last time he’d encountered a camp of wagons it had ended in slaughter and screams.
He was downwind of the city and could smell the horses and the donkeys and the food and the fires and the humans, their sweat and waste. The city, too, carried a smell, mostly of decay, but also of something familiar, something different from the rest of the world, and it only reinforced his conviction that the faint tang of the Great Spell that he’d smelled so many leagues ago had to have come from somewhere within its walls.
He stayed far from the people and buildings, moving hunched through the unoccupied area distant from the city’s walls. Lumbering across the grasslands, mumbling and grunting, he eventually reached the road and hurried across it without slowing.
The breeze carried a sharp whistle from his left, laughter, the whinny of a horse and a raised voice. He sped up, mumbling in nervous spurts, hoping he’d not been seen. He’d never before dared enter a city but to find the Great Spell he had to risk it.
The ground sank gradually toward the river until at last the grassland gave way and he found himself standing on the gently sloped, muddy bank, looking across the wide, smooth expanse of the slow-flowing water. The snaking river cut a meandering north-south path through the plains, a winding dirty line drawn through the grass.
Downriver the city lined both banks, the two sides connected by a soaring stone bridge decorated with dangling lights that swayed in the breeze. He stopped when he saw the bridge, seeing in its curves and stone and immensity something of his own lost world. People were on the bridge, people born to this world, and wagons, too, and he heard music and chanting and laughter and smelled incense and smoke.
Grunting, he moved down the bank, his eyes still fixed on the bridge, perplexed by what its otherworldly nature might imply, and he lost his footing and slipped and tumbled the rest of the way down the bank, feet over head, his mouths exclaiming in surprise until he hit the cool water with a large splash and his weight sank him a hand span into the muddy bottom. He came up, gasping, and heard a distant voice from the darkness off to his right.
“What’s that now?”
“All well?” called another. “Sounded like someone went in the drink, din’t it.”
“Aye. Pull up that net. Uncover the lantern. Here we go.”
Oars splashed, a beam of light cut through the night, and the Afterbirth hurriedly moved away from the boat, heading for deeper water, but he was slow, a poor, loud swimmer.
“Ho, someone there?”
As the light neared him he dove under though he still was in fairly shallow water and imagined by day he would have been easily seen. He hoped the darkness would shield him. He heard an exclamation but the water muffled the words. The splash of oars grew closer. He could hear the voices even through the water. They were coming, coming for him, to catch him and hold him maybe.
He could not allow himself to be seen they would raise a hue and cry and find a way to hold him contain him and he could take no risks before getting into the city. He tensed and looked up through the murky water, saw the shadow of the boat framed against the lighter darkness of the sky, the glow of the lantern….
He tensed and propelled himself out of the water.
The two men in the boat, one older and one younger, had only a moment to respond to his attack. Their faces registered surprise, terror, and they reared back, mouths open, and they had nowhere to go but shrank away from him as best they could. He crashed into them and the boat, his weight causing some of the boat’s wooden planks to shriek and crack. He snatched a man in each hand and rolled off the boat and dragged them underwater. They screamed, the sound muted by the water, a flurry of bubbles pouring out of their mouths. They struggled, kicked, punched, and finally went still.
He lifted his head out of the water and listened. He heard nothing. No one had heard.
He released them and let the river’s ponderous current take the corpses. If they were seen at all before floating past the city in the dark, they would appear to be nothing more than an accidental drowning. He left their boat where it was, crooked and broken on the surface, and swam out into the river, keeping only his head above water and watching for more late-night fishermen.
He saw none near him and swam closer to the city, to the bridge.
A sound carried through the night, a deep gong, repeating, perhaps tolling the hour, and the sound, like the bridge, carried the promise of another world. He felt it on his skin, in his bones, in his soul, the tingling energy of something he’d thought long gone, something as alien as him. He felt dizzy for a moment, as though he had stumbled onto some secret place, some dreamscape where worlds collided and he wondered if he had gone fully mad at last and if his perceptions were lies and if he would soon awaken in one of the dank caves he had called home since the birth of the world and he wanted to weep but he could not weep because his anger held back tears and his hope kept him buoyant.
The gonging sound ended and he felt its absence. He floated out in the center of the river, staring at the lines of the city’s buildings, watching the piers, waiting for stillness, picking a place from which he could emerge from the water and walk among the alleys and dark places. A few men worked on the docks still, loading barrels or crates. A few other men stumbled along the night-shrouded streets, and now and then a carriage or wagon moved slowly along the road. He let the current take him some, looking for a likely place to exit the river.
The clock tolled another hour, energizing him with its sound, as he waited and watched and hoped.
Soon the activity on the docks and piers ended, and most of the torches and can
dles on the streets and in buildings went out or burned low. The city was dark, mostly asleep. He saw no one. He’d have to move quickly and quietly, hunched and cloaked, sticking to alleys and sewers and trash heaps.
The unseen currents that bore the world’s magic carried to him another taste of the Great Spell, coming from somewhere within the tangled nest of the city’s buildings.
Unable to resist, unable to wait any longer, he swam for shore.
Hours later, the heavy clicks of the lock on the Vault’s door presaged its opening. Nix leaped to his feet and drew his falchion. He kicked Egil’s boot to wake him.
“Huh? What?” Egil said, but took in the situation in a blink and clambered to his feet, hand on a hammer haft.
The metal slab swung silently open. Rusk stood alone in the doorway, a glowing glass globe in his hand. “Minnear and Kulven are both down and that’s all the time you boys bought. Let’s go.”
“No trouble for you and yours owing to our trouble?” Nix asked.
“None as of yet,” Rusk said.
As they walked past him, Nix said, “I bet you took no end of shite from the rest of the Committee for sheltering us here.”
Rusk closed the Vault door and fell in with them. “They do what I say and they see the value in your promise. Just remember that you owe me.”
“Not the guild, but you?” Egil asked.
Rusk smiled. “It’s the same thing.”
Having committed the way to memory, Nix led them out back through the series of concealed doors and into the guild house proper. Trelgin awaited them there in a candlelit room, standing near a table. Circles painted the skin under Trelgin’s eyes. He hadn’t slept in a while.
Seventh Blade’s a shite job, Nix thought.
Rusk squared up to them. He looked tired, too, Nix thought.
“Trelgin will see you out,” Rusk said. “I’ve got other things to see to tonight. Whatever you’re up to, don’t die, yeah? I’ll need you for something later.”
“That is deep and abiding affection for us right there, Egil,” Nix said.
Egil said, “I think I may swoon.”
