The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “The House of Deskata is better off disbanded than with a man like you at the helm. At least the House will end with its honor intact.”

  John looked away, and Tilda turned her back on him to hurry after the others.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Zeb followed Amatesu out to a raised porch, overlooking the intersection around the big willow tree and across from the mound of ash and blackened wood that had been the Dead Possum Inn. The adventurers had emptied out of the vicinity for with Vod’Adia now Open everyone was on the south side of Camp Town getting ready to enter soon or else studying the black city through the thinned-out mist. The only people around were a dozen or so Jobians, mostly armored acolytes, and a score of Shugak hobgoblins and bullywugs. The leaders of both groups seemed to be having some sort of confab under the tree, though at the moment they had withdrawn into two separate huddles and were speaking among themselves with their heads together.

  Someone socked Zeb in the arm as he blinked in the daylight, and he stumbled to the side. Uriako Shikashe was reclined in a wooden chair on two legs, leaning back against the front wall of the inn beside the door. He had his helmet off and his face around his eyes was red, as though he had gotten a sunburn through his visor. His armor was burned and hacked in many places but still intact, as was its wearer. Shikashe gave Zeb a nod and a very short smile that made Zeb blink at him.

  “Good morning, Zebulon,” a light voice said in Zantish behind Zeb. He swallowed hard before turning around.

  He only knew Nesha-tari at a glance by her sapphire blue eyes. Someone had brought their packs here from the Shugak barracks and Nesha-tari was reclined supinely atop them on the porch by the rail, in a square of open sunlight. Her cloak was beneath her head as a pillow, hands laced behind her head, and her dirty, bare feet were crossed at the ankles. She wore clean cloth trousers and a billowy linen shirt of a Zantish cut, and as she was stretched out comfortably her torso seemed slightly long for her legs, giving her body a lithe, lanky look. Though she did seem a bit shorter than Zeb had previously thought. Gone too was the magnificent mane of rich red hair that had reached the middle of her back in Zeb’s mind eye. Nesha-tari had hair of a tawny brown, shoulder length just as Amatesu had said.

  The greatest difference was however her face, for while Nesha-tari was by no means a bad-looking woman she bore only a faint resemblance, apart from the eyes, to the way in which Zeb had seen her before. Her face was more rounded and her features fuller, with skin of a supple tan color that befitted a Zantish woman, though it was without the softness of a privileged life spent indoors. Nesha-tari had faint scratches on one cheek, and while she looked as though she had at least splashed water on her face recently there were still smudges of gray ash at her temples and on her neck. Altogether, the countenance of Nesha-tari Hrilamae looked more like a face that someone actually walked around in rather than like a perfect painting hanging in a gallery.

  She smiled languidly at Zeb with her blue eyes half-lidded, looking like the cat who’d gotten the canary. Zeb’s spine felt cold and he shuddered.

  “I was sure you would have gotten killed,” she said through even, white teeth.

  “Last time I saw you, weren’t you on fire?” Zeb asked. Nesha-tari shrugged on her back, which had an effect on her body that was not totally lost on Zeb, even though he no longer felt any of the unnatural pull toward her that had dominated his thinking for more than a month.

  Nesha-tari took a hand from beneath her head and waved at Amatesu.

  “Have her tell you what the whole matter is here, and then tell me.”

  Amatesu got the gist of that without Zeb having to explain, and the shukenja filled him in on what was happening. The Miilarkian girl Tilda had come outside and she listened with her large, warm eyes wide. Zeb was very aware of the Islander standing beside him, even as he relayed Amatesu’s words into Zantish.

  The Shugak and the Jobians had arrived here last night as the battle was ending and the inn was burning down to the ground. The former had driven the onlookers well away to fight the fire while the Jobians had gathered up the dead and injured. The Ayzant priest had died in the inn and his Destroyers were all slain but three or four of their accomplices, men in the armor of Codian Legionnaires and accompanied by a mage, had escaped and taken as prisoner a Duchess from Daul. The Shugak had gotten word that the men had shown up at the palisade gate shortly after Vod’Adia had Opened, bearing a fully paid-for and very expensive license to enter the city at any time. Their party had been waved through despite the fact that most of the men were injured, and the woman had been unconscious.

  The Jobians, led by a priestess named Paveline, were furious. All morning they had been demanding that the Shugak organize a band to chase down the kidnappers in Vod‘Adia. The Shugak were having none of it. They told the humans to fork over some large coin if they wanted to go chasing into the Sable City themselves. This in turn had started a heated debate among the Jobians.

  When Zeb brought Nesha-tari up to speed, the woman just shrugged and settled comfortably back on her bed of packs and bedrolls. Tilda however marched off the porch for the circle of Jobians, calling out to one as Brother Heggenauer. Zeb recognized the tall blonde fellow if only by the battered state of his armor and shield as the one who had been fighting beside the old man against the legionnaires and Destroyers last night.

  Nesha-tari curled onto one side and gave a contented sigh. She plainly had no more than a faint curiosity in the drama playing out around her. Zeb looked to Amatesu.

  “What happens now?”

  The shukenja shook her head. “Our employment with Madame Nesha-tari ended with the death of the Fire Priest, and we were paid in full back in Ayzantu. You will have to work out your own terms with the Madame yourself.”

  Amatesu turned to Shikashe and spoke in Ashinese. After a thoughtful moment, the samurai gave her a nod. Amatesu left the porch and followed Tilda over to the cluster of armored Jobians. Nesha-tari had closed her eyes and appeared to be napping, and Zeb did not really want to wake her to ask if he was going to be paid anything for services rendered. Not right now. He joined Amatesu, who stood listening as Tilda spoke with Heggenauer and a middle-aged woman in the blue robe of a ranking Jobian priestess, worn over a chain mail coat and coif.

  “I am sorry,” Heggenauer was saying to the agitated Islander, whose dark eyes were if anything even wider now. “His body was taken to our temple, with all honors due a knight of the Hearth.”

  “The old guy?” Zeb asked, and the blonde priest looked at him with a frown. Zeb wondered just how bad he looked at the moment. The priestess who must have been Sister Paveline, spoke.

  “The Order of the Hearth, though Daulic, follows the triadism of the Home. Jobe is first among the three gods to whom they pay homage. This knight was our friend, though we knew him not. Not like the renegade scum.”

  Zeb thought Paveline had meant him for a moment, but the priestess’s kindly eyes glared most unkindly at two dead legionnaires laying splayed out past the tree. One dented tower shield lay across both their faces, but the corpses were otherwise untended.

  Tilda swallowed hard before she spoke, and kept all but a slight quaver out of her voice.

  “The Duchess was under my protection as much as Sir Towsan’s. I have to go after her.”

  “She was in my charge as well when she was taken,” Brother Heggenauer said. The young man was grim and determined, looking far more like a knight than a priest.

  “Brother Kendall,” Paveline said gently. “I can not allow any of our church to enter that evil place. Not even you. It is beyond the scope of our purpose here.”

  Heggenauer’s blue eyes blazed and his jaw came up. “Sister, the Duchess was in our care.”

  Paveline shook her head softly. “She was not, Brother. You just happened to be with her. We pledged her no service, and took no oath.”

  “But the men who arranged all this were Ayonites,” Heggenauer held out a large mace toward the ruins
of the Dead Possum Inn. “Is it not the duty of those who follow the Builder to oppose the agents of Destruction, wherever they may be found?”

  “The Ayonites are all dead,” Paveline said. “Praise be to Jobe. And thanks to these people.”

  The priestess looked toward Zeb and Amatesu, and included Shikashe and Nesha-tari on the porch. Zeb cleared his throat and Amatesu gave a brief bow.

  “Are you people willing to enter Vod’Adia to retrieve the Duchess?” Heggenauer asked. Amatesu said perhaps, but Zeb blanched and sputtered.

  “Me? No, sorry, but I don’t even know who we are talking about. I may not have a lot to live for, but a little is enough for me. I want no part of that place.“

  The young Miilarkian woman gave Zeb a sideways look, and her eyes were not warm at the moment.

  “I am sorry,” Zeb said, specifically to her. “Really though, why would any of you go in there to chase somebody down? There is no way out, correct? Why not just wait until the fellows come out?”

  “They are not going to come out. Not the same way they went in.”

  Zeb, and everyone else, turned to the porch. John Deskata had called out from where he was listening at the railing. He stepped briskly down the stairs and approached.

  “The legionnaires have a book, and now they have a mage.” Deskata stopped and looked around at everyone, even the Shugak. The hobgoblins had ugly, snaggle-toothed frowns on their faces, and the long tongues of the wugs darted rapidly in and out of their wide mouths. Deskata let out a long breath.

  “With those two things, they believe they can open a portal in the center of Vod’Adia. A portal they can use to take them anywhere in the world.”

  *

  Tilda listened as John Deskata spoke to the Jobians at length, and the hobgoblins and bullywugs listened as well. Whether or not the Magdetchoi were physically able to speak Codian, they seemed to understand it. The man Zebulon and the shukenja he had called Amatesu moved back to the porch and translated for the odd pair remaining there, the woman with the huge blue eyes and an Ashinese man Tilda recognized as wearing the full o-yori armor of a samurai.

  Deskata told the crowd much, though not everything. He said he knew the renegade legionnaires, and he knew that they had found an ancient tome in faraway Orstaf, at the site of the destroyed Round Hall in La Trabon. They had taken the book to a seer, who had been able to read enough of it to tell them a mage could use it to open a magical doorway of some kind, a doorway that would lead anywhere the person walking through it could desire. The magic would only work at three specific places, and the only one the seer could decipher was identified as, the heart of Vod’Adia.

  “That was their plan,” Deskata said. “They wanted to come here, find a mage, and go into Vod’Adia. They meant to take everything they could carry out through the doorway, without having to turn anything over to the Shugak for taxes.”

  The hobgoblins and bullywugs growled and croaked. Sister Paveline gave Deskata a hard look.

  “You were one of them,” she said. “You yet have the look of a Legion man about you.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Deskata said. “I didn’t join with the band we are talking about, but they robbed me to get together the price of a license. I came after them to get my money back. I have no idea how they fell in with a bunch of Ayonites, or what they think they are up to now.”

  “Why would they have taken Claudja with them?” Tilda asked, though she did it grudgingly as she would have preferred not to speak to Deskata at all. The man had his reasons for lying to her for months now, as stupid as they were, but she had no intention of forgiving him. Captain Block was dead because of his lies, and the House of Deskata was doomed. Tilda had failed the only mission she would ever be given, and it was John Deskata’s fault.

  He shook his head at her question. “I said I don’t know. Whatever it is, I reckon it was the Ayonites’ idea.”

  “But those men are all dead, are they not?” Tilda looked around for confirmation and the acolyte Heggenauer nodded at her.

  “They are, but they had a purpose for being here. The war between Ayzantium and Daul rages on. There are any number of reasons the Fire Priests might wish to have a Duchess of Daul as a hostage.”

  “Do you believe your friends still serve the purpose of Fell Ayon’s minions?” Sister Paveline asked Deskata. “That they will seek to take the Duchess, by magic, somewhere she can be handed over to the agents of the Burning Man?”

  “If they have been offered enough cash, they will do whatever it takes. What I am telling you people is that the legionnaires would not have gone into Vod‘Adia, with or without a hostage, unless they intended to leave by a different route.”

  “And they have a mage with them,” Tilda said quietly. “The man who knocked me out with a spell.”

  There was a surprised cry from the porch, the man Zebulon sputtering, “What?” to the woman with blue eyes. He asked it much too loud, and everyone looked over from under the tree.

  The woman settled back on her elbows, sitting now on the top step of the porch. She spoke several sentences in a language Tilda did not know, but which made Heggenauer and the Jobians frown. Zebulon only stared at her as she spoke, but when she was through he looked up and noticed that everyone, including the two Westerners, were looking at him expectantly. He licked his lips and cleared his throat.

  “Um. We know the mage who was here last night. Apparently. Fellow name of Phin. Nice enough chap.”

  Amatesu asked him a quiet question and Zebulon shook his head.

  “Who is this person?” Sister Paveline demanded. Tilda was not sure if the priestess was asking about the mage or the blue-eyed woman, but Zebulon chose to answer her regarding the former.

  “Just a Circle Wizard who tagged along with us on the way here.”

  The frowns of the Jobians deepened, but suddenly the throng of Shugak chiefs were barking and croaking in alarm, attracting everyone’s attention. A large hobgoblin shoved a thin one forward, and the toothy creature forced out words toward Zebulon like it was choking on them.

  “A Wizard of the Codian Circle? Tullish trained, as was Kanderamath?”

  Zebulon shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “Kanderamath,” Deskata snapped his fingers. “That was the name on the book.”

  The Shugak stared, then went back to growling and spitting among themselves. A little black bullywug rubbed its hands together and its pink tongue darted out to lick its pearl-black eyeballs the way a nervous man might mop his brow. Tilda could not imagine the little creature could see out of those eyes and yet it did not seem to be blind.

  “Who is Kanderamath?” Tilda asked no one in particular, though the name sounded vaguely familiar to her.

  “An ancient Witch King of Tull,” Sister Paveline said. “It was he who supposedly Opened Vod’Adia the first time, nearly five-hundred years ago.”

  Tilda glanced at John Deskata, but the man’s face was blankly neutral and if he knew she was looking at him he gave no sign. She could not believe he was out here already after the news she had given him only minutes before, and then the reason occurred to her. A book that could open a doorway. A doorway that would lead to any place that the person walking through it could desire. Anywhere in the world. In an instant.

  Tilda’s heart should have risen in her chest at the thought, but it stayed where it was. She had not spoken her last words to John Deskata idly. Matilda Lanai truly felt that the House of Deskata was better off without him, even if it meant the end of the once proud line for whom her own family had worked for a century. John Deskata was no sort of a man to lead a House. His last lie, that the Duchess Claudja was safe, had been the last straw for Tilda.

  The crescendo of the Shugak’s debate turned into a shoving match, until finally the black bullywug silenced the others with loud croaks and a wild waving of its webbed hands. The thin hobgoblin that spoke Codian turned to Paveline.

  “The mighty Shugak will grant entry into Vod’Adia by a
party. Take the Daul woman as you will, but you must slay the Circle Mage and bring us out the book.”

  Those words did move Tilda’s heart, and Heggenauer struck a fist into an open hand. Sister Paveline frowned, but before she could speak the black bullywug hopped over to the porch in two long bounds and threw itself to the ground at the base of the stairs. It held its webbed hands up toward the blue-eyed woman and gave voice to the most pathetic series of ribbits and croaks Tilda could have imagined.

  *

  Nesha-tari heard Kerek’s voice as though the bullywug were speaking Low Drak, and she answered it in the same tongue. The sound of the sibilant sounds sliding from her mouth made Zebulon and the Far Westerners stare at her.

  “For what possible reason would I want to do that?” she hissed.

  Kerek rolled up to his knees, joined his webby hands and shook them. His wide mouth lolled open and his tongue unrolled almost to the ground.

  “Please, great Mistress, servant of the invincible Azure One. We humble servants of Black Danavod beseech thee. Slay for us this wizard, fetch his book, and you shall have anything that the Shugak may give.”

  “I heard you the first time, bullywug. I asked why?”

  Kerek’s hands worked over each other with an oily sliding noise.

  “There is some chance, however slight, that a Tullish wizard employing Kanderamath’s style of witchery might undo the magic that binds Vod’Adia to this place. Without the Witch King’s spells, the place would be forever Closed.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  Kerek’s tongue slithered back into its mouth.

  “The situation, as it is, has been of great value to we Shugak. And to the Mistress of the Night Sky who we serve.”

  Nesha-tari sighed and shook her head at the pathetic little creature.

  “So go get him yourself.”

  “Alas, we can not, for all Shugak have sworn an oath to the Black Dragon herself not to set foot on dark Vod’Adia’s streets. I mean to send word to Her immediately, but She is distant and never answers but in Her own time.”