The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “Huh,” Balan said, glancing sideways. “Yes, that might do it.”

  “Balan, what have you done with John Deskata?” Nesha-tari demanded.

  “Not a thing, Madame. He decided to leave completely of his own accord.”

  “Where has he gone?” Tilda asked, still with her bow fully drawn back, the string hooked on her archer’s glove and her straight left arm trembling slightly.

  “Not far,” Balan said.

  “Enough dissembling,” Nesha-tari snapped, marching around the table and coming to stand quite near the devil. Tilda relaxed the pull on her bowstring before her arm gave, and Zeb knelt behind the table to load his crossbow as innocuously as possible.

  Nesha-tari’s blue eyes flashed as she glared at the devil, standing near enough now to touch him but only raising one hand to jab a finger at his face. Zeb knew the woman was powerful, but the sight of her confronting the horned, hoofed, red-eyed Devil Lord with her hands empty of weapons, or lightning for that matter, was truly impressive. She growled as she spoke to Balan.

  “You will tell the truth to me now, as your kind must. What is it you think to do here?”

  Balan stared into Nesha-tari’s eyes, and a wistful smile played about his dark gray lips.

  “There is no need for such a coarse tone, Madame. Nor indeed for you to involve yourself here at all.”

  Balan looked at Nesha-tari with a solemn expression on his diabolic features, and spoke with complete sincerity.

  “There is no reason what I do here need be of any concern to you, nor to your Blue Master, Akroya the Great.”

  Nesha-tari’s lips pulled back, exposing her even teeth.

  “How do you…”

  “Because Danavod told me who you are,” Balan said with a shrug, then looked around at the others. “Even had she not, we would have learned all by now. You people talk entirely too much. Do you not know that the streets of this city have ears? Not to mention eyes. Beady little red ones.”

  “Balan…” Nesha-tari snarled. The devil sighed.

  “Call off your man, Nesha-tari, that we might speak in a more polite fashion.”

  “He is stalling,” Tilda said, but Nesha-tari met Shikashe’s eyes over Balan’s shoulder, and the sword blade hovering just above it.

  “Uriako Shikashe, stand down.”

  The face mask of the samurai’s helmet was undone. He was seen to frown deeply.

  “That is not a good idea, Madame.”

  “It is an order. Are you in my service, or are you not?”

  Shikashe let a hard breath out through his nose, then gave Balan’s neck a soft tap with the flat of his sword. Balan winced as though the blade was either very hot, or very cold. The samurai lowered his sword and took a step back, though he took a formal stance with both hands on the pommel, clearly ready to strike in an instant.

  “That is moderately better,” Balan said, rubbing his neck.

  “Speak, Balan,” Nesha-tari growled.

  “Fine,” the devil said, and nodded toward Tilda. “She is right. I am stalling.”

  The devil disappeared in a wink. Shikashe lunged, his sword flashing, but it passed through where Balan had stood and cut a slice clean through the top of the heavy oak table.

  *

  Deskata jerked Phin off his feet and strode down the ring of stairs, dragging the wizard along by a fistful of robes. The collar twisted tightly around Phin’s neck as he tried to get to his feet, but Deskata loped quickly across the flat circle of floor and started up the dais, banging Phin’s knees and then an elbow against the rising steps. Phin gasped for a breath and at the top was thrown on his side in front of the curving platinum posts. The silvery white metal seemed to glow spectrally against the black stone background.

  Deskata set his tower shield aside on its rim, slid the satchel off his shoulder to hold it by the book within, and drew his ugly, fat-bladed short sword. He kept the weapon at his side with the blade pointed at the floor, but his eyes stabbed at the wizard.

  “You will cast your spell or speak your words, now!” he roared, his voice suddenly thick with some accent that was not of the Empire. “Open this gate, that I may pass through to Miilark.”

  Phin stared back at him. “Miilark?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I’ve never been to Miilark!”

  A vein throbbed along Deskata’s jaw, and his fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword.

  “I did not ask if you had been there, I told you to open this damned gate!”

  Phin was on his side, but he rolled to his back to look up the long tower at the false sun suspended high above him. He laughed bitterly.

  “Nine Gods, you people are all morons!” Phin yelled. “Do the Legions bar entry to anyone with enough brains to pour piss out of a boot?”

  The ex-Centurion glared, but he made no move as Phin got shakily to his feet, and shook out his robes which had bunched up awkwardly as he’d been dragged to the center of the room. He pointed a finger at the satchel in Deskata’s hand.

  “Who told you idiots that thing could open a gate?”

  Deskata glared, and from the utter lack of light in the depths of his muddy brown eyes Phin did not doubt that the man would not hesitate to kill him. Phin just found it hard to care about that at the moment.

  “A seer,” Deskata said.

  “A seer! That’s really brilliant. Some Orstavian local, I expect? Was he wearing animal skins and rocking back and forth in a tent? Smoking herbs and drinking fermented toadstools? Nice choice. That is exactly who I would consult regarding an ancient work of thaumaturgy, written in Tullish!”

  Deskata’s nostrils were wide and he took deep breaths through his nose, as his mouth was shut so tight his lips were going white. He had to pry them apart to speak.

  “He said this gate, when opened, could lead anywhere in the world.”

  “He wasn’t even close!”

  Phin spun toward the posts and threw out his hands.

  “When this thing worked, it connected to only one or maybe two specific places. And it hasn’t worked in fourteen centuries! All that is in that book in your hand are musings about why that might be so. Did the cataclysm that tore Vod’Adia out of the world sever the links? Did some safety measure shut it off, so that the rest of this world did not disappear along with the city? It is theory, Centurion. Wonderings and ruminations.”

  Deskata shook the satchel with stiff, jerky motions.

  “There are spells within this book!”

  “Quite right. Three teleport incantations, written as models of how the gate might have worked, once again, fourteen centuries in the past. And before you say then teleport me to Miilark, know two things. One, a wizard teleports by envisioning a destination in his mind, one that has been studied intensely and committed to memory in its every detail. I can’t envision a place I’ve never been, now can I? And two, no spell of any kind can function across a magical barrier. Like, for example, the big gray misty one you may have noticed when you walked into this city! Do you think the Shugak would let magi come into this place if they could teleport away anytime they liked, without paying taxes on the way out?”

  Deskata stared at the platinum horns, graceful in their lines and beautiful in their way, and utterly inanimate. Phin spread his hands at his sides, and shrugged. Deskata took a stiff step toward him, then dropped his shoulder and plowed into Phin’s chest.

  He hit Phin like a charging war horse, lifting him off his feet and slamming his back into one of the posts. Phin’s breath exploded out of his lungs and as he started to slide to the ground on legs gone to water, Deskata drove a knee into his side so he toppled between the two posts on his way to the floor.

  Phin actually had an instant of nervousness, based on nothing, but his body took a predictable path as he sprawled to the dais floor for the second time, albeit on the other side of the gate. He glared up at Deskata, and managed to shout, “Ta-da!”

  The Centurion’s face was flushed. He looked
at the posts to either side, then took a breath before stepping between them himself. Nothing of course happened, and he stood over Phin.

  “Does it feel like home?” Phin asked, sneering. “Smell that Island air?”

  “There must be something…”

  “There is not.”

  “There must be!”

  The Centurion shook Kanderamath’s book out of the satchel over Phin’s head, and the Circle Wizard narrowly managed to catch the heavy volume before it hit him in the face. When the bare skin of his hands touched the worn leather covers, the world turned white in Phin’s eyes.

  *

  Zeb heard the Devil Lord’s voice coming out of one of the side rooms, and he raised his crossbow toward the open door. Tilda raised her bow at a different doorway, while the others looked around wildly.

  “Madame Nesha-tari,” Balan’s voice addressed the woman as she crouched back against a wall and snarled. “While I had hoped to have a civilized discussion regarding a certain matter, it seems we shall have to do things the easy way.”

  Nesha-tari opened her mouth to speak but she only gasped, and staggered on her feet. Amatesu rushed to her side while Shikashe took up a position in front of them both with his sword raised and eyes darting about. Nesha-tari’s blue eyes fluttered like signal lamps and she swooned against the shukenja.

  “You have promised not to attack us, devil!” Heggenauer shouted. The Jobian acolyte stood with mace and shield raised, the Duchess Claudja behind him in a corner.

  The devil answered Heggenauer, and as Zeb and Tilda both turned to aim at where the voice now seemed to be coming from, they pointed their bows at each other for a moment.

  “Actually, I swore that me and mine would do you no harm. This is not harm, nor is it an attack.”

  Tilda ducked under Zeb’s crossbow and scooted around him, then put her back against his. Zeb noticed to absolutely no purpose that she smelled very nice right now. Balan’s voice continued to speak.

  “There is an aspect to the diabolic presence, I need not deny it, which has a unique effect on simple creatures. Humans among them. With only a little concentration on my part, people can be made to feel very strongly their most fundamental desires. Greed, hatred, envy and lust. And of course, most simply of all, hunger.”

  Nesha-tari shoved Amatesu away from her and sagged against the wall, arms held tight against her stomach and mouth locked in a grimace.

  “She is in pain,” the Duchess Claudja said from behind Heggenauer.

  “True, but pain is not always harm, is it, your Grace? Pain is useful. Pain is honest.”

  The voice had moved again, though Zeb stopped whipping his crossbow toward it every time as he was starting to feel like an idiot. Tilda dropped her bow altogether and drew two matching daggers from the sheaths under her forearms.

  Nesha-tari’s chest hitched and she stumbled forward, shoving Shikashe hard and sending the surprised samurai staggering sideways. She fell forward but caught herself on the edge of the table, and everyone in the room cringed. Nesha-tari’s spread fingers ended in claws that dug deeply into the oak, and there was tawny fur on the back of her hands and forearms. Her brown hair, still damp from washing, hung lankly in front of her face.

  “What the hell?” Tilda asked. Zeb wished she had found a different word.

  “You do not know?” Balan’s voice came from still another part of the room. “That hardly seems sporting. The lovely Nesha-tari never told you people of her lineage as a Lamia?”

  Zeb dropped his jaw, as the last several weeks he had spent in Nesha-tari’s company suddenly made complete sense to him. He knew just enough about the creatures known as lamias, from spook stories told across campfires if nothing else, to give serious consideration to turning his bow on the woman slumped against the end of the table.

  “What is a lamia?” Tilda whispered behind Zeb.

  “Monsters of high deserts and lonely plains,” he answered. “They lure men to their deaths, and eat them.”

  “Lure them how?” Tilda asked.

  “How would you?”

  A deep, resonating growl emerged from Nesha-tari. The table she leaned on toppled to its side as though her weight had suddenly increased, and as she hit the floor on all fours she was no longer wholly a woman, though neither was she fully something else. Her clothing strained at the seams as her limbs and torso elongated. Thick, tawny fur sprang from every inch of her exposed skin. She crouched cat-like on four thick paws, and when she raised her head to release a deafening roar it came out of a muzzle framed by long whiskers. Only her eyes, still of the deepest blue, remained unchanged.

  Even Shikashe and Amatesu sprang away from her and put their backs to the walls, the samurai’s sword and the shukenja’s club warding away the great half-feline beast. A spark flashed on the floor in front of Nesha-tari and suddenly Balan was there, kneeling right in front of her with his red eyes looking into her blue ones.

  “Nesha-tari,” Balan spoke in a soft whisper. “You do not have to fight what you are. Not here, and not with me.”

  The big cat’s ears twitched, and Nesha-tari’s fanged maw hung open. The devil reached out slowly and gently scratched the side of her head.

  “You can not stay with these monkeys, they will not allow it. Not now that they have seen you for what you are. Stay here, with us, Nesha-tari. We are of a kind.”

  Zeb was staring, everyone was staring, with the exception of Kendall Heggenauer. The armored Jobian took several running steps and lunged, dropping his mace to hang from his wrist, bracing both arms and a strong shoulder behind his shield.

  Balan looked up to see Jobe’s holy symbol bearing down on him and before he could move or disappear, Heggenauer crashed into him as though fired from a ballista. The devil lord reeled and slammed into a wall, as Heggenauer leaped to his feet and raised his mace, white light blooming from its head.

  “She is with us, devil,” Heggenauer said calmly. “Sell your lies to another.”

  The great beast that had been Nesha-tari cringed back as Balan’s focus came off her, nails scratching on the floor as the cat reeled back on its hind legs, which were suddenly human legs. She was a woman again, tripping over the overturned table and falling toward the floor. Shikashe and Amatesu came together to catch her by the shoulders. Balan righted himself, and glared at Heggenauer.

  “You godlings are the same everywhere, aren’t you?” the devil sneered. “Nesha-tari, explain to this dolt the way of the world, will you?”

  Nesha-tari shoved herself away from Shikashe and Amatesu, growling again though it was now with a human voice. The blue lightning bloomed in her hands and she threw her tanned arms forward, split sleeves hanging off them in tatters, and unleashed arcs of crackling blue fire across the room, into Balan.

  The devil was lifted off his foot and hoof, and Zeb and Tilda flattened to the ground as the creature was blown across the wall above them, rolling and screeching. Balan slammed into a corner and fell to the ground in a smoking heap. The smell of bad barbeque filled the room so thickly that Zeb nearly gagged.

  “Ouch,” Balan muttered, lying on his neck and shoulders with his legs sticking up against the wall. He groaned and rolled to his side, then pushed himself up to a seat. A hole had been blown in the clothing on his chest and the jagged edge of coat, vest, and shirt were all smoldering. The gray skin beneath was blackened like a piece of meat fallen off a spit into the fire. He coughed, and a puff of smoke came out of his mouth.

  Nesha-tari stood glaring, her own tattered clothes hanging so she had to hold the trousers up with a hand. Blue fire still danced in her other palm.

  “Where is the Wizard?” she hissed.

  “And J-John Deskata,” Tilda added, almost getting it out without stammering.

  One of Balan’s arms hung limp at his side, but the devil pointed back into the tower entryway with the other.

  “First set of double doors on the left. Long hall through the wing, then another set of doors into the central t
ower. They are both in there.”

  The lightning in Nesha-tari’s hand rose in intensity, and Balan shook his head.

  “You chose badly, Kitty,” he said, then rolled on the floor and disappeared.

  *

  Balan rolled another turn across the hard ground of a courtyard, shouting as he went over his broken arm. He stopped on his back and let out a ragged breath at the featureless night sky above.

  “Poltus,” he said, and the devil appeared instantly above him.

  “Anything?” Balan asked, and the spiked devil shook his head once. Balan sighed. “Such a waste. Open the western tower.”

  Poltus bowed and disappeared. Balan lay still for a moment, grimacing as the fried skin on his chest moved, burns and blisters sinking back into the flesh and the unhealthy gray pallor returning. Nesha-tari’s lightning bolt had caused the muscles of Balan’s left arm to contract so violently his humerus had snapped. Nothing funny about it. Balan grabbed the arm under the elbow and pulled it straight with a gasp, so that the bones could knit back together.

  “Balan?” a disembodied voice asked from all around.

  “Danavod,” Balan said, needing to add no affectation of strain to his voice. “The Circle Wizard is in the central tower, at the Node. I have opened the tower doors to your hobgoblins. You must send them right away.”

  “The Wizard did this to you?”

  “No, Blue Akroya’s servant. She seeks to aid the Wizard.”

  There was silence in the courtyard but the air seemed heavy, and angry.

  “Does my Blue brother act against me?” Danavod asked, possibly a rhetorical question but Balan answered anyway, and as always with complete honesty.

  “I do not know what Akroya wants done here, your Fierceness.”

  There was another moment of silence, then dust stirred all around the courtyard as if tremendous wings had beat the ground. The dark presence of the Dragon rose into the sky, and moved off west.