“To still live he must have used his necromantic arts against the natural day of his own death, delaying it. It’s a foul practice, usually accomplished at the expense of many other lives. He may be many centuries old. In the Labyrinth of Leaves there are texts at least five hundred years old referring to him, though whether it is the same sorcerer who now haunts his tower I couldn’t say with certainty. It is said that he never showed any signs of age. If the legends are true, if Phisphul lives, if this is his work, I am no match for his power. Perhaps together with my brother we could challenge him, but my brother becomes obsessed to the point of madness with his researches.”
“So you expect me to take on a necromancer even you wouldn’t?”
“No, Corin; Agmar is right; you’re a thief, not a warrior. And clearly the nymph chose you for the task. There is something significant about this pain that you suffer. It drew her to you. But more than that, perhaps you’ll find a devious way where a bolder approach would fail. I don’t know. But I do know that this is important.”
“What do I care about important? I’m a thief, like you said.”
“If the city is destroyed, who will you steal from?”
“I’ll find someone. I always do. This sounds like suicide.”
“I’ll go with you,” Agmar said, “or perhaps I should go in your place.”
“No. It’s my quest.” Agmar’s offer made him irrationally protective of his prerogative, even if it was a death wish.
Agmar smiled at the effectiveness of his reverse psychology on the young thief.
“No,” Javid agreed, “the goddess asked it of him. Deities are wise in ways that mortals can’t easily understand. This is a task he must face alone.”
“So, any words of wisdom before I become an exhibit over a necromancer’s fireplace?”
“Don’t get caught,” Agmar said with a grin, the motes in his eyes sparkling.
“Thanks.” Corin said dryly.
Chapter 6: The Dark Tower
Corin had always occupied himself with the healthy, honest occupations of a “low lawyer,” a thief in the local thieves’ cant. A week ago sorcery had had no place in his world. Though he had seen many strange things in this city, he had rarely seen anything magical, unless you counted the entertainers and charlatans with their sleight of hand and hypnotic words. Those he saw through easily, given his own knowledge of sleight of hand and bullshit. But now he was obliged to search out the real thing. He thought of turning back, ignoring the nymph’s plea. But he remembered her kiss, sweeter than the freshest water in the parching summer heat. Would he ever see her again? And she had saved his life. As amoral as he tried to be he felt he owed her. And then, who knew what riches a great necromancer might have. Riches that a skilful thief could steal. A thief like Corin Quick-fingers. Greatest thief in the Obsidian City.
The burning sensation came in waves now. He wondered if it caused a madness that produced the voice he now heard in his head. As he came closer to Wizard’s Way the voice became clearer. And it called him, begged him to hurry. It was full of pain, and was too much like his own voice screaming in his head for him to be sure it wasn’t madness. But, whatever it truly was, he felt drawn by it. It was drawing him towards the tower.
He reached Wizard’s Way. He had expected brightly lit wizard’s residences to line the street, displaying wonders to would be patrons, or warnings of the dire consequences of trespassing. But there was only one, or at least only one tower. Along either side of the street, between where Corin slunk in shadow and the tower, stretched a row of dilapidated houses, clearly not lived in for many years, perhaps centuries. The tower rose at the end of the street, above a formidable surrounding wall, beyond which flourished a tangle of unkempt vegetation that somehow was not lit by the full moon, and seemed from a distance to be composed of shadows not wood. The tower itself soared higher than the battlements that ringed the city. And those battlements were high. From the tower window the strange light oozed, polluting further an already notoriously corrupt and filthy city.
Corin anxiously observed that high window and its unnatural light. In his brain and in his gut he knew he should turn back, but the voice called to him, and its urgency was such that he could no longer resist. Set in the walls was an iron gate beneath an arch from which gargoyles leered. Though the walls were high, they would stop no serious thief, but what thief would be so foolhardy to dare the wrath of a great necromancer? And this necromancer was great, if Javid was to be believed.
As Corin quickly scaled the wall, his fingers unerringly finding the best toe and finger holds, he felt the hair on the nape of his neck prickle. He was sure that was no charlatan’s trick. Whoever lived within was dangerous. Better safe than too dead to be sorry, he thought. He vacillated. He was going to turn back.
But the voice was becoming more insistent, like a pulsing in his head. It pleaded with him. He tried to ignore it. It tore at him. It threatened to leave him, and he wanted to scream, “then leave me.” Was it his voice that screamed? Could you leave yourself? He clutched his head and the fire in his veins surged from his heart along his arms and up his neck into his head, almost making him pass out. Into his legs, so that they seemed about to collapse beneath him. He almost fell. Then the voice whispered, more calmly this time, and washed away the pain.
Despite his misgivings he resolved to enter the necromancer’s lair. He sat on the ledge for a moment, while scanning the grounds within. The place was completely overgrown, the path that must lead from the gate to the tower barely visible, trees and bushes and creeping vines growing together; a thick undifferentiated tangle of wood and leaves and ivy and weeds and fallen, rotting leaves and twigs and branches. Usually that kind of riotous vegetation would be alive with the sounds of wildlife, owls and possums and nocturnal insects, but it seemed devoid of sentient life, and even the plants were stone-like, without a rustle, merely the ingredients for a creeping decay. Part of him knew he should have turned back, but another part could not; the fear of the fire inside him and the hope of a goddess’s healing kiss drove him on. He searched for a way down through the bracken. The growth was all the way to the wall, so that he could not simply climb down the wall or drop. He saw a thick branch from an olive tree, extending over the path from the gate to the tower, tested it with his foot, and it snapped, rotten. He tried another with the same result.
The top of the wall was more than a foot wide, so for someone with his balance it could easily be walked along. He walked away from the gate, peering into the tangled vegetation, but it only grew thicker the further he moved from the path. The shadows seemed deepest wherever he looked and he wondered whether they were real. But real or not they obscured the way down. He wouldn’t jump without knowing the ground. He went back to the gate arch. He took out a rope and grappling hook and fastened the hook to the highest crossbar on the gate from outside, fed the rope over the top, through the imperfect join between the arch’s keystone and the stone next to it, and dropped the rope into the darkness inside the gate.
He climbed down. There were more branches closer to the gate than he had noticed when looking in from outside. They seemed to close in on him as he descended. At first they were gentle, like the fingers of the diseased trying to touch a holy man, but as he climbed lower they seemed more like the hangman’s hands, touching his neck as if to check that the noose was tight enough. He struck out and branches broke off, kicked and others followed. He would have liked to have a sword to cut them all away. It was darker down here than he had expected too, and as he looked through the grille of the gate his vision seemed to blur and darken, the houses lining Wizard’s Way losing shape and shifting like shadows in firelight, as if any light from the street was strangled by the bars of the gate. When he reached the ground he could see nothing at all. He looked up the way he had come but couldn’t see the stars.
“That can’t be a good sign,” he said to himself, “but,” he tried to cheer himself, “at least it can’t be a bad sign if th
ere’s no sign.”
More strangely, he couldn’t even see the contours of the gate or lines of greater darkness where the bars of the gate should have been. He felt around but couldn’t find it that way. “You’ve got yourself into worse fixes than this before, Corin, if only you could remember when.” He usually had an excellent sense of direction, but here he was totally lost. He reached out in random directions and was surprised that no branches blocked his way. He decided he would just have to trust to the vegetation being thicker away from the path. He took one step in a direction he thought was away from the gate, reaching in front of himself. Another. And so by careful single steps he made his way, whether along the path to the tower or in an arc into the depths of the sinister garden he didn’t know.
The darkness seemed to become substantial as he progressed, at first like a stifling air, soon like liquid, and it became more viscous with every step. It didn’t choke his lungs, but he tasted a terrible despair in the air. Why had he come here? He was sure to die. He was dying now. He knew it. He knew there was no hope. Why did he go on? He had forgotten why he was here. Why not lie down here and die? The darkness closed about him, holding him immobile, pressing into his flesh. Fingers of it brushed his face, reached for his eyes, scratched like branches at his cheeks. Ivy reached out in thick fingers, which extended from all directions, knotted about his waist and dragged him down, but more forceful than this was the despair, which urged him to give up and to lie down and die.
Then the voice he had heard before called to him, washed over him, washing away the despair. It was a voice of power. He didn’t know whose voice it was, but it almost seemed his own, reassuring him. And he had always been more amused by the probability of death than terrified. He was a thief, born to a beggar and a whore, fostered by whores, befriended by scoundrels. It was a cruel but entertaining world. Laugh at it. Laugh all the way to the hanging tree, then dance. He laughed now, and every guffaw drove more of the fear away. The pressure around his waist grew less, the tendrils of ivy loosening. The darkness seemed to shift and shudder too, colours shimmering at the edge of vision, constantly shifting, like moonlight when the moon was full and its swirling colours most vivid. On nights like this. He knew why he was here. He was going to steal from a powerful necromancer. He would become a legend among thieves. The thief who stole from a necromancer and lived to tell the tale. That necromancer didn’t know what was coming and by the time he did it would be gone, along with everything of value in his tower, forsaken by all the gods, except Ilsa, god of thieves, who waited at the door to invite in his favourite son, the greatest thief in the Obsidian City, Corin Quick-fingers.
But the darkness closed in again, and the branches reached for him and held him back. Soon they would close about his neck. Here there would be no hanging tree dance. Here he would choke and no one would see. Here there was no laughing, not even a crowd to jeer at him as he drove away their own fear of death with his own, making light entertainment of that most terrifying of mysteries that all men great and small would one day face. And wasn’t that the point of a hanging? It wouldn’t be him laughing. He would be laughed at as he died. But even that would be better than this, dying here alone. No one would know. Rose and Sandy wouldn’t know. Rob wouldn’t know. Agmar…why did he think of Agmar? Who was Agmar? Who was Rob? Who was Sandy? Rose? Why did he think of a flower at a time like this? He must have friends, but did he? Who would be a friend to a rogue like him? Even if he did have friends they would probably just think the thieves of the Courts of Law had finally caught up with him, stuck a knife in his back, tied a stone to a rope and the rope about his ankles and chucked him in the lake, or maybe thrown his corpse on the refuse plateau to rot and have his eyes pecked out by hungry kites. He dropped to his hands and knees, but he couldn’t go on, not like this.
And again the voice came, as bright as the despair was dark, washing it away, speaking with a power greater than any he had known. This was greater than any necromancer. A necromancer was but an insect to this. And somehow it was Corin’s own voice, and yet it was not; and it lifted him from his hands and knees to his knees, from his knees to his feet. Corin knew where he was going now. The voice told him what he couldn’t see. It reassured him. It was himself. Who else could it be? He always talked to himself. That was what it was, he was sure. “You’re a great talker, when no one’s about.” And he had talked his way out of trickier situations than this. After all, here he only had to convince himself, and that was easy.
But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and he collapsed again, this time to his belly, the darkness wrapping itself around him, suffocating him. There was no life here. No animal, no insect. He strained his ears listening but could hear nothing. Though much of the city was asleep, always there was some sound in the Obsidian City, dirty jewel of Ropeua, where the king ruled and merchants traded and guild masters paraded down streets with their overdressed wives to their guild halls, and manglers and thieves made threats against freelancers, while chandlers slept and snored and dogs barked to one another and howled at the prismatic moon. But here not even a whisper of those sounds reached. Here there was nothing but silence. And it was not a peaceful silence. There was nothing relaxing or reassuring about it. It was a disturbed silence, a fearful silence, a silence that told of darkness and despair, of the pointlessness of all life, of the falsehood of all vitality. No such falsehood could survive here. He was dying of a lie and the lie was life, that disease with the most certain end.
“Truth is not so simple,” said the familiar voice then, and he knew in that moment that he agreed. Yes life was a road to death, but what a road, what views, what passions and pleasures, what adventures, what hopes, and not all were pointless. Yes there were times when the way seemed hard and steep, but the view at the end of the climb was the more satisfying for it. Yes there were frustrations but disappointment was the most certain evidence of passion. Yes there was pain, but didn’t that make the pleasures all the more exquisite? Yes there was dullness, so much dullness, so many boring rules and interfering guilds and laws designed to make a thief’s life more dangerous, but you didn’t sit still and moan, you got up and went out and looked for adventure. You didn’t avoid trouble you invited it. You made your own way. You broke every rule you could get away with and robbed blind every man you could outsmart. There was always hope, and it burned brightest in the darkest places. And now, in Corin’s breast, it blazed with incredible brilliance, a light within that fought the darkness without.
He could see the door. He crawled like a snake, on his belly. It was all he had strength for, but it was enough. Nothing would stop him. Nothing could. He was Corin Quick-fingers. He reached into his pocket and with his quick fingers felt the tiny statuette of his long dead father, next to that of his adoptive mother, the beggar and the whore. He carried them everywhere with him, as every common Thedran without hearth and home to place them carried their ancestral statuettes, carved from the bones of those who had gone before them, fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers, as many as could be held onto and remembered. His own father only spoke to him in dreams, but he would often speak to his father in times of need. He gripped the tiny figurine now and spoke to him.
“Father, I’m not going to try to trick you. I’m not going to use any of the beggar’s tricks you taught me. You taught me everything I know that I didn’t steal from someone else’s brain. You know all the tricks of the beggars trade, so I couldn’t trick you out of anything. I’m just a simple thief, with simple needs, like living. If I do beg you for anything I know you’ll respect me the more for it, but I wouldn’t want you to think I thought I could beg better than you. I understand professional pride. No better thief in the whole of this city, except maybe the Lord of Law, and maybe…well, you understand.”
He felt a sudden surge of strength. Perhaps, he thought, the voice had been of his father. He had thought it was female but he couldn’t be sure. He still could see clearly his father’s face, though he had
died six years before. It was carved with great precision into the bimateya statuette in his pocket. His thumb was pressed against it, and was familiar with its every contour. But try as he might he couldn’t remember his father’s voice. He remembered being told to beg for both of them. “They’re kinder to children,” his father had said. And they had been. But that was long ago. He was not a child anymore. He was sixteen.
He was not far from the door now. He got to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He looked up. At this end of the garden there was a gap in the vegetation. Through it he could see the stars, and the tower, iridescent in the spectral light of the moon.
A short stairway of slate led up to the door. Now he had to pick the door’s lock. He examined it, then checked all the edges of the iron bound oaken door. He couldn’t find any hidden triggers, and it didn’t seem to be locked. He checked again, this time for traps. Nothing. He turned the handle. As he did his thief sharp senses tingled. He stepped sideways instinctively, more quickly than he could think, and there was a flash, and an impact as if someone huge had shoved him hard. He landed in something prickly. He was blind.
It was only momentary. His vision cleared, and he was looking up at the same stars, reassuring in their twinkling normality, and the wall of the tower, with its crookedly mortared stones, rising towards the conical cap of its roof far above. He climbed out of the prickly bush he had landed on, something like a blackberry bush but without any fruit, as if nothing good could live in this place.
He cautiously went up to the door again. Looking to where he had stood a moment before he saw the slate of the top stair had been cracked, as if a giant hammer had struck there. He had discovered no trap with his examination of the door. It had to have been a magical trap. Sneaky of a necromancer to use magic, he thought. There had been no sound, despite the damage done. Perhaps the necromancer didn’t want his meditations disturbed by the killing of pesky intruders. And Corin didn’t want his life finished by the nasty spells of a vindictive necromancer. He would have to be more careful.
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