Omari wore loose-fitting pants and a simple shirt, both of white cloth, with a brown sash at his waist. His feet were bare and he was unarmed, though that made him no less of a threat. Behind him stood a large pillar-like sawing machine, with Rowan’s bard friend chained to it by her wrists. Pendris sat tall and calm, unafraid. The skirts of her long green dress had been tucked up under her to show off her metal-bound ankles, demurely crossed. Her expression was difficult to read, but her facial muscles looked relaxed. Her lute was on one of the worktables at the far side of the room, safe but out of reach.
“Are you all right?” Keren asked Pendris. “Aside from the obvious, I mean?”
Pendris gave a wan smile. “I’m not harmed.”
“You should caution your diminutive friend against the use of magic,” Omari said smoothly, pacing a deliberate circuit around the central machine. “I know you wouldn’t have come without her. The snake construct binding our minstrel’s ankles together is especially sensitive to magic. I think it likes her, but the slightest whiff of magic or attempt to remove it will make it nervous, and when it gets nervous, it bites. I assure you, its venom is quite deadly. It would be a shame to lose a talented songstress when she still has my epic to write.”
What Keren had assumed was just a spiral of metal resolved on closer inspection to an iron serpent. Its eyes were sparkling red gems, and its jaws were spread wide around Pendris’s calf. Sharp fangs dimpled the skin, more than merely poised to bite.
Keren lifted her hands to show that they were empty, and hoped he wouldn’t be suspicious about the powers of the permanent but inert shields on her palms. “No magic. Let’s just chat. Are you really planning to eat that thing?”
He paid no heed to the marks on her hands, but instead drew close enough to threaten her. “That ‘thing’ is a piece of a god. You might want to refer to it with the respect it’s due.”
Zae spoke from the doorway. “You want to pulverize it in your teeth and send it through your intestines, and she’s the one not showing proper respect?”
For a moment, Keren wondered how quick the monk might be to anger. While he had seemed perfectly placid on their last meeting, much less had been at stake for him then.
“You should be pleased with my plans,” he said in Zae’s direction, then turned back to Keren. “You most of all, Crusader Rhinn of Ozem. Once I do what I mean to do, the organ can never be returned to Arazni. She will never be able to seize all four Bloodstones. I’m saving you from a terrible fate. You could at least thank me for that.”
“I could,” Keren agreed. “But I somehow don’t think it’s going to go the way you expect it to. Eating it could kill you. Or Arazni could send a graveknight after you to rip it from your body.”
“Concern for my well-being? I’m touched. But I suspect it won’t do me harm. I’ve already tasted her blood with no ill effects—why would the stone weep blood, if not for me to drink? I’d gone decades without tasting flesh or blood, all cleansing me to lead up to this. I gained no power from it, unfortunately, but no illness either.”
“The blood in the library…” Zae said, stepping into the room. “I found the spot where you dripped it.”
He waved, an absent gesture. “And as for the graveknight, I will have ascended before it returns, so it won’t be able to touch me. I’ve been paying attention. It takes a graveknight at least a day before it can return to Absalom, and when it does, a squadron of Iomedae’s knights and city guards helpfully distract it for me.”
“You’ve thought everything through, haven’t you? So, why capture Pendris, Omari? And why bring her here?”
“Ah!” He turned to Zae with one finger raised. “Why indeed? For the poetic justice inherent in thwarting Arazni’s thugs. You witnessed the destruction they brought down upon this building just because they thought the Bloodstone might be here. It made me realize I have the power to raze any part of the city I wish to, just by spilling a drop of a dead god’s blood. What better place to hide it than a place they’ve already ruled out? And this is familiar ground for me. I trained here too, remember. There’s a chance I know this building’s schedule better than any of you.”
“I think I missed the part of the story where you had any reason whatsoever to apply here,” Zae answered.
“To better myself, of course. The same reason anyone studies anything, anywhere. It was the study of many skills that led me to my true calling.”
“Godhood,” Keren said dryly.
“Precisely. Ozem has closed in on Arazni, and though it’s amusing to watch the two factions shuffle you around as their pawns and even help each other unwittingly, soon both groups will close in to watch me. Arazni’s people will find me through the Bloodstone itself, and Ozem has found me by tracking down the fool necromancer. Somehow, one of your investigators got hold of his name. So. I’ve completed my tests on the blood and determined the organ safe to eat. I’ve seen the graveknight summoned this morning, so I know it can’t interrupt me now, and my first disciple has approached me to spread the word of the new god throughout the lands. If you’re properly worshipful, I might extend my boon to you as well.”
Keren’s head spun. Omari had brought Pendris to the Clockwork Cathedral because he had hidden the Bloodstone here. It was here now. And while he didn’t seem surprised that they had been on the trail of the Bloodstone and had found him, he didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t interested in hurting them, nor was he at all concerned that they might stop him. To him, Pendris’s predicament was just a way to ensure that bodies were filling seats in his audience, nothing more. Keren wasn’t sure at this point whether he was arrogant, as she’d first presumed, or fully delusional.
She took a step backward, but the movement caught his eye. “Oh, I wouldn’t, if I were you. If you were to leave, my snake might get jumpy.” Omari tilted his head, as if listening to something far away. “And sadly, our time is up. Do you have enough to work with?” he asked Pendris, drawing near to ease a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. The gesture was so tender as to be patronizing. He touched her cheek. “If you need any help during the writing, all you’ll have to do is pray. I’ll come back and release you, after. Have faith, and you’ll be rewarded. I’m sorry that you’ll have to miss the spectacle, but it’s important to keep you safe. Returning for you will be my first miracle!”
Keren had not seen the monk in motion before, and was dismayed to see the speed at which he moved. He was past them and through the doorway before either she or Keren had a chance to block his path, leaving them with the choice between freeing Pendris and chasing after him. Before she could phrase the choice into a question, she felt the faint rumble of machinery. Her stomach sank and panic flooded her veins.
“The gears!” Rowan cried from across the room, lute in hand. Keren blinked. She hadn’t seen him sneak along the walls. “We’re about to be locked in. He’ll get away!”
* * *
Keren raced to Pendris, examining the chains that held her to the machine. “How long before the hallway closes?”
“Moments,” Rowan answered. Urgency buzzed in Keren’s ears like angry bees. “The gears move slowly, but once they start there’s no stopping them.”
Zae closed the distance, joining Keren at Pendris’s side. “We’re not leaving you here,” she said firmly, resting her hands on Pendris’s calf.
“No! We don’t know what the thing will do to her,” Keren objected.
“Yes, we do.” The gnome smiled. “Get ready to chop it when I say. Oh, the viper’s fangs did sting, but they were no match for the knight, who steeled up her courage and on the count of three…” She held up a hand that was already glowing faintly with energy. “One … Two…” Zae pressed her glowing hand to into Pendris’s skin. The fangs snapped down and the bard screamed, writhing against her bonds. Keren hacked the snake-thing in two, then did the same for the chains on Pendris’s wrists and hefted her over her shoulder. Then they ran.
At the end of the hallway, where it met t
he main corridor, the large black gear was already inching down across the doorway, blotting out the light from the hall like a moon in partial eclipse. Keren lowered Pendris to the floor and pushed her through the opening. Zae ducked through immediately after, followed by Rowan with the lute. As soon as they were through he gathered Pendris into his arms. Blood pounding in her ears, Keren dove through the narrowing gap, her armor screeching a high-pitched whine against the marble floor. Keren turned onto her back and tucked her feet up, pushing off against the lowering gear itself to propel herself clear of it. She stared at the giant mechanism, panting, mesmerized by its inevitable orbit along its path. Keren had squeezed through by mere inches, and while the thought of it hadn’t swayed her in the moment, it left her a bit lightheaded now.
The gear locked into place, and an impatient, muffled bark snapped them out of their trance. Appleslayer paced anxiously at the entrance of the cathedral. He had something snatched up in his mouth—she couldn’t tell what it was and didn’t have time to worry about it. Zae vaulted into the saddle, said a quick prayer, and shouted Apple onward. Keren gently took Pendris from Rowan, scooping her up and securing her over her shoulder to follow them. She didn’t see Rowan but she assumed he was with them.
They already knew where Omari was headed; what they hadn’t counted on was his speed. One moment, they were gaining on him, and in the next he had simply vanished. Keren swore.
Streets blurred past in flashes of color and bursts of overheard conversation. Appleslayer quickly outpaced Keren, but when he and Zae reached the edge of the God’s Market they slowed to a walk, Apple with his nose to the ground.
“That was a hell of a gamble you took,” Keren yelled across the distance. She set Pendris down onto a bench and Rowan was immediately beside her, already starting to work on disengaging the iron snake around the woman’s ankles. Blood dribbled from under the construct, black against the pale of Pendris’s skin, but the bard was conscious and watched Rowan with lucid eyes, reaching down to push his hood back and ruffle her fingers through his hair. She didn’t seem to be in pain.
“He said venom, so I knew it was poison!” Zae countered. “It wasn’t a gamble. The spell I cast gave us hours to get her an antidote. We can’t worry about it now. Come on, we’ve got to find Omari before he does this thing.”
“You mean we have to find him before they do.” Rowan gestured with his chin. What looked from a distance like a band of street thugs proved, at a closer distance to be … a gang of street thugs. Arazni’s patrol.
Keren recalled what Omari had said—that if he was able to ingest the contents of the Bloodstone and ascend, Arazni would never be able to assemble all four organs. She had no expectation that he would be able to succeed at the test, not when he seemed so overly confident, and those who failed never actually returned. It would get one Bloodstone out of the way. As solutions went, it did seem to be a tidy one.
But her order lived in hope of being able to retrieve and restore Arazni someday, and for that the Bloodstones had to be intact and in their possession. It pained Keren to think of her order’s former patron trapped in undeath and deaf to the lure of freedom.
It would be easy to just let Omari go through with his plan and wait for the Starstone Cathedral to kill him, but it wouldn’t be enough.
Rowan glanced up from Pendris’s metal serpent. His tools were laid out in a leather roll at his side, along with a pad of bandages. “Do you see Omari?”
Keren shook her head. “No. Not yet. But we know two things about him: he’s sneaky, and he’s vain. He’s probably waiting for both sides to amass so that they can all witness his show. Evandor said that when a hopeful tries for the test, it’s a big deal. They gather people down the Avenue, to come and watch. I can’t see him organizing an entire parade, but I also can’t see him denying himself the spectacle.”
“Or he’s waiting for them to fight each other out over him. At the most, he’d only have to pick off the few who remain,” Rowan added. With a grunt of effort, a sturdy file, and a wicked looking little saw, he sprung the construct open with a sharp snap. Pendris stifled a yelp into her sleeve. She looked pale, but no worse for the removal of the metal fangs. Zae assisted Rowan in unrolling medicated bandages and pressing them onto Pendris’s puncture wounds.
Del, the man who had interrogated Keren, was near the lead of the Araznian pack, along with a well-dressed man who looked like he’d been diverted on his way to the opera. A few paces behind them was Ruby. The gang behind them pushed spectators out of the way, overran carts, and destroyed merchandise without a care. Keren estimated about two dozen, some of them walking with a strangely lifeless stride. It wasn’t a shamble, but it lacked something Keren couldn’t describe—emotion, perhaps.
“The procession draws near. Half of it, anyway.”
Keren drew her sword. “And here comes the other half.”
Evandor, in full white-and-gold armor, led a squadron of about twenty Knights of Ozem along the perimeter of the chasm. Weirdly, he appeared to be following some sort of floating, spectral hand. The two groups, each on its stately course, would converge right at the edge of the market where Zae and her companions were currently standing. The usual foot traffic still milled about at the near end of the market, browsing wares and haggling for souvenirs, but the two processions were beginning to gather attention. Visitors were abandoning their shopping to line the avenue, pushed aside by the crude swarm of Arazni’s followers. Now the chatter was made up of murmurs about who the aspirant might be.
“Get ready,” Keren said. “There he is.”
One of the market stalls at the end of the street was more a sturdy wooden pavilion than a tent, and it was on this that Omari stood to watch the crowds gather. He let out a fierce battle cry and lifted his arms in premature triumph. Only the nearest handful of people needed to notice him. Once they murmured among themselves, word spread through the crowd like a hungry flame. The wave of it spread outward and devoured all other conversation in its path.
“People of Absalom!” he shouted. His voice wasn’t amplified in any magical or mundane way, but it still reverberated majestically off the buildings and stonework. “Meet your new god, and know me.”
Pendris stood, hand on Rowan’s shoulder for balance, and kicked the cobra over the edge of the chasm. Despite knowing better, Keren found that she was waiting for the sound of impact; it didn’t come.
Omari proceeded to expound on his own numerous virtues, but his raised arms were not enough to silence the two militias that had marched to compete with each other at retrieving the Bloodstone from him. If anything, he only riled them more, dangling the knowledge that the object of their search was before them. The living among Arazni’s mob looked even more bloodthirsty than the undead. Zae started a prayer under her breath. They were almost near enough for her to hit.
“Keep him engaged,” Evandor roared. Keren nodded, but it was Rowan who sprang into action, melding into the shadows behind a vendor stall and slipping away into the shadows.
Omari would be expecting the two bands to fight each other, while he took advantage of their distraction and got away with the Bloodstone. Keren knew he was nimble and fast, and that he fought unarmed, but she didn’t know what tricks he had in reserve.
“He’s standing right there. Why doesn’t everyone just go after him?” Zae asked Keren.
The knight shook her head. “Because it matters very much which of us get to him first.”
Even though Keren was looking for it, she barely saw Rowan’s arrival on the rooftop behind Omari. She bit her lip as the rogue lifted his dagger, but just when she thought a backstab to Omari’s kidneys was all but assured, Omari whirled and kicked at Rowan’s wrist with his bare foot. Rowan’s knife flew out of his hand. The monk followed up with a punch and the halfling dodged, rolling to the edge of the roof and bouncing there on the balls of his feet, inviting Omari to charge. He brandished a new knife in his hand.
Between Keren and the wooden market
stall, Arazni’s militia surged and met the knights’ shield wall like water colliding with stone, sending up clouds of greenish poison as undead fighters used their secret reserves to threaten groups of knights in close quarters. As the crowd of fighters shifted away from the deadly air, they created a perilous shoreline that Zae and her companions would have to wade through to reach Omari and Rowan.
Lute strings played at the edge of Keren’s consciousness. Pendris had her instrument up, and was picking out an archaic dance on it. Magic surged through Keren; she felt stronger and more confident. She nodded to Zae, lowered her visor, and charged into the battle with Appleslayer at her side, carving a path toward the man who had been her primary interrogator. Her adversary wore armor of studded leather, but it could only protect so much of him.
Shouting with the primal joy of finally having an obvious enemy to fight, Keren swung hard, eager for blood.
27
IN THE FRAY
ZAE
Rowan won’t be able to keep him occupied for long,” Zae said, raising her voice to be heard. “Can we get around the back of the knights’ line?”
Pendris shook her head. “Look.” One of the undead turned to smoke as Zae watched, reforming into human shape behind the knights’ front lines. Others followed, sending what remained of the ordered formation into chaos. “And there’s that small matter of the bottomless pit.”
“Then we’ll have to do our best from here.” The gnome scrambled up onto the bench and then, with Pendris’s offered shoulder for balance, to the back of the bench. Here she had a vantage slightly higher than a human’s line of sight. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was the best she could do for now, and it was enough to let her see over the heads of most of the combatants.
There were more servants of Arazni on the trail of the Bloodstone than Zae had realized, but then, they’d had time to arrive from elsewhere. And if Ruby was among them, it was a safe presumption that the forces were bolstered by some of the other names on the list they had found. They fought without order or elegance, but with the enthusiasm of malice and bloodthirst. The living called insults and battered at Iomedae’s forces, while the few undead among them rushed the knights with tooth and claw. The knights rained glowing columns of holy light on the swarm of Arazni’s followers like a field of blinking suns. The undead faltered, but they were intelligent and resourceful; one grabbed a brave shopkeeper who had been blocked in before she could abandon her stall, and drained her to renew his strength while chaos clashed around them. Relics spilled and potion bottles shattered, and the clashing forces stomped them all into a faintly magical paste underfoot.
Pathfinder Tales--Gears of Faith Page 23
