Twig touched the hilt over her right shoulder to make sure the sword still nestled there, then she ran along the ledge to get ahead of the merchant. She avoided using the power of the sword while up high, not wanting to risk running out of roof. She didn’t need to rush, as the merchant was making slow progress, looking behind him as much as in front, and the thieves were content to wait. Once beyond where the thieves waited, she grabbed a gutter pipe and shinnied down. Neither the merchant nor the thieves noticed her. She crouched and waited.
The thieves stepped out of their hiding places, drawing their swords.
The merchant, looking behind him, didn’t notice them at once. When he did, his face, already bleached white by the shine of the moon, turned paler still. He backed away, pulling a heavy purse from his pocket and throwing it down to the ground. “Take that and leave me be.”
The heavier of the two robbers bent to pick it up and hefted it in his hand. “Promising. But I think you’ve got more on you.” He resumed stalking the retreating merchant.
“That’s all I have, I swear.” The merchant’s voice quaked, and his legs threatened to buckle with every step.
“Maybe we should just leave him be,” the second thief said. From the sound of his voice, he was much younger than his companion. “We have what we came for.”
Twig drew her sword and sped to the side of the closest thief. Before he had a chance to realize what was happening, Twig dragged the edge of her sword against his neck. The thief clutched his throat, trying to hold in his blood. It leaked out between his fingers. His eyes, widened in shock, stared at Twig. The thief’s companion ran away, and she let him go.
The thief still hadn’t fallen. Gurgling noises sounded in his throat. The blood, dark, dark red under the light of the moon, streamed down, blackening his clothes. Twig watched his eyes. Some religions talked of a soul, and if it was ever to be seen, then surely it was when they choked out their last breaths.
The man collapsed as he died. Just meat, Twig thought. If men had souls, they weren’t visible to her.
“The phantom,” the fat merchant said. He had fallen backward, and a stain spread across the crotch of his pants. He was even more scared than when the thieves had been pursuing him. Twig bent down to search the thief’s pockets and found several loose shards and the merchant’s purse. She pocketed the shards and squeezed the purse in her hand, wondering how much it contained. What had he been doing on the streets this late into the night? He’d been practically begging to be robbed.
“Take it,” the merchant told Twig.
No. Twig wasn’t a thief. She only took from the Takers. She tossed it, and it landed right beside the merchant. He made no move to pick it up but just stared at Twig, his lower lip quivering.
Twig glanced back to where the other thief was just disappearing down a side street. She knew where it led, so she gripped tighter on the hilt of her sword and sped up, taking a different route, stopping where she knew she could intercept him.
There, she waited, listening as the thief’s running footsteps neared. He slowed to a walk, looking behind him as he exited the side street.
“Running away from someone?” Twig asked, stepping out in front of him.
The thief fell to his knees in front of Twig. “Please don’t kill me.” He drew his sword from his scabbard and threw it away.
“Why would I let you go? You stole and were about to kill. You are a Taker.”
The remaining thief was the younger of the two, maybe eighteen. He clasped his hands together. “Please. We wouldn’t have hurt him. I’ve never killed anyone. This was my first time doing anything like this. Please. I was so hungry. If you let me go, I’ll never do anything like this again. Please.”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head, pushing his forehead into his clasped hands. He is lying. About some of it, at least. He was clearly a Taker. Even if he hadn’t killed before, he would soon.
She placed the point of her sword where his neck met his shoulder, wrapped her left hand around her right, and plunged downward. His head bounced upward, and his eyes shot open, full of accusation. Then blood spouted from his mouth, and his eyes went blank. He toppled over. If the man’s soul had just left his body, it went cursing Twig.
Twig wiped her sword on his clothes. She didn’t find any valuables in his pockets. Perhaps he had needed to steal. Though he wasn’t as skinny as Twig, he was thin all the same.
She scanned the walls for a drainpipe and a way back to the roofs. The young thief’s death made her feel uncomfortable in the way the others hadn’t. She didn’t like feeling uncertain.
She needed to talk to Bareth. He’d know what was wrong. She didn’t think killing a Taker should leave her feeling bad.
Chapter 18
Everything looked different, a darker version of itself—every tree, every blade of grass, every leaf. Even the birdsong had changed. It shouldn’t be this way. Danger and even death were parts of an adventurer’s life. Lukin had wanted to be free of the old man—free of the weight of the man’s expectation of what Lukin should be, free of his disapproval, free of his interference. He finally was.
At the end, Lukin had learned that Flechir hadn’t cared for him, suffering him out of some sense of duty, a loyalty to some person who was surely dead. Perhaps Lukin’s real parents... though Lukin knew he would find no cure to his malaise in following that line of thinking. Flechir had always shied away from talking of Lukin’s parentage when he was alive, and Lukin would never know.
Looking down, Lukin noticed that the grass came up to the horse’s knees, then he looked up to realize he had broken out of tree cover. The mountains soared upward in front of him, looming giants with green legs, blue-gray torsos and white heads. Lukin dug his heels in, and the horse broke into a trot, the lead rope tied to Lukin’s saddle forcing Flechir’s horse to keep up. The movement made Lukin feel good, and he drove the horses into a canter. A rush of cold air splashed into Lukin’s face. He didn’t go far before slowing the horses back to a walk. If I’m caught overtiring the horses, the old man will—
The old man would do nothing ever again. Lukin blinked hard as his eyes stung. Adventurers don’t cry. They did find magic weapons and go on adventures. That was what Lukin had to concentrate on. He’d been unthinkingly following the compass in his head eastward over the past two days, and he needed to start thinking again. The weapon he’d been tracking was close. He hadn’t changed his direction in a while—the clerics could be awaiting him.
With that thought, the open space of the grassy plain no longer felt liberating—it felt exposed. The Tockery mountain range was one of the few places in Mageles that Lukin and Flechir had never visited, but they had passed close to where Lukin was presently. When they had been heading north from Pizarr to Ziallia, Flechir had pointed out the trail that led to the Tockian villages. Lukin needed to find that, for it was where he’d surely find a weaponbearer, providing Zubrios’s eagle-crests hadn’t found him first. The next-closest weaponbearer was south, most likely in Pizarr. Pizarr was one of the few places in Mageles that Zubrios didn’t control. The eagle-crests wouldn’t be able to pursue him there.
The sky was gray, but only a few drops fell throughout the afternoon, splattering Lukin’s clothes but not soaking through to his skin, the dampness drying off as fast as it arrived. With the compass in his head plus the openness of the terrain and his vague memories from passing through before, Lukin didn’t take long to find the wide trail winding upward into the mountains.
Tockians avoided contact with the rest of the world, but even so, he was surprised how empty the trail was. Afternoon was giving way to evening by the time he saw another soul, a boy, descending. The boy was tall and thin, with jerky, almost coltish movements. He wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings, so when the boy finally noticed Lukin, he stumbled to a shocked stop. He then moved off the side of the trail, a fearful expression on his face although the trail was wide enough for them to pass each other easily.
<
br /> Lukin wanted to stop, if only for a brief greeting, but the expression on the boy’s face made him decide to keep going. So he just nodded to the boy and kept on going. He had gone a few paces past when he twisted in the saddle, turning back.
After the second horse went by him, the boy struggled back onto the trail again, his legs unsteady.
“Hey.” Lukin reined back, pulling his horse to a stop. “You okay?”
The boy came to a stumbling stop. He shaded his eyes against the sunlight but didn’t say anything. I was not long ago, but I threw it all away, he thought.
“You need something? Food or water?”
As Lukin looked more closely, the boy seemed sick. He had brown wavy hair and a plain face—very ordinary looking except for the unfocused eyes and pale complexion.
“Agony of the body is good for the soul,” the boy said.
Tockians are religious nutters, of course. Still, Lukin couldn’t leave the boy in that state, barely able to stand. He dismounted and unhooked his water skin from the saddle. “The soul needs a body to house it. Won’t do any part of you any good if the body dies. What’s your name?” Lukin handed the water skin across.
The boy seemed to want to refuse help, but after a brief pause, he accepted the water skin and offered his name. “Mortlebee.”
“That’s a mouthful of a name. I bet everyone calls you Mort.”
Mortlebee shook his head then touched the water skin to his lips.
Religious nutters with stupid names, Lukin thought. The weapons had to have gone to adventurers like himself, surely. What would someone like that be doing in Tockery?
Once Mortlebee started drinking, he couldn’t stop, gulping down the water as fast as he could, rivulets running down his chin onto his clothes. When he finally finished, he gasped for breath then handed the water skin back. “Thanks.”
Already he looked much healthier. “Is it far to the Tockian villages?” Lukin asked.
Mortlebee nodded. “Several days.”
Lukin was certain the weapon wasn’t that far. “And there’s nothing between here and there?”
Mortlebee shook his head. We went as deep into the mountains as we could, hoping to be left alone. It wasn’t far enough.
Lukin rehooked the water skin to the saddle. He felt certain he’d be able to find the weaponbearer—he just had to get there before the clerics did. “I’ll say goodbye, then. Remember to take care of your body as well as your soul.”
If it wasn’t for that stupid magic bow, both of them would be fine.
Lukin froze, his foot in the stirrup, his hand on the saddle pommel. “What did you say?”
Mortlebee looked confused. “Say about what?”
Lukin slid his foot out of the stirrup and turned. The religious nutter was a weaponbearer.
“What did you do with the magic bow?” Lukin asked.
“How did you...?” Mortlebee backed away down the slope, looking sick once more. “You’re a thought-mage.”
“No... yes, I mean, no.” Way to put his mind at ease, idiot, Lukin told himself.
Mortlebee, backing away, stumbled and fell over then scrambled to his feet. Another cleric. He had gone pale.
“I’m not a cleric. I’m actually running for them, looking for you.” Lukin showed Mortlebee his ring. “I found this one morning, several days ago. It gives me the power of a thought-mage. What does your bow do?”
Mortlebee stopped reversing. “It kills people.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It’s a terrible thing.”
“Where is it now?”
“I threw it away.”
Of course you did. So much for Lukin joining up with a band of like-minded adventurers. “Did you know that the clerics could track it?”
Mortlebee shook his head.
Lukin gave a long sigh. “Let me guess: you threw it away for reasons of your soul.”
Mortlebee nodded.
“And your thinking on retrieving it would be... against?”
Mortlebee’s head bobbed up and down rapidly. “I threw it off a cliff.”
A religious nutter who forgot to eat, drink, and sleep and threw his great gift off a cliff—the adventuring gods weren’t giving Lukin much to work with. “What are your feelings toward tavern wenches?”
“Huh?”
Most likely against. Perhaps he was someone Lukin could work on, though. He was still young.
“If the weapon has been left stationary for a few days, then there’s a good chance Zubrios’s clerics will have found it. Better leave it where it is. You want to come south with me into Pizarr, Mortlebee. We can find a third weaponbearer.” Lukin hoped that bearer hadn’t been idiotic enough to throw his weapon away.
“Pizarr? That’s where the raiders live.” It was they who drove us into the mountains in the first place.
“Those are the kind of people we need to protect us from the Lord Protector.” The only other place redbirds couldn’t roam was Soylant Forest, and only magic-users could enter there.
“They are enemies of my people.”
“We won’t tell them you are Tockian.” Wouldn’t want to scare them. “Can you ride?”
“Never been on a horse before.”
Lukin sighed. Flechir had thought I was useless. Lukin had quite a job on his hands, turning the boy into a worthy weaponbearer and adventurer.
Chapter 19
Simeon was a laughingstock, and his tribemates hadn’t been shy in letting him know it. He glared at the staff on his bed. What possessed me to tell Tarla about it? She had made an offhand comment that Simeon had put his hopes in a magic staff, and within a day everyone in Medalon—perhaps the whole of Pizarr at that stage—was laughing at him.
If he could get the staff to do some magic, he’d be able to shut them all up pretty quickly. But since that initial glow, his staff had been nothing except a well-polished and overlong piece of firewood. Simeon had searched for secret latches hidden in the wood, he’d pointed it an empty fireplace with conviction and belief that fire would be created, and he’d even tried some words from children’s stories that had released magical powers. Nothing.
Simeon sat on a stool in his bedroom by the window, looking out as the sun set on another day, wondering whether he should be glad people were laughing at him since that meant they weren’t doing worse. Despite Freid’s warning, the Men’s Council hadn’t yet moved against him.
Simeon didn’t much mind people laughing at him, but he didn’t want anyone laughing at what had happened to Xelinder. He wasn’t refusing to be raised to make a point but because of a promise. But he liked that his stand had gotten people to talk about what had happened to his friend. The tests that he and his tribemates took part in were supposed to be difficult, but they shouldn’t be deadly.
Simeon couldn’t forget, and he couldn’t break his promise. Xelinder would never be raised, so Simeon would never be raised.
He looked around the room. Like the rest of Tarla’s house, it was clean and functional. Barely big enough to fit the bed, the room’s only other furnishings were the stool and a chest for clothes. Tarla didn’t have much room for sentiment in her house, yet it was the one place he felt safe. Even after he’d gone to the barracks with his tribemates, Tarla hadn’t changed the room and had let him stay the night whenever the hardships of barracks life threatened to overwhelm him.
She had come to regret it, and the rest of Medalon saw the roots of Simeon’s weakness in Tarla’s love for him. Simeon’s stand was rooted in strength rather than weakness, but he doubted the Men’s Council would see it like that. Sitting in a darkened room and staring out into the night was hardly going to reassure anyone about Simeon’s mental state, so he stood, preparing to leave his room. He paused as he caught a glimpse of movement outside.
A single gleam of light on the edge of the horizon was all that remained of the sun, but that was enough to let him make out a cloaked figure with the hood raised, moving purposefully toward their doo
r. It could have been someone on Women’s Council business, but Simeon knew it wasn’t. It was about him. He twisted the handle on his door then stopped and looked back at the staff on the bed.
Everyone in Medalon thought him a fool, yet still he saw the staff as the thing that would save him. He picked it up and left his bedroom.
In the fireplace, tentative flames licked at recently split firewood, and two lit lanterns hung from the rafters, bathing the main room in a warm glow. Muddy boots lined the wall by the door, and the beginnings of supper were laid out on the kitchen table. The only things out of place were the four weapons leaning against the far wall. The weapons that his tribemates had left for him were the only blot of ugliness in Tarla’s clean and well-ordered house.
Simeon heard voices and realized Tarla was just outside. He opened the front door to find her confronting the cloaked figure he’d seen earlier.
“You aren’t getting in here unless you tell me what this is about,” Tarla said.
“Let me talk to him. I’m here to help,” the cloaked figure said, glancing over Tarla’s shoulder at Simeon. The voice was a woman’s.
“That’s for me to decide.” Tarla wasn’t budging.
“I’ve just come from Medalon. Borlan is rousing up some of the others. Things are about to get ugly.”
“This is a Pizarrian matter.” As Tarla said that, Simeon realized that, from her accent, the woman was a foreigner. Not many foreigners came to Pizarr, and practically none came to the little village of Medalon.
“An outside perspective can sometimes solve an intractable internal problem.” The foreigner pushed back the hood of her cloak to reveal a middle-aged woman with unlined skin and handsome features. Her long black hair was streaked with gray. “Unless you have figured out a solution.” She gestured at the weapons by the fire. “Is the boy going to choose one of the weapons and allow himself to be raised?”
The Silver Portal (Weapons of Power Book 1) Page 14
