“See here,” said Nape, bending down and picking up a chunk of clay buried in the sand, “I used to skip these in the waters back home. Skip-a-dee-do is what we used to call the game. I was the best at it, see. No one was—”
“I swear to every god you believe in,” Catali said, pressing her fingers against her temple, “I will kill you in your sleep if you don’t stop talking.”
“That’s unkind,” Nape said. “Unkind indeedy. Ah, well. Lips are dry, so silence might do me good. Might indeed do me good.”
Catali’s lips were dry too. So was her throat. And her eyes. Her skin was cracked and peeling away. She’d left the Free City several days ago, heading in the direction that Nape said the sorcerers had gone, which put her in the Krolton Desert. She was currently somewhere between the beginning and the end of that desert. One can never quite tell the difference in a place where dunes, hills, and sand dominate the horizon forever.
“Want some spice?” Nape asked, hand fidgeting inside the pocket of his tattered pants.
“No.”
“Sure ’bout that?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll take the pain away.”
Catali stopped. She unsheathed her skinning knife and held it before Nape’s eyes in the manner of a woman who was teetering on the edge of madness. “Do you think I was joking?”
Nape dipped his finger into a pouch he’d produced, spreading some spice on his nail. “Point taken,” he said, lifting his finger to his nose and snorting.
Catali wished she hadn’t allowed Nape to come along. He’d begged her—on his knees, no less—said he’d be a good follower, a faithful bodyguard, or whatever else she needed him for. He’d raised his brows in a provocative manner following that last declaration. He told her he wished to see the sorcerers who’d sacked the Free City die a gruesome death, because he liked it there. It was his home, and now his home was destroyed.
Catali was never one for sob stories. She simply didn’t care about another’s plight. Didn’t have time to. And she preferred to travel alone, but in this case—when an encounter with sorcerers could be involved—two was better than one. Nape could serve as a distraction, at the very least.
Instead, he distracted her. And annoyed her.
A haphazardly constructed ball of twigs and cactus parts and remnants of fur rolled in the distance. “This place proves gods don’t exist,” Catali said. “No god would allow something so painfully depressing and unpleasant to exist. Are you sure they went this way?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“Would you bet all the spice in your pockets on it?”
Nape considered this. He picked at the numerous scabs on his face nervously. One began bleeding. “Y—yes.”
Catali booted a red rock out of her away. “That’s reassuring.”
“Say, why are you bald?”
“Don’t ask me personal questions. Do you hear that?”
“Nah,” Nape began, then he listened. “Oh, actually. I do hear somethin’ now that you mention it.” His tapped his foot and grinned mischievously. “I bet we found ’em!”
Catali elbowed him in his gaunt stomach. “Calm yourself down. I think it’s coming from beyond that hill. Keep quiet, and don’t do… whatever you’re doing right now. Stop that.”
“The foot tapping?”
“Yes, that. And the smiling. Stop it.”
Nape frowned. “You’re not a fun—”
She shushed him and moved toward a hill of bronze-colored sand and red rock. The voices grew more boisterous as she approached the hill. They did not sound friendly, neither to visitors nor to one another.
She climbed the hill slowly, navigating around loose gravel so as to remain silent as possible. Nape didn’t care how much sound he made, and despite Catali snapping her head back and glaring at him when he caused a commotion, he continued his clubfooted climb.
Cresting the hill, Catali quickly flattened herself on her stomach, motioning for Nape to do the same.
“Four of them,” Catali whispered as Nape fortunately positioned himself beside her.
“Two of ’em are wrangled up.”
“Looks that way.” She squinted. “Do you see that crest there, on their shoulders?”
Nape folded his lips in. “Can’t say I do. Blind as a mole without my spectacles.”
“Where are your spectacles?”
“Sold ’em for spice.”
Catali rolled her eyes. “I think the symbol’s a pair of steepled hands. It’s not clear from up here, but that would mean they’re sorcerers of the Conclave. Which means… this is strange.” Members of the Conclave didn’t always get along. In fact, they rarely did. Disagreements were common but also encouraged, because the best solutions to problems usually arise from the ashes of passionate discussion. But never did those disagreements reach a point at which one side would assault the other, or in this case, bind their hands and tie them to cacti.
“Dammit!” said one of the men who wasn’t tied up. He had a thick island of hair running down the center of his head, bald on the sides. One eyebrow was missing, the other nicked in half. He kicked the sand and punched the wind. He seemed to be clutching something in his hand.
“Let’s just sleep them, Emrik,” the other man said. He had sagging jowls and a shadowy beard.
The two who were bound preferred that option, nodding as one.
“And then what?” the apparent Emrik said. “They wake up, hike it back to the Conclave and spill their guts about us. Fuck that.”
“We’re not killing them.”
Emrik swore. He stomped around a bit, then stopped as if a brilliant idea had struck him. With a scowling grin on his lean face, he went over to those he held captive. He crouched before them. “Tell you what. I’ll put you to sleep if you tell me what these other vials do.”
“We don’t know what half of the bloody things do,” said one of the men.
Emrik got close to him. So close that the tips of their noses now touched. “But you know what some of them do. You and him, youse was part of that shady council who tried keepin’ these beauties hush-hush; I know—I know—you’ve got some knowledge of this magical stuff. Rumors say there’s injections in there that’ll make you strong enough to lift boulders, fast enough to outrun lightnin’. How about it?”
One of the men shifted, testing the rope that bound him. “We don’t know enough about it, Emrik. You shouldn’t have taken it. Wasn’t meant for you.”
Emrik sprung to his feet. He laughed madly. “Of course not! Why would anything be meant for me? Or for Gram over there? I mean, shit. We serve the Conclave faithfully for twelve years, and we’re still a couple lowly elementalists. I asked to learn the ways of an Oathbreaker, and the Conclave told me… maybe in a few years. They won’t do it. They don’t want someone to hold more than one discipline. Not nowadays. Might make me too big and scary, huh? Might threaten their leadership.
“So if they don’t give me what I want, I’m taking it. Must be important, these vials, huh? Otherwise they’d not send you two after us.”
The two prisoners had no response for that.
“Tell you what,” Emrik began, rummaging through a bag on the ground. “If you won’t tell me and Gram what’s in these vials, I guess we’ll have to find out for ourselves.” He produced a glass vial and with it a long, thick needle. “This one here’s engraved with… huh, two names.” He inspected it closely. “What’s that say? Ag-nor-eeth. All right, whatever the hells that means. And this says… pain.”
“Bet you the Conclave couldn’t figure out that weird name, either,” Gram said, “but bet you too that they tested it. Caused the subject pain, so that’s what they called it.”
Emrik looked impressed. “Could be, could be. Let’s see if it causes Frollik and Kren over there some pain.” He smiled a mouthful of jagged, crooked teeth. It was a smile of someone who delighted in misery.
Nape licked his lips. “I hope the boys in rope kill that other one,”
he whispered.
Catali was indifferent, so long as one of the four remained when this was all over. She only needed to question one, after all.
“Emrik,” Gram said, putting a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “I don’t know….”
“I’m not gonna kill ’em. Just rough ’em up a little, show them that I mean business.” He turned his attention to the men he called Frollik and Kren. “Right, boys?”
Despite the certainty of unpleasant sensations soon coursing through them, Frollik and Kren displayed no fear. Probably they were scared, though, Catali thought. She’d be scared if some insane man with an insane grin on his lips came strutting over to her with a vial of unknown substance that caused supposed pain.
Emrik removed the vial’s cap and stuck the needle inside, pulling up on the plunger. “A helping for you, Frollik, my man.”
He pulled the needle out and stabbed it without discretion into Frollik’s arm. The man yelped and writhed, wobbling the cactus as he lurched forward.
Catali couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Emrik chuckle.
“And,” Emrik said, sidling on his knees over to the other man, “one for you, Kren.”
After injecting Kren with the mysterious substance, Emrik stood and returned the needle and vial to the bag from which they came. Then he rubbed his hands together happily. “Let’s—” He stopped. Or maybe he said a few more words, Catali couldn’t tell. Not over the screams that could curdle milk fresh from a cow’s teat.
The cries of anguish and torment made even Catali queasy, and that didn’t happen often. But what she saw was even worse. Even more sickening, far more wretched.
Kren and Frollik were bobbing back and forth, their wrists bloodied from frayed rope biting into them. Tears, or sweat—or maybe both—streamed down their red cheeks. They kicked their feet and whimpered and wailed.
“Shit!” Emrik said, sprinting to them. “Gram, get me… get me… shit! Get me something. Oh gods!” He threw himself back as the flesh of Kren’s arm melted off, revealing ripe red tissue and bone beneath.
The skin of Frollik’s forehead bubbled like boiling water. The bubbles widened and inflated and then burst, spewing a thick pus all over Emrik.
“Oh,” said Nape, scooping out a bit of spice. “That’s morbid, there.” He snorted.
Emrik crawled backwards on his butt, frenetic hands digging into the sand for leverage. He backed into a cactus and screeched as the needles burrowed deep inside him.
“Serves him right,” Nape said.
Catali averted her eyes. She didn’t wish to see drooping skin slough off any longer.
“Emrik,” Gram said, crouching before him. “Emrik! We’ve gotta—we’ve just—” He made the mistake of looking at Kren and Frollik. He shook his head. “We need to go, right now. You know the Conclave will come lookin’ before long. We need to be far out—Emrik! Are you listening?”
Emrik’s mouth opened and closed, but he said nothing. He still had Frollik’s pus on his face.
Catali searched the premises for weapons. She didn’t see any, which made sense—sorcerers rarely had the need for sharpened steel. “Stay here,” she told Nape. “And I mean it. If you move—”
“Right, right,” he said, twirling his hand above his head, “you’ll kill me or something like that. Have at it, have some fun. Have a blast. I know I will.” He showed her his pouch of spice and winked.
Maybe she’d leave him there, atop that hill, forever. Or however long it took him to wake up from his inevitable fall from spice-induced bliss.
She picked herself up and started down the hill. Gram spotted her near the bottom, between two fruiting cacti.
“Stop right there!” he said, rising to his feet and showing her the ever dangerous and always lethal pointer finger.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she said, in as much of a girlish voice as she could muster. “I only heard screams, see”—I sound like Nape, that needs to stop immediately—“and came to see if someone was hurt.”
“They were drunk!” Gram asserted. “Fell into their damned fire pit.” He looked to Emrik. “Didn’t they?” Emrik’s teeth chittered.
A fire pit that doesn’t exist—that’s the best you can do? “I see. That’s very sad. Is that a crest of steepled hands on your shoulder?”
“What? Oh. Yes, it is. We’re—we’re sorcerers.”
Gram was unaware, but during his brief encounter with Catali thus far, his mind was slowly being pried away from his control. Sometimes influencing someone’s mind presented difficulties, even for a mindful sorcerer as capable as Catali. But she could have manipulated Gram’s wants, desires and thoughts in her sleep. He was vulnerable, close to losing control. He put up little resistance.
With each question she subtly forced him to answer, she ventured deeper into his mind, nearer to his most closely guarded secrets and sinful desires. With a push, she’d rearrange his thoughts to her liking.
Catali winced. Mindful sorcery, for all its power, has its drawbacks. All sorcery did, but mindful sorcerers were punished far more severely and personally than elementalists or Oathbreakers or even viscars. Every nightmare she encountered in Gram’s mind, she also experienced, and she’d continue to experience them forevermore.
“I would like those vials, please,” she said confidently. She reminded herself to breathe evenly, focus on her task at hand—that helped stave off Gram’s demons and devils that now danced in her thoughts. “And the needles.”
Gram tongued his sagging jowls. His eye twitched and he seemed to be having a silent conversation with himself. After some time, he looked up. “Er, all right. Sure. Go ahead. They’re all yours… so long as you keep your word.”
Catali had inserted a promise into his thoughts that she would keep secret the corpses of Frollik and Kren in exchange for the vials and needles. Probably it wasn’t necessary, but manipulations sometimes require negotiations. If the target of mindful sorcery resists attempts at redirection and manipulation, it becomes more difficult to achieve that control.
“You should take care of your friend here,” Catali said, high-stepping over Emrik’s splayed legs. He lay slumped against the cactus, shivering. “He looks sick.”
“Ah, thing is”—Gram scratched the back of his neck—“he’s not, er, what you’d consider a friend. And I’m no savant, and I don’t have the supplies, and… well, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just leave him here. He—he’ll figure something out.”
Catali inspected the bag full of vials. There must be fifty vials in here. Each had two engravings. One was gracefully carved by the fine, steady hand of an expert calligrapher and spelled out peculiar and exotic words, ones that Catali had never heard of or read in books: Hu’soel and Coautesis and Galaen-Stah. The other engraving was sloppy and rushed, reflecting a simple, common term, such as pain, or strength.
She didn’t know what any of this meant except that it was important. She pinched the drawstring bag closed, swung it around her shoulder and marched off toward a spiced-out-of-his-mind Nape. But before reaching him, or even climbing up the hillside he was perched upon, she stopped and faced Gram once more.
“Where is the Conclave?” she asked.
Gram was kneeling beside several pouches. He took from them leaf-wrapped meats and foodstuffs bundled in cheesecloth. Catali figured those goods belonged to the currently traumatized Emrik.
“Everywhere,” Gram said, slight irritation in his voice. “That’s what they say, anyhow.”
“Powerful though the Conclave may be, it is not as pervasive as the wind or as mighty as the sea.” She wasn’t playing with mind trickery any longer, rather conversing with Gram in the way two strangers might.
Gram stuffed the cheesecloth into his burlap sack. He looked up. “And what would a girl like you know about that?”
Catali shifted the leather strap of her bag higher onto her shoulder. “Of the sea, the wind, or the Conclave?”
Gram wiped his brow. “A wiseass, are ya
? Mark me paranoid, or call me too curious for my own good, but I never got your name or the reason you’re out here, wanderin’ alone in a desert.”
“My friends call me Cat.”
“And who are your friends?” His tone veered off into a suspicious pitch.
“They’re many hundreds of miles from this place. And, if you’re worried, they don’t belong to the Conclave. Though I do.”
Gram rose slowly to his feet, his face sour and red. “Is that so?”
Catali puffed an imaginary hair from her eyes. “Oh, don’t go growling and huffing at me, now. I’m not planning on being a canary and chirping to the Conclave about all your deepest, darkest secrets… like how you’re a treasonous, murderous and arguably moralless wretch. Though, to be fair, I don’t think the Conclave ever required a strong set of morals.”
Gram’s face twitched. He measured her words, attempted to put meaning behind them—was she telling the truth, or baldly lying? “Why would you need to know the Conclave’s location if you’re one of ’em?”
“Because I’m not really one of them. I want to bring them down. I want to destroy them. I want them to go poof into the night.”
The wind shifted direction, wafting the smell of burnt hair and charred flesh about. Both Gram and Catali made a face.
“Seems to me,” Gram said, “that’s a secret you’d want to keep to yourself.”
He obviously, and smartly, didn’t trust her. But the very fact he continued the conversation rather than shutting down and withdrawing like a turtle into its shell proved he was at the very least intrigued.
“Maybe I would, if you professed loyalty to the Conclave. But you don’t, so I feel safe. For many reasons I feel safe.” She allowed the subtle threat to linger for a moment, then said, “Tell me where the Conclave is and what they’re planning.”
Gram side-eyed Emrik, who lay still, broken and paralyzed. He returned his attention to Catali. “What do I get out of it? I am a lot of things, Cat—that’s your name, you said, yeah?—but charitable ain’t one of ’em.”
Catali shrugged. “What do you want?”
Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 8
