As soon as the buccen had emerged from the hole, Queeker and Tark stepped to one side and looked to their left, where gray-haired Brander stood to the right of a wing-back chair in which Rackburn sat. Largo was yet dressed in the finery he had worn when he had set out for the theater. He had black hair and dark eyes and a long, straight nose above the hint of a sardonic smile that touched his lips. With an elegance of motion, he tented his hands together, fingertip to fingertip, and canted his head to one side and peered at the Warrows. “So these are the burglars?”
“That’s right, Mr. Rackburn, sir,” said Queeker. “Snatched ’em right up, we did, ’cause they didn’t know the windows and doors are connected by hidden bell cords to jinglies in the ward room. And we-”
Without taking his eyes off the buccen, Largo threw up a hand to stop Queeker’s blathering. Then Rackburn once again tented his hands and said, “And you believe these are the ones who have been taking our. . due?”
“Yes sir, we do,” said Tark.
“Hmm. . ” With a dark eye, Largo fixed Binkton and then Pipper. “What have you two to say for yourselves?”
“These rat-eating-” began Binkton, but Pipper cut in and said, “Tark and Queeker stole our chest. We were merely trying to recover our property.”
Rackburn smiled and nodded. Then he reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and said, “If that’s all you came for, then why carry this?” He held up Binkton’s lockpick kit.
“Because you took Lady Jane’s silvers!” blurted Binkton. “You’re a bunch of Troll-begotten, Ruck-loving-”
Tark backhanded Binkton, knocking the Warrow sideways and down. One of the mastiffs snarled and lunged forward at the buccan, only to be brought up short by his handler’s leash.
Largo lifted his right hand and snapped his fingers, and held open an upturned palm.
Brander gave him two small, capped bottles, each filled with a dark liquid.
“Force this down their throats,” said Rackburn, holding the vials out to Queeker, who jumped forward to take the little containers.
Tark jerked Binkton to his feet, and Queeker uncorked one of the vials as Tark forced the buccan’s head back. Queeker reached forward, bottle in hand, but Binkton slapped it aside, knocking it flying, and the thin glass shattered when it hit the wall, the dark liquid running down.
Tark smashed a fist into Binkton’s temple, and the buccan fell unconscious to the floor.
“Bink!” yelled Pipper, and he sprang toward his cousin. But Tark caught Pipper up and grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back. This time Queeker held tightly to the second vial, and he poured the contents in and clapped a hand across Pipper’s mouth.
Pipper struggled and tried not to swallow the bitter fluid, all in vain, for the men were just too strong. In the end he could not help himself, and the liquid burned his throat on the way down.
Almost immediately the sides of the room seemed to draw inward. Darkness descended, and his knees gave way, and his mind began to fall toward blackness. Even though he could no longer see, he could yet hear, as one of the men asked, “What next?”
Rackburn answered: “Weight them down and take them out to sea and throw them in.”
“Out to sea, boss?” asked one of the henchmen.
“That’s what I said,” replied Rackburn.
“Whatever for?” asked Tark. “Why not just cut their throats and throw them into delta mud for the crabs to strip?”
Suppressed rage sounded in Rackburn’s voice. “Think, fool, think. The last thing we need is for a pair of Warrows to be found slain anywhere near Rivers End. It would call the attention of the High King, and that’s the last thing we want to happen.”
“He’s right, Tark,” said Queeker. “I hear tell ever since the big Dragonstone War, the Warrows, they be favorites of King Ryon.”
Pipper could hear as Tark gritted his teeth, but then all consciousness fled.
Half-aware, the side of his head hurting there where Tark had hit him, Binkton heard the chank of heavy links clacking together, and felt something being fastened to his ankle. Then a manacle clicked shut on his left wrist. Someone lifted him up, and a voice said, “Throw ’em over, Tark. Throw ’em over.” And then he was hurled outward.
Binkton came fully awake as he struck the water and, even as he realized his wrist was shackled to Pipper’s, the remaining length of a long, heavy chain splashed into the water beside them, and it jerked Binkton under by his left ankle as it plunged toward the bottom, Binkton dragging Pipper along as down through the water they plummeted. Swiftly Binkton withdrew the wire from his belt and poked the sharply angled tip into the wide key slot on the ankle lock. Come on, bucco, come on!
He felt the tine catch on the single tumbler, and with a sharp twist the shackle sprang open. The chain fell away and continued to plunge onward, as Bink clamped the pickwire between his teeth and began kicking and stroking upward with one hand, dragging Pipper along by the manacle that held them together.
Binkton desperately needed to breathe, but there was no air.
Above he could see a glimmer of light, as if day had come.
Swim, bucco, swim, else you and Pip will drown.
Upward he stroked, and upward, Pipper a deadweight, but Binkton stroked and stroked one armed, his lungs heaving but not breathing in, for his mouth was tightly clamped shut.
And then he broke through the surface and took in a great gulp of air past the wire held between his clenched teeth, even as he pulled Pip up into the sweet morning breeze.
Pip, though unconscious, had not taken in any water, and he started breathing on his own.
Binkton took the pickwire from his mouth and stabbed the angled end into the fetter on his wrist. And even as the manacle opened, from a distance Binkton heard laughter-Queeker’s nasally whine riding above Tark’s deep roar. And Binkton could see a white sail on a small skiff, faring away, heading toward the land the buccan could just see.
I need to get Pip to shore, but I can’t let Queeker and Tark see me. Oh, Adon, Adon, let them not look back.
In between buoying Pipper up, Binkton kicked off his boots and shed his shirt, but kept on his trousers. Struggling, he stripped Pipper likewise. Then, towing Pip, Binkton rolled onto his back and began swimming after the craft. He swam for long moments before he rolled back over to sight on the land. By this time the skiff itself had drawn far away, and he no longer feared that Tark or Queeker would catch sight of him and Pipper.
Again he rolled onto his back, and stroked for long moments more, but when he rolled over to take another sighting, he could no longer see the land or the skiff itself, though he did spot the top of its mast.
What’s this, bucco, where did the land go?
Once more he rolled onto his back and swam for what he thought might have been a quarter candlemark altogether. But when he again took a sighting, not only was the land gone, but even the top of the mast had disappeared.
“What’s happening here, Pip?” he asked aloud, but, of course, Pip didn’t answer.
Think, bucco, think. Surely you know the reason.
A moment later it came to him: The Argon. The mighty Argon. It flows into the Avagon Sea, and we are caught in that current. Adon, but I cannot swim against the force of that flood. What will I do? What will I do? Oh, come on, Pip, wake up. I need you to have one of your harebrained schemes to get us out of this mess.
Slowly a full candlemark passed, and Binkton, weary beyond his means, struggled to stay afloat.
“Oh, Pip, oh, Pip,” he called aloud, “please wake up. I don’t think I can hold out much longer.”
And as Binkton strove to keep his head above water and keep Pipper’s up too, the relentless spillage of the Argon River pushed them farther out into the deep blue indigo sea.
38
Nearing Vengeance
DARK DESIGNS
EARLY SPRING, 6E9
Safely locked away in his sanctum, such that none could do him harm, Nunde�
��s body lay slack, unresponsive, but for shallow breathing. For anyone who had the ‹sight› to see, out from his abdomen trailed a thin, dark, aethyrial cord, no thicker than a fine hair, for Nunde’s spirit soared far away.
And the Necromancer watched as Malik and his cohort of Drik and Chun, with one of the four Oghi in the lead, hacked their way through the last mile of the tangle lying between them and their goal. That Malik ineffectually swatted at the swarms of bloodsucking flies and mosquitoes and swiped at whining gnats and scraped leeches from his legs was of no concern to Nunde. After all, Malik was but an apprentice-valuable, perhaps, but expendable at need. One day Malik might achieve enough knowledge to strike out on his own, but that day lay far in the future; it certainly was not here yet. And by that time, Nunde himself would be so powerful that neither Malik nor anyone else would pose a significant threat. Why, Nunde would slap him down just as Malik had slapped that bloated thing feeding upon his cheek, leaving behind nought but a crimson smear and scarlet droplets oozing from the hole lingering in his skin.
After seeing that Malik neared the destination, Nunde sped on ahead. And before him, rearing up from the jungle, lay the pristine tower, made of stone so smooth and so seamlessly joined that no plant, no vine, not even lichen could gain a foothold upon its flawless surface.
To the top of the tower soared Nunde, and through one of the four cardinal arches carved in the dome and into the open chamber beyond. Ah, yes, his chosen one yet remained in place upon the pedestal.
I will call upon you if needed , crooned Nunde as his aethyrial self circled ’round, knowing that if he did so, it would take much ‹life force› to cast the spell that would loose and then cage the creature again, and would drain Nunde’s astral being dreadfully. Yet he would not make the same mistake as that fool of a Sorcerer had made, for at that time the city had been laid to waste by an imperfectly cast conjuration. It was only by the efforts of many of Magekind in the years after that the warder had been confined again. As to the original imperfectly cast summoning that had set the warder free, the imbecile who had done so had paid with his life. Nunde knew that he would have to expend the ‹essence› to prevent the same fate from happening to him.
Then away he fled, back toward his sanctum. Nunde would have liked to find Aravan and see what that fool of a Dohl was up to. Surely by now he had taken the bait. Yet Nunde would not risk the gamble, for not only did Aravan have that cursed blue amulet that might warn him that Nunde was nearby, but he also was accompanied by the whore Aylis, a Seer with the ‹sight›. And Nunde would not reveal his aethyrial self to her. Oh, no. She was, after all, the one who had helped Aravan ruin all of Nunde’s carefully laid plans in Neddra that hideous night when Aravan and his host attacked the Black Fortress.
Nunde smiled. In fact, he was depending upon that stupid trollop to help spring the trap he himself had devised. She was a Seer, after all.
What was it now? Seven, eight years since he had conceived his brilliant scheme?
To some that might seem a long time.
But Nunde was patient.
It didn’t matter how long Malik and his cohort had to wait there in the steaming environs. After all, they were nought but lackeys, and obeying Nunde’s slightest whim was the why of their very existence.
All this and more did Nunde contemplate as he sped back to his sanctum.
His trap was nearly laid.
Aravan would meet his doom.
39
Under Way
ELVENSHIP
LATE SPRING TO EARLY SUMMER, 6E9
Aravan and Aylis and Lissa spent days upon days going through the ancient archives in the libraries of Caer Pendwyr, those that had survived the burning and destruction of the Winter War, when Caer Pendwyr had fallen to the Southerlings-Hyrinians, Kistanians, Chabbains, and the Fists of Rakka, all under the sway of Gyphon’s surrogate Modru. But that was just over a millennium past, and the libraries had recovered some of the knowledge lost, though many ancient scrolls and tomes were gone forever.
The librarians had looked askance at Aylis leading a tethered fox into the buildings, yet the High King had sent word that whatever Aravan and Aylis did was under his personal aegis. And so the librarians had grumbled at this vermin being in their domain; still they had said nought. It wasn’t until Vex had slaughtered a goodly number of rats and mice that the staff began considering getting a fox of their own, for after all there were vermin and there were vermin, and rats and mice shredded documents to build their nests, while foxes did not. Then again, there were those cats in the cities of Khem that were said to deal death to vermin as well, so perhaps. .
Deep in one of the subbasements of the central library, where they had been directed by an ancient archivist, “Look here,” said Aylis, whispering so as to not waken Lissa, the Pysk asleep in a pigeonhole of a nearby escritoire, Vex dozing ’neath. “It mentions the City of Jade.”
She and Aravan stood at a waist-high scroll-scattered table, a lantern sitting thereon.
By the cast of yellow light, Aravan peered at the ancient broken clay tablet Aylis held. “What language is that?”
“I’m not certain,” she replied. “But it is similar to the one scribed ’round the base of the statuette.”
Aravan frowned. “Now that I think on it, the script looks somewhat like the runes of Jung. That language I speak and read, for several times I rode through in my search for the yellow-eyed man. Yet, from those runes I know, these seem to be a much older form. . ancient, I deem. What does it say?”
“ ‘In the near west lies the City of Jade, a place rich in spoils, but with a dreadful-” Aylis looked up and said, “There is no more. Whatever else it might say is gone, broken away.”
“Something dreadful there, neh?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Then it seems to correspond to the warning on the statuette. I deem this tablet might have told why the city was abandoned, what might have been so dreadful.”
Aylis nodded and said:
“Thrice I dreamt the dream
From the City of Jade I fled
Nought but shades now dwell.”
Long had they speculated on the last line of the haiku, yet they had nought but conjecture as to why someone had fled from something in the lost city-be it disease, drought, invaders, madness, or other such.
Aravan glanced at the shard and asked, “Canst thou do a ‹seeing›?”
“I was just about to suggest that,” said Aylis, smiling.
Aravan looked deep into her gold-flecked eyes. “I would not have it tax thee, Chier.”
“I think it will not, though this tablet seems to be quite ancient and might take a while.”
Aravan gently held her hand. “I would not have thee swoon, my love.”
“Swoon I might,” said Aylis, returning his concerned gaze, “yet how else can we discover what we might?”
Aravan looked about the shelves jammed with dusty clutter, and he turned up a hand of surrender.
Saying that the closer to the floor the less distance to fall, Aylis sat upon the tiles. Aravan knelt at her side. She pressed the shard between her palms and then spoke a word. After long moments she muttered an utterance in the tongue of Jung, though an archaic form of that language.
[In the near west lies the City of Jade, a place rich in spoils, but with a dreadful past. Only shades and shadows now dwell therein. Citizens of Jung, beware.]
Aylis took a deep breath and seemed to come to herself. “There is no more, my love. Yet I deem this a clear warning.”
Aravan frowned. “We know little more than we did ere now.”
Aylis nodded and then said, “Perhaps it is nothing more than a legend to keep looters away,” said Aylis.
“Mayhap,” said Aravan. Then he fell into thought and finally said, “So from somewhere in Jung, the City of Jade lies nearby to the west.”
Aravan suddenly stood and looked at marks on the bottom of the statuette. “I ween I know where this i
s.” He turned and held an aiding hand out to Aylis and said, “Up, Chier. The maps on the Eroean will say yea or nay.”
On her feet, Aylis wakened Lissa and Vex, and within moments they exited the library and headed for the switchback road down to the docks, where they would row out to where the Elvenship was moored.
It took several days to round up the crew, Long Tom and Brekk and several Dwarves scouring the taverns and bordellos and other such low places for those who had not answered the recall flag on the Eroean . But at last, all came aboard, some carried over the shoulders of others.
They sailed on the evening tide of an early summer day, and as the ship hauled out from Hile Bay, the second bosun, Noddy, asked, “Where be we bound, Cap’n? What be th’ set o’ th’ silks?”
Aravan glanced at Noddy and then at Helmsman Tarley. “With this northerly wind, I would have ye keep the shore of Pellar a league or so off our starboard. When we pass the point of Thell Cove, we’ll run straight for Port Arbalin. There we might make a short layover, no more than a candlemark or two; then we’ll head for our next destination.”
“And what might that be, Cap’n?” asked Tarly.
“We’ll talk about that as we approach Arbalin,” replied Aravan, “for I would propose the mission to the entire crew, one with an unknown danger, mayhap. And those who would forgo such a venture will be let ashore, while the remainder will go on.”
Just after mid of night on the second day out, the wind slowly shifted ’round from the north to finally flow out of the west and toward the east, directly against the Eroean . Noddy and Tarley, again on duty, looked to Nikolai, who said, “Tack nor’west, by damn. We run that way to dawn, then back sou’west. In all, ship take four tack to Arbalin.”
“What about th’ Argon, Nick?” asked Tarley. “Th’ flow be against us.”
“Aye,” replied Nikolai, “but flow with us when make next tack.”
And so Noddy piped the sails to the night crew, and Tarley spun the wheel over.
City of Jade Page 26
