by K. B. Bogen
“Wot yew want to see the Lord-Mayor for, eh? Yew think yew got business with ‘is Worship?”
“Yes, as a m-matter of fact. It’s a matter of utmost urgency.”
“Ow, listen to the fancy words. I reckon ‘is Lordship might want to see yew, seein’ as ‘ow yew’re new to the town, an’ all. All alone in a strange city. Might want to educate yew on our ways and customs, ‘e might.”
The man laughed, not a pleasant sound. Then he headed up the nearest street toward the middle of town without even a backward glance. Apparently he expected Erwyn to follow him.
As he hurried to keep up, Erwyn noticed that the town did indeed have people enough to account for the massive amounts of trash clogging the streets. From behind shutters and half-closed doors, he was being watched.
He caught glimpses of the people behind the doors before those doors slammed shut. Of those few he saw, all were just as dirty and scraggly as his guide. Erwyn shuddered. It gave him the willies to think there might be hundreds more like the man he was following.
His guide turned a corner unexpectedly and Erwyn hastened to catch up with him. He wasn’t certain, but he got the distinct impression that he was not wanted. His best course of action would be to get this job over with as soon as possible.
He rounded the corner, nearly walking into his aromatic “friend.” Swerving to avoid the collision, Erwyn found himself ankle-deep in a puddle of vivid green muck. It seeped into the leather of his boots and spattered his pants up to the knees.
“There. Yew look right at ‘ome now.”
“Terrific.” Maybe levitation wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
Rounding another corner, Erwyn found himself fronting the most impressive edifice he had yet seen. That is to say, the building before him still had all its walls in a more or less vertical position. Otherwise, it was just as dirty and dingy as the rest of the town. Maybe more so.
“This ‘ere’s the town ‘all,” Erwyn’s guide volunteered.
“Wonderful.”
Erwyn surveyed the rotting timber of the door. It must have been a magnificent piece of work, about a hundred years ago. As it was, the only things holding it together were the massive iron hinges. Sagging doorways seemed to be the norm around there.
“If anyone asks,” the man added, “my name’s Urik. In case anyone wants to know ‘oo brung yew here.”
He smiled, making Erwyn wonder exactly why Urik would want anyone to know who brought him. Or why anyone would want to know.
Half afraid it would collapse on him, Erwyn carefully pushed the door open. The interior of the town hall was in better repair than it seemed from the street.
Surprised, he took a cautious step inside.
The door opened onto a long hallway. The floors were of marble, the walls of polished wood. As Erwyn walked slowly down the passage, he discovered that those walls were covered with portraits. Every few feet, he found himself confronted by stern men in well-made, though long out-of-date, doublets, who stared at him from aging canvasses.
Passing through the double line of pictures of obviously wealthy and well-bred gentlemen, Erwyn had difficulty connecting them with the people he had seen outside in the town itself. There was no recognizable resemblance.
“Great, another mystery,” Erwyn groaned.
The hall ended at a large door which was made of solid wood, instead of the spongy variety that seemed to be the favorite outside. As he reached the door, it swung silently inward, revealing a richly appointed, wood-paneled courtroom. The courtroom was full.
Seated on large wooden benches, milling about on the marbled floors, and sprawled in various corners were numerous representatives of the populace of Perbellum, each and every one a prime example of the dregs of humanity. And all of them watching Erwyn as he was hustled into the room by two musclebound, hairy men who had appeared out of nowhere.
In a large, ornately carved chair behind a huge desk sat a man who could easily have bested Urik in a contest for the worst body odor in recorded history. This was the Lord-Mayor, Erwyn surmised.
“I am the Lord-Mayor Phamstall,” the man declared, vigorously pounding with his gavel on the desktop. “You may address me as Lord-Mayor, Your Lordship, or any other appropriate title of respect you might think of.” His voice dropped to a more threatening tone. “But you better make it very, very good.”
He smiled at the young man in front of him. He had fewer teeth than Urik, too.
“State your business in this, our lovely town of Perbellum.”
Silently, Erwyn wished for an army at his back. Preferably one with a few hundred buckets of water and some soap. It was getting hard to breathe. He wasn’t sure which was worse, the odor of unwashed bodies, or the fumes from their mouths.
Trying to resist the urge to cover his nose with his cloak, Erwyn addressed the assemblage at large, and the Lord-Mayor in particular. “Your, uh, Lordship, I have come to ask about a certain thief, who is supposed to be hiding here in your, ah, beautiful town.”
He suspected that honesty was not the best policy in this case, but he couldn’t think of anything else. The Lord-Mayor exchanged meaningful glances with another man, whom Erwyn supposed was the bailiff, or some such.
“And who might this thief be?” He smiled again.
Erwyn was learning not to trust people who smiled too much.
“He, uh, stole a talisman from a temple, Your Lordship. I have been sent to retrieve him, or at the least to retrieve the talisman.”
“And you think he’s here?”
“He was seen entering your gates, yes.”
“I think we can accommodate you.” The Lord-Mayor laughed. A very unpleasant sound. “These men will escort you to the ... thief.”
The same two hairy apes who had dragged him into the courtroom appeared at Erwyn’s elbows.
Oh, Lords, what now? Erwyn asked himself.
It was too easy. One man, unarmed, simply couldn’t walk in and ask for something an entire army had failed to recover, and expect to get it. Life didn’t work that way, not in his admittedly limited experience.
He had a feeling they weren’t going to let him walk out the gates with the man, or the talisman. And if he somehow managed to leave Perbellum, without the man and/or the talisman, the Marlians would kill both him and Chesric.
On the other hand, the Perbellans were probably going to kill him, and then the Marlians would kill Chesric. They were dead either way.
In any case, he wasn’t completely certain of his ability to get out of town, anyway, since the man probably didn’t want to leave the dubious safety of Perbellum, in the first place.
So matters stood when Erwyn’s guards reached a small iron door with an even smaller window in it. A window with bars.
“What the ... ?”
One of the guards produced a key and opened the door while the other unceremoniously shoved Erwyn through it.
“There he is,” one of the guards nodded toward the corner of the cell. “Talk all you like.”
Then he stepped back through the doorway and the door clanged shut behind him. Erwyn heard the rasp of the key in the lock. He was trapped. At least for the moment.
There was movement in the corner and Erwyn turned, pressing his back to the door.
“Welcome to the hospitality of Perbellum.” The newcomer or, more appropriately, the earlier resident, spoke in a soft drawl. “I think you will find it somewhat less than satisfactory.” He moved into the light afforded by the room’s one window.
He was young, not much older than Erwyn. Light brown hair fell to his collar around an oval, boyish face. A face which currently bore signs of a recent run-in with someone’s fist.
He wore a green tunic, once well-tailored, but now torn in places. His pants were brown rags whose ends were tucked into a pair of scuffed leather boots.
Around his wais
t was a belt of some kind, with what looked like a scabbard attached to it. The remains of his tunic bore a threadbare diagonal stripe, as though another belt or something had been worn there. Another sword? For once, Erwyn wished he’d learned more about weapons.
“You’re the thief I’ve been looking for?” Erwyn could not believe this soft-spoken man could be responsible for the deaths of a half-dozen Marlian warriors.
“At your service.” Doffing an imaginary cap, he gave a low, sweeping bow. “My name is Devydd, swordsman, lover, thief, entrepreneur. Not necessarily in that order.” He smiled, straightening. “And you are ... ?”
“I’m Erwyn. I have been sent by the captain of the Marlian guard to take you out of Perbellum and,” Erwyn took a deep breath, “to see that you are brought to justice for the theft of their talisman.”
Strolling Past the Cesspool
Could You Just Wait For a Spell?
“IN CASE THE NEED ARISES TO EFFECT A QUICK ESCAPE FROM SOMEWHERE, IT IS WISE TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO HOW YOU GOT THERE.” — Sorcerers’ Almanac, Section One: On Getting the Lay of the Land
“Are you crazy?”
“Huh?”
“Well, unless you are a most accomplished escape artist and a sorcerer to boot, I think you’ll have some difficulty escaping from this box. I did. That’s why I’m still here. It’s tougher than it looks.”
Erwyn smiled and calmly threw the edge of his cape over his shoulder. The patch on his chest seemed to glow in the dim light. He watched as first surprise, then amusement registered on Devydd’s features.
The young thief might not know the meaning of the patch itself, but the symbol of the Sorcerer’s Guild was universal.
“Getting out of this cell won’t be much of a problem,” Erwyn informed Devydd, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded. “The real trouble will be to get out of the city. Intact. I suspect that they didn’t lock me in this cell just to prevent you from escaping. I got the impression they don’t like strangers much around here.”
“All that from a first meeting? Wait until you get to know them better.” Devydd’s tone changed from flippant to serious. “The people of Perbellum would happily boil you down and use your body fat to fuel their oil lamps, if they thought they could get away with it.”
“Well then,” Erwyn replied as cheerfully as he could, “I guess it behooves us to get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Before they run out of oil.”
Without waiting for an answer, Erwyn turned his attention to the matter of getting out of the cell. He knelt to examine the lock while he mentally ran through his stock of spells. The lock was too complicated to be picked as he had the lock on Gordrun’s library. Besides, he didn’t have anything to pick it with. The Marlians had kept his knife.
“Could you, perhaps, speed this up a little? My stomach tells me it’s almost time for the guards to bring dinner.”
“You mean you can tell by how hungry you are?”
“Nope, I can tell by how nauseated I am. The food here is worse than the hospitality.”
“You sound like you’re actually looking forward to facing the Marlians.”
“Believe me, it’s better than the current alternative.”
“Well, here goes nothing.”
Using his scry spell, Erwyn peered intently at the inside of the lock. One by one, he levitated each tumbler into position. There were five of them.
By the time he had the fifth in place, Erwyn was trembling from the exertion. It took a lot of energy to control a scry spell and levitate five tumblers into different positions at once.
As the last tumbler clicked into position, Erwyn leaned against the door. To his relief, it swung open easily.
“Ow! Damn!” Bereft of the support of the door, Erwyn fell to the floor with an audible thump! When would he ever learn not to lean on things that move?
Devydd hurried out the door, swinging it closed behind him. The lock clicked loudly to inform Erwyn that his concentration had been broken in his fall. Big surprise. Well, he had lasted long enough.
“I hate to bring this up, my friend, but if we don’t get out of the area soon, we’ll have to take up residence here again. Know what I mean?” Devydd helped Erwyn to his feet.
“Right. Um ... ” Erwyn looked around him in confusion. He didn’t quite know how to ask his next question.
“’Um’ what?”
“Well ... I don’t suppose you know how to get out of here, do you?”
“You came in here to rescue me, but you don’t know the way out?”
“I didn’t say I came to rescue you. I said I came to take you out. I had hoped to get a little more cooperation from the natives, as it were.”
“Is everyone in your profession this naive?”
“I’m not naive!” Erwyn felt his temper rising again. “It’s just that I’m inexperienced.”
“Not to mention uninformed.”
Erwyn glared at him. “They didn’t give me much choice.”
“They?”
“The people who sent me.”
“The Marlian guard? Big, mean women, with lots of sharp pointy things waving about?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe they get their jollies out of sending people off to do an impossible job with a minimum of information. We still need to decide which way to go.”
Heavy footsteps sounded down the corridor to their left.
“I guess that takes some of the guesswork out.” Devydd grabbed Erwyn’s elbow. “It’s this way or nothing.” So saying, the young thief ran to the right, pulling Erwyn along behind.
Either luck was with them, or the Perbellans weren’t used to their captives escaping. They saw no one during the first few minutes of their flight down the hallway.
Devydd chose random directions at each intersection, sometimes turning left, sometimes right, sometimes going straight, until Erwyn was dizzy from all the zig-zagging around.
Finally, the thief must have felt they had left pursuit far enough behind, for he slowed down to a trot.
Erwyn didn’t mention that they were still inside the town hall. He was too tired to complain any more.
They turned another corner and Devydd stopped short. “Uh-oh.”
Such descriptive warnings Erwyn could do without. In this case, the warning applied to the three rather husky men, dressed in what passed for guard uniforms in Perbellum, who were loudly arguing about something as they stalked in the fugitives’ direction.
Fortunately, the guards were too busy yelling at each other to look where they were going.
Devydd and Erwyn hurriedly ducked back around the corner.
“What do we do now?” Devydd asked, as if their predicament were all Erwyn’s fault.
“Start out by getting out of their way!” he replied. “Follow me.”
He turned and ran back to the last intersection.
“What are you doing?” Devydd’s voice squeaked, just like Erwyn’s did when he was terrified.
“Shhh!” Erwyn stood in the center of the intersection, turning slowly to face each of the hallways in turn as he cast his spell. “I’m trying to find ... there! This way.”
He dashed down one of the halls. A moment later, Devydd followed.
“What the hell were you doing back there?”
“Scry spell.”
Erwyn couldn’t waste much breath on his answer. He had too little left. He turned at another intersection, with Devydd on his heels.
It’s here somewhere, he thought furiously. I know it is.
They heard shouts behind them as they turned another corner. Erwyn had the distinct feeling they had been going around in circles. The building couldn’t be that big. Then he paused again.
“Holy ... !” Devydd exclaimed, skidding to a stop beside Erwyn. “Hey, kid. They’re right behind us. Le
t’s get outta here!”
“We are getting out of here,” Erwyn panted as he stared at the window in front of him. He glared at his companion, adding, “And don’t call me ‘kid.’ I know a particularly nasty spell I’ve been dying to try on someone. Don’t tempt me.” He was bluffing, but Devydd couldn’t know that.
“Okay, okay. Whatever you say. Just get us out of here. And hurry.”
“Certainly,” Erwyn replied. A moment later, the bars on the window tore loose from the casement. “Here, hold this.” He levitated the bars, frame and all, into Devydd’s hands. Then he climbed onto the window, releasing the levitation spell at the same time. The bars landed on Devydd’s toes.
“Ow! You whoring son of a ... !”
“Temper, temper!” Erwyn shook his finger at the thief. “And you better keep your voice down, or our ‘friends’ will find us.”
“You didn’t have to drop it like that.”
“I don’t like being rushed. You coming, or staying?”
The shouts were closer. Much closer.
“I’m coming. Get out of the way.”
They dropped to the ground outside the window. Devydd kept watch for undesirables while Erwyn put the bars back in place.
“It won’t stand up to a close examination. I broke one of the stones. But it’ll slow them down.” Dusting his hands, Erwyn turned to check the street.
The window opened onto a back alley between the town hall/jail and the sewer entrance. He could tell it was a sewer because it looked cleaner than the streets. Maybe they didn’t use it.
The walls of the building next to them cast a cool shadow on the alley. The smell of the street was less noticeable here, almost bearable.
The alley stretched for some distance in either direction, and Erwyn couldn’t tell exactly where it led. One direction was as good as another at this point.
“It’s clear. Let’s get out of this dump.” Devydd started up the alley.
“‘Dump’ is too nice a word for this place,” Erwyn muttered as he caught up with the thief.
“SPRINGTIME IN THE LOWLANDS CAN BE SOMEWHAT WARM. A BATHING SUIT IS RECOMMENDED.” — Sorcerers’ Almanac, Section Two: On Weather and Its Effects
