by Deck Davis
“That’ll get rid of the street bugs,” said Yart.
Next, Bunk approached Ethan. He held a bronze bracelet in his hand. He snapped it across his wrist. Ethan tugged at it, but it wouldn’t move.
“This is more like it,” he said. “Gifts are nice. I might give you more of a show next time.”
“Shut your fucking face, rat. Your bed’s over there.”
Ethan eyed the bucket on the floor. There was still some powder left in it, and if it could speak, it would have been saying ‘pick me up, Ethan.’
He grabbed it, then shoved it in Bunk and Yart’s direction, covering their faces in it.
Bunk grunted. He shoved Ethan so hard that he slammed into the wall, and all the breath left him. Yart’s cat hissed, it’s claws protruding.
Bunk shook with anger, every cell in his gags body wanting to pound Ethan into the consistency of the powder he’d just covered him in.
Yart touched his arm. “Not yet, Bunk. Not yet. Go and train outside, if you need to get your anger out.”
After the gigas left them, Yart gave him new recruit clothes to wear, consisting of a cloth shirt that itched, and trousers that were too small. He gave him the worst bed possible; one nearest the wall, where the wind wheezed through a crack and froze him.
As night fell on the guild house, Ethan lay on his bed. He tugged at the bracelet on his wrist, but it was clasped too tightly. Short of taking a hammer to it, there was nothing he could do. He would have settled for at least knowing what it was for.
The other recruits drifted in. Some were covered in mud and sweat, while others sported bruises from a day of sword training. Far from being impressed with his celebrity as a traitor, they ignored him. He wasn’t a lovable rogue here – he was the lowest of the low. A street rat who didn’t deserve to be in any guild, much less one for heroes.
Opposite him, a wiry-looking recruit watched him. Blue jagged tribe marks covered his face, meeting in the centre around his nose. Dantis would have known what those meant.
“You don’t let people push you around, do you?” he said.
“You can’t let people walk all over you.”
“You gotta keep cards close to your chest. Especially around here. They know who you are now. They know you’ve got a temper and believe me, Yart will work out how to prod you until you show it at the wrong time. Me? They know nothing about me. Nothing to exploit.”
“I can’t help it sometimes.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I enjoyed it. What’s your birth-ja?”
“Birth jar?”
“Sorry, it’s a thing from back home. What’s your name, I mean?”
“Ethan.”
“Dullzewn.”
“At least not everyone here’s is an arse. I’ll try and rein in my temper.”
“Good. Yart won’t always be there to stop his ape. Night, Ethan.”
As soon as they settled onto their beds, the recruits fell into deep sleeps. Much as his eyes begged to close, Ethan forced them open. He listened to the groan of the wind as it mixed with heavy snores.
He couldn’t help feeling vulnerable, on his bed in a room for of people. He was used to it being him and Dantis, and he felt like he was never going to be able to sleep, like he’d need to keep one eye open all night.
A scratching sound caught his attention. He sat up. Dullzewn was crouching beside his bed and scratching at the wall. He held a metal file in his hand, and he chipped away at the stonework, gathering dust around his feet. When a pile of it formed, he scooped it and dropped it down a crack near his bed.
Was he making an escape hole? Maybe he was a fellow criminal. What a stupid escape plan. This place wasn’t a prison; there were easier ways to make a run for it. In fact, Ethan had noticed a few.
He was going to try one of them tonight. First, he needed the boy to go to sleep. No use bolting from the guild and leaving a witness behind to spill about his escape.
Come on, you bastard, go to sleep.
Hours went by. Recruits shifted in their beds. One of them farted. Another mumbled in his sleep. Finally, as the fingers of sleep tugged on Ethan’s eyelids, the boy hid his file under his bed, and flopped down on his back.
He shook the tiredness away. He moved off his bed and crouched, before sneaking out of the dormitory. He might have been a street rat, but he was a quiet street rat. If his life as a petty thief had taught him anything, it was how to mask his steps.
He went into washroom and looked at the hole in the wall. It was a tight fit, but rats could get through the tiniest of places, and Ethan had to try. He grunted as he squeezed through it. The stone scraped on his back, but inch by inch, he worked himself free, until half his body was outside the guildhouse, half in.
The wind lapped at him. He grasped on the outside wall and found a hand grip. He put his foot out onto a stone block that stuck out an inch and moved clear of the hole.
That was easy. Too easy.
His dormitory was ten feet off the ground. Knowing how to fall properly, it was easy for Ethan to drop onto the courtyard below. A slight pain stung his ankles when he dropped, but he shook it off.
He was out. The guildhouse loomed over him, but he wasn’t trapped in it anymore. Wind lashed his face, and nighttime insects chirped to each other. The winding path lay to the left, beyond the courtyard. The forest lay to his right. The trees would have offered more cover, but he remembered the klizerds, painfully aware he didn’t have a sword.
Better get moving.
Ducking low, he ran across the courtyard. This was ridiculously easy. For such a palatial place, the guild house was falling apart. Didn’t they know about the holes? Didn’t they know how easy it was to escape through them? He laughed to himself at how simple it had been.
When he reached the pathway, his stomach gurgled. When did I last eat? Back in the justice halls. I’m gonna have to find some berries or mushrooms. Luckily, he’d built a healthy knowledge of natural edibles in the time he and Dantis had spent travelling. If anything was going to kill him, it wouldn’t be starvation.
He took another step. His stomach convulsed. Pain shot through him, cramping him up. It grew until he was in agony.
“What the hell?”
He tried to fight through it, but tremors of pain forced him to the ground. He kneeled. He took deep breaths. Another shock rippled through him, and he lost control of his arms. He hit the ground face-first, feeling blood spurt from his nose.
“You owe me five gold pieces,” said a voice.
Two figures emerged from the shadows. In the throes of agony, Ethan forced himself to look. Bander and Lillian loomed over him.
“You’ve disappointed me,” said Bander. “Hoped you’d have more sense than this.”
“What…have you…done to me,” said Ethan, biting back the agony.
“It wasn’t me, cretin,” said Lillian.
Bander crouched by Ethan. He lifted his arm and tapped the bracelet on his wrist. “Did you think this was for show?”
“Rehabilitation?” said Lillian and spat. “I told you, Bander, it doesn’t work. Once a rat, always a rat.”
Bander patted Ethan’s shoulder. “I hope this is a lesson that you only have to learn once. While you wear the bracelet, you can’t step foot out of the guild.”
Chapter Seven
Dantis
He couldn’t stop thinking about Renton. It was a waste of a life, potential snuffed out for no reason. The woman had waited in ambush for Dantis, it seemed. No matter who he’d been travelling with, she would have tried to capture him, so why did it have to be Renton? Why couldn’t someone else have bought him? He didn’t wish death on anyone, but if he had to choose, then make it a faceless stranger.
He had to focus. No matter how much it hurt to think about Renton, he had to be alert for escape. The problem was the woman, and what he could do. Arcane blasts, balls of ice, a horseless carriage fueled by mana? Was there any spell she didn’t know?
Fury filled him when he looked at her,
but it wouldn’t help him. There was no way he could overpower her.
After seeing the woman use two mage disciplines, it was no surprise she knew a third, and this one propelled the carriage over the Road of Repent. Yellow sparks of mana exploded at the carriage doorway, and a burning smell drifted in.
The pain returned in his leg, walloping him full force. The fire was long gone, but he felt as if it still smoldered on his skin. I’m gonna lose my leg. It got me too deep. He touched the bolt wedged in his thigh, and a shudder ran through him.
Ethan has it easy. Bet he’s in a comfy bed with a flagon of wine next to him, laughing and joking with the other heroes. They’ll think he’s a cool thief.
The woman pressed her hand over the snapped bolt sticking from her chest. White mist gathered over her hands, curling between her fingers and seeping into the wound, as if drawn inside her body. The bolt end popped out and fell on the carriage floor. The wound knitted itself together until her skin was unblemished.
And there’s another one. Is there any magic she can’t use?
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Zaemira.”
“I’m-”
“Dantis,” she said.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her hair. It was dark and curly, and even though there as no wind, it wriggled as though it was alive. Mist seeped from her shoulders, glowing blue, then red, then purple. Every so often one of her hair worms would wriggle over her forehead, and she took a piece of biscuit from her pocket and handed it to her hair, which wrapped around it.
Her open robed revealed a shape printed on the inner lining. A giant, red eye with a blood tear in the corner. It’s the same as Lillian’s necklace. What does it mean?
“Your leg, boy,” she said.
Grunting, he raised his leg on the seat. “Give me some of that sweet white healing stuff.”
She put her finger to her lips. She touched his leg, and a shock of ice radiated through his trousers and onto his skin. White mist gathered around her fingers.
Something thudded into the carriage. It lurched, and another thud hit. Zaemira leaned out the carriage door.
“Acolytes,” she said. “Do those bastards ever give up?”
“What are they doing here?”
“They’re here for you, Dantis.”
“Why?”
“The Brotherhood seek out auctions like yours, hoping to snare easy meat for a cheap price. Few survive their fire trials, but the ones who do, can serve them. You, my boy, would be a precious prize to them.”
“I doubt I’d survive a fire trial.”
“It’s your magic they want. Not your flesh.”
“But what’s it all for? Criminals, fire trials…what the hell do they do down there?”
“They serve a god, Dantis. Not one that you need concern yourself with.”
Outside the carriage, horse hooves pounded on the road, punctuated by cracks of whips. He strained to lean over to the doorway. Sure enough, the surviving two acolytes chased them across the Road of Repent. To the right of the road, water surged down a river, tearing over rocks and threatening to overflow the banks.
A flame arrow whizzed toward him. He ducked back into the carriage in time to see it flash by, fire blazing a trail behind it.
The carriage lurched again. It slowed, and Dantis almost fell off the seat. Zaemira held him steady. Pain exploded in his leg.
“Finish healing me,” he said.
She shook her head. “My carriage runs on mana, boy. You can feel it draining, can’t you? I overspent myself.”
She was right. Battling the acolytes, she’d used more mana than Dantis could have summoned in a year. Mana fueled the carriage, and it seemed she was getting low.
“So, you can either heal me, or keep the carriage running?”
“I’m afraid I can do neither. I’m drained, boy.”
“Then we’re in the shit.”
The carriage lurched again. This time, it slowed dramatically. The horse hooves behind them grew louder.
Something shattered against the carriage, tearing a hole in it. Wind swirled in through a hole in the roof, and a giant lance wedged inside the carriage. Flames crackled around it.
“Fire lances,” said Zaemira.
Another lance crashed into the side of the carriage, tearing timber from the sides. Zaemira sank against the seat. She closed her eyes and strained in concentration. Yellow mana sparked around them. Even with her renewed effort, the carriage slowed further, and the acolytes got closer.
She can’t keep this up. They’ll catch us and take us to the lava fields, and Zaemira will be too weak to stop them.
He grabbed his crossbow. In his hurry to escape the acolyte, he hadn’t taken any more bolts, which left him with the one loaded on the bow. He leaned out of the carriage, holding the crossbow with one hand, and the carriage door with the other.
Wind rushed at him. The acolytes rode ten feet from the carriage now. Their faces twisted in anger, and spit frothed from their horses’ mouths.
One bolt, one shot. But maybe that’s all it’ll take. If I can hit one of the horses, it’ll crash into the others.
He squinted, took a deep breath, and fired.
The arrow zipped through the air and toward the acolytes, before sailing beyond them. In answer, one acolyte fired a flame bolt. Dantis lost his grip on the door toppled forward.
A hand dragged him back into the carriage. “Are you trying to get killed?” said Zaemira.
“I was trying to save us.”
“Let me work in peace. It takes everything I have to keep the carriage running, and I can’t hold out forever.”
“Can you give me some mana?”
“I don’t have it to spare, child.”
“I don’t need as much as you. My spells aren’t as…extravagant. Just a little, Zaemira. Send it into me.”
“Be quiet.”
“No. You need to trust me.”
She stared at him. Her eyes were a chestnut brown, and they seemed deep and endless. Without a word, she put her hand on his head. A force flew into him, and a warmth spread in his stomach.
His illusions would work now. He knew it, he could feel the glow of mana inside him. He leaned out of the carriage again.
The acolytes closed the gap until they were two feet away. One leaned forward on his cart. He held a wooden stick with a hook on the end, and he grasped to attach it to the carriage.
No time to think. I need to do something. What can I cast?
There was a tree to their right. Concentrating with every ounce of his being, he cast the dregs of his new mana into the illusion. He imagined the tree trunk splitting apart, the wood groaning, and tipping over.
The illusion formed in front of him. The tree no longer stood; instead, it crashed toward the carts.
The horse nearest to it whinnied and reared back. Shocked with fear of the falling tree, it dashed to its right, dragging the cart with it. The acolyte whipped it, but the horse was beyond control.
The horses in the other cart followed it. Neighing and wheezing, they galloped off the Road of Repent while the furious acolytes fought to control them. Soon, both carts careened toward the river. An acolyte tried to dive away, but he was too late. Horses, carts, and acolytes all crashed into the raging waters.
Zaemira’s carriage carried on a few meters and stopped dead. To his right, the horses whinnied as they fought to stay afloat in the river, while the tongue-less acolytes could do nothing but swim against the current.
Dantis leaned back into the carriage and collapsed against the seat. Sweat drenched his forehead. Pain wracked his wounded leg, and each throb made him want to vomit.
Even in his condition, he felt bad when he looked at Zaemira. She stared back at him vacantly, taking shallow breaths.
“Are you okay?”
“How did you…cast…such an…illusion…with so little mana?”
He wiped the sweat from his face. “I, uh, closed my eyes and imagined
it. What’s wrong? I thought you healed yourself?”
“My wound is…worse than I imagined. They didn’t just use…fire arrows. They had…something else. I need to drain from you.”
“Drain? Drain what?”
“Trust me…boy.”
Draining didn’t sound good. If he’d made a list of ten things he didn’t want to happen, being drained would have hit top spot. Or maybe number two; getting his tongue cut out by a rusty blade was worse.
If he didn’t let her do what she needed to, they were stuck on the Road of Repent until her mana replenished. In the meantime, the acolytes could swim out of the river and find them again. Or maybe they’d go to their lava fields and return with reinforcements. Zaemira was powerful, but not invincible. They couldn’t wait here.
“Go ahead. Do what you’ve gotta do.”
Zaemira stared at him. Her eyes turned blood red. She raised her hands, and a force shot through Dantis, jerking him upright like a puppet. A shock convulsed inside him, spreading through his veins. He wanted to be sick. His vision swam.
Something seeped out of him, but he didn’t know what. It wasn’t painful, but the sensation made his insides lurch.
Zaemira’s face contorted. Wrinkles cut into her once-smooth skin. Her eyes thinned into slits, and when she opened her mouth to breath in whatever she had drained from him, her teeth grew pointed enough to tear through flesh.
She’s a monster. I need to leave, but I can’t move. I need to…
The feeling stopped. He collapsed against the seat. His head lurched to the side, but he couldn’t help it. Something was missing inside him, but what?
Zaemira’s wrinkles smoothed out, and the red drained from her eyes. Once again, she was the beautiful, perfect-skinned mage.
“What the hell did you just do?”
She stood up. Renewed with energy, she clapped her hands, and yellow light spread out and coated the carriage. It tottered into life, and the Road of Repent once again sped passed them.
Dantis eyed the carriage doorway. Should he try and jump out? Whatever he had seen, whatever Zaemira was, it stirred fear in his stomach, and made him feel weak.
He couldn’t run. What hope did he have of escaping from her? And if he did, wouldn’t the acolytes hunt him?
