Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  “I am very busy, Chora Pravas,” Miara gestured towards a chair. “Spare me the pleasantries. Things are very turbulent at the moment.” If things were in a mess, Kustar reflected as she sat down, the office didn’t indicate it. Miara’s office boasted a lovely view of the Inner Keep and a handsome carpet covered the entire floor, but was sparsely furnished with a desk, two work tables, six cabinets, and four chairs. There were a few covered maps on the work tables, and a single book on the desk, but nothing else to indicate that Miara was wrestling with weighty matters. Meeting the officer’s emotionless gaze, Kustar was struck with the idea of introducing Agyra to Miara; the two would make a perfect couple. The Pargaie officer had to bite her tongue to suppress a giggle.

  “I need clearance to leave Alantarn via Gate to a field station that is code-named Fort Margrave, to continue my investigation.”

  The Choralon grunted. “Controlling station for the west quadrant of the Northern Wastes. Who picks the code names, anyway? How long will you be gone?”

  Kustar kept the surprise off her face, deeply impressed that Miara was so familiar with Pargaie assets and operations. “Sixteen days, I believe. If I could leave tomorrow I would be back in time for my regular report, or perhaps just a day or two after.”

  The staff officer drew a sheet of parchment from a drawer. Dipping a plain wood and iron pen into a matching pot in the set on her desk, she wrote a half-dozen lines in a large, neat hand. The desk set had a wax-melter and fat coils of sealing wax in three colors; using both a personal seal ring and a larger office seal, Miara signed and sealed the document. “Here, this will get you through anyone who who’ll balk at the atingo. It will let you draw on the fort’s resources for guards, mounts, that sort of thing. While you’re out there, find out who gave it that stupid name. It that your progress report? Good. Anything new, or just the usual?”

  Kustar shrugged. “An answer is imminent.”

  Miara barked a laugh. “Right, business as usual. I’ll need a dissertation on what you have uncovered so far, in case you don’t come back, as the Wastes are a dangerous place. Of course, it will remain a close-guarded secret; in fact, I won’t even break the seals until you’re overdue.”

  “I’ll need to keep my investigation log,” Kustar murmured, passing over the sealed document. “I hope to complete my investigation in the Wastes, and tie up the loose ends upon my return.”

  “The sooner the better, this business has dragged on for too long as it is. The Hold Master doesn't want any repeats of that damned first raid.”

  “I will do my best, Choralon,” Kustar assured her as she rose to leave. “I feel I am very close to the truth of the matter.”

  Preparations for the trip were minimal: she had spent years in the field, and knew far too well the importance of traveling light. The enchanted pouch loaned to her by the Anlarc held the vital investigation log, the final report on her investigation, and all documentary evidence, as well as her notes on the White Necromancer, the liche’s stronghold, and the treaties that had been negotiated in the past. A bedroll, saddlebags containing hygiene items, and a change of travel clothes rounded out her baggage. A short sword, two daggers, and a half-dozen throwing stars whose points bore the quills of a poisonous fish would be on her person.

  She passed word to Agyra as to place and time for the meeting with the wizard, and signed out a quantity of gold from the Treasury to cover any expenses; upon her return to her offices a runner brought a sealed package containing a note from the wizard that confirmed his participation in the trip, and instructions on how to use the short wooden baton that was included. If used properly, any item or area the baton was run over would be sterilized to the efforts of a Seer.

  Kustar advised Coke that she would be leaving Alantarn in the morning, and to turn over all his duties to the most senior under-clerk as he was coming with her. She gave specific instructions as to how Coke was to equip himself, and provided the chief clerk with a detailed list of projects and research tasks she wanted to be completed in her absence, a list long enough to keep all hands reasonably occupied. Taking Coke was a wise precaution against one of her competitors stealing a march on her investigation; of all her staff, her chief clerk would have the most details of what she had uncovered. His absence and subsequent death would seal off any possible lose ends.

  Covertly briefing her spies, searching her own office for any trace that might offer a clue to her competitors, and using the baton on both her work areas and personal quarters occupied the remainder of her day and kept her from having too much time to brood upon the task she had set herself. As a veteran intelligence officer Kustar had undertaken much more dangerous and exacting missions than the one she had created, but for the first time she was operating on her own, with both the foe and her superiors in ignorance of her mission and goals. It made for an eerie feeling.

  Stepping through the Gate, itself a shimmering doorway-sized field in front of an ornate tripod, was both amazing and banal, she discovered. Alantarn’s Gate-Hall resembled nothing so much as a warehouse on the outside, and was not much more impressive on the inside. The exterior was well-guarded, and guards stood every few feet in the central corridors the Nepas officer passed through, corridors which bustled with scholars, spellcasters, and Pargaie officers, all discussing, bickering, and demanding, their speech so heavily laced with strange terms as to nearly be another language. Her atingo made no impression at all on the bookish types she met in the paper-choked office, and the order from the Hold-Master’s office made little headway as well. It took three interviews with persons of unknown position or rank, and over two hours of waiting in dreary offices before the staff grudgingly admitted that they would send her.

  The actual Gate room she used was a large, empty hall two stories below the surface, furnished with only a well-manned archer’s catwalk fifteen feet overhead and an elevated platform at one end where scholarly types drank endless cups of tea and muttered arcane terms to one another while tending various and sundry items of that she supposed controlled the Gates. The rest of the floor was bare except for a score of six-foot-high tripods made of baroque brass or wood staves, each with a small brass plaque to one side indicating the location to which they were mated.

  One of the adepts finally detached herself from the tea society and, after studying the ornate pass issued upstairs with the intensity of an auditor accounting for black andern, finally led Kustar and ‘Coke’ to a particular tripod; after indicating where to stand, she made a lengthy incantation that caused the field to appear.

  The adept had advised her to close her eyes to avoid disorientation, and to take exactly four normal strides forward and one to her right; with a fluttering heart, Kustar complied, marching forward as if to execution. Midway through the third step a flickering feeling like static from cat’s fur passed over her entire body from front to back; the sensation was like the brush of a wind-blown feather, there and gone in the same instant. It wasn’t until she took the sidestep (to keep Coke from walking into her, she supposed) that she noticed that the air had changed from the cool basement air flavored with exotic incense to a warmer atmosphere heavily laced with pipe smoke, both fresh and stale.

  Opening her eyes, Kustar found herself in a domed room that she guessed would appear to be a beehive-shaped grain silo from the outside, with mud brick walls and a glazed clay tile floor. The whole room, or building, was only about twenty paces across, perfectly round, and sparsely furnished: besides Coke and herself, and their saddlebags lying in a pile where they had been thrown through the portal, there was the tripod of the Gate, a veil-covered mirror on a carved stand made of bones that Kustar suspected were Human, a large chest, and a pile of cushions which was occupied by a diminutive humanoid wrapped head-to-toe in a sort of voluminous hooded robe and turban. The wizened face was hairless and seamed by a thousand wrinkles, home to a pair of intensely piecing gray eyes; a gnarled stump of a pipe was clenched in the being’s mouth, sending out a plume of soft-scented
smoke. Although being seated made accurate estimation difficult, Kustar guessed its height to be less than five feet.

  “I need to speak to your commanding officer,” Kustar announced firmly, tapping the atingo in her belt. “At once. I am a Pargaie officer acting on orders of the Hold Master of Alantarn.”

  “Are you now,” the creature murmured, one gnarled hand tugging the pipe free in a manner suggestive of pulling a tooth. Kustar placed the creature’s sex as male, and guessed half-Goblin for race. The bright eyes took in the nondescript travelling clothes the two wore, and the baton that was the only mark of allegiance. “Covert operations, no doubt, no doubt. Hold Master of Alantarn, you say. New one there, I’m told, old one dead and without ever visiting, ‘tis true, ‘tis true. Shame. The flowers here are lovely in the spring, stretch for miles, just lovely they are.”

  “I’m sure they’re wonderful, but spring is long gone, and I need to speak with the commander of this fort,” Kuster tried to keep her voice level as she eyed the stout, low doorway in the wall. This misshapen creature must be the station Seer or Watcher, supervising the Gate and the enchanted mirror which was the prime communications with Alantarn and other similarly equipped field stations. The station commander was a Chorapel Vargrat, but she had not bothered to pull Vargrat’s file, or to check any of the garrison files; ingrained training kept her from learning unnecessary data about her own service on the principle that what wasn’t known cannot be extracted under any circumstances. “I need to speak to Chorapel Vargart.”

  “Ah, the commander, yes, that would be the appropriate step for a young and lovely officer on an important covert mission, yes, ‘tis true. Still, a pity that you will be rushing off so soon; we get so few visitors these days, so few that one can carry on a conversation with, that is.”

  “The price of service to Arbmante,” Kustar nodded, trying to paste on a sympathetic expression. “Out here on the edge of the world, carrying out our masters’ wishes, it must get very lonely. Coke here would be glad to speak with you while I discuss my mission with the fort’s commander.”

  The diminutive creature cackled softly, rocking from side to side. “Such a hurry, so busy, this dark beauty. Ambition pushing, powerlust leading, skills and experience showing the way, so many secrets tucked away for the winter. Proud beauty, wears her breasts like badges of rank and her loveliness like a weapon. You don’t know you’ve smelled the scent before, too busy looking forward to recover the past; they won’t miss you the second time, lovely. Not the second time: they ride like a javelin hurled, and fear nothing that lies in their path; to intercede between such a shaft and their target could be dire, could be foolish. Wasteful, I say. Put it all aside, sound advice, and dally here with old Dooaun, let him teach you new ways to see the flowers, yes, new ways of seeing. No? Then through the door,” the pipe drew a line of misty smoke as it gestured towards the portal. “Through it, where Vargrat waits. I dreamed of a dark flower, such a pity; the blossoms never last. They seek only the sun, and never a moment will they spare for a wise old bee like Dooaun.” The little half-Goblin, for that was Kustar’s best guess, gave a gurgling laugh and jammed his pipe back into his face, giving a giggling buzzz buzzz between puffs.

  Kuster shook her head and stepped to the door, motioning for Coke to follow.

  Not forgetting to buzz, Dooaun rolled sideways to be able to admire the movement of tight riding breeches over her shapely rear as the Pargaie officer stooped through the door. Vargrat would play with that one, using his rank and her need for his support to trundle her into his games, at least for one night. How foolish of her, to pass up the offers of Dooaun, so gentle and kind, for the harsh pleasures of Vargrat and the dangers of her mission lying before her. Not that she was unused to harsh pleasures, given or taken, not that one, no indeed.

  He rolled back to his usual position and tended his pipe. He had offered, and she had declined without the courtesy of a word or even a graceful gesture, just an imperious look and a haughty wave of those delectable buttocks. So be it, let it never be said that he did not serve his dark masters to the smallest degree: it was not his fault if their mad haste and shrill ambition kept them from the truth in his words. Vargrat would bend that proud beauty to his lusts, and in the time to come, others would bend her further than she dreamed.

  Slipping a thin plate of amber from its place amongst the cushions, he cradled it in both hands and blew a puff of aromatic smoke at its surface, letting his mind’s focus drift with the thin haze, reaching out across the miles to her, far south and moving fast. He found her, and the vision sharpened, drew closer, widened to encompass the others. A smile shifted the angle of his pipe and flexed his wrinkled face.

  She glowed in his mind like the golden shape of the plate he held, so lovely, so fine: once Pargaie like the one who had left, on the surface at least, but no servitor of the Dark One, rather, a betrayer and killer. Now openly in the Light, she rode to a battle both desperate and attainable, to fight an ancient evil. She had the Sight, small like so many others who said they could See; she had no idea that he was Watching and had been for days, a feat that few in this world could duplicate or even acknowledge as possible. The fools enslaved him for his powers and then banished him to this faraway place because they refused to acknowledge his scope; all thought him to be a mundane Watcher with merely average ability simply because his words were not what they wished to hear. He told them what he Saw, if only they would listen; he was not like her, he would not dare to defy the might of Arbmante, to tweak its nose and murder its minions. No, he carried out his assignments, and if his masters were unhappy with his speech, they could banish him to distant outposts.

  He had told Vargart of this tawny beauty that swept across the Wastes towards a variable destiny, but the fool hadn’t paid any more attention than ever. All to the better; if the commander had understood, he would have sent bribes to various Orc chieftains and she would have died well short of her goal. But Vargrat was a busy man with little time or patience for an old bee, buzz buzz, leaving Dooaun to Watch and love.

  Severing the vision with a caress, the wizened haffer slipped the plate away and absently studied the Gate’s tripod as he puffed his pipe to the right pitch. They had taught him how to use it, or at least to operate it from this end, along with the message-mirror, never dreaming how clear the viewings he received from those who stepped through the glowing portal. It was a quirk that others of his ilk had noticed, the way certain types of magic would focus and intensify the Sight. He hadn’t ever been asked about it, and so no one else knew of this quirk of his, although it had provided him with endless entertainment. He knew that the dark flower was up to no good, as far as her masters were concerned; nor was her ‘clerk’ a clerk, or hers for that matter. He could see her future for many days ahead, so many possibilities weaving onward, multiplying with each day until they hazed out into the distance. Or at least some hazed out, and some terminated while still within easy range of his vision.

  He shook his head and sighed. Such a pity, she was a lovely flower; a wise old bee could have done her a world of good if she had chosen to dally a bit, surrender some sweet pollen, learn. If she met him, she would understand the truth in the word-dance, would dally and come away so very well informed, he was sure of it. Not that there was any chance of it happening, although he liked to think on it.

  But there would be other flowers, and other opportunities, he knew. Springtime could come at odd intervals for a wise old bee who knew how to wait and watch. Buzz buzz.

  Since dawn she had begun to notice a roughness to the horizon each time they reached a crest, an odd irregularity that seemed out of place, but Kustar was too saddle-weary to ask ‘Coke’ about it, not that the wizard was in any better shape than she was. ‘Six day’s hard ride’ had simply been a phrase in her planning, a simple step in her undertaking that had required very little active consideration until it came time to actually do it. Things had gone pretty much as she had expected before that point
: the commander of the fort had provided her with mounts, spare horses, pack animals, supplies, and a guard detachment of six well-armed Orc Thanes led by a half-Orc who called himself Petor, although it had cost her a long night entertaining said officer and his cronies in order to assure prompt delivery of these essentials. The latter was hardly a surprise, however, to one with any experience of Direthrell operations.

  The hard ride was just that, however, and turned out to be one thing she hadn’t taken into consideration. Her Direthrell blood and regular weapons practice had kept her in trim back at Alantarn, but it had been months since she had travelled at a hard pace, and she had forgotten the demands it placed upon you. By the second night she had been too weary to do more than grumble when Petor crawled into her bedroll, as he had every night since. She was recovering more of her stamina each day, but until she was fully up to par, and, just as importantly, so was Coke, she would not be able to fully reclaim her authority over the detachment.

  Other than his nocturnal demands, however, Petor had performed his duties with competence and professionalism, taking them directly to the coast before turning south. They had been following the coast for two days, riding a half-mile inland, following a caravan trail that itself followed the path of an ancient highway, travelling fifty miles a day by switching mounts every two hours. It was the sixth day today, and with all the energy she had left, Kustar hoped that the line she was seeing was the ruins of Tiria, and not just the remains of an aqueduct or nameless town. The coastline they had been following was dotted with the stony debris of a long-dead empire.