Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  All of this I took in as I hurried up the gangway gasping, a roaring in my ears and looking at the scene as if I was staring from inside a cave.

  I had presence of mind to touch the lamplighter’s pole to one of the gangway lanterns and it flared up. The flash made one of the men turn. He shouted something and dashed at me. I may have been old and feeling my years, but no one with a three-foot-spear, for so the man was trying to use his sword as, can successfully perforate another who’s carrying a ten foot lance.

  As he came at me I shoved the burning ball of tar full in his face. His long hair caught fire and he howled agony and stumbled back.

  The last man saw his mate dying and spotted Janela as she pulled her attacker’s sword from the deck and, holding the great blade as easily as she had her dagger, came at him. It was his turn to shout fear and he ran for the ship’s side, intending to leap over onto the dock.

  Waiting, a long piece of wood in his hand, was Quatervals. The tough was trapped. He turned back and Janela was on him. I saw he was a trained swordsman because in spite of his fear he went on guard and lunged. Once more, neither she nor her blade were there... but a foot and a half of steel stuck out from the fellow’s shoulder blades and he gargled and was dead.

  Quatervals jumped on deck and his face was a study of anger and shame at his failure to protect me. His mouth opened and I motioned savagely for silence.

  “Janela! Are you hurt?”

  “No. No,” she managed. “The bastards startled me when they burst into the cabin. But I’ve taken no harm.” She looked around the deck. “Three of them.”

  “There were two more standing guard at the head of the dock,” I said. “Quatervals killed one and I stopped the other.”

  Janela nodded, chest heaving as she recovered her breath. I realized I was still holding the lamplighter’s torch and tossed it over the side. It hissed as it struck the water and went out.

  “A big gang for such slender pickings,” she said. “None but the first would have had pleasure from me.” She smiled, a tight grin without mirth. “And there’s little gold in my purse.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think they were thieves.”

  Both Quatervals and Janela looked at me.

  “Thieves, rapists, murderers... they’re cowards,” I explained. “I have yet to see one stand and fight, except when they’re trapped and then they can show the savagery of any cornered animal. These men stood their ground. By rights they should have run as soon as they saw Quatervals and me.”

  Quatervals nodded. “I’ve never heard of robbers willing to stand away, on guard, when the others have found... gold,” he said uncomfortably, not wanting to say what he knew they’d intended for Janela.

  Janela smiled. “Lord Antero,” she said, speaking formally in Quatervals’ presence, “I know you think yourself old and helpless. Yet you came down that dock as proudly as any warrior I’ve ever seen.”

  I muttered something. Even as a youth I never knew how to accept praise and still haven’t learned the lesson, although I admit my bravado had surprised me.

  To change the subject I walked over to one of the corpses, the one Janela had stabbed. He lay face-down, and wore cheap homespuns with a cap pulled over his head, like any other night-bully out of Cheapside.

  “I’ll go for the watch, Lord Antero,” Quatervals said.

  “Wait a moment.” I toed the body over and swore. I heard a start of surprise from Janela.

  Hanging around the man’s neck was a large torc, solid gold with gems set in it. It sparkled in the lantern light.

  “That’s not loot,” Janela said. “Look at his shirt.” Green filigreed silk shone around the torc, exposed now the disguise of homespun had fallen away.

  The necklace and the silk had not been the surprise for me. I had recognized this man.

  And I knew this night’s troubles had just begun.

  * * * *

  “Lord Palic, eh?” the sergeant of the watch said. “I’m not surprised to see him weltering’ in his own gore. Lord Antero, you and your servant Quatervals have done Orissa a service. Mayhaps some of his friends who swagger th’ streets thinkin’ they’re above th’ law’ll see where their nose-slittin’ and brawlin’s like to bring ’em. But it’s only a hope and a weak one at that. They’re the sort who never learn.”

  He turned to his men. “Haul this one off with the others, lads,” he said. “I’ll send someone to his family to see which priest gets the gold for holdin’ its nose an’ pratin’ at th’ death-ceremony.”

  The sergeant pulled a bit of the homespun over the late Palic’s face and stood as the guardsmen slid the body onto a stretcher and carried it off the Ibis to the bank where the bodies of his four henchmen rested.

  “Will you be seeking death-damages, Lord?”

  “I shall not.”

  “Sir, I’ll not record your words t’night. Perhaps you’ll rethink in th’ calm of day. Lord Palic’s family was warned and warned again about him, once even by m’self, but paid no mind, sayin’ the boy’s just full of himself an’ no more’n a fun-lover. Boy they called him and he’s touchin’ thirty.” The sergeant thought about spitting, remembered who I was and swallowed hard. “He’s got two brothers now, who’re shapin’ to be his mirror-images an’ maybe, you pursuin’ the matter an’ touchin’ what they find dear, their vault, might change things.”

  “I said what I meant, sergeant.”

  “Very well, Lord Antero. But I think... ah, it doesn’t matter what I think.” The sergeant was silent for a minute. “And here I thought Lord Palic might’ve changed his ways since we’d heard no wind of what he must’ve called adventures for nigh on a year, year and a half. Damme for a milkfed dreamer. ’Night, Lord. Lady.” And he trudged off down the gangplank after his men.

  Janela was looking at me curiously. I waited until the sergeant and his detail were gone, then motioned Quatervals and her into the cabin, where there’d be no possibility of my words being overheard.

  Palic had, indeed, been a terror. His family was older than mine and weren’t merchants but landed lords. Several magistrates had come from their ranks over the long years. Palic grew up with no concern for money or life. He and his friends, about fifteen or so of them, loved to stalk the night streets and entertain themselves with those they encountered. Nose-slitting was just one of their pastimes.

  Others I’d heard of ranged from the fairly innocent one of ringing a passerby with drawn swords and after shouting “How dare you turn your back on a gentleman,” pinking the haplessly-spinning man in the buttocks until he was driven to distraction; to the “sport” of nailing derelicts into barrels and rolling them into the harbor, betting on whether they could break free before drowning. He was one of what I’d heard called the Monstrous Generation by my contemporaries, even though I reminded them Palic was not much worse than some of the rich wastrels we’d grown up with who’d either mellowed out of their evil, been found dead in an alley or else graduated to become a sacrifice at the Kissing of the Stones.

  I knew more about the man than the sergeant did. He had not exactly changed his ways but found a sponsor for his mischief. If he hadn’t been of the nobility he would’ve been described as “in the employ of” but naturally no one of his high rank ever held a real “job.”

  Instead Palic was the “boon companion” of one of our newest and fastest-rising Magistrates, Lord Senac. I’d had word he was so enthralled he did nothing his mentor didn’t order.

  Now, tonight, I said, I proposed to visit Lord Senac and inquire as to just what errand, if indeed there was one, Palic had been running aboard the Ibis.

  Quatervals’ eyebrows climbed. “Aren’t you puttin’ yourself a bit too much in harm’s way, Lord?”

  “I’m old,” I snapped, “Not dead. At least, not yet. And I’ll not put someone a task I’m afraid to touch myself.” That ended that line of discussion abruptly — and I saw Quatervals grin approvingly.

  Janela furrowed her brow. “I’
ve never heard of this Senac, Amalric. Is there any reason he might be an enemy?”

  “I know of none. Which is why I wish to speak to him.”

  Quatervals was looking at me. I nodded — he could speak freely in front of Janela.

  “Are you sure you aren’t looking at mist on the mountain and seein’ a storm, Lord? Maybe the sergeant was right and Palic was just rippin’ and tearin’.”

  I shook my head, not sure of why I was so certain, but I was.

  “There could be,” Janela said, “a way to confirm your thoughts.”

  She drew her dagger and went out.

  Quatervals made sure the door was closed behind her. “Lord,” he said, “I failed this night. I think I should find another way to pay the debt I owe you than being your guard. Any fool that runs into a trap like I did has no more business carrying a sword than a priest does holdin’ a blood-debt.”

  “Shut up,” I advised. “I didn’t think anything was awry either.”

  “But—”

  “The matter is not open for discussion. If you wish to expiate your many sins, next time I ask you for an opinion, make me feel good and lie.”

  Quatervals hissed through his teeth but obeyed orders. I didn’t add he wasn’t the only one who’d been a cursed fool. I’d committed to this plan of Janela’s knowing there was danger but forgetting such a voyage brings hazard the moment it’s thought of and so went about with no weapon sharper than my tongue. Perhaps I shouldn’t have strapped a sword on again — that would’ve made even more tongues wag but I certainly should have been carrying one hidden in the carriage and had more than one guard with me at all times.

  I remembered something Janos had said to me, long ago in a weapons shop when we’d been arming ourselves for our quest.

  I’d bought a sword and then he’d handed me a dagger, saying, “This will be your copse-, carcass- or thief-cutter, which you will keep always beside you. The sword you will find uncomfortable and tend to leave by a campfire or tied to your saddle, especially just before you need it. And this dagger can be your salvation.”

  That I could manage and from now on Janela would have guards around her and I wouldn’t venture out without at least two men besides Quatervals. I’d also make sure our villa was properly guarded by day and night.

  Janela came back, carrying her dagger level in front of her like a priestess returning from the sacrifice. On its bare blade was a dark, congealing liquid.

  “Blood will talk,” she said and went to her bag and begin fishing through it. Quatervals glanced at me.

  “Lord Antero, I’ll be outside,” and before I could say anything he was gone.

  “Another one that magic bothers,” Janela said, as she took out a small pouch containing vials.

  She unfolded the legs of a small brazier and sprinkled herbs from the vials onto it. “Golden seal... myrrh... white willow...”

  She scraped the drying blood from her dagger’s blade onto the bare deck.

  “This will not please your shipwrights,” she said, “but steel gives the edge over chalk’s bare image. Also, this blade has had certain words said over it to give it potency in matters like this.”

  She cut twin crescents into the decking and a circle around the gore and I realized it represented an eye. Above, below and to either side of it were carved four figures, letters or words perhaps in lettering I didn’t know. She held her finger over the brazier and whispered words I couldn’t make out. Smoke wisped and I could smell the herbs burning until their scents filled the room. Then she chanted:

  Blood can see

  Blood can tell

  The man is gone

  The secrets are bare

  She said this thrice and above the brazier a shimmer formed between the narrow wraiths of smoke and it was if we were peering through a peephole into a luxurious chamber. There was a man standing in front of us, pacing back and forth talking and I squinted, trying to make out who it was.

  “I don’t want to make it bigger for fear —” and as Janela spoke I recognized the figure. It was Lord Senac. Then came a flash, but not of light, of darkness, like a cloud of night building over the brazier and Janela seized another vial and sprinkled herbs. I smelt something foul, then the sweet smell of a forest in autumn and the ball of darkness, of night, vanished.

  Puzzled, I looked at Janela.

  “That man...” she began.

  “That was Lord Senac,” I interrupted. “The man who employed Palic.”

  “I was attempting to cast back in time, using Palic’s blood, to see if I could read his last few hours,” she said. “And then came that... blast. I don’t know what it means for certain. If I were using this spell to spy on a sorcerer, I would guess I’d been found out, which was why I cast oak bark powder on the brazier, to break the contact. But Lord Senac isn’t an Evocator, is he?”

  “I’ve never heard of him having any dealings with sorcery,” I said. “This is another question we shall ask him.”

  Janela began putting her powders away. When she finished she closed her bag and looked at me, her face showing concern.

  “We must go carefully, Amalric. I feel this path turning as we begin to walk it.”

  * * * *

  Lord Senac was the heir of one of the oldest noble families of Orissa. The family had fallen on hard times and had even been forced to move out of the city a few generations ago. About twenty years ago it had been quietly announced — as all the great families announced everything from birth to death — that the Senacs had been fortunate enough to find gold on their property.

  Once again the Senac fortunes were restored and the family mansion in Orissa rebuilt. Only the finest marbles and inlaid stones were used and the most exotic plants and trees went into their gardens and mazes. The grounds were fenced with thorn trees from the wastelands and there were tales Lord Senac had hired Evocators to put guardian spells around the estate. He had no human guards, nor even dogs and in fact lived a very plain life with only a handful of servants.

  When all was finished Lord Senac took residence. He threw small affairs and four great parties a year at the beginning of each season and invitations were widely sought, since only the top tier of Orissan society was invited. Within a few years Lord Senac was named a Magistrate. It did not hurt that he was slender, young, good-looking and known for his quiet wit and intelligent conversation.

  Now I wondered what his interference in this matter meant and was determined to find out at once.

  I took Janela’s advice, not that I’d ever planned on wandering onto his grounds as a wide-eyed smiling maiden. We went to my mansion and I woke four good men, Yakar, Maha, Chons and Otavi and armed them well. Yakar and Chons were gardeners, Maha was a kitchen apprentice and Otavi, like his grandfather J’an, was my head stableman.

  J’an, incidentally, was one of the fellows who’d stood firm beside me when mobs, influenced by magic from Irayas, thought they could destroy the Anteros. Otavi was about twice the size of his father, a man who had comfortably wielded a butcher’s ax as his favorite weapon and was as monosyllabic. I noted that more than silence had been passed down, since Otavi was leaning on a huge ax that we normally used to split steers’ carcasses after we’d poleaxed and gutted them for the kitchen.

  As they got ready Janela took me aside. “When my spell was broken,” she said, “that ball of darkness could have been the beginnings of a counterspell. I wonder if perhaps I should take a moment and prepare a relish for a gander.”

  “You are expecting magic?”

  Her eyes had a hard glitter to them that reminded me of Janos when he thought someone or something might be standing between him and the Far Kingdoms.

  “I expect everything, I expect nothing,” she said shortly. “But I prepare for everything.” She asked for a servant to take her into the kitchen and to follow her bidding. By the time the men were outfitted, she’d returned, carrying her bag and a small oilskin pouch.

  “Would you ask your men to line up,” sh
e asked politely. “I’ll need a bit of sputum from each.”

  All of them complied reluctantly, since no one cheerfully gives any part of himself into a wizard’s keeping, save Yakar. He shook his head stubbornly, his lips pressed together and said only, “I’ll have no truck with that.”

  Otavi glowered and asked if I wanted another servant summoned.

  Before I could reply Janela said, “No man should be forced to do something like that against his will. And if he does whatever benefits a spell might bring would be negated or lessened.”

  Yakar looked vastly relieved. Janela took a wand from her belt pouch and touched it to the rag the spittle was on, then drew out two round mirrors and tapped each of them with the wand.

  “That’s for the invisible. Now for the visible,” Janela said and went into the arms room.

  She scanned the weapon racks with the easy familiarity of an expert, then chose a slim sword, almost a rapier but with the blade sharpened and delicately-worked hilt and guard. I found a favorite sword from years gone by, an ondanique broadsword with a simple guard, intended for battle, not for display and slung it from a baldric.

  Finally all of us donned thin chain mail shirts under our clothes, arranging everything as discreetly as possible. The last thing we wanted to do is look like a war party.

  Our social requirements met, we set out to call on Lord Senac.

  * * * *

  We rode the back ways to Lord Senac’s estate, wanting to attract as little attention as possible. And when we arrived we tied our horses in a woods near the mansion. We crept to its gates and I motioned for my men to remain still as Janela pushed her senses out, sniffing the air like a big cat on the stalk. Then she frowned and beckoned me close.

  “Very odd,” she said. “I feel no magics from here, and surely I would’ve perceived the presence of any guardian spells.” She looked worried.

  The stone gates were large, but I knew cunningly set on a counterbalance so it took but a finger’s push to open them when they were unlocked, which they weren’t at this hour. We’d brought a padded grapnel and rope, but a bit of knowledge I’d gained from a supposedly-reformed thief in my employ turned out to be a better tool. He’d told me one of the best ways to enter a place is next to where the guards are the most alert. It’s easier, for instance, to slip into a palace through the main entrance than smash glass, pry bars away and clamber through a window.