by Max Irons
“Long odds,” said Iven.
“Only ones we’ve got.”
The trip to the burg took too long for Galeron’s liking. The streets of the outer city congealed with people and carts like a ship’s sealing pitch, and the gates in and out were no better. By the time they’d managed to squeeze into the winding pathways of Keenan Caffar’s main burg, the sun had dipped still further in the sky. Mid-afternoon.
The apothecary’s shop looked no different than it had two days prior. Iven nodded at the Penniless Prince next door.
“Good. Once we’re done here, we can stop for lunch,” he said.
Galeron’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “He’s got an earth mage named Vort. Like Tondra but not too bright.”
“Is that really saying something?” asked Iven. “Her intelligence wasn’t anything to shave with.”
Galeron opened the door and walked inside. This time, more candles glowed in holsters around the shop, and the spidery apothecary sat stooped over a cutting board cluttered with some sort of roots. He looked up, if he could see through all that hair, and his lips pursed.
“You again,” he said.
“Met him before, have you?” asked Iven.
“He was one of my first stops in Raya,” Galeron said.
“Where’s the woman?” asked the apothecary. “She was nice to look at.”
Galeron scowled. “She’s why I’m here. Someone took her off the street.”
The apothecary sneered. “Do you think I did it?”
“No,” Galeron said. “Rumor has it you know about everything that happens in Raya’s burg. If anyone knows who took her, I figure it’d be you.”
The apothecary was silent, and Galeron wrinkled his nose at the overwhelming stench of garlic.
“This was a waste,” said Iven after a few heartbeats. “He doesn’t know anything.”
Galeron shrugged. “It was worth a try.” He glanced back at Iven. “Did you want to kill him, or should I?”
The apothecary coughed.
“I figured you could do it,” Iven said. “I know this has been tormenting you.”
Galeron nodded. “That would make me feel better.”
“Thought it might.”
“Vort!” the apothecary yelled.
The muscle-bound Vort rumbled out of the back of the shop, his beady eyes fixating on Galeron. Galeron himself drew his sword, gripping the hilt tightly in both hands.
“You lied,” Iven said. “I think this one makes Tondra look like Lonni on her best days.”
“Kill them, Vort,” growled the apothecary.
Galeron jumped out of the way as Vort lunged for him, huge hands nearly encircling his neck. He pivoted and slashed at the back of Vort’s knees. The black blade cut through the cloth of his pants but scraped across his flesh without leaving a mark. Galeron grunted and avoided another swipe from Vort.
So, the back of the knees wasn’t a weak spot for an earth mage. How had they managed to take down the one in the crypt then? Three arrows rattled off Vort’s skull in quick succession, landing on the floor with bent heads.
As Galeron circled around Vort, keeping him at a distance with an extended blade, he saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. The apothecary was running for the back of the shop.
No, you don’t. “Iven, he’s getting away,” Galeron said.
Iven with another arrow nocked and aimed, spun on his heel and unleashed one in the apothecary’s direction. A deep thrum followed by a squelching sound and a shriek of pain.
Galeron dove under another strike and rammed his shoulder into Vort’s stomach, only to bounce back and hit the ground. The man was nearly immovable.
“Quit screaming,” said Iven over the apothecary’s shrieks. “It’s only a flesh wound.”
“You shot me!” he yelled.
“Such brilliance. How did you notice?”
Galeron sent another blow crashing down on Vort’s skull, but, again, it rebounded. How could he kill an earth mage? Galeron had no great strength to punch through those defenses, and it was likely his sword would shatter if he kept wailing away on Vort’s stone-like skin.
One of Vort’s fists connected with his chest and sent him sprawling into a shelf filled with who knew what. Air fled his lungs, leaving him coughing and gasping on the ground. Vort was on top of him in an instant, hands pinning him down and knees on his chest.
Galeron flailed against the weight, but bringing down castle walls with his teeth would have been more effective. Vort smiled and pressed a hand to Galeron’s throat. He was enjoying this, like some wolf cub playing with his kill.
More arrows rattled off Vort’s form, but he paid them no mind. A fiery pain spread from Galeron’s neck, and his skull pounded so fiercely, it had to burst at any moment. Galeron drove his knee into his stomach, even kicked up between his legs, but nothing made Vort so much as flinch. Iven jumped on Vort’s back and pounded away with his fists and a spare arrow, but again, nothing worked. He was just too powerful.
No. Galeron’s mind refused to accept it as he struggled for air. The standard method of confronting earth mages was binding them in chains and suspending them from in midair. If they couldn’t touch the ground, they had no power. However, Iven lacked the chains or the strength to do something like that. There had to be another way.
Something was different in the crypt. He and Lonni had injured the earth mage Bolthor employed. It was possible, but how had they done it?
Darkness seeped into the edges of his vision as the pain increased. Think fast!
The earth mage in the crypt had been pounding away at him. Some things didn’t seem to change. Lonni had snuck up behind him and gotten him in the back of the knee with spear.
Galeron gagged, and his heart rumbled in his ears. Time was running out. He could hear the apothecary cackling in the distance.
It hadn’t been the body part. He’d just proven that with Vort. No, the Bolthor’s man had been wounded. He insisted Galeron had cut off his hand. That was the man he’d hit in the physician’s house. He hadn’t seen the blow coming. There was something.
Galeron’s limbs shook involuntarily, and he coughed out his last bit of air. Moments remained. Hurry!
The faint crash of shattering glass drifted to his ears, though it seemed very far away.
Could the secret be that the earth mage couldn’t see the strike coming? No, that wasn’t it. Vort hadn’t turned to see Iven’s arrows, but Vort also knew roughly where Iven had been in the room. Something was missing, but what?
Darkness overtook his sight, and his heart thudded with an erratic rhythm. No! He couldn’t die now. Lonni still needed him.
Lonni, who had hit the mage from behind, when all his attention was on Galeron. On revenge.
Got it!
His last conscious thought before the darkness swallowed him whole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The black was impenetrable. Galeron looked around, but he couldn’t see anything, only never-ending darkness. Was he dead? The last thing he remembered was Vort’s hands around his neck. Galeron lifted a hand, but he felt nothing. He supposed a hand moved when he wanted it, but he couldn’t know for certain.
A heat-like haze shimmered before him, and a wooden table bearing a simple pewter chalice appeared. It wavered, as if its existence were a tenuous thing. Galeron approached, though he still seemed to lack a physical form. A dark liquid filled the chalice to the brim, and it frothed on his approach. Another figure wavered ahead in his vision.
He looked up. A pair of iron gates appeared. No walls, no gatehouse, just the gates themselves, one door ajar. A shape emerged between the gap. Galeron squinted. Shaped like a man, the image stood motionless and seemed to watch him, though he couldn’t see a face.
What was this place? Was this a part of life beyond death? If so, why did the table and chalice block his path forward? Galeron peered at the liquid in the chalice and bent closer to it.
A deep, earth
y scent emanated from it, and the smell drove a feeling of raw strength through his being. He knew, without being told and without pondering, that the chalice contained the ground itself, distilled and condensed into this potent mixture. How could that be?
Galeron swallowed without his throat. Magic. The choice he’d heard about once before. Bind himself to the earth and return, or reject it and pass beyond.
Binding wasn’t a thing done lightly. Many men could not hold their own in the face of such raw power. He coughed and picked up the chalice. What choice was this? He had to return, had to finish the job. Galeron coughed again, harder this time. Why was he coughing? There was nothing here to—
Galeron inhaled on reflex. It wasn’t a conscious choice, and he didn’t even know he could take a breath. His lungs pulled in air, and the thick darkness lifted from his mind. His chest ached and his neck felt raw, as if someone had run a whetstone hundreds of times around his Adam’s apple. He coughed and spluttered, the apothecary’s shop coming back into view.
Iven pulled a jar of something away from him. “Smelling salts. Thought those would work.”
Galeron blinked, and then saw the face-down form of Vort, an arrow jammed deep into the base of his neck. Blood oozed from the wound still. He hadn’t been dead long.
“How?” he croaked.
“I just threw things out of frustration, and I think I hit him with sweet oil,” said Iven. “You know, the stuff dentists rub on your face if they need to put you to sleep and pull a tooth.”
Galeron nodded. “Concentration was the key.”
Iven frowned. “When did you figure that out? You might have told me.”
“I…” Galeron cleared his throat. “I guessed it while he was choking me. Magic requires will, I suppose. Interrupt that concentration, like sweet oil does, and the power goes away.”
He got to his feet, swaying and leaning on Iven’s shoulder for support. Cobwebs cleared out of his mind, and he looked toward the back of the shop. The apothecary lay on the floor, one of Iven’s arrows embedded in the flesh below his knee.
“Nice shot,” Galeron said.
“Isn’t it?” said Iven. “And that was under pressure, too. Masterful, if I do say so myself.”
“You shot me,” the apothecary wailed.
“I think his mind is stuck,” Iven said. “He keeps yelling that, as if we haven’t noticed.”
Galeron grunted, flexing his arms. Strength started to pool back in his limbs again, more with every breath. He strode over to the spidery man and grabbed both of his arms, hauling him to his feet. The apothecary squealed as he briefly put weight on his injured leg.
“I asked nicely the first time,” Galeron said, his voice dropping into a growl. “I’m through with that. Who kidnapped Lonni?”
“Why should I tell you?” he wailed. “You’ve come into my shop, destroyed my wares, and killed my enforcer. You’ve ruined half my business in just a few minutes.”
That was it. This man stood between him and Lonni’s kidnapper, and he had decided to be stubborn. So be it. Galeron closed his eyes for a moment and reached back in his mind. He sifted through the flood of memories from informer training, from his days interrogating captive Delktians in the Njal mountains. The cold, the anger, the horror of war all came flooding back. They’d taught him to be ruthless, and so he must be again.
Galeron opened his eyes and dropped the apothecary on his injured leg. He screamed, but Galeron let him wallow in the pain before he seized the front of his doublet in both hands and lifted him into the air.
“Vort is dead, and you’re proving useless,” Galeron snarled. “Tell me the name, apothecary. You might report to Pendegrast, but he’s in his mansion, and I’m right here. This sell-sword took someone I care about, and I’ll tear apart Keenan Caffar to find her.” He brought the apothecary in closer. “And if I’m going to rip open the city, imagine what I’ll do to you.”
The apothecary swallowed but said nothing.
“A name. Now!”
The apothecary twitched and squirmed in his grip. “Rikard! His name is Rikard. Rayan sell-sword. Doesn’t ask questions, does anything for coin, and has a soft spot for women.”
Galeron’s guts froze, and he shook him. “Soft spot?”
“I wouldn’t trust him…with my own mother,” gasped the apothecary.
“Do you even have a mother?” asked Iven. “I could’ve sworn you crawled from under a rock.”
“Where is he?” asked Galeron.
“He’s got three taverns he likes, and a number of brothels if he’s not in an alehouse.” The apothecary coughed again and told him which ones. “Don’t expect to find him, if he’s on a job.”
“Last question,” Galeron growled. “Who hired him?”
“Why do you—”
“Who. Hired. Him.” His grip tightened, and he lifted him high again. “Do not lie to me.” The words came out low and slow.
“I don’t know.” The apothecary struggled against Galeron’s grip. “I heard it was a woman, royalty, but that’s all I know.”
Galeron hurled him to the ground where he curled up in a ball and whimpered in pain.
“Royalty,” Iven said. “So, Arlana really did…”
“Her or Queen Tulia,” said Galeron. “There’s more to this than we know.”
“But why?” asked Iven. “Why would either of them want Lonni kidnapped?”
Galeron shrugged. “No idea.” He stared at the shivering man for a moment. “Maybe his information is wrong. He could only tell us that the person who hired Rikard was royalty. How do we know Kolvein didn’t just forge the queen’s seal on a letter and get the job done that way?”
“We don’t,” Iven said. He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m getting sick of this cloak and dagger business.”
“You see why I got out,” Galeron grumbled. He picked up his sword and sheathed it. “Let’s go.”
Iven sighed. “He named about half the alehouses in the burg, and at least a third of the brothels.”
“Any you’re familiar with?” asked Galeron.
He grabbed a jar off one of the still-intact shelves and studied the contents. Sulfur. Good.
“I know a few of them,” Iven said. “I doubt I can be much help if we have to go visit the brothels.”
Galeron snatched the apothecary’s coin purses from his belt. “Why not?”
“Have you not done enough?” the apothecary whimpered. “Now you rob me?”
Galeron scowled at him and undid the ties.
“They get new owners every so often,” Iven said. “I’ve been gone too long for most to remember me.”
“How could they forget a face like that?” asked Galeron as he dumped coins all over one of the tables
Iven stroked his long chin. “You only wish you had a face this good.”
Galeron filled one of the purses full of powdered sulfur, and the other with charcoal. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“But if I don’t, who will?”
Galeron tied off the purses and stuffed them back in his satchel next to Lonni’s firelocks. “Done.”
#
The first tavern they visited, the Penniless Prince, turned out to be nearly deserted. It was the middle of a workday, but it seemed strange to find a tavern completely deserted but for its alewife and hired help. They walked out soon after entering, though it hadn’t taken Iven long to sample the local ale. He still wore a deeply sour expression as they moved up the main road.
“I can’t believe she brews that stuff,” he grumbled, one eye closed as he licked his lips.
“That bad?” asked Galeron.
“Her drink’s more bitter than Falco’s attitude,” Iven said.
“You didn’t have to sample.”
“I was thirsty, and you won’t be bothered to stop for a while.”
Galeron looked toward the sky. The sun inched closer to the horizon, casting longer shadows among the sloping wooden structures and winding streets. “I’m getting hung
ry, too, but we don’t have the time.”
Iven nodded. “I know. Not saying you’re impatient, just annoyed about our lack of daylight.” He glanced back at the palace complex on the mountainside. “A serious lack of light.”
“If you were a sell-sword in Keenan Caffar—”
“I am one.”
Galeron sighed. “Then where would you go?”
Iven smacked his lips thoughtfully. “Rikard is high-priced, at least, I’m assuming he is if this man and the former Captain Rikard of the Rayan legions are the same person.”
That made sense. With so many soldiers returning from the wars, nearly every sell-sword was bound to be a survivor. For a lot of men, what else was there?
“We can avoid some of the alehouses in the poorer districts,” Iven said. “He wouldn’t ply his trade there. No one could afford him.”
“Narrows it down somewhat.”
“Let’s crack some skulls.” Iven flexed his fingers. “Preferably before supper.”
Galeron and Iven spent the rest of the day in and out of alehouses and taverns, but no one seemed to know of Rikard or his whereabouts. The sell-sword community in Keenan Caffar was fractured and split into several groups and factions, each specializing in a particular kind of trade or job. Unfortunately, that meant they had no interest in anything outside their sects, and Rikard, it seemed, didn’t work well in groups.
“Perhaps,” Iven said as Galeron tossed a half-drunk patron onto a table. “We’re going about this the wrong way.”
Galeron shot a narrowed-eyed glare at the tavern’s enforcer, who had started to move toward them. The beefy man stopped in his tracks and slunk back to the edge of the main room, eying him and Iven but making no moves to interfere.
“What gave you that idea?” asked Galeron.
Iven looked up at the ceiling. “This is our fourth tavern and we still don’t know where Rikard is or if he has anyone resembling an associate.”
Galeron grunted. His stomach had already twisted itself into a triple knot, and the muscles in his torso, both chest and back, actually ached with strain. When they’d walked into this alehouse, the sun had been dipping below the horizon. Twilight had come, and they were running out of time. They had to find Lonni soon. She was going to need time to mix her night dust, and then they had to get back to the palace and somehow free Iven’s sisters.
