“I’ll only be using it if I have to, believe me,” I replied. “But if I need it and don’t have it, I’m dead anyway, and Amra along with me.”
“I can only take your word. I’ll send Kettle to get it. I certainly don’t keep any of the stuff.”
“I didn’t think you did. But I’m not at liberty to go searching for it. Thank you, Fengal.”
“For this, I reject your thanks.”
#
While waiting for Kettle to return I begged paper and pen from Fengal and write a short note to Keel, Marle and Chalk explaining, what was happening and what I wished them to do in my absence. I hoped that either Marle of Chalk was marginally literate.
A half hour later I stepped out into the street and then directly into the hack that Kettle had anticipated my need for. I twitched closed the dusty, sun-faded curtains on the small windows and settled into the cracked leather upholstery, pack on my knees. For most of the next hour I could relax, as much as possible in the jouncing, swaying carriage.
I was finally on my way to reopen Bosch’s hell gate.
Twenty-Four
Once we’d made it a fair distance out on the Jacos Road, man-made light was virtually nonexistent, and the hack’s interior became oppressively inky. I opened the curtain. The sky was clear and the stars shone down in beautiful profusion, while the moon rose over the Dragonsea, turning its waters, whenever we hit a rise and I could see them through the scrub, to quicksilver. Yes, I’d missed Lucernis, and I was about to miss it far, far more. Even Bellarius was a paradise compared to where I was going next.
The narrow, sliding window that allowed communication between driver and passenger shot open. “Someone’s coming up behind us, sir. Quick-like.”
I stuck my head out the side window, and saw another carriage behind us, perhaps a quarter mile away, visible only because of the swaying lanterns it sported.
“Can you outrun them?” I asked the driver.
“No chance.”
I dug out a handful of marks and thrust my hand through the gap. “How about now?”
The marks disappeared off my palm as if by magic. “Still doubtful, I have to admit.”
“Do your best,” I replied, and the coachman applied the whip. We speed up considerably, and I found myself being battered about in the narrow confines of the hack.
I knew it had to be Kluge, and I knew it was unlikely in the extreme that we would outrun him. If he was using the same carriage he had that morning, his team of four were likely fresher and certainly better horse flesh than the rented hack’s pair, who had been plying the streets all day.
Which meant that I would have to hurl myself from the hack when we made a turn that took us out of Kluge’s line of sight. I communicated this to the driver, with the further instruction that he keep on as fast as he could until overtaken and ordered to stop.
“You’re a mad bugger, but your gold’s good,” the man replied over the thud of horse hooves and the rattling of the hack.
“Can you get the door closed again? I don’t want to give the game away.”
“I’ll manage. Best prepare yourself, best turn you’re likely to get’s coming up quick-like.”
I got firm grip on the pack with one hand and put the other on the handle. I steeled myself for the impact. The fall I wasn’t worried about.
The carriage slowed nominally, though it still went into the turn at a rate of speed that was daunting. “Now!” the driver shouted, and I hurled myself into the night, trying to curl myself around the pack. There were things inside that would react very, very badly to being broken.
I landed in a ditch with such force that I lost my breath. Then I kept going, my body getting brutalized along the way by unknowable but decidedly hard and often sharp objects. Nature seems to be full of such things.
I finally fetched up against the trunk of a tree, which did brutal things to my back. Everything hurt. My hair hurt. I lay still and fought for breath. When air finally began to ease back into my lungs, I spat out dirt and debris, opened my eye and saw that I’d bounced down a little leaf-choked ravine. I was definitely out of the line of sight of the road, which was provident. Nothing about my flight felt provident, though.
I lay still until I heard Kluge’s coach pass, and saw its lantern light fade as it raced down the road. Then I began to think about getting into a vertical position. With a shaking hand, I pulled myself up the tree that had ended my flight. Nothing seemed broken, though there were definitely rips in both my clothing and the skin beneath.
“Get moving,” I muttered to my legs. They didn’t seem to want to. I let go of the tree and staggered on anyway. My time was limited. Kluge would discover my ruse soon enough, and be back on my trail. He seemed to be depressingly competent when it came to finding me. I needed to get to the hell gate and get it open before he got to me. If I couldn’t, then I was very much afraid I was going to have to kill the commander of the city watch of Lucernis.
That might well give me a sense of satisfaction, considering the trouble Kluge had put me to, but the costs far outweighed the benefits.
I climbed back up to the Jacos and began a stumbling jog towards the cliffs. If Kluge turned around and came back this way, I would be able to hear him in good time and dive back into the brushwood beside the road. I wasn’t terribly sure how far I still had to go, but at least I was in no danger of passing my destination by mistake. Beside the fact that there was only one stretch of cliffs along the Jacos, hell gates—even closed hell gates—gave off a stench of magic that was difficult to ignore.
Of course, Kluge was no fool. There was nothing else on the Jacos Road to interest a mage. It wouldn’t take much for him to put one and one together and decide my destination.
With a groan, I turned my shuffling jog into a shambling lope.
#
Of course Kluge was waiting at the remains of the villa. Of course he was. He was just that much of a pain. I saw him pacing the ground in the strong moonlight, occasionally stooping to pick up a stone and toss it toward the cliff. His carriage was nowhere to be seen. I stopped at the twisted wreckage of the gate and gave myself time to get my breath back and think of some further plan that didn’t involve killing him.
“No need to hide, Holgren,” he shouted. “I heard you gasping and wheezing your way up the hill quite some time ago.”
“Liar. You can’t even hear your own breathing over the surf.”
“All right, that was a lie. But you are sadly out of shape.”
“You try taking a moonlight jog after throwing yourself from a moving carriage,” I muttered, and walked towards him.
“I have to admit,” I said over the pounding of the waves on the cliffs below, “I am impressed you were able to continue to track me despite my best efforts to throw you off the scent.”
“Why? Because I am a mage of lesser abilities? It’s simply taught me to use every resource at my disposal. Magic should be a tool, not a crutch.”
“I happen to agree with that sentiment,” I said, knowing then that he had set some sort of trap for me. He knew I could obliterate him if it came down to a duel using the Art. I wondered what form the trap would take. Bowmen in the brush?
I stopped advancing when we were perhaps ten feet apart. Close enough to speak without having to raise our voices. The hell gate was twenty feet behind him, a patch of seared earth where nothing would ever grow again.
Kluge looked me in the eye, the muscles of his jaw working, working. Finally he shook his head. “I have never held you in high regard, but I never believed you were a daemonist.”
“I’m no demon lover, Kluge.”
“Then why are we here, Angrado? For old time’s sake?”
“I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.”
“Let’s hear it, then, before I arrest you.”
“Neither of us have time for the full explanation, so I’ll abbreviate. I’m going to steal Lagna’s notebook from the Black Library. Behind you is my entry point into the eleven
hells, since I have no intention of opening a new gate, as I am not a daemonist, or the sort who is amenable to ritual sacrifice.”
“You do realize that the crown doesn’t recognize insanity as a defense in Lucernia, don’t you?”
“Defense against what? What crime have I committed?”
“You just admitted to me that you’re going to open a hell gate.”
“No. I admitted I’m going to reopen a hell gate. Not the same thing at all.”
“A distinction that all the infernal creatures who crawl out of it will respect, I’m sure.”
“Actually, that’s the best part. The hells are empty. Or at least Gholdoryth is, and that’s where this hell gate leads. So no worries on that score, commander.” I gave him a wide smile.
“You’re—” Kluge didn’t get to finish his thought, because I punched him in the jaw and he went down like a bag of wet sand.
“Yes, Avrom, I am,” I muttered, waiting for an arrow in the back. Which never came.
He had really come after me and faced me alone. Very brave, and very stupid.
I tore a page from Gammond’s book and scrambled all his senses, in case he regained consciousness before I’d reopened the gate and departed. I made sure it would dissipate as soon as I left the mortal plane. Then I left him a note in floating silver letters:
Please close the gate after me. Wouldn’t want anybody falling in by accident.
And then I started picking apart all the threads I’d woven together to seal the damned hell gate almost two years before. It wasn’t long before I was cursing myself for being so meticulously thorough. When that was finally done, I started the weary work of breaking to rubble all the dauntingly large stones Kluge had had transported here to fill it in. Though I used the Art rather than muscle power, I was still covered in sweat before I was done.
By the time I’d finished, Kluge was stirring.
“I’ll be off now, Avrom. Sorry about the assault and battery. Or is it just battery if you punch someone without warning? I’ve never been clear on those particular legal concepts.”
In response he lashed out with a curse and a brightwhip. His Art-fueled weapon dug an impressive furrow in the earth. Thankfully nowhere near me.
“I’ll see you hanged, Holgren Angrado. I swear it.”
“All right, then. I suppose asking you to wish me luck would be pointless. Fare well, Avrom. Truly.”
And then I secured my pack and turned to face the yard-wide black hole at my feet.
And jumped.
Amra: Interlude Two
Kerf’s balls, but eternity was boring.
Getting stolidly, ragingly drunk killed some small fraction of time. But I had all of time staring me in the face; or at least all the rest of my life. Stuck in one room. With an inhuman mass murderer for company.
“That’s your choice,” Kalara said. “Choose again. Choose differently.”
“Shut up.”
I finally understood what it was that had driven Rui Qi to end it all in Thagoth. Sometimes death really was the best alternative. I had been naive, then. Me, naive. Imagine that. After the life I’d led, I would never have thought it was possible.
“And that’s just the hangover talking,” Kalara observed. She’d taken up position in a corner, legs crossed tailor-fashion, leaning back on thin arms. Utterly at ease.
“Why are you starting to sound like me?”
“I’m in your head as well as your soul. I’m just taking in the local color, so to speak.” She gave a negligent half-shrug.
“Well stop it. It’s fucking annoying.”
“You and I both know you can’t spend the rest of your life in this situation, Amra. You will go mad. And when you do, it will be child’s play for me to influence you into doing what I want.”
“What good would I do to you mad? If a mad bugger was good enough for whatever your plans are, you already had the Telemarch.”
She smiled. “You speak as if the mad can never be made sane again.”
“Can they? I’ve never seen anyone come back from being cracked.”
“You’ve seen much. But not nearly so much as I have.”
I frowned. The thought was unsettling. Could she just wait for me to lose my mind, get me to return to the world, and put a poultice on my sanity?
“I don’t think so,” I finally said.
“And why is that?”
“Because if me coming unstuck was your best option, you wouldn’t talk about it. You’d just let it happen.”
“You’re absolutely right. It isn’t my best option; that would be you listening to me and leaving this self-made prison right now. But believe me when I tell you it is an option.”
“Why should I believe you? About that, or anything?”
She—it—laughed. I waited for that high, child’s laughter to fade away.
“Answer my question, Kerf damn you.”
“You should believe me, Amra Thetys, because it is impossible for a goddess to lie to her avatar, or her avatar to her. Didn’t you know that? This age has lost so much in the way of knowledge.”
I felt a sour sickness rise up from my roiling stomach, and it had nothing to do with all the wine.
“I am not your avatar. I never agreed to any such thing.”
“I am not soaked through,” she said mockingly, in a voice identical to mine. “I never agreed to let the rain fall on me.” She smiled a small, cold smile, and her voice reverted back to a child’s. “And yet.”
“Go to hells.”
Her expression sobered. She looked at me levelly. “It may well come to that, Amra Thetys, though I rather doubt the eleven will exist for much longer. Not in any form you would recognize, at least. But keep in mind, if I did go there, it would be inside your soul.”
I stopped talking to her—to it—then, and started drinking again. Holgren entered my thoughts, naturally enough, and I pushed the thought of him away almost immediately. Firstly because I wasn’t ever going to see him again, and that wasn’t something I was going to dwell on if I could help it. Second, because if there was a weak spot in my resolve, its name was Holgren Angrado. And third, because having Chuckles as a voyeur to my private thoughts and emotions made those thoughts and emotions feel slime-coated.
So I drank, and did not think about Holgren.
Eventually I passed out in that big stone chair.
PART III: HELLS
Twenty-Five
I’d opened and stepped through a gate between Lucernis and Thagoth once. Twice, actually; once there and once back. Gating between locations on the face of the world was an experience best described as traumatic, but exceedingly brief.
Going between the mortal realm and Gholdoryth was much, much worse, and lasted for a subjective eternity. I felt as if both my soul and my mind were being flayed a strip at a time. Despair and madness were the most positive reactions I could muster, and whatever else was happening to me, in whatever state of existence or transition the hell gate had transmuted me to for the journey, I could feel a raw pain in my throat, engendered by my endless scream. My eye was open, but I could see nothing but a shade of red that somehow ate its way into my eye.
And then I landed. Hard.
The first thing to assault me was the cold. You’ve heard the phrase ‘bone-chilling’. In Gholdoryth, it was not hyperbole. I slowly levered myself to my feet, face already numbing in the brutally chill air. I took a brief look at my surroundings; a gray stone temple-like structure, roughly oval, with stereotypical carvings of the torments damned souls could expect adorning the walls. Walls that went up and up, and never found a ceiling. Wan red light came from somewhere high above. It pulsed erratically.
The second thing to assault me was a daemonette.
One of the disgusting crosses between crab and spider that had infested the villa Bosch had turned into a hell gate, it was roughly the size of a cat. It scuttled towards me sidewise on the gray flagstones. Its two rear legs seemed paralyzed. It wasn’t nearly as
quick as the others had been. I summoned a brightblade to dispatch it as it approached.
No brightblade appeared, though the light from above flared briefly.
“Oh, hells,” I said, and then I dodged the strand of mucus the daemonette shot at my face. The stuff was incredibly sticky, in addition to being both paralytic and acidic when it came in contact with exposed flesh.
I could sense my well, but I couldn’t seem to summon any power from it. I had no idea why. Or rather I had several ideas, none of them pleasant, and so refused to believe any of them.
I started backing away from the daemonette as quickly as I could, and it followed, pincers clacking, throwing off blue-white sparks every time. I glanced around, but could find no doors. So. I could run around in circles indefinitely, or I could dispatch the fiend. Without magic. Which meant my only weapon was Amra’s knife.
In my favor was the fact that the creature was small, slow, and stupid.
So be it.
I put my pack in front of me, and stopped retreating. It reacted by shooting another strand at my face. I blocked it with the pack, felt it tug, surprisingly forcefully considering the thing’s size. Like a fisherman, I kept it on the line, slowly letting the distance between us lessen. And then, when I was one long step away from it, I twisted the pack to the side and stomped on its carapace with all the force I could muster.
Guts shot out in all directions, immediately filling the air with a stench that nearly had me vomiting. Six of the eight legs twitched and scrabbled violently, and then were suddenly still. And then the thing began to be absorbed by the floor.
When they say the eleven hells are always hungry, it isn’t a metaphor.
“Well that warmed me up,” I muttered, my breath pluming. But I was in serious trouble. If I had no access to my well, I was done before I’d even started, and the trinkets I’d brought along, even if they still worked, wouldn’t change that. The cold would kill me much sooner rather than later, making worrying about food and water a moot point. And it appeared I was trapped in any case.
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