Tan Skulks (A Wielders Novel Book 1)

by Max Anthony

  For a wizard so concerned with his personal protection, Tiopan Lunder didn’t expend much energy on his front door. Having passed across the street unseen, Skulks looked at the door closely and found it to be lacking in traps and unlocked, though often a suspiciously untrapped door was a trap in itself, leading the incautious interloper into an ambush.

  Skulks was oblivious to such games of cat and mouse. His sharp hearing had reassured him that there was no one lurking immediately behind the door, so he pushed it open, looked inside and then waved at the Warp and the Weft to hasten over.

  Inside, they found themselves in a pleasant reception area, large enough for guests to unburden themselves of coats, yet not so large that the house would become freezing cold every time the front door was opened to a passing charity worker or kipper salesman. All three of them cast their eyes about the room. There was nothing suspicious. No sign of traps, snares, artifices or subterfuge to hoodwink seeking eyes. All-in-all, a splendid little room.

  Skulks opened one of the two exit doors and peered out into a corridor. Alert to the fact that the Qamunol had almost fooled him, he cycled his vision through all of the possible concealments that an opponent might use and found no sign of life, death, undeath, semi-death, demon-stealth, vision blanking or Rhultian dislocation. There was sound though, a steady tick-tick-tick, combined with a whirring of cogs to indicate the presence of that linchpin of every town house ground floor corridor: a grandfather clock. These were known hereabouts as a Pillock’s Longcase, after the local craftsman Rould Pillock who had perfected a mechanism which could produce a series of bongs depending on whether or not it was high or low tide and could also show the progression of the three moons Chartus, Tradis and Ploster.

  Motioning for the Warp and Weft to remain where they were, Skulks headed off to familiarise himself with the house. He was rarely flabbergasted by the inside of a house and this one was doing its level best to maintain his record. It looked well enough lived in as one might expect, for Lunder was known to have resided in Hardened for a number of years. In the kitchen Skulks considered attempting to listen for any voices which may have been spoken over the previous few hours, but dismissed the thought for now. The required focus would make him potentially vulnerable to surprise attack.

  All seven rooms downstairs were as mundane as could be imagined and though there were a few items of value none of them were small enough to slip into a pocket and Skulks didn’t want to be burdened with a wonderfully carved stone bust, nor an enormous, yet dubious painting of a man eating an apple on the back of a rearing horse.

  Skulks ascended the stairs to the first floor. The staircase was wide, solid and with only a slight incline to ensure the house’s occupants arrived at the top in fine fettle, even when drink had been taken. This floor possessed a mere three rooms, two of which were incompletely furnished. They contained furniture, as if the owner had thought to prepare for potential guests, but had become bored at the notion after buying a couple of bed frames and a cut-price dresser constructed from shaped pieces of compressed wood chips, screwed poorly into place.

  That meant, thought Skulks, that the last room must be either enormous or an enclosed suite and likely to contain something of importance. A vast and interlocking series of mage wards covering the door gave the game away. Mentally noting this door as the final destination of their visit here, Skulks prepared to scout the top floor in order to eliminate any potential foes who might slip down behind them. His intentions were given pause by the sound of four small feet making their way up from the floor below. Skulks grimaced as each foot seemed to locate the creakiest part of each tread, stepping from one creak to another. In reality the noise was slight and it was only loud to Skulks’ highly-tuned aural capabilities. From below came the Warp and the Weft.

  “We’re bored,” said the Warp. “Why are you having all the fun while we’re sitting in a grandiose porch?”

  Skulks hoped they weren’t about to slip into childish petulance.

  “I’m scouting the house. I thought we’d agreed this.”

  Ignoring him, the Weft uttered quietly, “Oooh! Look at that door! I’ll bet there’s something exciting behind that!”

  “Yes,” whispered the Warp, “look at all of those seals on there! If I was Tiopan Lunder, I know that I would be hiding behind that door.”

  “Someone’s put a lot of work into it, blocking it off like that. I wonder what the release words are for it.”

  “Flibbertigibbet!” exclaimed the Warp at the door, which continued its silent vigil in the frame that contained it.

  “I know! I know!” said the Weft. “Hairy Lunderpants!”

  If a door was capable of looking doleful, this one was doing a superb impression of it.

  “Let me try!” said the Warp, the volume of her voice having climbed slightly above conversational level. “Smelly bums!” she declared at the door.

  This last attempt a guessing the release words for the door elicited a more forthright response from it in the form of a crackling bolt of dark blue lightning, which flickered from the handle once, twice, thrice, each time jumping to the Warp as she stood on the landing. As each bolt struck the wizard, it illuminated the lines of certain wards on her body and also some of the lines joining her with the Weft. She appeared unaffected, apart from a small cloud of steam which rose from her hair.

  “Crumbs!” she said. “That was a bit previous!”

  Skulks was not to know it beyond guessing, but the door had been imbued with a considerable amount of magely power in order that it might rebuke those who thought to gain entry beyond it. A lesser mage or adept would have been quite easily destroyed by the electrical shocks delivered unto the Warp. As it was, all it elicited from her was a curse of the smallest order.

  “Whoever’s in there probably knows we’re here by now,” said the Weft.

  “Yes,” said the Warp. “Though they probably think we’re dead.”

  “Bugger it!” Skulks announced. “If Spout’s in there they might cause her a mischief!”

  There was a dull throb in the air and the smell of dandelions. Skulks watched as the spider-web of wards on the door was stripped away at a speed far in excess of anything he could have managed. The doors began to flex and bow as the throbbing sound increased, accompanied by a vibration he could feel in his spine.

  The tree from which the doors were carved had taken eight hundred years to grow. A master craftsman had taken three years to temper the wood and shape the doors. Four Rhultian mages had taken two weeks to apply their magics. It took the Warp and the Weft seven seconds to destroy them - splintering them, crushing them and folding them neatly back on their hinges to allow access to the area beyond.

  The chamber revealed was enormous and stuffed with items of a wizardly nature. It took up the entire middle section of the house and had no windows, being lit by many glowing glass spheres embedded into the walls. Skulks scanned the room, taking less than a second to identify the most valuable items and assign a black market value to them. There was a rare monkey in a cage, huddled and miserable. A crystal ball was on a plinth in one corner, glowing faintly purple. Several tall book shelves housed thick leather-bound tomes that silently shouted ‘I belong to a wizard!’ A collection of discarded robes was piled carelessly against one wall, presumably destined for the laundry and several staves had been left on top of them. There were two small tables with chairs and also a very large third table upon which was a map, though it was too far distant to make out details.

  The room was occupied, but not by Lunder, nor by the fine upstanding member of the Chamber Council named Heathen Spout.

  “Yerda Grotbeam?” asked Skulks, recognizing his dumpy erstwhile companion from the ill-fated meeting of the Gardener’s Society wherein he had narrowly averted a mass-murder which would have sent Hardened into a monumental perturbation.

  “Trius Gong from Needle,” responded Grotbeam drily. “Though I suspect you’re going to tell me you’re not Trius Gong.�
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  “Nope,” said Skulks. “Trius Gong, that’s me.”

  “What are you doing breaking into the house of a respected merchant and destroying his prized door?”

  Skulks looked left and right, as if surprised to see the shattered door.

  “My travelling companions seem to have been a trifle forceful in their attempts to tweak it open. Now if you could just tell us where we can find the worthy Master Lunder and Lady Spout, we shall be on our way.”

  “You’ve just missed him, I’m afraid. And he asked me to kill anyone looking for him.”

  “Fine,” said Skulks. “You keep up the good work then.” He turned as if to leave, though he had no intentions of leaving the house without information. He felt a tugging on his sleeve. In fact, he felt two tuggings. Looking down, he noted the serious expressions on the faces of Warp and Weft.

  “Get out of the room,” whispered the Warp

  “Do it now,” said the Weft.

  Tensing his legs, Skulks sprang out through the open doorway and into the corridor. The move caught Grotbeam unawares and Skulks was able to blend himself into the shadows. He was just in time, for a great percussive wave followed him through the doorway, causing the walls of the house to shudder down to their very foundations. Even at the fringes of it he could feel the power of the surge, making his ears ring. He was glad he hadn’t been caught in the middle of it.

  Poking his head back around the door, he saw that Grotbeam was gone, but in her place was an eight-feet tall demon, black as night, scraggly of build, long of limb, but with Grotbeam’s pudgy face stretched bizarrely over the front of its wide skull. It was trying its best to immolate the Warp and the Weft, commanding their bodies to burn. Impossibly small against it, their ward-patterns glowed brightly as they cast back their own magics at it, freezing the air around the demon as they attempted to wrench away its protections.

  Rolling back into the room unseen, Skulks added his own small efforts to their endeavours, pulling away at a few of the minor sigils, hoping that he would remain unnoticed as he circled behind the demon. Another powerful thump caught him unawares, knocking him from his feet, overturning three of the book shelves on the other side of the room and causing the poor caged monkey to cower in fright.

  After a few seconds Skulks had recovered and raised himself to his feet. The demon was now being assailed by a cloud of hammers. Conjured by the Warp and the Weft, these hammers were of all shapes and sizes, some rusty, some half broken and they struck most cruelly at the demon’s head and feet. Each blow produced a flash of sparks where the magical hammers skittered off the defences of the demon as it thrashed at them, momentarily distracted.

  Skulks’ dagger-swords were expensive enough to cut through all manner of magical barriers and he darted in, stabbing the demon in the leg. He ducked underneath a backhand blow and then jumped away as a burst of flame erupted where his feet had been placed just a moment before. He was caught mid-air by another thumping magical exhalation, which hurled him towards the wall at speed. Quick of mind and body, Skulks turned himself in flight, cushioning his impact with shoulder and feet.

  Not content with sixty whirling hammers, the Warp and the Weft brought forth a whoop of vicious Tree Chimps, directing them towards the demon, at which they leapt, crooked yellow teeth bared and carnivorous salivary glands a-drool at the thought of demon flesh. Unfortunately for these worthy chimps, they found themselves chopped into pieces as they leapt, by a wickedly sharp blade mesh which appeared for an instant in front of each, shredding their muscular simian bodies as easily as they themselves would pull apart a Borean Marmoset.

  Now the floor was slimy with a red glop, freed from the insides of the deceased Tree Chimps. This looked to be no setback for the demon, which closed the intervening space between it and the wizards, the cut in its leg slowing it only moderately. It hurled fire as it came, hoping to batter aside the Warp and the Weft, who themselves countered with yet more cold, splinters of piercing ice raining from out of nowhere. These icy barbs cut through the demon’s defences and burrowed themselves into its flesh, leaving its head and shoulders a patchwork of tiny wounds. Grotbeam’s face became even more distorted, frozen along one side and now bearing almost no likeness to the woman she had been.

  As it reached its foes, the demon swung its long arms, hoping that they had so crowded themselves with magical defences that their physical ones would be lacking. This was not so, and although its claws came close to the Warp and the Weft, they glanced off an invisible barrier with a loud and hideous screeching sound. Not finished, it followed up with another wave of force, staggering both wizards, only to experience an uncomfortable skewering sensation within the area of its right buttock, followed by a second jab into its flank. The demon was less than impressed to feel the viciously sharp blade being twisted as it was withdrawn. It turned, but Skulks had already danced aside, leaving behind feinting images which confused the demon’s inchoate thoughts to impale its tormentor.

  By now the relentless onslaught of hammers was starting to wear at the bastion of deflecting wards, with one or two crunching into the demon’s flesh, leaving circular indentations as evidence of their success. Realising that it was close to defeat, the demon channelled its remaining eldritch energy into a single black beam, which it directed towards the Weft. The spell caught the wizard by surprise for it blackened his skin and tore one of the ears from his head, charring away hair and skin.

  Though it had hurt the Weft, the force of the beam had been spread across the Warp also, allowing her wards to absorb some of the assault. But they were both angry now, the Weft snarling with a hatred Skulks had not heard before. As he watched, the demon was lifted into the air, arms and legs splayed out forcibly. It struggled to no avail as a wrenching, popping noise told Skulks what was happening to it. The left arm was the first to detach from the body, skin stretching as bone was pulled unwillingly from socket. The right arm followed in a similar fashion. The two legs put up more resistance, though they also succumbed to the invisible magics, ripping and popping free as the mouth of Yerda Grotbeam opened in a silent scream. The hammers finished the job, pummelling at the skull, which softened and sagged under the blows as it was smashed, concussing and flattening the brain underneath. Skulks winced as he saw it.

  With her face now serene - clear of the hate Skulks had witnessed only moments before - the Warp looked at the carnage on the floor. “Golly!” she said. “Look at all this mess!”

  The Weft appeared satisfied, with the charring on his face already subsiding to a light pink. His hair and ear would take a few days to grow back. “Eh?” he said helpfully, pretending that he couldn’t hear, while pointing at the nub on the side of his face.

  Next door at Number 23, The Docks, the elderly Sea Capt. Himbleton Dunk (Retired) turned querulously to his wife. “That bloody Lunder!” he stormed. “Always making a noise just when I want to sleep!”

  His wife patted him gently on the arm in consolation.

  “Yes dear,” she said. “I think you should take yourself down to the Chamber Building tomorrow and put in another complaint.”

  “You’re damn right I will! Bloody first generationers. They’ll see this street full of bakers and whores before long, you mark my words they will!”

  This elicited another “Yes dear” followed by soothing noises to calm him and reassure him that the noises had stopped and that he should get himself some well-deserved rest as he’d not been feeling well for the last few days.

  “Harrumph!” said Sea Captain Dunk knowing he was being patronised, but mollified all the same. He rustled himself down under the covers to sleep.

  Back in Number 21, The Docks, Skulks was assaying the room for clues and pocketable valuables. The map spread upon the table was large and well-researched, displaying the continent of Ko-Chak. There was Hardened, where the Ten Dams River finally joined the Deeping Sea. Upriver there was High Domes, Corpus and Ironsburg. Dotted elsewhere he could see Crimson, Qol-Wert, and Ev
erseen. The map looked like it had cost a lot of money and here it was, splattered with the blood and intestines of unlucky Tree Chimps. There was a large circle drawn around Hardened.

  Skulks was sure there would be plenty of other clues in the room, but instead he dropped into a semi-trance to allow him to partake of any recent conversations which the room had hosted. The map table seemed the most likely place to hear anything and he was correct, for as he drifted back through the audible history of the room he was able to discern the voice of Tiopan Lunder some hours prior to their confrontation with the demon-who-was-also-Yerda-Grotbeam. He picked up a few choice snippets.

  “I need to take our guest upriver for a few days.”

  “Where are you taking her?”

  “I have a nice little place in High Domes that no one knows about.”

  Then there was:

  “I’m expecting visitors and they will be unwelcome ones, so please do your best to treat them to a slap-up Rhultian feast.”

  Skulks knew that a Rhultian feast referred to the tradition in certain parts and certain circles of that continent whereby an ambitious lord or merchant would invite his rivals to a special feast in their honour, during which these rivals would be poisoned, flattened by a falling chandelier or discover a suddenly-opening chute beneath their seat which carried them into a pit lined with excrement-smeared spikes. The problem for the ‘honoured’ guests was that Rhultian tradition dictated that the declining of an invitation to a feast in one’s honour was a gross insult. As such, every Rhultian feast was an affair approached with some trepidation by the parties involved. Conversation rarely sparkled, generally encompassing the weather, the cost of essentials and enquiries as to the health of the mother-in-law.

  “It sounds like we’re off to High Domes,” announced Skulks, having just spoken aloud the information he’d heard.