The Thief who Spat in Luck's Good Eye
(The complete, revised novel formerly known as Thagoth)
by
Michael McClung
Copyright © 2012 Michael McClung
Smashwords Edition
Cover image courtesy Pebble Media
(www.pebblemedia.com)
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Kerf & Isin, Part the First
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Kerf & Isin, Part the Second
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Kerf & Isin, Part the Third
Chapter 10
...and Everything After
Author’s Note
Kerf & Isin, Part the First
Another age was almost upon the world. Ancient Kerf and ever-youthful Isin had been appointed to see the present one to its close; to blow out the lamps, dust the corners, and hand over the keys to the new tenants, as it were. They toured the vast, empty plane of deities, both feeling in their eternal bones the unnatural silence, the melancholy of things ending, the excitement of things about to begin.
“Almost done, then,” wheezed Kerf.
“Indeed it would seem so,” replied Isin, patting a few stray wisps of hair back into place. “You’ve pulled the plug on magic?”
“Centuries ago. It drains away as we speak. What of the Twins?”
Isin snapped her fingers. “I knew I’d forgotten something! I always do.”
“I had high hopes for them, alas.”
“Well it wasn’t your fault, Kerf. The path to godhood may be narrow, but it is plainly marked. Though I’m afraid it was an excess of the qualities I cherish that led to their troubles.”
Kerf grunted, stopped, leaned on his crooked staff. “Or a paucity of the ones I espouse,” he replied. “Can’t leave them in the way of the next lot, in any case.”
“You rest,” said Isin. “I’ll deal with the Twins, and then we’ll clear out.”
Kerf had a sudden thought. Beneath bushy, snow-white brows his eyes gleamed.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea.”
Isin arched a perfect brow.
“There’s a thief down in Lucernis, likes to swear by my testicles, of all things. Annoyed me for years, that one.” Kerf rubbed his gnarled hands together in anticipation.
“Now Kerf, what are you planning?”
“It’s been ages since we’ve meddled with mortals. Frankly, I miss it. Might not get another chance, my dear. Who knows where we’re off to?”
Isin smiled radiantly. It was the only smile she owned. “Oh, all right,” she said. “But are you sure this thief can handle the Twins?”
“She’s got what it takes to settle the matter, she and her partner, though I daresay she won’t have much fun doing it.”
He chuckled. “‘Kerf's shrivelled balls’ indeed. Cheeky wench...”
Chapter 1
It was to have been a relaxing afternoon in the Artists’ Quarter- a cup of wine, a walk along the Promenade, a show later in the evening, the final performance of The Yellow King. I’d wanted to see it for weeks. I’d finally been able to filch a ticket. All in all, I was looking forward to an enjoyable few hours.
It didn’t turn out that way. Instead, Holgren wanted to talk to me about money. Ten thousand gold marks, to be exact.
I was sitting at one of the scarred wooden tables outside Tambor’s wine shop, enjoying the first fine day of spring. Winter had held on with a tenacity almost unheard of in Lucernis, southernmost of the great cities on the western shore of the Dragonsea. It seemed everyone else in the city had had the same idea as me. All Tambor’s outside tables were full while the interior of his grubby little shop was deserted. Hoof, foot, and carriage traffic along the street was heavy and more boisterous than usual. There was even a warm easterly breeze that kept the steaming miasma rising from the gutters at an endurable level. For a wonder I was actually enjoying the rare feeling of contentment.
Holgren found me and slapped down a creased, dirty notice under my nose. It was the Duke’s offer.
“This just came in with a coastal trader, Amra. The Duke of Viborg is posting it in every port on the Dragonsea, apparently.” He stood there with a strange grin on his face. I gave him my best annoyed look, which failed to have any effect on him.
“Well, go on. Read it.”
I sighed, picked up the notice and read. The Duke was offering ten thousand marks for proof of the existence of the legendary city of Thagoth. I pushed the sheet of parchment back at him.
“Kerf’s balls, Holgren. The old buzzard is insane,” I said. “That’s why they call him the mad Duke, you know. Besides, Thagoth is a myth. If it ever existed, it’s just so much dust and rubble now.”
“But—” Holgren started.
“No buts. Look, even if we found it, you’d never get a bent halfpenny out of the old goat, much less ten thousand marks. Now sit down, shut up, and drink. Or leave. I’m busy enjoying my ill-gotten gains.”
My partner leaned back on his heels and opened his slim-fingered hands in a gesture that he thought conciliatory, and I found annoying. “Granted, the Duke will probably never pay, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth looking into.” He signaled the barmaid and sat down at my table.
“I won’t talk business today, Holgren. I won’t. I have plans that run contrary to the topic.”
He snorted, accepted the shallow earthenware cup the barmaid handed to him, and paid her. Tambor only served one vintage—cheap.
“You never stop thinking about business, woman. You’ve no idea how to relax. You’ve trained yourself out of it.” He took a drink, made a face, and exiled his cup to the edge of the table.
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Holgren, I don’t know what is.”
“Perhaps. Finding Thagoth won’t be business for me, however. It will be personal.” He stared at me with those hawk-like brown eyes of his. It was a look I knew. He was about to get me to do something I didn’t want to do.
“We need to find that city,” he said, “and we need to find it before anyone else.”
“What’s this really about? It’s not the money, that’s obvious.”
Holgren shook his head. “Let’s speak elsewhere.”
I put down a few coppers and followed him out to the street. So much for my relaxing afternoon.
He took a long, rambling route to the river Ose, dodging hacks, carriages, and the reeking contents of chamber pots slung out of windows despite a rather strict ordinance to the contrary. I walked beside him, hurrying my pace just a bit to match his long strides. I wondered what could get him interested in such a fool’s errand. I had to admit to more than a little curiosity. While I’d known Holgren for a handful of years, I knew almost nothing about his personal life. He was a solitary, even secretive man. Mages are like that, and Holgren was no exception.
He turned off narrow, twisting Gravedigger’s Row into an even-narrower alley between a pair of whitewashed houses that leaned toward each other drunkenly, like sailors on leave. At the end of the alley we took a set of mossy, cracked steps down to the river.
The Ose ran through the city in great loops. Some sections were beautiful, ornamented with stone walkways and ancient trees whose branches fanned down to the water. Other parts abutted the back walls of tanneries, charnel houses, and squalid tenements. The stretch behind Gra
vedigger’s Row was hardly park-like, and I pretended not to see the vague, sodden lumps that floated by, which might have been garbage, or something worse.
“You take me to the nicest places, Holgren.” I picked up a stone and pitched it into the water. “Want to tell me what this is about now?”
“This is difficult for me to speak of, Amra. I’ve never told anyone else.”
“I’m honored.”
“You never make things easy, do you?”
I bit down an easy retort. He was right. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
“When I was a boy, I was apprenticed to a master of the Art named Yvoust. Ten years I slaved under him as an apprentice. By rights I should have been a journeyman after seven. I had the skill and control. But I failed an impossible task he set me to, and was sent away in disgrace. He was a cruel master, prone to beat and starve his apprentices, but that does not excuse what I did in revenge.
“In my youthful pride and rage, I made a compact with dark powers and killed Yvoust using the Art. It was long ago, and I am not the boy that committed that act. Still, the lad is father to the man, and for that sin and for the bargain I made, my soul is forfeit upon my death.”
I just stood there for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to do, or say. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off.
I suppose I should have been shocked. I’d never imagined him capable of such a violent act, or such a stupid one. Except there were times growing up when I would have sold my soul to be rid of my father permanently. Times spent hiding in the muck under the house to avoid a drunken beating or worse, times spent listening to it happen to my mother instead.
The only difference between Holgren and me was the fact that he’d had the magical power to make good on such wishes. I’d settled for a scaling knife. There were things Holgren didn’t know about me, as well.
“Say something,” he said.
“What does this have to do with Thagoth?” I asked.
“What do you know about the legend surrounding it?”
“What everybody knows, I suppose. It was an ancient city, ruled by twin gods, a brother and sister with the power of eternal life and the power to devour souls. It and they were destroyed by a rival power, a wizard-king whose name has been lost to history.”
“Close enough.” He stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it into the water. “The power to grant eternal life . . .”
“Come on. Holgren the Immortal? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“I do. Better than Holgren the Eternally Suffering.”
“That’s what you think the Duke is after? Immortality?”
He nodded. “He has a horror of death—oh, not the death of others, of course. But nearly every insanity reported of him has an interior logic, if you look at his motivation. Bathing in the blood of the unborn. Putting a bounty on crows and owls in Viborg, the two harbingers of death. Banning funeral processions within a mile of his palace. Removing portraits and statues of dead ancestors from the palace. Buying—”
“I see your point,” I interrupted. “What makes you think this search for Thagoth is any different from those other mad, vain attempts to fend off the inevitable?”
“This offer of his is too noteworthy, too public to simply be a whim.”
“Holgren, there must be another way to settle your debt—some surer way.” Some way that might actually work, I meant.
“Don’t you think I would have tried by now if there were another way? Something has set him on the trail to Thagoth. While I might wish I knew what it was, it is enough for me to know that he wants to find it.” Holgren clasped my hands in his. “I want and need your help, Amra. I’ve seen you slip into and out of places so heavily guarded a mouse wouldn’t pass unnoticed. I’ve watched you find valuables so cleverly hidden I couldn’t have located them using the Art. Your skills would be invaluable. Should you choose not to assist me, however, I will go on my own.”
“Flattery, Holgren? You must be desperate.” I pulled my hands from his and walked away from him.
“It isn’t flattery if it’s true. Remember when you broke into Lord Morno’s wine cellar and stole an entire crate of Gol Shen thirty-seven? He certainly does.”
“That was a lark. It’s not like there were armed guards at the door. Now be quiet and let me think.” I had to smile. I sent Morno an empty bottle every Midsummer’s Eve. The bounty for the person or persons responsible had risen to five hundred marks over the years.
I contemplated the murky, filthy Ose as it slid its way to the sea. It was idiocy, but how could I refuse Holgren? He was my friend and partner; how could I not at least try to help?
“I never said I wouldn’t go,” I finally said. “I just said it was pointless. Where do we start?”
Holgren started at the beginning. He identified certain texts we would need and I acquired them; the Bosk texts, notes from Mumtaz El Rathi’s expedition to the west, a copy of General Velkaar’s campaign memoirs, many more. Maps, histories, legends, travelers’ accounts of the west, tomes of magic theory, ancient military texts—there was no rhyme or reason in what he wanted. It was all rare, hideously expensive, and generally difficult to lay hands on. I spent nearly a month tracking down, buying, or stealing what he said he needed. One particular scroll, done up in a sort of picture language I’d never encountered before, explored the lives of the Twin Gods in graphic detail. Apparently they’d been quite a bit more than siblings, if the scroll was to be believed. And the sister at least had some unwholesome appetites. I suppose gods see most things differently. Who’s going to tell them they’re wrong?
Holgren spent the time holed up in his sanctum, a moldering hovel hard by the charnel grounds. What he did there he did not discuss, nor did I pry. I knew where it was, but I rarely went there. I have little interest in the arcane, except what can kill me. Occasionally he would prepare the odd amulet or fetish to aid me in whatever task I undertook. While I had little understanding of how they worked, I took it on faith that they did.
Holgren, on the other hand, always seemed fascinated by the most mundane aspects of my craft. Once I’d left a set of lock picks out, and some hours later I found him squatting in front of an old sea chest I used for a table, methodically trying each pick in various positions, then making notes in the margins of a book he’d been reading. When I’d told him the tumblers of the lock were rusted solid, he’d looked crushed.
It was a wet, miserable day when I returned from my latest foray for research materials. Spring had not fully sprung after all. Almost no one was stirring in the Foreigners’ Quarter as I returned the spavined excuse for a horse I’d rented from Alain the wainwright. I trudged my weary way home, keeping dry the fragile map I’d acquired. As I climbed the narrow stairs to my den, I wanted nothing more than hot food, a hot bath, and a warm bed.
Holgren was pacing the rooms I let above Burrisses’ Tailors. The Burrisses were a family of immigrants from the Nine Cities who didn’t care if I was a woman living on my own so long as I paid my rent.
“Amra,” he shouted, and grabbed me by the waist. “Pfaugh! You’re ripe.”
“That’s what three days in the saddle will do.”
“Never mind. I’ve found it!”
“You found the city?” I pushed him away from me and sat down on the hall bench. Every bone ached from the ride. Wearily I started unlacing my boots. “So you don’t need this map I just stole from a nice widow in Coroune?”
“No. Oh, it will help prove I’m right, no doubt. I’m dead certain I have the location of the city itself.”
“That’s nice,” I said with mock brightness. “Now get out so I can boil water for a bath, bolt some food, and go to sleep.”
He looked at me quizzically for a second, then had the grace to blush a little. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been killing yourself gathering all these odds and ends. I truly appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve finally located it—”
“I know, I know. Tomorrow I’ll be suitably excited.
Right now I’m just too tired.”
“Why don’t you relax? I’ll find you something to eat.”
“Thanks.” I made my way into the main room and stretched out on the floor, on the silk Elamner pillows I used for furniture. I just closed my eyes for a second, honest.
I woke the next morning. Holgren had left a tray of nuts and a bowl of blood oranges next to me, and a note in spidery silver letters in the air above my head:
See you here, midday
The letters faded as I read them. I dug up fresh clothing and headed for the baths.
The morning was hot and bright, and the streets steamed as they dried under the indecisive spring sun. Time was passing too quickly. I knew of at least three expeditions that had already set out for the lost city. There was no telling if they were headed in the right direction, but our delays had begun to worry me. If it did exist, I didn’t want to get there only to find it plundered.
At the baths I paid my penny and soaked for an hour, ignoring the comments muttered behind milk-white hands about my scarred hide. It was a little knitting circle of five women. Whenever I looked at them directly, their eyes would slide away, and the whispering would die down, for a time. Then it would slowly pick back up again.
“. . . figure like a boy.”
“Such short hair, and all those scars. Perhaps she’s just come from prison.”
I was very good. What did they know of the world beyond their familial villas or their fathers’ shops, beyond spinning, weaving, and making babies? I knew as little of their life as they knew of mine—I understood that. It’s just that I didn’t think their difference gave me a right to talk about them, whereas they obviously did. But of course it’s always that way when you have the numbers. Men don’t hold exclusive rights to bullying.
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