The Sorcerer's Ascension (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  Azerick blushed having completely forgotten his debt, but Andrill cut him off before he could respond.

  “Do not lose focus, lad. That is another sort of business, not tonight’s business, and I do not like to mix different topics of business at the same meeting. Concern yourself, and me, with the topic that brought you here.”

  “I am looking for a friend. She has been missing for several days now and I think she may have been taken by slavers,” Azerick said and gave a description of Andrea.

  “I would have to agree with you, Azerick. Given her age and description, it is very likely she ran afoul of those cretins,” the guild boss replied, very business-like now. “The problem is that they are a very secretive bunch and, even with my resources, are hard to track down much less locate a single individual they may have taken.”

  “I was not sure you could or would help me. I was afraid that the guild may work with the slavers, but I did not know who else to turn too.”

  Andrill looked darkly at the assumption. “Hardly, though many people think otherwise. They steal from our city and feel they have no need to pay taxes or report to the guild. Not to mention, many of the guild come from the very streets these men use as their hunting grounds. The only reason we do not drive them from the city is that such open warfare would be very costly; far too expensive given the fact that the ones in most danger are simply street rats, no offense.”

  “So you cannot help me?” Azerick asked.

  Andrill sighed as he stared into his wineglass as if he were seeking answers within the swirling red liquid. “As interesting as I find you, I am a businessman first and foremost. What do I stand to gain compared to the level of risk I would take by seeking out this information you desire?”

  “I would owe you a favor. It is all I have to offer. I have no wealth, no power, nor any particular skill I can offer, so a promise of a returned favor is the best I can do,” Azerick told the Night Raven leader.

  Braxis looked dubious but Andrill leaned forward, stared Azerick in the eye, and actually sniffed. “Do you smell that, Braxis?”

  Azerick thought Andrill was making sport of him or commenting on his hygiene, but the guild boss looked deadly serious.

  “Do you know my mother was a Traveler, a seer at that? No, of course you do not, how could you? You carry the scent of destiny, fate, or god touch—whatever you want to call it. Sometimes, if it is strong enough, even I can sense it, although it is always stronger within the female bloodline. I have a sister that could probably tell me a great deal of what I might expect in return for accepting your proposal, but I believe I sense enough that such could be a wise investment. Very well, I will see what I can discover in exchange for a favor at some future point of my choosing.”

  “Thank you, Andrill, this means a great deal to me,” Azerick replied with obvious relief.

  “Do not thank me yet, young man. I have not collected my fee. The cost of such deals can sometimes make one feel like a fool when it comes time to pay. Remember that for the future.”

  Azerick felt a chill run down his spine at the warning, but at this point he had nothing else to offer and nothing else was important to him. The only important things he ever had had already been taken, and he doubted the master thief wanted his books.

  Azerick recognized his dismissal and made his way back to his lair, managing to avoid the Watch, out of habit, and numerous shady-looking characters skulking about the dark streets, out of necessity. He tried to go to sleep, which considering the amount he ate and the potent wine he drank, should have come easily, but his concern for Andrea and his anxiousness to hear back from Andrill kept him awake until the early hours of the morning.

  He woke well after the sun had risen in the east and went in search of Bran. His first instinct was to go looking for him around one of the several market squares throughout the city but something told him that his friend was probably not staking out their usual haunts. His gut led him to the docks where he eventually found Bran in one of the taverns looking warily over the top of the clay mug gripped tightly in his hands.

  At first glance, Azerick was afraid his friend had fallen into a depression and was trying to wash away his sorrows with cheap ale, but on a closer inspection, Azerick saw that he was watching and listening to the sailors and laborers around him.

  Azerick pulled a rickety chair up and sat next to him. “You hear anything yet?”

  “No, if the slavers are running they’re not talking about it openly. At least not where I can hear them,” Bran replied without taking his eyes off the patrons in the tavern.

  Azerick saw that his friend was taking Andrea’s disappearance hard. He was sullen and withdrawn, a polar opposite of his usual genial self. “I have someone looking into it,” Azerick told Bran. “If anyone can find something, it’s them.” Bran simply nodded as he continued to scan the crowd as if at any moment someone stand up and confess to the abduction. “I am going to go and look around. I will let you know if—when I hear something.”

  “I’m going to find her, Az. If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll find her.”

  Azerick laid a hand on Bran’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze before walking out of the tavern and into the salty seaside air. He paused just outside the tavern door, listening to the complaints of the seagulls and the shouting of dockworkers a block away. Azerick headed toward the docks and walked into Peg’s store, figuring that the old sailor was likely to see and hear a great deal of what goes on around the docks.

  “Well, if it ain’t the young chimneysweep,” Peg called out from behind the counter as Azerick entered. “So did you manage to get the job done?”

  “Oh yes, I got it cleaned out real good,” Azerick replied. “I wish I had been able to save enough to repay you for the value of that rope, but more pressing debts soaked up most everything I made.”

  “Well I hope you’re not sniffing around for anymore handouts. I liked your father, but I gotta eat too and I ain’t gonna be able to do that if I gives away all my merchandise.”

  “No, I’m just looking for information this time, Peg. It will not cost a thing. I am looking for a friend of mine, a girl, about my age, dark hair about this long, kind of pretty. She lives on Sailor’s Row with her drunk of a father.”

  “How long she been missing?”

  “A few days now.”

  Peg rubbed the grey stubble on his chin. “Good chance slavers got her if she was foolish enough to run about after dark.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Have you heard anything about any slavers lately?” Azerick asked.

  “Too often to tell the truth. Fat lot of good it does to make it illegal if it ain’t enforced. All the King did was make it more profitable for those that don’t worry about getting arrested. A ship came in last week, not much cargo to unload, just a few bits of odds and ends from Sumara. It left port about four or five days ago without taking on much more cargo than it dropped off.”

  “That does not sound like a very profitable trip,” Azerick replied.

  “Nope, not unless they loaded up some cargo they didn’t want nobody to see.”

  “Thanks, Peg,” Azerick said and walked back out onto the docks.

  Peg had told him enough to strengthen his suspicion but nothing that could help him find out who took Andrea or where they had taken her. He had assumed that she would be taken south by ship although a few are hidden in wagons and taken to private estates outside the city. Either way, it would be nearly impossible to find her if she had been taken from the city already.

  A sailor approached him and interrupted his thoughts. “Hey, boy, can you read?”

  “Yes, I can read,” Azerick warily replied.

  The sailor pulled out a scrip of parchment and handed it to him. “Good, Andrill said you were clever, but clever don’t necessarily mean literate. He says this is the best he can do, so don’t come asking for more help. You won’t be able to afford it anyway.”

  The guild thief, Azerick knew now h
e was no sailor, left without giving Azerick a chance to ask any questions or give any comment. He unfolded the parchment and saw that there was a set of instructions and a small, crude map drawn on it. It told him of a warehouse that Andrill’s men had been watching last night. Several men were always present, but there was little activity around the place until well after dark. Men carried large sacks in on their shoulders and moved wooden crates out by cart to be loaded onto an unregistered ship, and always after midnight.

  Azerick returned to the tavern and was glad to see that Bran was still there although the time had done nothing to improve his mood. In fact, his lack of success made him look even surlier than he had before. Azerick hoped his news would lift his spirits some.

  “I have some news,” Azerick said as he sat down.

  Bran’s face lit up with hope and anticipation at his friend’s proclamation. “Did you find her? Do you at least know where she is?”

  “Calm down and listen. First, promise me you are not going to go charging off the instant I tell you what I know.”

  “Fine, just tell me you found something out!”

  Azerick told Bran about the warehouse and showed him the map, describing the security and movements of the men around the building.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Bran asked after Azerick told him what he knew. “Let’s go get her!”

  “And do what, Bran? Charge in and take on a dozen or more slavers, just the two of us? And with what weapons? Do you have a ballista in your pocket you did not tell me about? We need a plan, preferably one that does not get us killed,” Azerick shouted back then lowered his voice when people began to stare.

  “We need to rescue her before they take her out of the city,” Bran urged.

  “She may already be out of the city. We do not know for certain she is there, but if she is, us going in with swords waving, if we could even get a sword, is not going to free her.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Bran demanded.

  Azerick rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will have one tonight.”

  Azerick told Bran to meet him tonight and to bring whatever weapons he could get his hands on although he hoped that whatever plan he came up with would avoid, or at least minimize, any physical confrontation with the slavers.

  He returned to his home and took stock of the numerous potions that he had created during his numerous experimentations, formulating plans as he determined what he had to work with and how it could help him and Bran in their mission. Azerick then dismounted one of the many crossbow booby traps that guarded the halls of his sanctum that he had painstakingly refurbished. Fortunately, the steel bows had avoided significant corrosion and had lost only a small amount of their strength. He had spent the past two years carving new stocks and replacing ruined strings.

  Azerick counted the beads flicked over on an abacus indicating how many times he had turned his hourglass and saw that it was nearing the time to meet Bran. He loaded several stoppered glass bottles into a padded rucksack, grabbed up his crossbow, and left out through the warehouse entrance of his lair.

  The squatters’ district was not far from the docks and the warehouse where Andrill suspected the slavers were holding their prizes. Even moving carefully through the streets, it took him less than thirty minutes to reach the rendezvous point. Azerick was not surprised to find Bran already waiting and looked as if he had been here for some time.

  “Have you looked at the place yet?” Azerick asked, confident that Bran had.

  “Yeah, I’ve been watching the place for a couple hours. I couldn’t stand just sitting around waiting,” Bran said. “I made sure I wasn’t seen though.”

  “So what have you found out?”

  “Come on, let’s get closer and I’ll show you.

  From a dark area between two buildings, perhaps thirty yards away, Bran showed Azerick the warehouse and explained what he had seen so far.

  “You can see the main doors there,” Bran said, indicating a large door that slid on metal rollers and rails. “They lit the lanterns as soon as it got dark, and my guess is they’ll stay lit until morning. There is a small side door on the side and another larger set of doors at the rear. One man guards the small door while the big doors have two each and that is just on the outside. I have no idea how many are inside, but I have seen at least four men enter and three leave, but one of them was not the same as went in. Two men take a walk around the outside of the warehouse, and sometimes they’ll walk around some of the surrounding buildings.”

  Azerick blew out a breath in a soundless whistle. “This is a big operation. It sounds at least as big as a thieves’ chapterhouse. Azerick understood why Andrill did not want to have a direct confrontation with the slavers if this was any indication of their usual numbers.

  “So how are we going to get inside?” Bran asked.

  “You say there is no door on the other side?”

  “No, just a solid wall.”

  Azerick nodded, a plan forming in his mind. “All right, that is the way we will go in.”

  “You got a saw in that bag? It’ll make way too much noise.”

  “We won’t be cutting our way in, but we will need to create a distraction.” Azerick looked at a few of the surrounding buildings and inclined his head toward one. “Let’s get over there.”

  Azerick and Bran walked swiftly between the buildings, keeping out of sight of the warehouse until they had circled around and hid in an alley that opened opposite of the solid side of the warehouse where Azerick planned to breach the wall.

  After a quick check on the guard standing in front of the smaller single door, Azerick pulled two flasks out of his rucksack and concealed them under bits of rubbish several feet in from the end of the alley and close to the walls.

  Azerick handed Bran a small metal vial plugged with a cork. “When I say ‘now’, pour that into the flask. As soon as you pour it in, we need to get our butts over to the backside of the warehouse.”

  “What is it?” Bran asked, shaking it next to his ear.

  “It is a catalyst for the stuff in the flasks. As soon as you pour it in, those flasks are going to smoke like a bonfire made of green leaves. It should bring most of the guards over to investigate and give us time to get into the warehouse,” Azerick explained.

  Bran nodded and stood next to one of the flasks while Azerick stood near the other. “Do it.”

  The instant the liquid from the vials was added to the contents of the flasks, thick, white smoke billowed from the two flasks. The two boys darted further down the alley and around to one side of the warehouse just in time to see the smoke blowing out of the alley.

  The smoke quickly gained the attention of the guard on that side of the building. The man looked left and right before running across the street and trying to see the source of the smoke. Assuming the smoke must be from a fire; he ran to the corner of the warehouse and called for help, shouting that the alley was on fire. One of the other guards shouted something through the door, probably a warning, before running toward the source of the disturbance.

  Azerick and Bran ran around the building they were hiding next to until they reached the backside of the warehouse. They paused before darting across the narrow throughway that lay between them and the warehouse wall. The two boys pressed their bodies against the rough, worn wood as Azerick pulled out another glass flask containing a liquid with the viscosity close to that of lamp oil.

  Azerick unwound the waxed cord sealing the glass stopper in place and sloshed the substance onto the warehouse wall. The wood began giving off an oily, acrid smoke almost immediately. Bran watched in amazement as the wood dissolved as if it were aging decades in mere minutes—aging in a swamp. The wood quickly became spongy and began crumbling into a sodden pile of pulp.

  “Watch that stuff!” Azerick warned as Bran impulsively stuck his head through the growing hole. “You definitely do not want to get that stuff on your clothes.”

  Azerick used a st
ick to knock a larger hole into the wall, large enough for them to walk through if they hunched over. Dim lamplight showed through the hole from lamps that barely lit the interior. There were several large crates stacked haphazardly about the massive interior but little else.

  They heard the sound of voices and whimpering cries coming from their right near the far wall. Using the crates as cover, Azerick and Bran stole stealthily toward the sound of people. Peering around a crate, they saw four adults, three of them women and none more than twenty-five years old or so, but there were also close to a dozen children ranging from perhaps five or six to sixteen years old but the light was too poor to tell if Andrea was among them.

  Rope or leather cords bound the captives and the oldest had gags in their mouths. All sat with their backs pressed against the wall, looking fearfully at each other or the three men playing dice using an empty crate for a table.

  Azerick looked at Bran and pointed at the sling he carried looped through his belt then at the light crossbow he himself carried. Azerick had seen his friend hit rats and pigeons at thirty yards or better with unerring accuracy. The twenty feet or so that separated them from the three slavers would be no problem for him.

  Bran quirked an eyebrow at Azerick, jabbing his finger at their two weapons then pointed at the slavers and raised three fingers. Azerick pointed to the knife that hung at his belt. The blade had never failed to take the life of anyone he used it against so far and hoped his luck would hold.

  Bran nodded once, stepped out from behind the crate, and whirled his sling over his head, a heavy lead shot that fishermen use to weigh down their nets was cradled in its leather pouch. All three men turned to look at the whirring sound Bran’s sling made just as he released the lead ball. Just as Azerick had expected, the heavy bullet struck one of the men square between the eyes with an ominous thud and crack of splitting bone.

  Azerick sprang up from the other side of the crate and put a quarrel in the second slaver before the one Bran brained dropped to the floor. Azerick was no expert with a crossbow, but as close as his target was, missing would have been a difficult feat. The bolt struck the man just below and to the right of where his heart struggled in its losing battle to keep beating.