Crusader

by Andrew Smith

  The hallway branched at its end into a large pantry. There were still some items on the shelves, including a few ancient jars of preserves and a few onions which had colonized one corner. The other side of the branch was a large kitchen. Pots and pans hung loosely from the rack. There were a few items on the floor. A skillet lay in the far corner. A dent in the wainscot evidenced its having been thrown to its current position. Hard. Grace was not soothed by this.

  She was quite a ways into the house by now. The room beyond the kitchen appeared to be an informal dining room, small, with a hutch for dishes and a table that could fit a tight six for dinner. The room seemed perfectly normal. Grace was beginning to think she would find nothing her, and smiled a little at the thought. The knot in her stomach began to untie itself.

  Beyond the small dining room, the hallway branched again. Down the way, Grace suspected, was the larger dining room. Through the doorway, she could just see a stretch of table and a large candelabra The other path was up the stairs. Grace was pondering her choice when something clicked. Something bad.

  The candelabra was lit. She clutched her Focus tighter and edged down the hallway. Half way down, she started to hear voices. Thin voices. She frowned. Something was strange about them. She chocked it up to acoustics and moved in closer. After what seemed like half an eternity, she reached the door frame and peered round it into the room

  “Hello,” said one of the strange, thin voices. “We were wondering when you would get here.”

  Grace’s chest was painfully tight. She had never been so afraid in all her life. Because she had never believed in ghosts. Yet here were two, staring at her with malignant smiles growing like cancers across their faces

  They were transparent, dressed in the garb of nobility from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. And they were red. A horrible crimson like oxygenated blood. The woman bore bruises and appeared to have a crushed throat. The man’s chest was riddled with stab wounds. Grace could see the whole scenario in her mind: a battered wife. She finally had enough one day, in the kitchen, where the thrown skillet lay on the floor. She took a knife, and she stabbed him, again and again. But she missed his heart. He didn’t die right away, and with his last breaths, he wrapped his hands around his wife’s throat and crushed the life from her.

  Grace began to back away. “You’re ghosts,” she told them. “You can’t touch me.”

  Their smiles widened and she knew that she was wrong. They had lit the fires, one of two ways, and neither was a good option for Grace

  She turned and ran down the corridor. The husband chased her, floating three feet above the ground. He was gaining. Grace ducked, and went into a shoulder roll. The spirit flew past her as she came back up. He seemed to have disappeared into the wall

  She lost traction as she turned without slowing, and nearly fell. She scrambled up the stairs. She didn’t dare go through the kitchen. The wife would be waiting in the kitchen, she knew.

  The husband was already waiting in the upstairs hallway. There was a door to her immediate left, but she instinctively knew that’s what he would be expecting. She shouted the Mandarin word for fireworks, and the hallway was filled with thunderous noise and blinding light. Grace clenched her eyes and ran forward, doing another shoulder roll past where the apparition had been. She hoped that even if he couldn’t be blinded, he at least would lose sight of her in the light. She felt out the nearest door on the left hand side. It would be the outer wall, or closer to it than the doors on the right.

  Grace groped blindly at the door and threw it open. The fireworks were still causing havoc in the hallway. She opened her eyes, but the imprints of the lights were still there and she could hardly see. She ran until she hit the far wall, and jabbed it with her wand, yelling something as the wall exploded outwards and she fell twelve feet to the ground below. She managed to ride off some of the impact, but it still knocked the air from her lungs. She couldn’t quite manage to get to her feet, but she crawled as quickly as she could off the property. Leaning against the next building, she blinked the tears from her eyes until they could see again.

  There was a gaping hole in the wall where she had fallen. She couldn’t see the spirits within. Perhaps they couldn’t come into the daylight. Grace sat for a while. It was late afternoon. She could be to the Nightlight before the rest of the city was dark. She needed a good stiff drink, somewhere in the daylight. On the way she thought about interviews. They’re just linguists, she told herself. There’s no way they could be near that scary

  * * * *

  Hunter Blue descended from the second story of the building across from St. Vrain manor. Suerte had left fifteen minutes ago on some errand. Hunter didn’t particularly care what, only that he was gone. He did not feel as though he were in a good enough position to confront Suerte directly, not yet. Suerte was dangerous. Plus he wanted the bastard to know what was coming to him, wanted him to stew a while first

  Hunter crossed the street at his usual brisk clip, his gun slung casually over his back. The gate to the new campaign headquarters approached. He kicked it, and was very surprised when it didn’t budge. Hunter rubbed at the wiry growth on his chin. He muttered an ancient word for feather and jumped over the wall.

  He stalked straight up to the doorway and decided to knock. A large, dark man with a neck the width of an oil drum opened the door and looked down on Hunter, who was not a very tall man. “What?” the man spat.

  “I’ve got a message for your candidate,” said Hunter in his gravelly voice.

  “You can leave it with me,” the large man replied.

  “I’d really rather put it on his desk myself,” said Hunter.

  “You’re not going to, so deal,” the man returned.

  Hunter ducked in the door before the man knew what had happened, and started for the right-hand side of the building. He inferred it to be the location of Suerte’s office, since it was the place that cute, black-eyed girl was always hanging around, albeit outside and under the window.

  The large man was on him in an instant, shouting something along the lines of ‘where do you think you’re going?’. Hunter really wasn’t listening. Lackeys had a limited vocabulary, and even with centuries between encounters, the lexicon never changed. He was sure there was a book that came with the job, and not only that but the only reason the book was more than pamphlet size was that the print had to be so large.

  He could sense that the man was almost close enough to reach him, so he launched a spinning jump-heel kick. He caught the man across the face, hard enough to stun him for a moment, though a lot of people, those built more like normal human beings and less like a Kodiak bear, might have gone down all the way. Hunter’s arquebus was in his hands in a flash. He swung the butt upwards, clapping the man on the chin. He swiftly turned it around, placed the barrel against the man’s midsection and pulled. The gun didn’t fire lead balls anymore, but nonetheless the man was flung back against the far wall by an iridescent yellow ball of force. The guard slumped to the ground and remained there.

  Hunter continued into the manor. The house was very open for such an old construction. All the doors were closed. Hunter swore harshly and went to the first. Nothing. Down the hall, he could tell by virtue of a lot of shouting that the unconscious guard had been found

  He swore again and tried the next door. Nothing. He moved on to the next door. He didn’t even touch the handle before three more guards, all, he noted, in the same black suit, ran into the room. Apparently, they all thought that the average wand wasn’t a masculine enough Focus, as they all clutched black nightsticks. The Peelers would be furious about it if they knew.

  The middle one stayed where he was as they other moved to flank him. Hunter couldn’t help but roll his eyes. His gun was up in a flash and he fired on the left-hand guard without looking.

  A green orb of force hit him in the chest. Hunter could hear the sternum cracking. He leapt into the air. The feather spell tended to last a while. As he reached the peak of
his flight, the guards finally had the presence of mind to look up. Two red orbs, a less powerful version of the same spell, called force-of-light, came flying at him. One knocked him out of the way of the other. Firing or being hit were the only real ways to change trajectory once in the air. The knock was painful, but now Hunter was moving too fast for them to target him.

  He, however, was not thrown much. He fired again, green again, and hit one guard in the knee. The man cried out in pain as his knee folded the wrong way and he fell to the ground. The guard on the left had inhaled the contents of a healing vial and was back on his feet. But the trajectory of Hunter’s flight had brought him right over the man, and he landed, bringing the butt of his gun down on the man’s head. He collapsed again.

  The right-hand guard charged towards him, firing red bolt after red bolt, shouting the words at the top of his lungs. How they ever got employed when all they seemed to know was this one, low-level bit of offensive sorcery was beyond Hunter. Surely they must have some other tricks. It wouldn’t be any fun for him if they didn’t. He ducked to the ground as the bolts slammed repeatedly into the wall behind it, breaking the plaster away. It flew off in shards. Hunter muttered a word, and the ground under his aim became slick. The guard couldn’t stop, slipped forward from his own momentum, and barreled towards Hunter.

  Hunter moved out of the way by the time the man arrived and slammed into his unconscious partner. He was just raising his Focus when Hunter’s heel slammed into his head and he lay still. The other guard lay pitifully on the ground, fumbling with stopper of a vial of smoke.

  Hunter crossed his arms and waited for the man to get to his feet before rendering him unconscious.

  Guards dispensed with, Hunter went back to the closed door. Within was Suerte’s office. He walked up to the desk. One hand on his arquebus, he held the other, palm out, towards the desk. He spoke several words in an ancient north African language, and grains of red sand flew from his hand, slowly building the image of a desert building. It had existed here in the city, many years ago, from the days before Rome was even founded. It didn’t exist anymore. Suerte knew why. One part of the miniature building was a round tower. Hunter drew a dagger from his boot and sliced into his wrist, letting the blood pool in the top, forming a small round well, before inhaling healing smoke to stop the bleeding. He grinned darkly at his little message and left quietly.

  Voice

  The new interior of Mary’s barn was coming along well. There was no news on the artifact front, and it was generally concluded that everyone could use another project to focus on. Mme. Rumella had dragged Benny along to help them. The loft was transformed. Benny had summoned a stove and brick oven and ice box. Mme. Rumella summoned a butcher’s block island and all manner of copper pots and a dazzling assortment of knives and other shiny, kitchen-related things, though Mary protested that she wasn’t so a good a cook as to need all that.

  “Mary dear, I will come over and put it all to good use if you don’t. You do, after all, need to have a nice house warming party.”

  “I suppose,” Mary said, sounding not at all sure

  “Of course you do,” said Mme. Rumella, settling the matter

  “At the very least, I would feel better if we did it after this whole...whatever it is that’s going in has stopped going on,” Mary said, brow furrowed. Mary was very rarely worried.

  Benny was in the sitting area, cycling through chairs. The great thing about sorcery was that almost anything could be summoned, providing it existed. The drawbacks were of course that unless you knew how to prevent it, all your things kept disappearing. Secondly, unless you pictured a specific object in a specific location, a random object of indeterminate quality would be summoned

  “Ugly...Ugly...Ugly...” Benny said, each time a chair appeared in his midst. He tapped his Focus against an end table and the chair was dispelled and replaced by a new one. “D’you like plaid?” Benny called to Mary, who gave him an evil look. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and summoned a new chair. “How ‘bout a chaise lounge?”

  “A what?” Mary asked.

  “One of these things,” he said, indicating the suede-upholstered item

  Mary regarded the furniture with some suspicion. “Interesting,” was her only comment. She walked over and sat down, leaning against the large back pillow. “Oh,” she said. “Keep this. Definitely keep this.”

  “Alright. You still need a sofa though. Maybe we can find a matching set.”

  “Not terribly likely, nephew.”

  Benny shrugged. “I’ll just look for something that goes then. I mean, it shouldn’t be too hard, the whole room is brown.”

  Mary didn’t open her eyes or move from her position as she informed him, “I like brown.”

  “Yeah, I could tell.”

  Mme. Rumella busied herself arranging the assortment of candles she had brought with her. She placed a few on the conjured hearth. “Do you think there should be a partial wall separating the kitchen?”

  Mary mumbled something unintelligible that yet conveyed how much she failed to care. Mme. Rumella frowned, swapped two candles round and went to sit on the sofa.

  “Keep this one,” she told Benny

  “But look at the color, it’s a like the horrible child of a giant lemon and a putrid lobster.”

  “I agree. It borders on tragic, but I like the style. We can cover it with something nice.”

  “If you say so,” Benny said, and set to work on a coffee table

  Mary had a question on her mind. Her body was too busy melting into the chaise to want to do anything about it, but through some great effort, she forced her lips to move. “Have you seen the Crusader recently?”

  “No. He must have worked his way away from the shop, that or he’s actually searching instead of just hassling people,” Mme. Rumella replied. “I wish he were around though. It’s easy to feel safe when you’ve got a seven foot suit of armor at your side.”

  “I saw him. What on earth is that?” Benny asked of a plastic table that had appeared.

  Mary opened one eye to look. “I don’t know, and I’d wager that if you asked, you wouldn’t find out. No-one would admit to making it. Now get it out of my sitting room please.”

  “When did you see him?” Mme. Rumella inquired over the small pop of air filling the space where the coffee table had been.

  “Er... Last night. I wanted to see what you were talking about.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I flew. It’s not difficult to spot him from the air, you know.”

  “I see,” said Mme. Rumella. Benny was very fond of flying. And she knew that he was very good at it. It was still dangerous. A strong gust could knock a person any which way, and in this patchwork world, wind conditions were never consistent. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Oh yeah! Very interesting bloke. I told him I was your nephew. He seems to be very fond of you, you know.”

  “How... nice,” said Mme. Rumella, more confused than anything.

  “Anyways, he told me that he had been looking a lot more places, like this stretch of desert somewhere in the outer city, and the University. Lucky we’re on break, or he would have caused mass havoc, eh?” Benny asked with an evil grin.

  “You’re incorrigible,” said Mme. Rumella.

  Mary couldn’t help but smile. “You know,” she said, “I could swear I saw him when I was returning that cattle spirit thing the other day, only for a second out the corner of my eye.”

  “Near Jericho again?”

  “On the way,” Mary said absently. “I am in love with this chair. Have we done the safeguard yet?”

  “Actually, we haven’t done any. I fear we should get to it before anything happens.”

  “I agree,” Mary mumbled.

  “She’s gone to sleep, hasn’t she?” Benny asked.

  “So it would appear,” Mme. Rumella responded. “Come Benny, I’ll show you some safeguards.”

  “I’m taking safeguards 101 next
term, actually,” Benny remarked

  “Now you’ll be ahead of the class. The first thing we’re doing is placing an anti-summoning safeguard. We’ll be doing the blanket spell, so nothing from inside the building can be summoned from anywhere outside or within. Levitation is still possible, of course.”

  “Right.”

  “Come.” Mme. Rumella crossed the loft back to the kitchen area, so they wouldn’t disturb Mary. “This will come in very handy when you have your own place,” she told Benny. “I’ll be doing the spell, but you can mimic me. Place one hand on the wall. Now, take your Focus, and place it to the wall as well.”

  Mme. Rumella placed the tip of her wand to the wall, as did Benny. “I wish I had a Focus like Mary’s. It’s way better than a silly old wand,” Benny lamented.

  “All in good time, nephew. Now, concentrate. You must picture the entire space in your mind.”

  “Alright,” said Benny, squeezing his eyes shut. “Now what?”

  “This is one of the oldest sorceries,” Mme. Rumella explained. “I’m not even sure what language the incantation is in. I’m going to sound it out once slowly before I do the actual casting so you can follow along, alright?”

  Mme. Rumella slowly sounded out the syllables, and had Benny repeat before saying them at normal speed. There was a sound like stone dropping to the bottom of a dry well.

  “Is that all?” Benny asked.

  Mme. Rumella nodded. She also set some basic defenses against burglars and the like, though in truth, as she explained to Benny, any thief worth her salt would be through them fairly quickly. They left Mary asleep on her chaise and returned to the tea shop.

  * * * *

  Mme. Rumella was up early the next morning, as usual, preparing her fresh baked good for sale as Benny made the most of his vacation by sleeping till noon

  It was a busy morning. Mr. Markab came in, as ever asking for a medium earl gray, no milk, no sugar. A score of unknowns showed up, along with Tina Virtue, Mary and Jason Oblivion. Mme. Rumella ran this way and that fixing drinks and serving up food.