Flames Over Frosthelm

by Dave Dobson

  The amulet Novara wanted? That we’d taken from Stennis? He had to know. He was there. “You took it.” I nodded my head toward the swordsman. "With her. From the evidence chamber.”

  The wizard slapped me again, hard. It took me by surprise, as I had answered his question. He was amazingly strong. “Do you think me a fool?” he asked.

  I had caught on enough to realize I wasn’t supposed to answer that one. He hauled my head back up again, and said, slowly, coldly, “Where is the amulet?”

  I couldn’t think. But I had no other answer. “You took it.”

  He punched me in the jaw, twice, with each hand. Then, with a sideways sweep of his leg, he kicked my legs out from under me. I fell to my knees, the rope scraping and wrenching my wrists and arms as I fell. I hung there, my shoulders burning with pain, my arms held back and up at an unnatural angle. Blood and saliva dripped from my mouth, but I could not then muster the strength to close my lips to stop it, much less to get back on my feet.

  “Brand,” said Algor quietly. “Isn’t there a better way?"

  The wizard glared at Algor for a moment, but then he stood and straightened his robe. Then he leaned over me. “Don’t think you can resist me,” he said. "We have more refined methods to break your will. You do not even know what pain is yet. But you shall.”

  He turned to the swordswoman. “Gag him. Bring him to the temple in the morning, Tolla. They’ll be locked down now. It will be easier then. Don’t let him be seen when you take him.” Tolla nodded. “And post some guards – his partner may be about, or others. Wake me if there is trouble.”

  Tolla produced a strip of grimy cloth and wrapped it around my head twice, pulling it so tight between my teeth that it cut into my lips at my cheeks. Tolla. Tolla and Brand. I said the names over and over in my head to be sure to remember. Futile, perhaps, but if I ever regained my freedom, I’d have some small thing to show for my cuts and bruises.

  The wizard, Brand, came back over to me. I struggled to raise my head, and then, with the last bit of strength and will I could muster, I looked him straight in the eye. I could not see him too clearly through my bleary eyes, but it was at least a moment of resistance. It had no discernible effect on Brand, but it gave me some small comfort. He grabbed my chin and squeezed it painfully. “Do not think you can stop us. We’ll get our artifacts back. We nearly control your foolish guild. You’ll rue the day you crossed us." He released my chin, and his eyes took on such a fierceness that I almost shrank back. “Faera will rise. You cannot fight our destiny.” He left the room, and the others followed.

  Fight our destiny, I thought. I had to get my arms to a less painful position, but I was weary and addled from the short but brutally efficient beating I’d received. Fight our destiny. As I struggled to get my legs to respond to my will, my mind filled with the pool’s vision of our destiny – Frosthelm burning, yellow flames dancing across the city’s rooftops.

  26

  The Frying Pan

  At some point in the night, shortly after they’d left, I’d lost consciousness there, leaning against the wall. Whether it was to sleep or from my injuries I did not know. I awoke to Tolla slapping my face sharply. When I responded, she untied me from the bar set in the wall and led me toward the door. Off to the temple, I guessed. Not a trip I wished to take. My mouth was dry and very sore, and one of my eyes had swollen nearly shut. My arms and legs ached with a thousand pains, and my hands and feet flared with swarms of needles now that I was released from the wall.

  “City guard! Open this door immediately!” The cry was muffled but audible. My heart leapt in my chest.

  Tolla shoved me to the floor, then moved, catlike, toward the front of the room. She opened the door a crack and peered out, I presumed toward the front of the building. I breathed in as much air as I could through my nose and yelled at the top of my lungs. The gag muffled most of my cry, but Tolla looked back at me and glared. She ran across the room to the other door. She opened it, revealing to me just a narrow view of the study beyond, and let out three quick, shrill, whistles. In a moment, I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs from above.

  I heard a booming thud from the front of the house. Were they assaulting the door? I hoped so. Another thud followed. Tolla slammed the door, then drew her sword. Was she going to fight them? The guard? Could Boog have summoned them when I failed to return?

  There was a strange silence, then. Both sides preparing for whatever was to come. Tolla’s breathing was the only sound, a controlled hiss as she crouched, listening. Finally, I heard a crunch – the door breaking in? – and then the clanking and pounding of metal-shod feet. Probably the guard. Their standard duty uniform included armored boots. I heard muffled cries and the clash of blades. Tolla moved silently to the door and opened it gently once more, a few inches. The sounds of combat came louder. I struggled to roll over to my back.

  Quickly, Tolla closed the door and latched it. The latch was wrought iron, set deep in a slot in the doorframe. It seemed dishearteningly well-crafted. There was a pounding at the door. “Guard here! Open this door now, in the name of the Prelate!”

  Tolla shifted her grip on her sword and turned smoothly to me. “It appears, Inspector, your time is shorter than I’d thought.” She grinned. "Count this as lucky, though – I’ll be far quicker and far less painful than the temple guards.” She crossed over to me and raised her blade to strike.

  Beaten and broken as I was, the threat of imminent perforation took precedence over my injuries. As Tolla stabbed downward, I twisted to avoid the blow. The blade pierced my tunic, and I could feel the cold steel next to my skin. Tolla hissed and raised her sword once more. As she sliced at my neck, I swept my leg across the floor, hooking her heel with my ankle. She fell back, catching himself with her left hand as I scrabbled away toward the door.

  She was back on her feet in an instant, and I was sure that whatever wellspring of luck I was drawing from had run dry. Her eyes flashed angrily. “Die!” she shouted, three quick steps bringing her within striking range once more.

  I sat on the floor, holding up one foot in a feeble attempt to block her attack. Time seemed to slow, and my senses fractured into distinct flashes of perception – her face with its cruel glaring eyes, her forehead glistening with sweat, her braid tossed upward as she moved. The muffled sounds of movement and struggle from elsewhere in the house, the cool damp of the stone floor against my bound hands, the gleam of her blade’s wicked tip poised above me as she considered where to strike and how to end my life. She and I stood on this precipice for one dreadful, desolate moment.

  A terrible, splintering crash from the door diverted both of us. A second such crash broke open the door, sending the latch and bits of the door frame clattering to the floor. Boog stumbled through, and Tolla took a step back. She swung once at me as Boog steadied himself, but her moment had fled. I squirmed away, and Boog brought his staff up between Tolla and me. Tolla paused for just an instant, and I could see the bloodlust in her eyes, but the pendulum had swung. There were two guards in the hall behind Boog, and Tolla no longer held any advantage. She feinted at Boog, and Boog took a step back to defend. Instead of pressing her attack, though, Tolla spun away and leapt feet-first through the window, knocking the heavy shutters aside. As Boog ran to the window after her, and the other guards rushed in, I heard her quick footsteps receding outside into the night.

  “Blood Mother,” Boog swore. “She’s gone. Our men are all on the other side.” He came back over to me and sat me up, his huge hands gentle. “Your plan doesn’t appear to have worked as intended," he said as he cut my bonds, pulled out the gag, and loosened the ropes from my wrists.

  Fire and needles shot up and down my arms as I brought them around to a natural position. “Right where I wanted them,” I gasped. My bravado rang hollow and false. After I regained some mastery over my numbed hands, I gingerly probed my swollen face. "Ow.”

  I struggled to get up, then thought better of it as the room danced
around me. My legs were no sturdier than boiled noodles. “Brand… the wizard… Algor……” I croaked.

  “We’re searching the house,” Boog replied. “But I think nobody's here but a few guards, and the one who just fled.” He placed a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Rest now. We’ll sort it out later.”

  The next hours swam by. Boog found a cushion for my head and a finely-knit blanket, and I lay on the cold stone floor, my injuries new and old stinging and throbbing by turn like the twisted melody of some cruel tavern minstrel. Guards came and went, along with a couple other inspectors, and Boog stopped by frequently. I think I slept at several times. I told more than one person what little I knew of my brief imprisonment, my captors, and their plans. The names I had struggled to remember, Tolla and Brand, I shared at every opportunity, along with descriptions. The face of each was etched into my memory.

  Eventually, Boog tucked an arm under my shoulders and knees and carried me out to a wagon, where he set inside on a bed of straw. Even with Boog’s care, I ached all over, but despite my physical distress, I remember feeling a sense of relief and righteousness. Now Sophie and the others would have to take us seriously. My capture and torment would demonstrate what our investigation had not, that the Faerans were real, malicious, and dangerous. My pain had bought something, at least, however high the price.

  I remember a couple of agonizing jolts on the ride back to headquarters, but consciousness and I had gone our separate ways well before I arrived back home.

  I awoke some time later. Sunlight caressed my cheek. I was tucked into a soft bed. I felt sore, but my pain was greatly diminished. I smelled good enough that someone must have washed me, likely better than I wash myself, even. I opened the eye Brand hadn’t smashed and then worked on the other. Finally, I got both open and cooperating. The infirmary glowed in the winter sun streaming through the salzglass window, and a small fire crackled in the nearby fireplace. On the small table by my bed, I saw a glass of milk with little bits of cream floating at the top and a dusky-brown loaf of fresh oat bread. I breathed deeply, ignoring the niggling aches, and let out a happy, contented sigh, glad to be both home and alive.

  As I basked in my deferred mortality, I heard a voice from behind my bed. “I think he’s awake, Inspector.” I recognized the stern voice of the healer. She didn't sound happy at all, and while I was quite familiar with her gruff bedside demeanor, there was a note of real displeasure there.

  “Thank you, Domina,” came the response. I struggled to rise, but I couldn’t move my right arm. As I wiggled, I realized it was stuck. Something circled my wrist. I craned my head around to see a set of leather straps binding my hand to an iron ring set in the bedpost. Fighting a surge of panic, given wings by my recent treatment at the hands of Brand, I rolled around to see a man in the scarlet uniform of the Guild approaching my bed. I didn’t recognize him, and I knew all the Inspectors in Frosthelm personally, most as friends. Could he be freshly arrived from the border? My mind raced.

  “Marten Mingenstern,” he said gravely. “You are under arrest, under order of the High Inquisitor, charged with murder."

  27

  The Fire

  I tossed my wooden spoon at the rat, nearly hitting it, but it skittered away into a narrow crack in the wall with a cheeky squeak. I bent to retrieve my spoon.

  “Bad form, Marty,” said Boog. “You’ll never catch up with that kind of performance.” He gestured to the seven dead rats propped up in a little row along the edge of his cell. I was reminded of the murals of the Seven Seers in the Temple of the Blood Mother in the center of Frosthelm, but I had to admit the parallel was somewhat tenuous.

  “It’s not fair,” I complained. “They're attracted to your natural odor.” He snorted.

  To be sure, neither of us smelled very good at the moment. A week in a cell, even one as well-maintained as the Guild’s, was hard both on one’s hygiene and one’s wardrobe, not to mention one’s spirits. I had never considered how boring imprisonment was, even when one’s fate and one’s life are at risk every day.

  We knew a good deal more now than I had in the infirmary, now a distant bittersweet memory. Denault and Gueran had been down to see us a few times and filled us in on what they knew, and we shared our recent findings with them when there were no eavesdroppers about. At other times, grueling questioning sessions gave us more details about our alleged crimes, even as we navigated their perils. My training in conducting an interrogation helped me when on the other end of the process, but I was still worn out, and I was beginning to doubt even some of the details I thought I remembered well.

  Any investigation answers questions – what, where, who, how, why. In the case of our supposed crimes, some were easier to answer than others. The answer to what was murder in cold blood. The answer to how was a poisoned blade, slid between the victim’s shoulders as she slept. That blade had been found, still bloody, in my quarters, and the jar of poison in Boog’s, implicating both of us. The poison was a rare Gortian one, not generally thought to be available in Frosthelm, although traffickers in deadly venom didn’t tend to advertise their wares.

  The answer to why was complicated. That’s why they had spent so much time questioning us, going over conflicting events, schedules, and motivations. In the end, though, it was irrelevant, because the High Inquisitor was convinced of our guilt. Or rather, he made a great show of being so convinced, even though he knew sure as the sun rises that we were innocent of the crime.

  Yes, I do mean he. Don’t for a moment think I impugn the honor of my mentor and teacher, Sophie Borchard. The answers to who and where had been the biggest shock. We were accused of murdering, in her own residence, the High Inquisitor of Frosthelm. Sophie Borchard was dead. She'd been stabbed in her bed late during the night Boog and I had followed Algor, sometime between the times of my capture and my rescue.

  Boog had related the truth regarding his evening’s pursuits, but he was unfortunately lacking in corroboration. The only witnesses he could draw on (other than me, but my testimony was, shall we say, discounted) were the apprentice we’d used to set up Algor at the Pampered Pig, long before Sophie’s death, and the Inspectors and city guard Boog had raised for my rescue, well after the supposed time of Sophie’s murder. After we parted company, he had followed the two Faerans across town, but they’d entered a tavern, gotten a meal, and gone to sleep in rented chambers. A useless venture, and even more unfortunate, there was nobody to confirm this. He’d been keeping a low profile and had spoken no more than a word or two to anyone during this time.

  As for me, one might think that being captured, beaten, tied to a wall, and discovered nearly dead upon rescue by the guard might offer some exoneration for a crime committed during that period, but that alibi turned out not to be as useful as I had hoped, given the circumstances. Apparently, I’d set it up, faked my injuries, arranged my seeming rescue, or some similar unlikely scenario.

  So, the answer to why remained - the question of our motivation. Those who guided the interrogation seemed to think that we had chafed under Sophie’s restrictions of our inquiries. I’m not sure whether they proposed we’d decided to kill her out of anger, or in order to pursue our obsession with the Faerans unimpeded, or for some other reason. Whoever had set all of this up placed some of Sophie’s valuable personal belongings in our quarters as well. That was just showing off, I think, but you can add our desperate poverty and avarice to the pile of reasons they gave for our crime.

  They even, in a flourish of spurious revisionism, tried to cite the damage to the Augur’s pool as intentional on our part, to prevent discovery of our crimes after the fact. The Augur herself shot this down. Of course, anybody clever enough to destroy the pool and set up an elaborate kidnap and torture ruse might also have been clever enough not to leave the murder weapon and stolen goods in his quarters. But, we weren’t even given that much credit, and in the end, we were either criminal geniuses or bumbling fools as the narrative required.

  If the ve
rdict is assumed, the tale bends to fit it. This bending, and our resulting headlong sprint towards guilt, was helped along by some of the new inspectors appointed by the new High Inquisitor. It was against long-standing custom to bring in appointees as inspectors. The Inquisitor’s Guild prides itself that any citizen who can survive the training can become an Inspector of full rank, regardless of background, but pride and adherence to custom were now in sorrowfully short supply.

  Even with the changes in staffing, one might also think that this whole supposed crime was so convoluted and so obviously contrived that a carefully-trained group of investigators such as the Inquisitor’s Guild might perhaps find the leaps in logic somewhat troubling, and begin quickly to suspect the truth and try to find not only the actual killers but also those who had falsely implicated me and Boog. And one could not be faulted for such thoughts, except for one small problem.

  That problem once again manifested itself, or shall I say himself, shortly after my ill-fated attempt at rat extermination. He came swirling down the stone stairs to the holding cells, his blood-red cloak billowing behind him, the ceremonial gold key and scales emblems of office jangling at his breast. Sophie had never been one for show. I think I’d seen her in full uniform perhaps five times, but our new leader held a rather different view of the gaudy trappings of his position.

  In the cell across from mine, I saw Boog’s face settle itself into a cold mask, his eyes blazing with hatred. I think he could be forgiven this affront to his nominal superior.

  “Gentlemen,” said the High Inquisitor, a faint smile playing about his lips.

  “Marron,” I replied.

  28

  A Puzzle

  “I trust you’re well?” he sneered.

  Boog turned away, folding his arms across his chest in mute defiance.

  “Marvelous,” I replied. “The gruel was particularly well-seasoned today, and they’ve just changed my straw and emptied my privy bucket.”