Pathfinder Tales- Lord of Runes

by Dave Gross

Radovan

  On the street outside Upslope House, I climbed up the back of the Red Carriage. On the other side, Janneke checked the harnesses on the team before nodding to the hostler who’d brought them around. The big bays looked fit and well rested. They hated me, but I couldn’t hate them back. They’d saved our lives too many times for me to hold a grudge.

  I double-checked the supplies we’d secured along the edges of the roof. We kept most in the boot to balance the weight, but I left some on top to keep the surprise a surprise.

  The boss stepped out of the guest house, Arni following at his heels. The boss was filling out at last. We’d both got mighty thin on the way over from Sarkoris, but he was going to need a visit to the tailor if he didn’t cut back on the pastries. He looked left and right before calling up to me. “Any sign of Lady Illyria?”

  “She’s gonna be mad we didn’t wait.”

  “Are you saying that you trust her to accompany us?”

  He looked serious. It wasn’t one of those rhetorical questions. He really wanted an answer. “I like her all right. I don’t know I trust her. You know, on account of ‘necromancer.’ But that don’t seem to bother you so much.”

  “I am more concerned that she may be presenting us with a façade.” He paused. “A façade is a false front.”

  “I know what a façade is.”

  “Before you interrupted us, she made a sudden overture of affection.”

  “So you don’t trust her on account of she likes you.”

  “Appears to like me.”

  “Maybe she does. No accounting for taste. You like her?”

  “She is…” He furrowed his brow, and I figured the word got away from him.

  “Oh, you got it bad, boss.”

  With one last glare at me, he got inside and slammed the door.

  “All secure back there?” Janneke had set the pack with all her fancy ammo on the seat beside her, her plumed helmet on top of that. It made her look like she was riding beside a dwarf. I looked around just to make sure none were creeping up on us.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s go.”

  She cracked the reins and got the horses moving. Right away I could tell she was good with them.

  Janneke drove us around the Heights and up toward North Point. Much as I enjoyed the scenery, I gave the scorpion another once-over.

  About halfway through our stint in Sarkoris, the boss got tired of being the only one who could bring down a flying demon. It didn’t matter I could perforate ’em with a crossbow. He needed me to drag them all the way down, where me and the big knife could do our thing while he frosted the rest with his sorcery and riffle scrolls.

  To do that, he called in a favor with an old military buddy. That guy got his siege engineer to rig something special for the carriage. He put it on a folding steel base, so we could travel with it low to the roof and pop it back up as needed. Mostly we kept it down, because when it was up it threw off the balance. Still, you wanted it to pop up when you needed it.

  They call it a scorpion, but it’s really a giant crossbow that fires steel bolts that look more like whale harpoons. Some were rigged so the razor-sharp heads snapped open like backward bear traps, making the hole ten times bigger. Demons can shrug off a lot—lightning, fire, poison, all kinds of stuff—but no matter whether you’re from Cheliax, Hell, or the Abyss, big holes in the chest cavity pose a problem.

  So we put ’em in them.

  “What’ve you got back there?” Janneke strained to look back at me. The carriage started drifting over to a cart of roasted hens.

  “Keep your eye on the street.”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It is if you think it’s a scorpion.”

  “I want to see.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Why don’t you drive while I look it over? I’m good with crossbows.”

  “Sweetheart, you do not want me in that driver’s seat. More important, the horses don’t want me there.”

  “I don’t want you calling me that while we’re on the job.”

  “What, ‘sweetheart’?”

  “That’s right. Knock it off.”

  I muttered something that maybe ended in “sweetheart.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said ‘all right’! All right?”

  The boss knocked on the roof. Well, the ceiling. His ceiling, my roof. I leaned over the side and saw he’d opened the window.

  “Fetch a pair of those roast guinea hens.” He pointed at the cart Janneke was trying to pass.

  “Don’t you want three?” I figured Janneke deserved a snack.

  “Yes, make it three.”

  I hopped down, snagged three birds, leaving a bit more than their price, and ran back to the carriage. Each came with its own bit of waxed butcher’s paper to keep from burning your fingers. With three, I had to juggle a bit.

  Back up on the ladder, I passed one through the little window. The boss reached out and grabbed the second one.

  “Aren’t these for me and Janneke?”

  “You should have said you wanted one. You can run back if you like.”

  By the time I passed him the third, he was already sucking the flesh off a leg bone.

  Janneke drove past the statue of Montlarion Jeggare standing tall and portly in the middle of the circle. I didn’t see much family resemblance, but I muttered down at the boss. “You’ll look like him one day, you’re not careful what you eat.”

  “What?” said Janneke.

  “Nothing.”

  We rode along Northgate Avenue toward a big bridge. While I kept my eyes peeled for trouble, including Lady Illyria, I couldn’t help but admire the scenery. We passed a couple of big buildings sitting side by side. The first, with its scales of Abadar and spirals of Pharasma carved onto its façade—I know what façade means—looked like a prison. The word LONGACRE was chiseled into its face. Next to it was Korvosa’s City Hall, full of clerks in stupid-looking hats winding their way through white columns.

  I liked that the city buildings were still white, or near enough. Ever since House Thrune made their deal with Hell to take over the empire, they got their smudge on everything. In Korvosa, thieves and forgers didn’t get the rope. Here they hanged murderers, not pickpockets.

  I could get used to a place like that.

  We were just about to reach the bridge when an indigo-colored horse dashed out from St. Alika Way and blocked our path.

  “That lady sure likes purple,” I said.

  Lady Illyria sat high in the saddle. Even at a distance I could see the heat in her eyes. I liked her jacket and her leather pants, each a different shade of purple. Her black boots laced all the way up to disappear under her jerkin’s skirt.

  I rapped the warning knock on the carriage roof. The window opened, and I said, “Hey, boss.”

  “I know.” I could hear he was talking with his mouth full. For a second it sounded like he was tidying up, and then the window slammed shut again.

  As we came close to Illyria and the bridge, I figured it was time for a diversion. I cupped my hand to my mouth and shouted, “I like your phony pony!”

  She tried to keep on her mad face, but she couldn’t help cracking a smile. “It’s a horse!”

  “I know,” I shouted back. “But horse doesn’t rhyme with ‘phony.’”

  She rode up alongside the carriage. The way she peered down her nose at the carriage window, I guessed the boss had drawn the curtains. I’d seen that man take down half a dozen demons while crusaders healed themselves to get back into the fray, but his courage didn’t always extend to the ladies.

  “I take it you’ve seen Count Jeggare conjure a magical steed?” Illyria said.

  “Plenty of times. I can do it myself.”

  “You?” If she sounded any more surprised, I was gonna get my feelings hurt.

  “Sure.” I plucked a riffle scroll out of a sleeve pocket and showed it to her. “You play your cards right, I’ll show you s
ometime.”

  “You play your cards right, I might let you.”

  “Why don’t you try calling her ‘sweetheart’?” Janneke called back to me, not quite loud enough for Illyria to hear. “That’d be interesting.”

  Looking around for something to throw, I found an oilskin rain cape tucked between a couple of the boss’s bags. I don’t know why we’d held onto it. It smelled of bear fat, and I didn’t like remembering what happened to the big Kellid who used to wear it. Anyway, it kept off the rain, and it gave me an idea. I threw it at Janneke. “Put that on.”

  “It’s not cold.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not exactly inconspicuous in that getup. You said the Sczarni ran you off last time you visited this Thief Camp?”

  “Yeah. All right. I get the idea.” She sniffed the cape, winced, and put it on anyway. With her helm off, she didn’t stand out so much.

  Down below, the carriage window opened again. The boss said, “What a swift transformation from your previous attire.”

  “Swifter than you’d like, was it?”

  “I simply meant you had plenty of time. There was no need to rush.”

  “You promised to meet me at Jeggare Square!”

  “Did I? I thought you wanted to meet at Thief Camp.”

  “You know perfectly well what I said.”

  “It is possible that in the excitement of Janneke’s report I misheard you.”

  I’d heard this conversation a thousand times before, just not from the boss. Something told me it wasn’t going to end well for him. I wanted to climb up front to join Janneke, but I’d just spook the horses.

  Instead, I lowered the scorpion and locked it down. The top of the bow barely peeked over the luggage we’d stored around the roof’s edges. I settled down on a footlocker and enjoyed the evening sun sparkling on the Jeggare River for a while. Eventually, the carriage door opened again. I peeked over the side and didn’t see Illyria’s phantom mount, so she must have gone inside.

  On the other side of the bridge, a couple little villages hugged the river just outside the gates. They had their own docks and plenty of nets to keep up appearances, but I’d bet there was more smuggling than fishing going on. In the one closer to the city walls, a caravan had started forming. Some of the wagons were still empty, and none were hitched to horses. Looked like Janneke’s information was good, and they weren’t leaving anytime soon. Besides, the sun was sinking into the ocean on the other side of the city. We didn’t have much light left.

  I rolled off the roof to hang onto the back ladder. The boss opened up the little window. On the other side of his map table, Illyria looked at him over a wine goblet. Judging from her narrow eyes, he had some more apologizing to do.

  I said, “So I’m hiring guards for a trip to…? Where’s a good place to go in Varisia?”

  “Janderhoff.”

  I gave him a dirtier look than Illyria to see if he was yanking my chain. He was. “Very funny.”

  “Say we travel to Baslwief to look at horses.”

  “Got it.”

  “Come back as soon as you find a lead on this Zoran. If he is here, give me a sign. Do not try to take him on your own.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  So I hopped off the carriage and sauntered into this place they called Thief Camp. The smell of stewed mushrooms with garlic was the first thing to hit me. I got a taste for that stuff in Ustalav, so I followed my nose.

  “Sweet mead!” A man waved a wooden tankard at me and started filling it from a little keg on his table.

  I waved him off. “I don’t like the sweet stuff.”

  He started filling the same tankard from the other keg. “Dry mead!”

  “No thanks.”

  I passed a couple of bare-chested Shoanti squaring off in a ring of wooden spikes. The Varisian bookmaker waved me over, but I shook my head. Everyone else watching the match looked local, and I wasn’t here to be an easy mark.

  The waterfront tavern smelled more of fish than beer. I peeked inside but didn’t see our gal. Or guy. Janneke had me second-guessing myself. I’d seen this Zora or Zoran use magic. I guess a spell could have fooled me, but I didn’t like to admit it.

  Next door was a shop full of woven blankets and rugs. I made a show of looking them over while scanning the local traffic, especially anyone who looked in a hurry. Most of the people outside the city were Varisian or Shoanti. Some looked tough or shady, but most looked to be shopping or doing more or less legitimate business. I bought a couple blankets and moved along.

  An old woman with a face like a dried apple ladled me up a bowl of mushrooms from an iron cauldron. I ate while her fossilized husband caught me up on local events. Someone’s boy had been sent up to Longacre. A local girl got married the day before, but only after her groom managed to beat his rival unconscious. I said I was looking to hire guards. The woman told me to avoid the Shoanti wrestlers, who were both drunks. I asked who was worth hiring. The man and woman both shrugged. I wiped the bowl clean with a hunk of bread, which I munched while walking away.

  A hunched woman carried a couple of bags on a stick across her shoulder. I couldn’t see her face under her big scarf, so I pretended to find a coin in the dirt and peeked up to see her lumpy face. If it was a disguise, it fooled me. She was headed toward the boss, anyway, so if she was under an illusion, the boss would spot her with his sword.

  Thunk! A gang of Varisian teenagers took turns standing against a couple of thick boards. The game was to throw a knife as close as possible to the other guy, who wasn’t supposed to flinch. Then you took the knife and threw it back. There were a lot of ways to lose.

  Beside them was a fortune-teller’s wagon. The stars and butterflies painted on the side stirred up memories of Ustalav.

  They also gave me an idea. There was nobody outside, so I went to knock on the round door. Before I could touch wood, it opened. Out stepped a man skinny enough to crawl through a keyhole. On the tattooed top of his head, the sun cradled a crescent moon. Trinkets rattled in his white hair and tobacco-stained beard.

  “Welcome, seeker. May Desna smile on you.”

  “What do you know? I feel lucky already.”

  “Shall I cast a harrowing for your journey?”

  “Not that lucky.” I peered into his wagon. It was a market stall in there, the curved walls filled with gimcracks and gewgaws. “I’m looking for my own deck.”

  He brightened and turned toward the wagon. “I have three different styles.”

  “I mean a particular deck. Maybe somebody sold you one a little while ago.”

  He scrunched his nose like he smelled a fart. “I never buy used decks.”

  “Not even a special one? Old-fashioned backs, Ustalavic?”

  “Never. Once a harrower touches a deck, it becomes infused with his spirit. The lingering essence can skew a reading. That is in the best case.”

  “And in the worst?”

  “Haunting, curse, the evil eye. The perils are endless.”

  It was bad business to annoy fortune-tellers, even the fake ones, and I needed some goodwill. “All right, let’s see ’em.”

  He showed me his decks. One caught my eye.

  On the cards’ backs were blue swallowtails with Lady Luck’s eyes on their wings. The faces were a little different from what I was used to seeing. The Rabbit Prince looked more like a badger, the Queen Mother some kind of whale with tentacles and three eyes. The Dance showed a hellspawn and an angel strangling each other.

  “How much?”

  He named a price. I had the cash, but I didn’t want to insult him. I let my jaw drop and handed back the cards. “What? Do I look like the Rabbit Prince?”

  “Surely you are a prince among your people.” He took a look at my jacket and reconsidered. “But perhaps you have fallen on hard times.”

  We haggled for a minute, but my heart wasn’t in it. As I counted the coins into his palm, he looked disappointed in me.

  “My old friend Zora said to
say hello if I was ever in the area.”

  “I know of none by that name.” His gaze slipped over my shoulder, where I heard a heavy thunk as the boys threw another knife. “Someone at the tavern might know.”

  “Thanks.” I headed back to the tavern, but I glanced at the knife-throwing boys. There was no way short of magic any of them was Zora, but they saw me looking. They sneered back at me, chins out, nostrils flaring. I tipped them a wink to show I wasn’t scared. One wearing a vest over his bare chest raised a knife, making like to throw it at me. I stood still and didn’t flinch, making him look stupid. He squeeze off a fig at me. I shot him the tines. He threw the knife.

  If he’d thrown at my feet, I might have let it go. He threw for my head. I dipped low, caught his knife, and threw it back too fast for him to dodge. The point stuck in the board behind him, quivering an inch from his ear. He flinched, but his buddies didn’t laugh at him. Their eyes stuck to me as they showed me their knives.

  I pulled my “tail” and showed the boys the big knife. It was an ugly thing, scarred and blackened by demon ichor.

  “Think twice, boys.” Sometimes a look at the big knife could run ’em off.

  This wasn’t one of those times.

  The knife boys moved in, grinning. I had a feeling how come. The Shoanti wrestlers and some hard-faced Sczarni men drifted toward us. The fortune-teller tipped off the boys, I figured, but I missed the signal passing through the rest of Thief Camp.

  Waving the big knife to keep their attention, I slipped a riffle scroll into my hand and snapped it off. By the time the magic tickled my feet, I’d put the dead scroll in my pocket and was pulling out another.

  Four bobbing lights went up on the other side of camp. They bobbed through the air, following a fat bearded gent riding a dark horse. As I watched, the illusion melted away. The rider was the woman who’d robbed me.

  “Radovan,” the boss whispered in my ear, even though he was still far away. I looked over at the carriage to see him standing on the roof, his sword pointed at the rider while he pointed a finger to send his magic message to me. “We spotted her!”

  “Her! I knew it was ‘her’!”

  “Hurry back.”

  “I’m trying.”

  The knife boys spread out between me and the carriage. None of them looked too keen to get close, but a Shoanti bruiser ran at me, a couple of Sczarni covering each side. I snapped off the second riffle scroll. Bright magic flared in their faces, dazzling their eyes.