Chris Willrich

by [ss] Eyetooth (html)

  Bone said, “So that, there, is exactly the sort of thing that works in Loomsberg but not anywhere else.”

  “How can they export anything, then?” Gaunt said, looking back at Richard Thomas weaving his way toward Ellen’s Inn.

  “Well, there are degrees. A simple gadget, like a spring-operated knife that looks like a wedge of cheese, might work a full year before the ire of magic breaks it. And a knife cheese is a good investment.”

  She smirked. “Certain you don’t mean a cheese knife?”

  “Heavens, no! You’d use one for a surprise gorgon and another for a surprise gorgonzola. Anyway, beyond the gadgets, Loomsberg is a good source for any fine craftsmanship. Things are expensive, but for the right buyer it’s all worth it.”

  It did seem to Gaunt that the town was brimming with artisans. They passed the signs of glassblowers, metalworkers, shoemakers, and many, many clothmakers. There were not so many haberdashers, but Gaunt spotted one or two and had an unaccustomed desire to stop and try things on, assuming they had something in black. But, she cautioned herself, she and Bone had been hunted. “And your contacts? What do they sell?”

  “Knowledge. Ah, here are the Bridges of Bright Surprise.”

  They were a surprise indeed, and Gaunt gaped as they ascended fifty feet above the mists to stand at the sun-washed convergence of two spindly stone arches with a magnificent view of four waterfalls toppling into a misty gorge—a truly spectacular place to die, if the guards took a dislike to you. For there were two of them nodding gravely at the passers-by, a man and a woman armored in chain mail.

  “Good afternoon,” Bone said with a bow, but not too deep a bow. Guards the world over grow suspicious if strangers are over-friendly. “We seek the inhabitants of the observatory.”

  “You mean Sunspool and Moonwax, the astronomers?” the female guard asked. Like the inventor in the street, she was unusually light-skinned, perhaps from the far northern Bladed Isles, and bore a phalanx of copper freckles on each cheek, guarding sea green eyes above. Long, auburn hair streaked with sun-gold spilled from beneath her helmet. She gave the impression of strength disguised by a slender frame but obvious in her ready stance.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re astrologers, Marit,” her comrade said. He possessed searching and good-humored brown eyes upon a dark face, with a black beard that readily framed a laugh. There was a coiled strength to him, and Gaunt judged he’d be an agile and dangerous opponent. But looking at that focused gaze again she suspected his mind was his greatest weapon.

  “Regardless, Subrata,” said the woman Marit, “both sorts use the observatory. It’s over yonder in the Otherfolk quarter.” She pointed toward the west, where a great rocky outcropping, riddled with caves and bristling with buildings, rose like an island from golden mists.

  Gaunt and Bone thanked them and left them to what sounded like an ongoing, open-ended debate. Sound carried well up here, and the dispute followed them down. Gaunt wasn’t sure who was playing devil’s advocate to whom.

  “In a world where magic exists,” Subrata was saying, “astrology is surely necessary.”

  “In a world where most beings lack magic,” Marit replied, “it’s surely best to focus on reproducible results. Hence, astronomy.”

  “Ah, but astrology is somewhat reproducible too, in a world of magic. As the celestial bodies are, in many cases, powerful beings themselves. Astrology thus becomes a form of psychology. One can predict astrological effects as readily as one can predict human behavior.”

  “You mean,” Marit said, “not at all?”

  “You are too pessimistic,” Subrata said. “I know people and I know they are potentially predictable.”

  “Well, I know people, and I know they are beyond predicting.”

  “I knew you’d say that—”

  The voices seemed lost in fog. Gaunt and Bone stepped onto to the island-like rock. It was filled with crystal-windowed rocky dwellings, iron-braced wooden huts with smokepipes, and high caves teasing out mist like ghostly carpets. Though they’d seen non-humans elsewhere in the bustling town, here things were quieter. Furtive shadows swept from the paths ahead of them and vanished through creaking doors, into fissures, down holes. “This seems such a welcoming city,” Gaunt said, not sure why she was whispering. “Why is there a separate quarter for non-humans?”

  “I have to admit, the question had not occurred to me. Perhaps they prefer to keep to their own kind?”

  “But all non-human sapients are not one kind, surely?”

  He had no answer.

  They had to cross two more bridges over deep gashes to get to the north end of the great rock, and here things were livelier. Foot traffic was brisk, and along the way a one-headed, three-eyed goblin grilled rats and crows and lizards, for sale with bags of vinegar-covered popped corn. A two-headed, two-eyed goblin sang the praises of trollish furniture movers, each voice aimed in a different direction. Down a shadowed, webbed fissure beside the road an eight-legged Oldspinner wove while you waited. Gaunt shuddered, even though she coveted a scarf. Then they were at the observatory.

  Gaunt studied the place as Bone knocked on the door. On first examination it seemed a pile of boulders with a roof of thatch and a dome of twisted trunks bound with twine, the great brass telescope emerging with three ill-omened bends in the metal, and you might, she thought, be tricked into thinking the whole thing had been blown together by a unusually crafty hurricane.

  The door opened a crack.

  “We are not buying,” a sonorous voice intoned, a golden eye shimmering in the shadows of the crack, “any candles, contraptions, indulgences, prototypes, lottery chance tickets, relics, prophecies, omens, baked goods, campaign dinners, pyramid schemes, love potions, pincushions of vengeance, exotic birds, monkey’s paws, hands of glory, seeds of the infinity vine, or tomatoes.”

  “It is not any of those things,” Bone said.

  “Moonwax!” the sonorous voice called out. “Bring the list! We must add something!”

  “Don’t you recognize me, Sunspool? It’s Imago Bone, the great... finder-of-things-that-have-overly-possessive-current-curators. Do you not remember the incident of the Button Men and the Pattern Card of Doom?”

  “That was you? I thought it was Master Sidewinder.”

  “My master is dead these seventy-three years.”

  “All you Eldshorens blend together.”

  Bone coughed. “I am from the Contrariwise Coast, and my master was Palmarian born and raised.”

  “If you live anywhere west of the Ruby Waste, and you’re human, you’re an Eldshoren to me.”

  “You are not human?” said Gaunt. “You sound...”

  The door opened wide. The person addressing them was willowy and yellow-haired, tresses hanging long and swishing in the breeze. Her tunic was plain and grey, and she might have seemed drab, yet strange luminescence flowed beneath her translucent skin like sunlight caught upon waves. This red glow moved within her blood in indifference to the flow; it flickered and twisted, split and recombined, and where it went, the woman’s bones were visible beneath the skin.

  “My people come from the opposite face of what you sometimes call the Earthe,” she said. “A disaster I will not speak of drove us through peculiar places of the underworld, until we emerged beneath these strange skies. We migrated far and wide and our clans became distinct. You might meet others of our kind far away and not know us as kin. But we will always know each other.”

  “You are delven,” Gaunt said.

  “Delven is what you usually call us, when you are not afraid.”

  Another delven approached: a short, wizened male in greens and browns embroidered with intricate golden knotwork. Spectacled eyes peered forth beneath a white wool cap marked with the sign of an almost but not quite perfect circle. The man’s skin was far more wrinkled than Sunspool’s and was harder to see through, but at times silvery light could be perceived in his veins.

  He bore an unravelling scroll, which he t
ossed aside. “Ah! The poet and thief with the best potential for a happy ending in three centuries. Enter, Gaunt and Bone.”

  Sunspool stepped aside, making a sweeping gesture with fingertips glowing red.

  They traversed a small hallway, passing a bulky clock with narrow hourglasses for hands and a hanging celestial hemisphere, the stars of which were red-inked with comments like Not There Anymore and Purple Now and Hatched.

  They entered a circular space littered with precious-looking almanacs and star charts, some open to uncanny solar systems whose worlds had exotic shapes like cubes or prisms rather than mundane discs. There was also folded laundry. These obscured a great floor-mosaic portraying the constellations of the nearer skies. The vast brass telescope was molded with niches for weird idols with various candle-covered arms, tentacles, pincers, and antennae pointing heavenward. The green flames fluttered in a direction disinclined to match the breeze.

  A six-foot-diameter crystal disc sat upon a circular table opposite the hallway. Coasters were scattered upon it, along with a potted cactus. Sunspool and Moonwax arranged four chairs, bade the travelers sit, and wordlessly withdrew to alcoves in the dome. Sunspool returned bearing a thick dusty tome with gilt edges, whose cover nearly overflowed with arcane diagrams and the words Nominus Umbra. Moonwax returned with a tea set and bags marked Iniqua Tea, Perspikassa Tea, Kalamma Tea, Serendib Tea, and many others.

  “Yes, please,” Gaunt said to Moonwax’s questioning look, “tea would be lovely. Could you recommend one? I have never heard of these places...”

  “Ah, yes,” Moonwax said. “The metacosm brims with methods of flavoring hot water. You can find any variety you can envision out there. For our purposes I would recommend the tea from Alakra, transported by starwhals.”

  “Starwhals?” Bone repeated.

  “Metacosm?” Gaunt asked.

  “Husband,” Sunspool said, “in this conversational labyrinth there are too many side passages to count. Best drink the tea and discuss the key.”

  “You know about Eyetooth, then,” Bone said.

  “You were wise to come,” Moonwax said, pouring. “It almost makes up for your rashness in trusting the skull.”

  “What don’t you two know about?” Gaunt wondered aloud.

  “Almost everything,” Sunspool said with a fleeting smile. “Behold Starfang Mountain.” And she waved delicate fingers dancing with light over the table’s lens-like surface. It shone with a milky illumination. Mist rose from it as though from an icy pond in the morning sun; like the green candleflames, it billowed in a direction out of synchronization with the breeze.

  Suddenly the glass blazed, revealing a field of crystal shining in sunlight, and embedded within was a vast block of black metal. As their eyes adjusted to the light, they saw the seven dispersed keyholes in its face.

  Gaunt whispered, “The Logos Lock?”

  “Yes,” Sunspool said.

  A minute passed as Sunspool studied the scene. Moonwax coughed and smiled. “I will consult the Nominus Umbra of the mad mage Lynnistarec.” He slid the book over to himself. “I translate from Middle Roil. ‘the Angels of the Dawn were first of the Creator‘s children. Implicit in the fabric of the cosmos, their imaginings gave structure to matter. Thus their power was terrifying. Their minds had to bend toward justice, or else the cosmos would become a hell. They lacked that grace given mortals, whose thoughts need not become true.‘”

  “What does this have to do with the Lock?” Bone asked.

  “Beyond it moans the First Prisoner, second-ranked among the Dawn Angels. Greatest was the First Exile, you see, who struggled with the Creator. The Exile wanted a cosmos founded on a hierarchy of merit, and maddeningly the Creator introduced the idea of luck that could thwart merit and break down hierarchy, even the hierarchy of skill. The Creator almost lost that fight, though in many quarters it’s blasphemous to say that. The First Exile was cast far into the dark, where it growls and gnashes infinitely sharp teeth and awaits its time.”

  “And the First Prisoner?” Gaunt asked.

  “The First Prisoner did not contest the idea of luck per se. But it did wish to soften raw luck into probability and asked that it might tidy up the cosmos and tighten natural laws here and there, so that in the dance of grit and probability, mortals who strove with all their might stood a good chance of success in life, though never a guarantee.”

  Bone said, “And the Creator locked it up for its trouble?”

  “No,” Moonwax said. “It was all the other angels.”

  “What?” Gaunt asked.

  Sunspool flicked a shimmering finger. Now the lens of the table seemed to fill with snow. Amid titanic mountains flew a fur-shrouded, dark-skinned woman upon a grey beast with bat-like wings and a sharp-angled head.

  “Perhaps we will let these women explain.” After such a long pause, Sunspool’s sonorous voice was startling as a gong.

  When the Olitiau screeched, Eshe of the Whispering Hunt raised a spyglass, a thing of brass and teak with ivory images of cheetahs racing from objective to focus. Against the grey-white mass of Starfang Mountain, she just managed to spot the white raven’s approach.

  She took a deep breath. The air was already thin. She compensated with a rubber breathing mask designed by her people’s artificers, connected by a tube, also of rubber, leading to a pack stuffed with a plant brimming with natural air sacs. It could help her stay conscious during ascent. Or battle.

  As if it knew it was being watched, the raven winged to a large cliff upon a spur of Starfang.

  Eshe landed and dismounted. She donned a pair of gloves that held poison vials in the fingers suitable for delven, goblins, and humans, and one in the thumbs that might suffice for a troll, a yeti, an Oldspinner, or a small dragon. The pinkies held alchemical preparations designed for sorcerers of any breed.

  Eshe carefully approached the raven through the snow, calling out in the tongue known as Roil, “Do I address an agent of the House of Vorre?”

  “Power!” croaked the raven, its caw cutting through delirious-sounding whispers of alpine winds careening along twisted stone.

  A human voice emerged, vibrating through the metal of a tiny charm upon the bird’s neck. “You Kpalamaa people are always courteous. The courtesy of people who believe they hold all the cards. Let us not be coy, champion. Do you side with magic or science?”

  “Magic. And you?”

  “You must ask?”

  Eshe shrugged. “The Vorres are known to be contrary. One must never assume.”

  “You are right of course. But I declare for magic. I am surprised your people would. You value rationality so highly.”

  Eshe said nothing of her own opinions. “We are not averse to magic at all. But the great kingdoms that came together as the Kpalamaa Federation each have their own forms of magic, and each kingdom is jealous of its powers. The framers of our constitution mandated that we make no law establishing an official form of magic. Naturally, science beckons—”

  “And I thought they lectured overmuch at the Old School! I take it you are no wizard?”

  “I am a mere bureaucrat. You, now, are either a wizard or this crow is a very good ventriloquist.”

  “Power!” the raven repeated, and the voice from the charm said, “I lack false modesty, mere bureaucrat. I am Archmage Sarcopia. And I find it hard to believe you yourself are without magic, up here.”

  Eshe shrugged. “Our doubts or beliefs do not change the world, archmage.”

  “Much may change, if the First Prisoner is unleashed. Have you a name, mere bureaucrat?”

  Eshe looked around her at seeming oceans of dark rock spattered with glaciers like small white continents. “Snowheart,” she suggested.

  “Fair enough. It may be a cold business. I prefer you to lead, Snowheart.”

  “As you wish.”

  “I do wish it,” said Sarcopia as Eshe remounted the Olitiau and the raven took wing. “For as archmage, magic is mine to protect, and today I take no
chances.”

  The snowy vision faded.

  “So,” Gaunt said, “angels locked up the First Prisoner because they feared the loss of magic?”

  Moonwax nodded. “But they could not kill their beloved sibling, and they lacked the power to exile it. Thus, the vault. But the concretization of their thoughts of a prison required the corollary of a key.”

  Sunspool said, “As a relic of angels, the key can touch all Creation. It was flung across the metacosm and has drifted among worlds. But it always finds its way back to this Earthe, tied as it is to the Lock. Many have claimed the key in order to use its strange properties, but never to release the First Prisoner. It was the Vuuhrr who added a handle and named it Eyetooth.”

  Bone patted Eyetooth in his pocket. But gently.

  “Imago Bone,” said Sunspool, “you have promised the First Wizard you’ll bear the key to the Logos Lock.”

  “Yes,” Bone said.

  “That’s more than I knew,” Gaunt said. “What First Wizard?”

  “That’s what my favorite talking skull called itself,” Bone mused. “Tooth by tooth it returns to me...”

  Sunspool said, “If you break this oath to the First Wizard, your blood will boil, your skin will seethe, your eyes will burst like roast tomatoes...”

  “Nevertheless,” Bone said, a little giddily, “I must only approach the Lock with the key, yes? No more is demanded of me?”

  “True,” Sunspool said.

  “Why, I’ll drop it there and run.”

  “We‘ll drop it there and run,” Gaunt said.

  “Consider!” Moonwax said. “Self-aggrandizing sorcerers are converging at the Lock. They will fight over the key. The crystal summit will shine red with blood.”

  “Does nothing about that image warm your heart?” Bone asked.