by Markus Heitz
“They didn’t find the necklace there so they think one of us has it,” Rodario said and nodded. “Hey, you blockheads!” he called out to the men, pretending to be holding something. “You want the necklace? Think again! Tell Nolik’s father we’re going to sell it. He can come to Mifurdania and buy it back.” One of the heavies was about to clamber onto the string of tethered boats, but Rodario moved up to the end of the landing stage. “Stop right there! If anyone follows us we’ll chuck the necklace into one of the canals and you can go diving for it.” A gesture from his leader stopped the man in his tracks. “Well done,” the actor praised him, taking Tassia’s hand and running off. “Stay where you are!” he warned and ran off round the corner with a laugh.
When they were passing under an awning formed by garments drying on a washing line, Tassia stopped. “Wait! Give me a leg up!”
Rodario did as she asked, and she placed one foot on his locked hands and wedged her other foot against the wall; sprightly, as if on solid ground, she filched a dark yellow dress from the line and jumped down again. Without taking any note of her surroundings she stripped off her wet clothing and slipped into the stolen garment; then she gave Rodario a passionate kiss, laughed and ran off.
“This wild creature will be the end of me or the making of me,” he grinned, hurrying after her.
Late in the afternoon they finally arrived at the forge where Lambus worked. Rodario wanted to thank him and to get a few more details about where Furgas might be.
The inner gate to the forge stood open. A fire burned in the furnace and two pieces of metal lay red-hot in the flames waiting to be worked on. They couldn’t see the blacksmith.
“Lambus, you old iron-basher,” called Rodario. “Are you here?” He stepped into the half light but before his eyes could adapt to the dark he tripped over something on the ground. “What the…?” He bent down and saw what had nearly made him fall: a young man’s outstretched legs. In the man’s side there was a gaping hole. Blood had spread over the floor. “Mind out, Tassia,” he warned the girl, who was hot on his heels. “There’s been a murder.”
“Perhaps one of the heavies sent by Nolik’s father?” She peered over his shoulder and went pale. She stepped back, retching, then turned and fled for the door to get fresh air.
Rodario studied the brutal wounds: the work of a very sharp ax. “I don’t think so. Those men didn’t have weapons that could make injuries like these.” Rodario got up and went over to look at the iron objects in the furnace. One of them could indeed have been an ax head. “Lambus?” he called out, taking a poker and moving slowly into the dark recesses at the back of the forge.
At that point a figure jumped out of the shadows at him.
With great presence of mind Rodario stepped to one side and a dagger just missed his throat. “Assassin!” he shouted and took a wild swing with the poker, hitting the dark-clad attacker full in the face so he collapsed in a groaning heap. The knife clattered to the floor. To be on the safe side he gave the man another blow with the poker, then grabbed him and dragged him over to the part of the outbuilding where there was better light. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
He saw a dirty face marked with burns. The man was a good fifty cycles old and looked more like a simple workman than a professional killer. The poker blow had broken his nose and knocked out two of his teeth. There was blood coming out of his nostrils and his mouth. In a daze, he was trying to break away, but couldn’t.
“Tassia, bring me a red-hot iron!” Rodario requested. “We can pierce his tongue with it.”
“No, let me go,” he mumbled, terrified. “He’ll kill them if I’m not back on time.”
“Did you kill this man?” Rodario picked up the glowing metal and held it in the man’s face. His eyes widened in fear. “Who sent you and where is Lambus?”
The man was trembling like a fish on a hook. “I don’t know. Ilgar did it because the boy refused to come along and he threatened to betray us.”
Each answer brought more questions in its wake. “Get the story out, old man, or I swear—by Samusin—I’ll put out your eyes with this iron.” Rodario threatened the man again, putting on his most villainous expression, a face that went down well on stage. Not for a moment did he really intend to harm the old man any further.
“Are you a friend of the blacksmith?” the man asked, coming to his senses. “If so, by the grace of Palandiell, don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen. Tell them Lambus is off on his travels. Get rid of the boy’s body. That’s the only way your friend will ever be able to come back.”
“Is Furgas in the power of whoever’s got Lambus?” asked Rodario, guessing wildly. “He’s about my size, black hair and…”
The man’s face changed suddenly. He looked surprised. “You know the magister?”
“He’s my best friend.”
The man spat in his face. “May all the demons…”
Rodario heard a faint swishing noise, one he knew well from his adventures outside the world of theater. A jolt—and the man fell slack in his grip. An arrow shaft stuck out from the man’s back. Death had been instantaneous.
“Get down, Tassia. Get under cover,” called Rodario, going to one side to crouch down behind a heap of coal, and wiping the bloody spittle out of his face. There had been many times in his life when things had happened beyond his understanding, but so far, this was the height of not-understanding.
Quiet steps could be heard approaching; Rodario could hear the creak of leather armor straps, and iron rings clanked. There was the sound of a sword being drawn. When he saw a boot next to him he took hold of the tongs and dropped the red-hot metal down inside.
There was a hissing. The man yelled fit to bust and ran out of the shed, smoke streaming after him. Immediately after that they heard a splash. The man had jumped into the water to cool the burned leg.
“Ha!” Grabbing a smaller hammer from the forge, Rodario ran out in pursuit. But the man had disappeared. Rings on the surface of the water showed where someone had dived in.
Tassia came over to his side. “Drowned?” she asked in surprise. “Must have hurt so bad he forgot he can’t swim.” Out of the corner of his eye Rodario caught sight of a boat that was pulling away from Mifurdania. It was a squat little barge, heavily laden and so low in the water that any small wave would have swamped it. The broad sail was letting it pick up speed as it headed north.
At the stern of the barge stood a brunette in a simple brown dress. She was looking over toward them through a long tube, the sunlight glinting off glass. Then she put it down behind her.
“Tassia. We’re off.” Rodario kept his eye on the brown-haired woman. She reminded him of someone, but it couldn’t be…
Tassia was staring at the circles on the water. “Perhaps he’ll come up again for air?”
The other woman took out an arrow and fitted it to a bow.
“Tassia. Come with me.”
The bowstring was drawn back, the arrow pointing straight at him and at his self-appointed “wife.”
“What is it, O Fabulous One? Look over there on the left. That could be him. I can see something dark. Perhaps…?”
Rodario had just enough time to throw himself at Tassia and tumble them both into the water to avoid the arrow. The waters surrounded him in a cold embrace. Spluttering, he came up to the surface again under the shelter of one of the walkways. Tassia came up cursing loudly and tried to hit him. “What on earth are you doing? To get me soaked twice in one day, Rodario; it’s the limit!”
“Slow down, mermaid.” He pointed over to the barge.
The woman was still at her post and fitting another arrow to her bow, waiting for a target.
When someone’s head popped suddenly out of the water like a cork, she did not hesitate—the movement was fluid, steady and sure. The arrow flew and entered the side of the skull over the right temple. The scream turned to bubbling sound as water gushed into the mouth. Without realizing it she had killed one of her ow
n henchman.
“Thanks be to Palandiell!” mouthed Tassia, not taking her eyes from the dead body that drifted past them, face down. An arrow stuck out like a dead branch. “And thanks be to you, too, Rodario. You’ve saved my life,” she said in a serious voice and kissed him long and hard on the lips. In spite of the cold this was starting to give him a warm feeling.
When they looked for the barge again it had disappeared behind a row of houses. They clambered out onto dry land and made their way, soaked through as they were, to the Curiosum’s site.
What they left behind were three dead bodies and a whole lot of things that didn’t make any sense. Most of the uncanny things that had happened that day seemed to be connected to his friend Furgas, and he was utterly determined to work out what was going on. He was going to write a play about it.
Girdlegard,
Kingdom of Gauragar,
Porista,
Late Spring, 6241st Solar Cycle
Young Lia was sitting, a boyish figure, with the other workers. She gazed out over the pancake-flat plain in the middle of Porista, drank her cold tea and took an occasional mouthful of the stew they gave her. Her task was dangerous, but it was well paid: she was to gather information, scouting in a particular area.
In recent cycles Porista had undergone difficult changes.
Once it had been the center of Nudin’s realm—Nudin the Knowledge-Lusty, one of Girdlegard’s magi. But when he had turned into Nôd’onn the Treacherous it had become the field of a terrible battle, and had to a great extent been destroyed by a conflagration. People had only gradually been returning, salvaging what they could from the smoking ruins to build anew, when an army of avatars swept through the land, determined to secure for themselves the magic wellspring that lay underneath the palace of the magus. The rest of Girdlegard could not sit back and let that happen and so had hastened to its defense; the resulting fighting had left fresh scars on the new Porista. Even the grounds of the palace had become just an ugly heap of stones.
Then peace had arrived.
About five cycles earlier, after the defeat of all the great magae and magi, and after the resultant collapse of the magic fields, King Bruron had laid claim to the land and annexed the territory.
Since then the city had been growing steadily.
A friendly army of casual laborers had been sent out by the monarch to remove, stone by stone, the debris of the flattened palace to make way for his own new residence. They had just completed the work. Now all that remained were the foundations and the rubble-filled cellar entrances. This was all that told of the extent of the gigantic building that had previously stood on the site.
Lia’s slim build had an advantage: it allowed her to slip down past the fallen stones into the interior of the cellars to reconnoiter. Once back in the daylight she would report to the king’s construction masters so they could decide how work on the chambers should progress: fill them in with shale or excavate carefully by hand.
None of the overseers on the site had any idea that Lia was conducting her own research at the same time.
Franek, one of her friends, came over and offered her some flatbread. Like her he wore simple clothing, the material looking the worse for wear in places. His mop of dark blond hair was covered with a leather cap. “Have you found anything?” he whispered. He was one of the scouts, too, and was working in another part of the site. He also was on a higher mission.
The girl took the bread, placing it on the bowl of stew, and then rearranged the headscarf that protected her brown hair from the dust below ground. “No,” she answered quietly, making gestures with her hands to imply that she was complaining about the quality of the baking.
Franek sighed. “Then I don’t know how long we should carry on looking. There aren’t many cellars still to search.”
“I said straightaway that it must be broken. Have you seen how even the largest blocks of stone are split right through? That’s how great the pressure was.” Lia always looked on the black side. “There’s nothing left of some walls but brick dust.” She held the bread out to him again and he stuck it under his jacket.
“Samusin won’t desert us,” Franek said as he went off back to his work.
Lia finished her meal, wiped her hands on her breeches and went back to the opening, which was sheltered by a canvas awning to protect the workers from the sun. Tamàs and Ove, two of the building masters, were studying their plans. She greeted them as she passed.
Tamàs, the younger one, greeted her in return and looked at her. He liked what he saw and his inquiring gaze was no longer totally academic. “You’re late. Two others have gone down already,” he said, smiling. “I hope there’s room for you all. If not, come back up here and keep us company drawing up the charts.”
Lia stopped in her tracks. “Excuse me, sir. Who has gone down?”
“Two boys I just sent down,” murmured Ove without lifting his eyes from the plans. “We haven’t got much time. King Bruron wants to get started with the building. We need the last secrets of the vaults found quickly. And since you were on a break I sent down two young lads who were free.” He turned a page and made a mark on the site plan.
“It’s dangerous down there. I’ll go and find them.” She forced herself to smile and hurried down the cellar steps.
That was all she needed: children at work. She wasn’t worried about any of the other people she worked with because they could not move in the cramped conditions underground. Young lithe bodies, on the other hand, were competition.
Lia could see the boys working their way forward outside where the domed roof had once been. They were chattering, talking about their wages and about how they hoped to find treasure buried by past occupants of the palace.
“Hey, you boys,” she called, slithering through the narrowest of spaces like an eel. “Off with you! This is my cellar!”
“You wish!” laughed one of them.
“Master Ove sent us down here,” called the other one. “Go and complain to him if you don’t like the idea of us finding the treasure before you do.”
Lia forced her way through under one of the fallen blocks of stone. It rocked worryingly while she was still underneath it. “There is no treasure to find,” she said. “It’s not safe here for you. The chamber hasn’t settled.”
“We’ve done this a lot,” come the high-spirited response. “And anyway…”
Some of the rubble collapsed and clouds of dust rose up so she could not see. She coughed and cursed at the same time. “Are you all right?” she called, rubbing her eyes.
“Well I never! There’s someone down here! An old man with a long beard!”
Lia tried to move more quickly. It had happened. Now there were things she must prevent. “Where are you?”
“Idiot!” snarled the other boy at his friend. “You pushed against that pillar and you nearly had me buried in dirt. And that thing is not a man,” there was the sound of wooden boards clattering “—it’s a statue.”
“That wasn’t me. It fell in on its own,” came the defense. Now Lia could see both of the squabbling boys.
They were standing in a small cave-like space, no bigger than a store cupboard. It had somehow been formed when beams and pillars had twisted and collapsed. Between all the rubble lay a statue with its face uppermost. It was so true to life that Lia was not surprised the boy had thought it was real.
“So that’s where you are!” She slipped under one of the supports without touching it, then stood up. Slowly she approached the two treasure-seekers, her eyes sliding over the statue’s form. Everything was in place. Every fine detail of the clothing, each single beard hair, every fold and wrinkle in the old face could be recognized.
“It’s as if they’d turned someone into stone,” whispered the taller of the boys with respect. “It’s amazing.”
“It’ll bring us a good bit of extra money. One of those rich guys will want it for his garden or in his study, I bet. A good day’s work!” nodded his fr
iend, giving a skeptical glance at the distance the statue would have to be heaved up. “We’ll have to dig a way to the top and get a hoist set up. We won’t be able to pull it through the rubble.” He threw Lia a warning look. “The statue is ours. Got that?”
She was furious that she’d taken that lunch break. If only she’d got back to work a little bit sooner she wouldn’t have run into trouble with these two kids at all. “Of course you found it. But it won’t get you any money. It’s already the property of Tomba Drinkfass,” she said, inventing a name. “He gave the statue to Nudin originally.”
“Even better,” said the taller of the two. “We’ll get a reward for finding it.”
“Yes, we will,” the other one stressed, pointing to his friend and himself. “You won’t.”
Lia had a quick think about how to make the best of the situation. She could go along with this and wait for her chance, follow the statue to its new owner and take it then. That would demand time and effort. And there’d be quite a to-do once any of Porista’s older citizens got wind of what had been found. Or she could…
“Samusin is my witness I won’t say a word about the statue. Or about you.” She spoke slowly before swiftly plunging her dagger into the throat of the boy at her left.
She cut his throat and then thrust her weapon into the other boy’s chest. Eyes wide open in surprise, he sank onto the statue’s base, blood gurgling. He stared at his murderess in complete astonishment at what she had done.
His friend grew weaker by the second and crumpled onto the floor, expiring soon afterwards. The blood from his slit throat no longer spurted out of the open gash, but overflowed much as a stew might boil over in an unwatched pot.
Lia watched them both die. The sacrifice was essential. For the greater good, more important than two young lives. Perhaps thousands would be saved. She dragged the two bodies, still warm and convulsing, into a small hollow under some debris and pushed away the supporting beams over where they lay.