by Markus Heitz
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 own 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 wag
es 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 friend, 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.
Then she started on her way back, counting her steps so that she would be able to locate the statue again. Still gasping for air and sobbing she returned to the building supervisors and told them a terrible accident had happened.
“The cellar walls are soft as wax,” she reported, bursting into tears again. “It would be madness to go back in there.”
Ove and Tamàs conferred briefly, then stopped the works for the day out of respect for the two children who had died. On the next day, they decided, the bodies should be fetched up and then the cellar area filled in.
Lia returned to the building site that night with Franek and ten helpers.
They carried poles, pickaxes, pulleys, rope and cable winches with them. A cart with two horses waited in a side road to transport their prize away. They had placed watchers in strategic places to warn them if anyone should approach. They had to work quickly. And they had to succeed, whatever the cost, whatever lives might be lost.
On the surface Lia paced out the distance she had calculated. Then she placed a marker on the flagstone. “It must be right under here,” she said to her companions. The men set to work.
Franek and Lia helped to shovel the debris to one side while the hole the men were digging grew steadily bigger. They had to take great care that none of the surface material broke off and fell back in.
“And to think I was ready to give up,” said Lia, thrilled that the treasure would soon be salvaged.
Her joy triumphed over her guilty conscience about the murder of the two young boys. She had told Franek what she had done, hoping the confession would make her feel better, but it had not worked. At least he had agreed that she had done the right thing. She would have to leave Porista once and for all. If the bodies were found she would be accused of the murders.
“Samusin is on our side again,” he nodded, watching the men shifting away the loose earth and hacking through the vaulted cellar roof.
“Don’t speak too soon,” said Lia. “Let’s not thank the god of retribution until we’ve got the statue safely out of Porista.”
With a crack, a section of the tunnel roof gave way; two of the men fell though to the cellars, yelling out as they dropped down.
Franek looked round in alarm, checking with their watchers. Nobody seemed to have heard the noise. “Quick! Get them out of there!” Five others jumped down with lanterns in their hands.
“Get the statue first,” called Lia after them anxiously, stepping a couple of paces back from the hole in case another section should cave in. “Then get the injured out.”
The others worked at the entrance to make the opening wider while another group put the pulleys and the hoist together. They tossed ropes down to fasten round the stone figure.
Soon the statue was winched up, rising in the dark to the surface. It was covered in a fine coating of dust and there was a huge red stain—the blood of the young boys who had paid for their find with their lives. It looked as if it were the statue that was bleeding.
“Bring the cart over here,” ordered Franek, lifting a lamp and giving the prearranged signal. Soon the wheels were turning, muffled with cloths to avoid making any sound; the horses’ hooves had been wrapped in hessian as well.
Lia was getting more and more uneasy. “Come on up; hurry!” she called down into the vaults. “Let’s get out of here.”
The rope snagged, the pole bent under the weight, but did not break. The men climbed out of the hole and heaved the heavy statue onto the sacking that had been put on the wagon in readiness.
“The guards!” came a shout from across the site, echoing back to Franek and Lia.
“Stupid idiot!” Franek cursed their watchma
n, who had meant well with his warning, but had certainly risked alerting Bruron’s soldiers. They saw pinpricks of light—torches coming nearer. “Take the rags off,” he told the others and leaped up onto the wagon. “They’ve seen us now—the noise won’t make it any worse.”
Lia followed him and jumped up to crouch beside the statue. The whip cracked and the wheels rattled along.
“Halt!” They heard the challenge from the guards. “Stop in the name of King Bruron!” There were no more niceties—arrows were already flying in their direction, most of them falling short, but two buried themselves in the wood of the wagon, one hit the statue and broke, and one caught Lia in the leg. She cried out.
By the light of the torches they could see the guards falling on the men who had helped them with the statue. Anyone who put up a defense was killed outright—the rest were taken prisoner. Bruron had issued a strict new law five cycles ago, protecting people’s property and condemning to death anyone suspected of pilfering. The fact that they had emptied the vaults belonging to a man who was dead made no difference.
Out of the darkness of the side streets four mounted guards came galloping up; they had heard the noise and it was simple for them to overtake the wagon.
“Stop!” the first rider shouted to Franek. “I can…”
Her friend turned, whip in hand, and caught the soldier full in the face. His eyeball burst under the force of the slashing leather and he fell from the saddle. The next rider had to swerve to avoid him, and lost ground.
One of the guards made a bold leap straight onto the cart and hit Lia in the face with his balled fist to silence her, then climbed over the statue to get at Franek.
“Look out!” she croaked in warning, swallowing her own blood. Groaning, she drew her dagger and crawled across the swaying cart to reach the guard.
Another rode past them, heading for the gate to get the sentries to stop the unscrupulous thieves escaping with their plunder.
Franek had seen him. He hurled his sword at the man when he was three arms’ lengths away from him, catching him in the side. At full gallop he fell to the ground, rolled over and over, and was crushed under the back wheel of the wagon.