Chapter Twenty
‘Alright then, gentlemen,’ Kallista addressed the dozen or so occupants of our table with the air of a carnival barker. Kallista’s breasts - sorry, her fantastic people skills - had managed to rustle up plenty of takers when word went round that she was organising a drinking game. ‘The rules are: we each put in our stake in and then we take it in turns to drain our glasses.’ She indicated the large jug of ale and the small shot-sized glasses set out on the sticky table. ‘The last person still drinking takes the money. There are two provisos: no one leaves the table. Gentlemen, if you’re going to puke, puke in your boots. If you need to piss...well, I’ll leave that to you.’ Uproarious laughter from our bearded, rough-hewn co-drinkers.
‘This is stupid,’ I mumbled to myself.
‘Will you shut up, please?’ Kallista hissed at me through the side of her mouth whilst simpering sweetly at two men across the table.
‘The other rule is that one elbow stays on the table at all times.’ Everyone groaned, but no one seemed surprised. Maybe this was standard.
I surreptitiously looked around the room, trying to see where Raelthos had got to, thinking that I could bow out of the drinking competition early and help him instead. He was propped against the bar chatting smarmily to the barmaid. So much for hunting down the portal custodians, I thought, scowling in his direction.
Resigned to being stuck with Kallista for the time being, I only noticed the drinking game starting when her first drink was met with a roar of approval from the small crowd gathered around us. Another roar went up when I sank my first shot of ale. The other contenders knocked their drinks back and Kallista poured another round for the table. Seriously? That was it? What was the big deal?
The answer came about two hours and eight games in. I’d lost every round so far but still the room was starting to swim. ‘I think yer friend’s feeling a bit worse for wear,’ one of the contenders, whose eye was sewn shut, called out to Kallista.
‘She doesn’t get out much. Bit of a homebody,’ she said rolling her eyes slightly at the man sitting next to her, whose face was a network of deep, claw-like scars. Scarface and Kallista both looked over at me, taking in my outfit, and I felt my hackles rise.
A crowd had formed around the table as soon as the game began and was beginning to get more boisterous with their shouts of encouragement. One of the onlookers was jotting wagers down in a tiny book and I saw the flash of gold pieces as he pocketed money. I would have been happy to bet that my name wasn’t one of the ones being given short odds.
I looked around the bar for the others. A couple of dark-hooded figures were moving smoothly around, never staying in one spot for long, and I found myself trying to see which one was Oriel. As I scanned the room, I caught a flash of bright red. No way. The girl with the scarlet dreadlocks was here, too. This was more than just a coincidence; Oriel must have arranged to meet her. With a bone-crushing thump of humiliation, I remembered Kallista’s words and hurriedly looked back down at the table.
My irritation grew as I picked up my next shot, ready to down it. This stupid drinking game was Kallista’s stupid idea and I was starting to feel so, so groggy. I looked into my glass, through the amber liquid, to the outline of my fingers. My stomach was starting to feel sloshy. I didn’t want any more beer. Bloody Kallista....
All at once, my anger solidified into a single point and a faint prickling spread out from the back of my neck, along my arms to the tips of my fingers. My heart sped up as I recognised the sensation, the same feeling I’d had when I captured the demon in the bubble. If only I could harness it, I could get rid of this drink.
The liquid had barely touched my lips when I looked down at the glass again and stifled a gasp. The ale inside had disappeared. It was just...gone. And I hadn’t drunk it. I’d magicked it away, or vanished it, or something. Whatever. It was gone and it took every gram of self-control to stop myself shouting out across the bar, ‘Did you SEE what I just DID?’
As I set my glass down on the table, I slanted my eyes from side to side, looking to see what the reaction of my fellow drinking-gamers was. With the exception of Kallista, they were all beating their fists on the table in...approval. Yep, definitely approval. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. I had no idea how long I’d be able to keep it up for, but it at least bought me some time to stop my head from spinning quite so much.
Taking some deep, sobering breaths, I saw Raelthos finally pry himself away from his barmaid and join the crowd. As the others at the table took their turns drinking, he worked his Influence, gently prying to find clues as to the whereabouts of a portal custodian.
Snakelike, he would sidle up to the spectators and murmur in their ears, so insidiously that they barely even registered that they were being spoken to. What he said I couldn’t tell, although I was fairly sure that any success had less to do with words and more to do with the power that lay behind them.
As Raelthos wove his Influence over the crowd, their expressions changed one by one to an empty, bovine stare. Gradually he worked his way around the table, and eventually our audience was barely watching the drinking game or the talent show any more. The crowd moved almost as one, gently bobbing and swaying in time with Raelthos’s every movement, plucking vacantly at his sleeve and jostling their friends in an effort to get his attention. He was like the Pied Piper of Barbarians.
As I watched, I started thinking about my own Influence, about the latent power I held. I knew that what Raelthos was doing, he was doing for the right reasons, but the thought of controlling people’s thoughts creeped me out big time and I resolved to make control of my Influence the first thing I would learn when I reached the Citadel.
My attention was pulled away by a man carrying a hand axe. I flinched at the sight of it - would I ever get used to people just carrying weapons around in public? - before I realised he was only waving it to get my attention. Bizarrely, Hand Axe spoke like a BBC newsreader. ‘I do believe it is your turn, miss.’
With all eyes intently on me, I didn’t dare to try vanishing my drink away, and swallowed it with a grimace as the room gave another unnatural lurch. Everyone except Kallista applauded me in a beery way. ‘Dearie me,’ she said, the saccharine-sweetness of her words not fooling me for one moment, ‘You look like you could use an early night.’
‘I’m fine,’ I enunciated, possibly a bit too loudly and clearly.
Kallista raised her eyebrows delicately back at me, her chin propped up on her hand and her fingers lightly drumming her jawline. She hadn’t moved her elbow all evening, keeping it carefully fixed a few centimetres from the corner of the table in accordance with the rules of the game. I stared down at it. I wish your elbow would just slip, I thought to myself. Just slip off the table so that it’s you looking stupid for a change.
There was a clatter and Kallista almost fell off her stool as the elbow she’d been leaning on slumped towards her lap. I wondered if anyone else noticed that the table looked...shorter somehow, than it had before. A roar erupted from Hand Axe, Scarface and the rest of our companions at Kallista’s sudden expulsion from the game.
I smiled tightly as Kallista sputtered her outrage. ‘Looks like I’m not the one who needs an early night,’ I simpered, and stood up to leave, the crowd behind me parting to let me through. The bar had filled up while we had been drinking; people were wedged in all the way from the door to the bar.
‘Hey!’ A short woman I didn’t recognise, whose once-coppery hair was now twisted with thick strands of white, was staring at me with open suspicion. ‘Have you been betting on a drinking game?’
The majority of our audience were still vying for Raelthos’s attention, but at this turn of events attention started to drift towards us. ‘Um, yes?’
Her expression clouded worryingly. ‘But you’re a Psion!’ It was a statement, not a question.
A ripple went through the crowd. Not a good ripple. I suddenly felt very small and alone in a crowd of people who were begin
ning to look a bit pissed off.
The short woman grabbed my elbow with a hand that felt like an eagle’s claw. ‘Was that you? Did you do that?’ she demanded, gesturing to Kallista’s end of the table. Kallista wore an expression which was a perfect balance of annoyance and fear.
‘What is it, Deirdre?’ Scarface asked slowly, peering between us both through the ruined tissue surrounding his eyes. ‘What’s been going on?’
‘Your table’s been Changed, Allum. I can see the residue on it, plain as day, it matches her energy signature. And look!’ Her eyes gleamed with the fire of a zealot. ‘She’s done something with her glass, too! Has she been taking money from you, Allum?’
‘No, but her friend ‘ere ‘as,’ he rumbled.
Kallista gave a visible gulp, her eyes widening to the size of saucers. I stood frozen to the spot as a hundred or so barbarians with huge weapons realised that I’d duped them.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two members of the audience push draping hoods away from their faces and Oriel and Neve started sliding through the crowd towards me. Neve grabbed Raelthos and jerked him along on her way past.
Neve frowned at the rumbling crowd. ‘New plan,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Run.’
The crowd were jostling us now that they realised Kallista and I had accomplices. Suddenly, and with no conscious planning or thought on my part, I felt a seed of power plant itself at my feet, shredding the tissue-thin skin inside my sinuses as it flowed through me. The seed bloomed around me like a bubble, creating a force-field which expanded out with surprising speed to form an invisible tunnel between the five of us and the door.
Oriel grabbed my hand and propelled me along the tunnel behind the others. The bellows of the crowd rose to a deafening pitch as they realised what I’d done.
‘She’s BLESSED! Blessed and deceitful!’
‘Demonspawn! She must be demonspawn!’
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