by Damien Lake
* * * * *
In a paralysis of total incomprehension, Marik watched Hilliard rock backward, slipping through Dietrik’s fingers while still tilting sideways from Kerwin’s blow. Sound drained from the world. The scene played before Marik’s eyes in absolute silence. Pain twisted Hilliard’s features into a leper’s mask of disfigurement.
Landon dove between the two while the young noble struck the paving stones. People around them slowly turned to look, to see why this small group had halted to obstruct the flow of travelers. Kerwin recovered from his blunt shoulder tackle, only to run away from Hilliard. Marik watched him dazedly while the gambler darted to the street’s center, head revolving, gazing at the rooftops.
A hand gripped his shoulder. Marik twisted his gaze to see Dietrik frantically mouthing words. He stared back, puzzled at why Dietrik did not simply speak aloud. Dietrik watched him for an eternal moment, waiting for a reaction. When none came, he roughly shook Marik’s shoulder, punctuating the action by digging his fingertips harshly into his flesh.
Sound exploded back into the world. Marik reeled, unsteady, nearly overwhelmed. His mind finally moved from its shocked state.
Strangers crowded forward. They wanted to see what the fuss might be or, understanding the crisis, they pushed away, wishing no part of it. Visions of disguised assassins creeping close to sever their prey’s head as a gruesome trophy flashed with terrifying clarity through his mind’s eye.
“Keep them back!” he shouted at Dietrik. His friend, glad to see the dazed expression vanish from his eyes, made to do that as Marik looked to Kerwin. He realized the gambler was searching for any signs of the man who had fired the crossbow.
Dietrik fended off the crowd. He awkwardly half-drew his rapier with his weak hand to make his point. Marik dropped down beside Landon. Blood coated Hilliard’s robe and still spurted under the archer’s hands. The young man had passed out. Good, that would keep his heart from racing in fear, which would only pump vital blood from the wound that much faster.
Marik studied the quarrel protruding from Hilliard. Not from the chest as he first thought. Kerwin had accomplished that much, upsetting the assassin’s target enough that the well-aimed shot penetrated the shoulder rather than the centerline. What to do next?
His brain threatened to seize up. For a brief instant his only thought centered on facing Torrance and Janus in an attempt to explain how he, as acting leader of the bodyguard detail, had allowed his charge to be murdered right under his nose. Hilliard still breathed. Landon continued his efficient, if frantic, examination of the young man.
He obviously needed medical attention. What should they do? If the damage were extensive, only a Healer would have a prayer of holding his life on this side of the veil. Should they run for the Houses of Healing he had heard described in tales?
No. In the first place, he knew only two houses existed in the city, and he knew not where either might be found. Also they gave their aid only if the patient could afford the house’s fees or if they were donating charity work to the underclasses. Though they would no doubt come to the aid of a wounded noble, fees to be discussed later, convincing them that they had a legitimate need for their services could take all day. Hundreds of sick clambered at their door every morning, every one of them desperate to convince the residents that their need surpassed all others. Besides, many among the houses’ medical workers were chirurgeons, talented in their craft to be sure, but very few true Healers could be found within those walls. Marik knew with sick intuition, studying Hilliard’s blood-soaked form, that the most expert chirurgeon might not be enough.
Time no longer passed at an agonizingly slow pace. It raced in a furious stampede of frothing horses. Every eye blink worsened Hilliard’s condition. Marik struggled for a course of action.
How about the Cathedral of the Eternal Twelve? With so many archbishops and ecclesiastical royalty preaching the Twelve’s teachings, surely one must command the powers of Healing! But that might not do either. Delmer and the Head Chirurgeon in Kingshome had given him a quick lesson in Healers during his own recovery. He had been fortunate. Many religions required the one who received a Healing to convert to that faith. Those who attempted to ignore the conversion met with countless misfortunes until they adopted their new god in their hearts.
Hilliard might give the entire pantheon their due, but which deity did the young man personally called his own? Probably Sheirleon, yet he could not swear to it. The priest at the cathedral could refuse a Healing altogether if Marik failed to supply the name of Hilliard’s patron!
How about…
How about…
Landon shifted his gaze to the floundering Marik. “This is not good.”
Marik leaned down. He feared the worst. “How bad?”
“The quarrel shattered his collarbone. It tore most of the muscles, but…” Landon’s voice dropped so Marik needed to strain for it over the noisy crowd. “I’m afraid one of the greater veins has been severed.”
“A chirurgeon…” Marik’s voice faded at Landon’s negative shake.
“Veins can’t be sewn back together. He will bleed to death unless he receives a true Healing.”
“How?” Marik desperately questioned the more experienced man. “Do you know where we can find a Healer? Find one fast enough?”
“We can’t move him very far, but we must take him off this roadway. I think we must send for the Healer at the tournament.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Landon’s eyes darted to him. “You never noticed her?” At Marik’s blank look, he continued, “She usually stands with the officials. I am certain the palace stationed her to see after any serious injuries the contenders suffer during the events.”
“Are you sure about that?” Marik’s intense gaze locked on Landon.
“As certain of that as anything. She wears the traditional Healer’s blue, and I can’t imagine the nobles not seeing to their own needs when participating in such dangerous activities.”
“Very well, then.” He rose, plans forming with a path, tenuous and overgrown yet visible, appearing before him. “Kerwin!”
Marik continued shouting it until the gambler finally heard him through the press. He returned, angry, mostly at himself. “I never saw the bastard! Just had a sudden feeling, you know?”
“Yeah. Good thing you did. I’ll never bet against your instincts. You need to run to the jousting lists. Landon says the officials are keeping a woman Healer on tap. You need to get her back as fast as you can.”
“I will!” He readied to spring away until Marik caught him by the arm.
“Paddy’s stable is closer than the inn. We’ll carry Hilliard there. If I still had that summons Celerity gave me I’d give it to you. If they give you any trouble, try using her name. I’ll figure out how to pay her back later.”
Kerwin nodded before dashing off, winding eel-like around bodies. Marik returned to stand guard over the unconscious Hilliard while Landon made the best preparations he could to move the body. He and Dietrik scanned the crowd for painfully long minutes before Marik spied what they needed.
Passing through the clot of stalled pedestrians inched a two-wheeled handcart loaded with carrots in woven baskets. Marik forded the human tide to catch the man pulling it, who was intent on reaching a produce market before midmorning.
This carrot farmer spat at Marik’s declaration that they were appropriating his cart. He argued vehemently with the mercenary who stood in his path until Marik dug into his pouch, pulling out a five-silver coin. The only coin that large in the purse provided by Janus, Marik decided this, if anything, constituted an emergency expense.
He and Landon dumped the man’s carrots by the roadside. They told the farmer he could reclaim his cart later at Paddy’s Stables. Already having earned six times over what the entire load would have yielded on the best of all market days, the farmer told them he would be by the stables to reclaim his cart, and would call the cityguard down on them
if he found it missing, then sat to hawk his carrots to the people walking past.
Paddy fell to pieces when they pulled into his yard. His men frantically cleaned out a backroom of everything except the iron stove and moved the cot in. The little man commanded his personal army of stable hands, stoking the heat in the small room to sweltering, ordering every suitable blanket in the stable to be rooted out, sending five men with buckets and the watercart to the public well on the next street to bring back enough water to scrub all the stalls to a polish. Landon watched over Hilliard, Dietrik took a post by the stableyard gate to intercept strangers, so Marik, with little else to do, helped build a fire in the large hearth in Paddy’s office, boiling endless pots of water to have a cleansed store ready if it were needed.
The wait for Kerwin’s return spanned entire ages of the world.
Marik returned to Hilliard’s side. He watched the ashen face grow paler while Landon performed the best field dressings he could manage around the protruding quarrel. Taking it out would surely result in a bloody gush that would end the young man’s life in moments.
“We completely failed, didn’t we,” Marik asked in a low voice.
Landon nodded. “We overlooked a layer hidden beneath what we could see.”
“Gods damned onions!” Marik nearly shouted. “I’m sick of them!” He punched the wall in frustration. “We should have left one alive and beaten the stuffing out of him until he told us everything!”
“Too late now,” Landon murmured. He lost focus, staring at nothing. Marik knew the archer had begun meticulously reexamining the facts at their disposal and the assumptions made on their part, searching for the detail overlooked.
“I’ve had enough of this!” Marik declared fiercely, breaking Landon from his thoughts. “As soon as Kerwin returns with the Healer, I’m going to get Ilona.”
“Ilona?” Landon replied with a lost expression Marik had never seen on the man before. “What good will that accomplish? None of us harbor any doubts concerning her involvement.”
“Don’t you worry about that.” Marik growled, steaming as his rage continued to build unabated. “Don’t you gods damned worry. I’ve had enough of these cowards. I’m going to put an end to this once and for all.” A commotion erupted outside, forestalling Landon’s next question under the shrill screaming of horses reined harshly to an abrupt stop. “That’ll be Kerwin. Here.” He tossed the coin purse with the remaining funds. “You might need this. Do me one favor though.”
“What might that be?”
He pointed at the quarrel in Hilliard’s shoulder. “Tell the Healer to wrap that in cloth before she pulls it out, then put it aside and save it. Don’t let anybody near it, or touch it. And I mean anybody!”
Landon held his questions and nodded. Marik blazed a scorching path from the stable, passing Kerwin dashing inside, led by a fretting Paddy, followed by a gravely concerned woman in sky blue.
* * * * *
Through gritted teeth, sweat dripping from his eyebrows, forehead and ears, hair slicked to his head, eyes straining as if to leap from their sockets, entire body ridged from the strenuous effort, Marik grunted, “Now for the hard part.”
Landon stood three steps away, gazing down at the hand mirror resting on a crate of leather rein straps. Dietrik stood beside him, watching Marik’s sixth attempt, interested in the proceedings, unafraid of his friend’s powers. That meant a lot to Marik. Especially under the last candlemark’s strain.
Ilona leaned close as she dared. She was less concerned about a dangerous, untested mage working as she was worried that leaning any closer would disrupt his concentration. Paddy had brought him an egg-white ceramic plate for the quarrel to rest on. Several tin plates had been offered, but Marik wanted to use a holder made from neither wood nor metal. They might interfere when he tied the wooden quarrel tipped with steel to the scrye. Or perhaps not. He chose not to risk it. Time ran short.
The much smaller hand mirror made setting the initial energy circle far easier. Unfortunately Marik’s needs were different. He had read how to use the working in the manner he wanted, yet never before had attempted it.
With the prior workings, he’d instigated the scrye’s most basic nature. Like calls to like. Matching affinities. The simplest of the simple.
This time he needed to call forth the image of the man who had shot the quarrel at Hilliard. No connection linked that man to the wood and steel other than that he had once handled it. Fixing that need within the working, teaching the serpent what to seek for, proved immeasurably more difficult.
At first Hilliard’s blood caught in the working the way a hook catches in a fish’s mouth. Four times the mirror had shown Hilliard laying prone on his cot in the next room, the Healer bent over his body, bloody hands pressed to his chest, Kerwin leaning with all his weight against the rag staunching the gaping wound. Marik, cursing, had collapsed the etheric circle, setting it all over, trying to instruct the working to use a different sized hook to catch the smaller minnow of the archer’s signature behind the larger trout of Hilliard’s blood essence. He feared the Healer would next be shown in the reflective surface. Fortunately the cloth had prevented her personal astral signature from tainting the fragile essences already clinging to the quarrel.
In an effort to hasten the serpent’s rotation once it stopped fixating on the young man twelve feet away, Marik attempted to set a limit on the distance it should seek. As in Celerity’s workroom, he concentrated while instructing the serpent, asking it to search no further than ten miles distant. After a held breath, he watched the serpent, visible to him alone, spin far faster on its axis than previously.
On the fifth attempt a different image surface within the glass. A nondescript man with trimmed beard, thinning hair and plain brown clothing sitting alone in a room. He wrote on parchment at a small table. What the words might be were hidden by his hunched posture. Marik had paused, wondering if this man were the one he sought or if the working had gone awry.
They all four watched for several minutes until the man folded the parchment and sealed it with a daub of wax. He rose, collected a large sack from under the table, then stepped to the door.
“That’s a crossbow,” Landon proclaimed.
“In the sack?” Dietrik asked. “Are you certain?”
“Look,” Landon gestured as the man in the glass adjusted his grip. “See how the bottom end is stretched wide? That’s from the bow, I am positive!”
“So I suppose that makes him our man.” Dietrik glanced at everybody. “What to do, then?”
“I do this,” Marik informed them, and the moving picture in the mirror vanished. From his angry cursing the others guessed he had not intended that to happen.
With this sixth attempt he took greater care. Exhaustion wracked him. Sweat rolled from every pore. His vision doubled when it did not waver. The sweat saturating his clothes had chilled so he nearly shivered with the cold. He blessed Ilona that he had thought she might enjoy this small mirror. Not a chance in the hells he could have set this working in motion six times using Tollaf’s old massive glass.
If he failed this time, he only had enough stamina for one more effort. Perhaps twice. In the mirror the man settled into a different room. The four had watched him deliver his parchment to a portage service, presumably to deliver it to whomever the man intended to receive the letter. With greater experience Marik might have retargeted the working to follow the delivery man, seeing whom the assassin archer corresponded with.
Their crossbow archer settled into a residential room. Hopefully this would prove to be the man’s living quarters. Marik tensed while he prepared to draw the view back, the second half of the scrying Tollaf should have helped him with in Kingshome, the act that had shattered the working and ended the fifth attempt.
He felt a cool hand stroke his neck. Marik spun, nearly severing his channels. Ilona looked down at him. Her expression was far from what Marik would call caring, but less sharp than her usual edge. For
an instant he had forgotten her presence and thought Dietrik or Landon owned the caressing hand. After years in the male dominated mercenary hometown, where the few women were as masculine as the men in attitude if not body as well, her presence still caught him off guard.
Her cool touch, feather-light, made him realize how taunt his tendons were. With an effort he forced them to loosen. Mage talent required no demands on his physical strength. Bunched muscles served only to add tension to his mental state, which would only hamper his ability to successfully complete the working.
Body looser, he focused his mind on the simple commands Natalie’s book told him would force the view in his mirror to retreat. Back. Slowly. Back. Up. Up. Up! Not so different from drifting the etheric plane as an insubstantial ghost.
Thoughts and intentions, incorporeal substances that influenced magework more than all the swords ever made. Especially this particular working of magecraft.
Gradually the scene within the mirror shifted. The view pulled back through a nonexistent window, through a solid wall, rising slowly as a newborn bird must first struggle its way into the skies. From above, the whole building clarified, then they could see the street it bordered. Higher it rose, new streets becoming visible, until finally Ilona decisively announced, “Ah! Yes, that’s the Seventeenth District.”
“You are certain?” Dietrik asked.
“No question. That’s Dilltock Square, and there’s one of the alchemy shops we visited.”
“So you can tell us how to get to this building,” Marik announced.
“Of course.”
“Good.” He cut his channel, allowing the etheric circle to collapse. Despite feeling tired beyond measure, he rose to his feet. He could use the stamina technique during the walk to regain the better part of his spent strength. “Then we’d better go before he moves. Dietrik, I think you’d better stay to look after Hilliard. Your arm, you know.”
Dietrik raised the limb, free from his second sling on a single contract. He flexed it slightly and winced at the tenderness in his sword arm. “I think I will need to lodge a complaint with somebody over this. I keep missing out on all the jolly moments lately.”