Sourcethief (Book 3)

by J. S. Morin

  "That right there ... you never make that exchange," Kyrus said as Rashan removed his light-squared bishop from the board. Kyrus's move to capture Rashan's knight was obvious. "And it was the right move, not just copying my style without understanding it."

  "You got in and pillaged Caladris's offices before I got around to it. You got to suck all the sweet nectar out, but the husk of what remained was not devoid of interest," Rashan said. He paused and leaned across the board. "Caladris was writing a book on chess."

  The next hours were lost in combat. Rashan's understanding of the game had clearly grown reading Caladris's explanations of Acardian theories. While Kyrus had never seen the notes Rashan referred to, he knew he was seeing Rashan play Lord Harwick's game. The warlock was new at the differing style, but it was an improvement on his typical play.

  "So why are you so resistant to becoming part of the Inner Circle?" Rashan asked after making a play. Brannis's matches had been much the same with Lord Harwick: idle time filled with idle words. At least, they had been largely idle coming from Lord Harwick's mouth. From Rashan there was always the risk of a fork in the conversation leading down a treacherous road. Truth, but with the best bits snipped out, Kyrus reminded himself.

  "A lot of reasons," Kyrus hedged. He took his mind free of the board for a moment, turning his attention instead to the question. It was not as if chess required a hurried decision. "I suppose most of them come down to being responsible for my own choices. The Inner Circle has made a muck of so many things. Even if it is just a few of them, all get spattered with the same ink. For good or ill, people see my actions and judge them, but at least they are mine."

  "Those creaky old men thought they ruled the empire instead of serving it. With the exception of Fenris, they are gone now. It is a new day for the Circle," Rashan countered.

  "Like every new day, the sun rises and sets. It is as likely to bear storm clouds as any other. Just look at the character you are seeking among the new blood: four thinkers, likely as not to be scheming behind every action they take; four power-hungry, with just as many schemes but no subtlety to hide them; four would-be bullies, strongest in the empire. Oh, there is overlap among the groups, but that is the sum of it. Why should you expect them to do better than the last group? It just might take them longer to create their tangle of lies and plots."

  "You seem young to be so cynical. It serves you well as the emperor's proxy, no doubt, but you might worry yourself to an early death in the process. The Inner Circle could help bear some of the weight you carry," Rashan said.

  Kyrus let the comment simmer a while as he looked once more to the chessboard. The simplicity of the unquestioning pieces seemed to drain his worries away. The knights wanted nothing more than to jump a space over and one to the diagonal. The bishops only needed a path along one color of squares. The rooks ... did not go running off to get themselves killed. Iridan called me "rookish" once. It fit him better. A piece with too high an opinion of its own power. Not a queen, but more than a knight.

  "Why does it matter so much to you?" Kyrus asked. He moved a rook, a play he had in mind for some time. "You could run the empire without them. You might manage it better without dubious help you got from the last bunch."

  "Well, that much is certainly true. I suppose if this lot does the same I can replace them as well."

  "There you go," Kyrus pointed across the board. "Another perfect reason not to throw my lot in with them."

  "Come now, what sort of fool do you think me?" Rashan asked. "I would sooner try my luck in the Dragonlands. Once we get you to the point where you are more a danger to our enemies than those around you, you will be the best weapon the empire has."

  What if a weapon is too dangerous to you to keep alive? Kyrus somehow doubted that Rashan would take well to a subordinate role. With the emperor, Rashan could always refuse an order with no real threat of consequence. Were Kyrus to become the more powerful, Rashan would grow to resent him.

  Despite improvements in his game, Rashan was still no Lord Harwick. Kyrus had been initially caught off guard by the new style of play, but he had worked the game so that he could force a draw, and lock the game up hopelessly. A new game would be required to resolve the contest of who would go to Ghelk.

  Kyrus took a deep breath. He stared unfocused at the pieces on the board. I am trying to win but why? Do I want to go to Ghelk? The best I could hope for would be to kill Jinzan. As much as he distrusted the pirate and wanted the staff, Kyrus could not bring himself to compete for the chance to slay him.

  Kyrus made an aggressive move that would keep the game from stagnating. He devised a convoluted attack that would be brilliant if Rashan made two or three key errors. He trusted that either the demon would fail to make them, or that he could find some way to make a blunder himself without being obvious about it.

  "Well, that felt good," Rashan said a while later as Kyrus tipped his king over in admission of defeat.

  "So is there anything you need me to see to while you are away?" Kyrus asked.

  "Nothing that I can think of offhand. I am sure you can manage well enough without me for a few days."

  "Just in case, bring Faolen with you. You can send messages through Varnus," Kyrus said. Rashan had been gazing down at the army of defeated white pieces, still gloating to himself. Kyrus's suggestion brought his focus back to the matter at hand.

  "You," Rashan shook a finger toward Kyrus, "are starting to think like a twinborn master of spies. Very well, we can keep in contact via Faolen and Varnus."

  "Good," Kyrus replied.

  * * * * * * * *

  The Starlit Marauder hung in the sky, a blot against a starry night, too high for any arrow to reach. Only Juliana was aboard; Tiiba’s family had been delivered safely to a remote village in the hills where they could hide until the war ended.

  In the captain's cabin, a magical light pushed the darkness back into the corners of the room. Juliana sat with a book in her lap, open to the first page. She stared at the page a long while, trying to come up with an excuse not to follow through on her promise to read it. She could feel Brannis's arms around her as he lay in bed with Soria, both of them awake and waiting. Every reason she could think of for Soria to give Brannis as to why he should not hear the contents of the book sounded pitiful, even to her own ears. Brannis would see them for what they were; he knew her too well.

  Juliana closed her eyes and took a few long, deep breaths. She opened them again, and directed them down toward the first words on the page, hand-written in an ancient dialect, still recognizable as Kadrin, though just barely. As her eyes observed, Soria's lips spoke aloud:

  Whosoever readst these wordes, knowe thou that they be true. I hast borne witness to thee grate deedes of Mightee Tallax and taken to accounte the wordes and lettres of he who hast spake true to mine selfe. Herein I removed all falsehoode and deceit that I hast founde and left naut butte truth.

  Thee birthe of Mightee Tallax hast been of such legende as I canne trace unto truth. He was a firste sonne of two low borne folke...

  "...he was a first son of two low-born folk." Soria stumbled over the words just a bit as she spoke them.

  "Is it even written in Kadrin?" Brannis asked. Soria's Kheshi accent was coming through clearly. While it sounded charming and exotic most of the time, it did not make her any easier to understand.

  "Well, after a fashion. It's really old, and I don't think they had the language quite figured out back then. I think they were making up spellings as they went along."

  Brannis smiled. He had come across older works during his ventures into the Tower of Contemplation's libraries, and had had the same troubles slogging through them, reading familiar words spelled rather more phonetically than properly in modern Kadrin.

  "Go ahead, keep reading. I won't keep interrupting," Brannis said. He lay propped on one elbow beside Soria, who lay back with a vacant look in her eyes. Brannis knew she was seeing Veydrus more than the cabin around her.


  "Three brothers had he, and two sisters after. The land in which they lived exists no longer. In their day it was called Rreise and was ruled by dragons. It was common in those times for the dragons to cull they who showed too strong a Source among their mortal subjects.

  "The parents of Mighty Tallax, who had yet to earn such glorious title, saw early the peril of the power that grew within him. Before the agents of the dragon had found out their nascent doom, Tallax was taken in flight and brought to live among the forest spirits. Among the fey of the woodlands did he first learn the rudiments of the aether ..."

  Soria read on for much of the morning, pausing frequently—sometimes because a spelling was just too bizarre to read at a glance, other times just to quench the thirst of lengthy oration. Though the biography read more like a fairy story for children than the life of a real person, its veracity had been endorsed by two who knew him and whose purported ages lent weight to their testimony.

  The book went into the minor details of Tallax's childhood before describing his rise to power. It told of his rebellion against dragonkind and how he single-handedly slew so many of the great beasts that they sued for peace, offering vast lands and gold in exchange for their lives. Thus were established the earliest of human kingdoms, all under Tallax's protection.

  A student of history, Brannis found it all fascinating. To his chagrin, he would not hear the whole tale in one night.

  "Sorry," Soria apologized, "Juliana is about ready to plant her face in that book and I don't want to be responsible for damaging a hundreds-of-years-old copy of a thousands-of-years-old book. I can feel it too, but it's her eyes that are burning and going blurry. I ... I need to walk out on deck and get some air."

  "Fair's fair. You've done more than enough. We can pick back up tomorrow," Brannis assured her.

  She cocked her head and gave him a sidelong look. "Maybe aftermorrow. I can't do that everyday. It's exhausting keeping my attention in both worlds like that."

  "You sure you just don't want me to hear it all?" Brannis teased. He reached out and touched her arm as she rose to get dressed.

  "I just want this whole business done with. If you think it's going to take hearing every last bit of that dratted book to do it, so be it. I'm not going to fly around in that airship all by myself forever you know. Sooner or later I'm coming back to get you. I just want you ready to go," Soria said. Sliding away from Brannis, she resumed her belated morning routine.

  "Well, sooner or later, I will be. Then you can have me all to yourself," Brannis said. He smiled at her and she mirrored him. "That, or I'll end up dead."

  Chapter 19 - Trail of the Dead

  A crosswind raked the deck of the Luminous, sending her crew to grab for the nearest handholds in the overhead netting draped there to keep them from flying overboard. Though his hair whipped and his cloak snapped, Rashan appeared oblivious to the conditions. He clung by one hand to the outside of the netting, leaning well over the side of the airship to view the ground below.

  The countryside was green and fresh, and the trees had thinned since passing over the Ogrelands and into Ghelk. Tall prairie grasses waved in the same wind that buffeted the Luminous, following the roll of the hills. The wind brought everything to life. And somewhere down there is a man who would kill every last bit of it if it killed me as well.

  Rashan watched shadows shrink into valleys as the morning progressed. Bits of faded geography played themselves out in the demon's head as they advanced toward Lon Mai—the Ghelkan capital. He tried to estimate the time it would take them but could do no better than "soon."

  When the noontime sun settled above them, Rashan watched with amusement as the ship's shadow cavorted over the hillside, frantically keeping pace as it hugged the ground. The distraction diverted his attention such that he was not the one who first saw the skyline appear ahead of them. "Ahead, the city!" came the cry from the lookout. Rashan turned his attention to the thin, delicate spires of Lon Mai, a city he had once feared to approach. Heavens Cry itched in its scabbard.

  No longer, Rashan thought. He swung about on the netting, facing the crew stationed on deck.

  "Bring us in fast and low," he ordered. "Below the tops of those towers and just above the rooftops, if you can manage that. Once I am clear, head skyward and do not return for me until nightfall." That ought to be long enough to settle things.

  The city wall of Lon Mai was a border more than a defense. It stood but twice the height of a man and was quarried of some pinkish stone. The Luminous hurtled toward it, not bothering to slow.

  Rashan had spent the morning distracted by the scenery, lost in the light vision. The wall defenses being more than a simple shield around the stone caught him off guard. Lightning crackled along the hull of the Luminous and vine-like tendrils lashed out at her rigging, catching hold and trying to tear the ship to pieces. Ropes snapped and sails tore as every piece of aeronautical equipment Kyrus had devised was subjected to forces far beyond what he had anticipated.

  The Luminous lurched in its flight, momentum alone enough to tear it free of its entanglements, but at a terrible cost. The airship was not so far above the rooftops of the nearest buildings when it cleared the wall. Crippled and hurtling out of control, there was little hope of avoiding a crash. All about him, men screamed, though it did them little good. Rashan was far more practical; letting go of the rigging, he hopped away from the doomed craft.

  The warlock lighted on a conical rooftop of red clay tiles, one of a thousand or more that spread across Lon Mai, and watched as the Luminous slammed into a residence. "Why do we even bother naming the things anymore?" Rashan shook his head.

  The streets of Lon Mai were far less crowded than Zorren had been when Rashan had first crashed an airship there and practically deserted by the standards of Kadris. Still, the sudden appearance of a Kadrin airship, followed immediately thereafter by a spectacular crash, was enough to set off a panic. Citizens ran from the area: some screaming, others managing to flee with rather more decorum and practical haste. Another group, a dozen or so lightly armed city guards, rushed toward the wreckage.

  Rashan watched for a moment before moving. This is beneath me, he thought. But there was something galling about leaving the ship's bones to be picked over by Ghelkan vultures. Before further introspection threatened to bog him down, Rashan stepped from the roof, dropping three stories to the ground, and slid Heavens Cry free of its sheath. He hit the ground in stride, and set off at a jog, eager to interrupt the search of the Luminous before anything of use could be found.

  * * * * * * * *

  Rashan climbed over the splintered remains of the ship's hull and the fresh corpses of Ghelkan city guardsman. It had been unsporting slaughtering men better armed to quell marketplace brawls and haul drunkards out of taverns than to face off against real soldiers, let alone a warlock. Still, they had needed to be killed, and no one else was about to do it for him.

  Rashan had been surprised upon eliminating the last of them, to find a live Source about. In the commotion, he had overlooked a survivor amid the remains of the Luminous.

  "Come on out of there. Is that you, Thearax?" Rashan asked as he tossed aside timbers. The broken wards, still glowing weirdly in their misshapen arrangements, obscured a proper view, but the Source was strong without a doubt. It had to be the ship's sorcerer, one Thearax Dellanter, Fifth Circle.

  "Yes. Is that you, Warlock Rashan?" Thearax responded. "You know I cannot see you in the aether."

  "Who else carries a rune-forged blade about?"

  "Point taken." In the ensuing pause, the only sounds that could be heard were the shifting of debris and the citizenry as they fled.

  Rashan found Thearax huddled under a beam with a hand shielding his face from the light that had suddenly intruded on his shelter. The boards dripped with blood. As if only just realizing his situation, the rescued sorcerer swiveled his head back and forth, taking stock of his surroundings with eyes wide in horror, and then vomited.


  As Rashan watched, Thearax, an esteemed member of the Imperial Circle, emptied his stomach, overcome by the carnage around him. The warlock was still supporting a section of the hull that he had lifted in his search. With a sigh, he dropped it and climbed back down the wreckage.

  "Useless ..." he muttered, and left poor Thearax to his fate.

  * * * * * * * *

  The streets of Lon Mai were deserted along Rashan's path. It was a large enough city, especially by Ghelkan standards, and the demon found himself impressed by the organization and discipline that it must have taken to evacuate so quickly. Little round houses stood with doors ajar, with not a Source to be found larger than a housecat. Stables were emptied. Market stalls were vacant. Rashan found himself strolling, looking about for signs of what might have become of the populace, his greater task set momentarily aside.

  Occasional glimpses of the hilltop palace spires kept him wandering in approximately his intended direction. Old maps in Kadris had described the city much the way he was finding it to be.

  "Have I become predictable?" Rashan wondered aloud. There was no one else about to overhear him so it seemed safe to voice his musings. "They were prepared for an airship to cross the wall. They cannot have had a city full of people when I arrived; any magic that could have gotten them away so quickly would not have escaped my notice." Unless she was helping them. He could not bring himself to voice the thought that other immortals might be taking sides in the war.

  By the time he arrived at the manicured archway hedge that opened into the graveyard, he had put aside his more fanciful fears in favor of the practical reality that he was perhaps walking into a trap. By whatever means, be it espionage or deduction, his arrival had been anticipated. I suppose spying on the boy might have been too blunt. It appears to have shaken them more than I had expected.