by Scott Taylor
She imagined Savino’s smile, missing teeth.
She moved cautiously in the direction of the bridge, pausing at every intersection to peek around for her pursuers. Stars began to flicker awake in the deepening sky before she made it back to the waterfront, where only an open courtyard separated her from the bridge. She pressed back against a wall as the watch bells began to chime from the far end of Taux. Listening for tramping feet, she counted the peals. …seven…eight…nine…
Nine bells. Time grew very short. She should have been halfway to the Shoals by now.
There was nothing for it. She sprinted toward the bridge. A cry, another cry, then footfalls and a clacking rattle. Torrent glanced back over her shoulder as she reached the Baymourn Bridge. Two Jai-Ruk and a Lowl raced across the courtyard, led by an abomination that made her gasp in horror.
The dweoler ran with a strange, loping gate on all fours, arms longer than its legs, the body and limbs like twisted driftwood bound together with thorny vines. Long spikes protruded from shoulders and knees, arms and thighs, and from the knuckles of the hands or forefeet, like talons. For a head it bore the skull of a dog or Lowl, bound to the misshapen torso by more entangling vines. A construct of magic, a golem.
And it gained quickly, outpacing the other Vash toughs—halfway across the bridge as Torrent reached the island. She wouldn’t outrun it, but this was no place to make a stand. She dashed for the lip of the high-tide plateau and leapt in desperation to the beach fifteen feet below. The wet sand, hard as stone, drove her knees into her chest and the breath from her lungs. She scrabbled to her feet as the dweoler tumbled down the steep earthen embankment after her. Jai-Ruk appeared on the top but paused to look for a way down. The Lowl passed them and jumped without hesitation, as the Jai-Ruk called back to more Vash men somewhere behind.
Torrent gasped in a breath of air and dashed for a tide pool in the rocks ahead. She splashed through it to the far side and turned even as the dweoler leapt into the water. Pulling her feet clear, she gripped the gemstone and froze the pond instantly, trapping the creature in mid stride by one forelimb. It flipped forward, crunching onto the ice.
She’d intended to freeze it along with the pond, but wood and bone contained no water to freeze. A thin shell of ice shattered off its surface as it struggled upright again, tugging on its trapped limb. Dog-skull jaws snapped and bit without voice. Runes were carved into every surface of its flesh, even on the skull; those around and inside its nasal cavity were filled with paint and precious metals. It scratched and clawed at the ice, trying to pull free and claim its prize.
The Lowl caught her eye, skirting the pond on her right. She backed to a smaller puddle and dipped her left hand, bag and all, into the water. The Lowl slowed uncertainly, eyes darting between Torrent and the dweoler. He turned his head slightly, keeping Torrent in sight, and shouted “Whitey!” An answering holler came from beyond the lip of the plateau. “She’s down h—” Torrent swung her arm up and out of the puddle, sending a thick fountain of water toward him. It turned to steam as it reached his face and he screamed in pain and anger, but Torrent’s blade ended his cry before he could clear his eyes.
She left the dweoler thrashing on the ice and moved along the beach. Rocks broke the shoreline, but she sprinted along every sandy stretch. She needed to recover lost time; the tide rolled in quickly. Soon she would be forced to abandon the beach and join “Whitey” on the high ground above.
She pressed on, gasping for breath, both her arms throbbing. At last, forced to catch her breath and shake out her arms, she slumped against a boulder to assess her situation. She pulled her hand out of the bag and looked inside. The gem glowed clearly, brightly. It definitely hadn’t done that last night, and not to this degree earlier in the evening. That both confused and alarmed her. What did Savino know about this thing that he hadn’t told her?
From across the harbor, ten bells sounded.
She pushed herself forward again. The Ghost moon provided just enough light to navigate by, but the path became difficult as the high tide rolled in and the shoreline grew rockier. Finally, with some trepidation she found a spot to scramble back up over the embankment to the island proper. There were no Jai-Ruk or Lowl in sight, and no dweoler, praise the Saints! Ruins crowded the shoreline –plazas of tightly knit pavers now overgrown with grass and creepers. Stone buildings covered with intricate carvings of odd, square-headed beasts, feathered serpents, men dressed as spotted cats bearing weapons lined with shark’s teeth. Vines crawled over everything; the jungle already tried to reclaim this land.
An ancient road followed the shoreline where the waves hadn’t undermined it. She made better time, always listening for the sounds of pursuit. Where were they? No doubt still close on her heels, for as long as the dweoler snuffled for a scent of the gem.
Sooner than she expected it, from Taux eleven bells rang.
With a curse, she picked up her pace. The headlands drew near as the moon put the Star Tower into silhouette above her. Impossibly tall, it whorled out of the center of the harbor like a waterspout cast in stone, seamless and featureless as blown glass.
The Wizards inside would have a great view of the show she put on… if she succeeded. Not a comforting thought.
At long last she sprinted along the narrow strip of the headland toward the Whispering Shoals. The end was in sight. Waves caressed the stony tip of the island, which broke up into smaller isolated rocks and islets. At low tide they’d be pillars marching into the mouth of the inlet. Now, at high tide, they barely surmounted the level of the sea. She had seen them from the decks of ships many times, on entering or leaving Taux, but standing here now she became aware that they weren’t entirely natural. The tops were perfectly flat, the sides almost perfectly vertical. All were covered with more of the carvings and runic decorations that marked the buildings of Taux. The promontory – even without the embellishments – would have served the harbor as a seabreak; the purpose of the runes defied knowing.
And then she heard the whispers.
As each gentle wave receded from the rock faces, voices murmured. More than the mere hissing of foam and spray, they spoke in a lost tongue, or in many at once, ghostlike. She half expected to see shapes in the mist of each wave. It soothed in a way she didn’t expect… or perhaps soothed wasn’t the right word. Entranced… Or beguiled… She could nearly sense what they…
The clattering gait of the dweoler broke through her reverie.
She spun even as it leapt at her. She ducked, but one thorny paw raked her shoulder, catching her doublet and pulling her over. The creature tumbled as well but sprang lightly to its feet, then charged at her again. She stabbed, but her sword did no more than nick a thorn from its driftwood torso. The golem drove her to the stone, clawing her legs, tearing at her doublet. She held its bony jaws from her face with the hilt of her sword, but the teeth raked her hand and snagged on her sleeve. She rolled over and gained the upper position, leapt clear, sidestepped as it charged again, hacked at the beast, but with a weapon designed for flesh, not wood.
Her elemental magic seemed equally useless—the thing contained no water she could manipulate. She crouched, sword leveled, as it circled her. As much in desperation as anything, she took the moment to thrust her left hand into the bag with the gem again, though she didn’t know what she would do with it.
As before, the link to the Afterglow exploded in her mind, enhancing her kinship with water. And suddenly she understood the voices in the Whispering Shoals: not ghosts, but water elementals, bound to the rocks. They spoke to the waves in a language of rain, and tides, and deep currents. Even all these decades after the disappearance of the Tolimic people they guarded the harbor, bound by some arcane and ancient covenant. Though she didn’t know the words, through the agency of Palentus’ gem and her own ties to the sea, she perceived the intent. They negotiated with the seas, calming the swells as they rounded the seabreak.
Inspiration struck her. She focused on the water i
n the harbor, allowing her sense of the elemental language to inform the shape of her will.
She ran across the surface of the waves.
The dweoler sprang after her, but splashed into the water. Torrent stopped on the first of the islets and turned. The golem, clearly not designed for swimming, clawed at the water and would surely have sunk were it not made of wood. She knelt, touched the surface, and caused the waves to dash it against the rocks until only splinters of bone and wood remained.
She collapsed, her arms and legs and mind throbbing with pain. She wanted to release the stone, but she knew she wasn’t done.
The water told her that a boat approached, and she looked up. From the direction of the harbor island came a rowboat bearing two Lowl, three or more Jai-Ruk, and a dweoler perched at the prow like a dog on a carriage ride. Every dip of their oars caused the elementals to chatter. A human stood behind in the billowing robes of a tome-mage, all in white, with an astounding shock of white hair standing straight up from his head. Gods, what else would you call such an ostentatious poof but “Whitey?”
She walked out across the swells to the furthest islet, arriving as the Ghost moon attained its zenith directly overhead. Torrent looked around to see that where she now stood aligned almost perfectly with the Temple of the Sun on her right, the Wizards’ Star Tower to her left, and with the Black Gate across the harbor in Taux. Coincidence? The water didn’t know, but it thought not. She looked into the bag; the gem now glowed so brightly she averted her eyes. Whatever else was true about the Whispering Shoals, they were a power nexus of formidable scope.
She kneeled down to wait. The boat bobbed closer and closer. She might yet have to contend with these pests the hard way.
Then came the chime from the city, a single bell that marked the changing of the guard.
11:45, and all’s not at all well.
She focused her mind, asked the ocean for aid and forgiveness, and touched the water.
Power exploded through her body, in every direction outward. The harbor boomed as a circle of ice fled from her touch like a tidal wave. The stone under her feet shivered. Pain gripped her and she cried out. The ice crackled and shone, heaving as the deep currents beneath it were disrupted by the expansion. She hung her head and braced herself with her other hand, desperately clinging to her equilibrium. She started to shiver with the exertion, quelled it only through force of will by crying out again. She lost her balance, expected to fall into the harbor, but landed on ice, pushed herself upright, gasping. Somewhere behind her the ocean ice heaved and cracked. Looking up, she saw whole sections of harbor ice lifted up as if something gigantic moved beneath, in the direction of Taux.
It finally occurred to her to check on the progress of the Lowl, the Jai-ruk, the dweoler, and Whitey.
They’d left their boat locked in the ice and approached on foot. Whitey and his minions tested each step; the dweoler scrabbled frantically in a mechanical need to run, even though its feet weren’t designed for such a slick surface. They would be upon her soon.
Hang on a little longer, she told herself. Savino is depending on you.
But the dweoler made progress too quickly, and now Whitey shouted with joy; he’d spotted her at last in the darkness, and reached into his robes.
“Oh, fuck all,” said Torrent, removing her hands from the ice.
With another thunderous crack, a black tide of unfrozen water raced away from her position like a wave. Whitey, the dweoler, and all his henchmen dropped into the harbor. The instant they were all submerged, she plunged her hands back into the swells and pushed the ice outward again. Pain bludgeoned her every sense as a third stupendous boom shook the harbor, but she maintained concentration, encouraged by the whispers, buoyed by mere contact with the sea. She hoped that temporary hiccup wouldn’t destroy Savino’s carefully laid plan.
Then a blessed sound: the first peal of the midnight bells.
“Saint Erik be praised,” she panted.
The second bell rang out. Twelve o’clock, and all is weird.
Thumping noises caused her to look up; a Lowl banged on the underside of the ice, eyes wide, cheeks distended.
Three bells…
She noted that ice encased Whitey’s head. His shock of white hair stuck up above the surface like an odd desert plant. Below the ice he didn’t move at all.
The dog skull of the dweoler also protruded above the ice, jaws still snapping. With a thought and a little concentration, she moved the tides and ripped the body off of it from below and tore it apart.
The bells pealed. She began to shake. Eight bells? No, nine.
The Lowl floated face-up beneath the ice. Jai-Ruk were notoriously bad swimmers, sadly for them, and she saw no sign.
The Afterglow roared in her mind. Anguish coursed through her arms and legs.
The twelfth bell rang. Torrent released the stone and collapsed upon the rock.
She awoke to whispers. The Blood Moon now hung low in the west. She smelled the sea floor and knew the tide had gone out again. The actual sandy shoals would be visible now.
All her muscles screamed when she sat up and stretched, rotating her shoulders, flexing her arms. Without the gem in her hand, it seemed odd that the whispers were merely strange noises, imparting no wisdom, stripped of their beguilement. She opened the bag and pulled the stone out. Not only had it lost its inner glow, it didn’t penetrate her awareness or crash into her senses. She’d heard that some tome-mage’s foci were good for but a single use, while others could be recharged, and a rare few would recharge themselves over time. This one was clearly spent, for now at least.
Whatever kind of focusing tool it was, Tlacolotl wanted the thing back badly enough to send two constructs, a mage, and a small army in search of it.
Perhaps more than one.
Vash would keep looking; she knew that with certainty. Should she give it back to him? Dispose of it?
Or keep it?
Her first instinct was to fling it as far out into the harbor as she could. But it certainly had been a useful thing last night. A self-recharging magical gem… She shook her head. The Vash family never forgave. She might well need it again. If she had been trapped between before, she was deeply, deeply between now.
Torrent sighed heavily. It was still a damned big ruby, if nothing else. She would keep it for the time being, and figure out what to tell Savino.
Savino…She couldn’t begin to imagine how all of this related to a Razor’s duel. I wonder how he made out, she thought.
She found enough toe and finger holds in the rock face to climb down to the sandy bar below. She saw no sign of Whitey or his retinue, though the dweoler skull lay half buried in the sediment. She crushed it under her boot and started toward shore.
Walking helped to work the stiffness out. Soon she felt better.
I hope Savino is alive and well, she thought.
She balled a fist up at her side unconsciously.
She wanted so badly to see his smile.
Illustration by Jeff Laubenstein
VENTURE
Juliet E. McKenna
Zhada woke to luxuriate in the warmth of his feather mattress in this coolest season of the year. As usual stirring among the four-storey tenement’s other inhabitants had roused him. Other races talking and moving quietly – above or below – was still more than loud enough to cock a sleeping Lowl’s sharp ears.
He rolled over and looked at the gear he had set ready the previous evening. Sturdy thigh boots stood beside his backpack by his room’s bolted door, leather breeches and a long-sleeved jerkin draped over it, with a clean shirt and underlinen on top and his sword and dagger laid on the floorboards.
Zhada threw off the coverlet and sat up. Rising, he took a step towards his washstand before recollecting himself. He crossed to the broad-silled window instead and looked into the earthenware pot standing there. Passing a hand over its wide neck reassured him that all was well. The gentle heat he had summoned within it was holding
constant, palpably warmer than the air in the room. He breathed a silent prayer in, his mother tongue, to Vitcoska, demon queen of the Crucible’s molten crater, the greatest of the fiery mountains watching over ancestral Lowl islands:
“My fervent thanks for granting your chosen people a spark of your Elemental Fire. I ask for your blessings on my quest.”
He washed and dressed, brushing his black fur and slicking down an unruly tuft between his ears with wet fingers. Locking his door, he made his way down the stairs and along the hallway.
Mistress Talleran saw him through the kitchen’s open door. “Master Jada!”
Like most Humans, she could only manage an approximation of Lowl names. Unlike all-too-many in the city’s more prosperous and orderly districts on the other side of the Black Gate, she didn’t assume that just because the Lowl looked like a Human with a dog’s head, that they had no more wits than such an animal.
“Will you take some breakfast?” She bustled around the well-scrubbed table. “Will you be wanting dinner this evening?”
Ducking his head politely, Zhada settled for answering her first question. “No thank you. I go to call on a friend, and will eat there.”
“You can take the edge off your hunger as you walk.” She hurried after him to the double-fronted building’s entrance, pressing a folded and fried pastry into his hand.
“Thank you.” He ducked his head again as he opened the door and went down the steps. He passed the sunhawk-carved pillar left by the priests who’d once shared the tenement, and strode through the crowds in the lane leading towards the practice ball courts.
The brooding bulk of the Ullamalitzli Stadium rose beyond them. A veil of mist softened the topmost towers and hid the hovels and hucksters’ stalls now built on the terraces where tens of thousands of the original inhabitants of Taux had once watched the fast and furious game played.