The Amber Enchantress

by Denning, Troy

  The fat man glared at Rhayn. “I want my dagger back!”

  “It’s my dagger now,” Rhyan said. Her voice was even, but she was furious inside. Her father had, no doubt, heard the merchant’s demand. Now she would have to defy the chief in order to keep the weapon.

  Rhayn turned toward the templars and slowly lifted her tunic, revealing the steel blade and, not by accident, a long expanse of tightly muscled stomach. Giving the king’s officers an inviting smile, she pulled the dagger from its hiding place and held it aloft. Whatever happened next, she wanted to make sure the half-elf and his partner had no excuse to search the rest of the shop.

  The wine merchant snatched at the weapon. Huyar grabbed his wrist in mid-flight and whipped the arm back against the elbow, at the same time kicking the man’s feet out from beneath him. The fat vendor landed flat on his back, wheezing for breath and holding his sore arm.

  The templars leveled their partizans at Huyar. When the elven warrior made no further move to injure the vendor, they did not strike.

  “Rhayn said it’s her dagger,” said Huyar, his eyes fixed on the fat vendor’s face.

  “Stealing don’t make it so,” gasped the merchant.

  “I didn’t steal it. You promised it to me,” said Rhayn, finally letting her tunic fall back over her stomach. Her voice grew suggestive. “Or have you forgotten?”

  The crowd outside chuckled and the merchant’s face reddened, but he would not be embarrassed out of the weapon. “She didn’t deliver!” he complained, looking at the two templars.

  “Deliver what?” demanded Rhayn’s father, slipping from the back room. He kept one hand hidden on the other side of the curtain. “Are you calling my daughter a harlot?”

  The half-elf templar shifted his partizan toward the chief. Rhyan and Huyar glanced at each other with exaggerated agitation, supporting their father’s bluff.

  The merchant’s eyes darted to the hidden hand, but his double chin remained set in determination. “We had an arrangement,” he said, glancing at the templars for support.

  “Our arrangement was that you’d give me your dagger, and now I have it,” said Rhayn.

  “I doubt the wound on his head was part of your arrangement,” said the half-elf. “You robbed him.”

  The crowd outside murmured approval of the templar’s determination, but Rhayn did not attribute any such nobility to him. To her, the man’s actions suggested that he wanted a bribe, and she had no doubt that her father would gladly pay it—then steal it back later.

  “The fat oaf deserves his bandage,” Rhayn said. “I had to smash a flask over his head to keep his grubby hands off me.” She gave the vendor a spiteful glare, then smiled at the half-elven templar. “Still, I can see why you are suspicious. What will it take to convince you of my innocence?”

  “All the purses of your tribe don’t have enough gold to bribe one of King Tithian’s templar’s—if that’s what you’re asking,” said the red-haired man.

  Rhayn and Huyar glanced at each other with furrowed brows, unsure of how to proceed. In their experience, templars could always be bribed—usually for a modest price.

  It was Faenaeyon who came up with their next ploy. “Did I mention that I have another daughter?” the big elf asked. “You may have heard of her—Sadira of Tyr?”

  “If you say so,” the half-elf answered, rolling his eyes. “And you might be my father as well. It still wouldn’t matter.”

  The templar shifted his partisan to Rhayn’s chest, the motioned at the dagger in her hand. “Give that back to the wine vendor,” he said. “You won’t be needing it where you’re going.”

  A woman in the crowd yelled. “That’s right! Let these elves know what happens when they rob the free citizens of Tyr!”

  “To the iron mines with her!” cried another.

  Rhayn looked to her father. “Maybe we could buy the dagger?” she suggested. If the templars couldn’t be bribed, perhaps the wine vendor could.

  Faenaeyon only scowled at her in return. “What else have you been holding back?” he demanded, gesturing at the dagger. He glared at the templars for a moment, then looked back to Rhayn with a silvery light gleaming in his eyes. “You’re trying to dupe me!” he yelled. “You’re in this with them!”

  Rhayn scowled. She had heard her father make such accusations before, when he was well into his cups, but never at such a critical moment.

  “Think of what you’re saying!” Huyar exclaimed. “No Sun Runner would side with an outsider!”

  “If she keeps the dagger from me, what else has she hidden?” hissed Faenaeyon. He raised his arm as though he were lifting something on the other side of the curtain.

  “Stop!” ordered the red-haired templar.

  “This is between me and my daughter,” the chief growled, pulling his sword from behind the curtain.

  “Your daughter is Tithian’s prisoner now,” the templar said, pushing his partizan toward Faenaeyon. “If you try to harm her, I’ll kill—”

  In a blinding fast kick, Huyar planted the sole of his foot square in the fellow’s chest. As the templar stumbled back, Faenaeyon’s bone sword flashed past his son’s ear, striking the Tyrian’s neck with a sharp crack.

  Huyar wasted no time pondering how close the chief had come to killing him instead of the templar. He dived at the half-elf guarding Rhayn. The Tyrian started to bring his weapon around to defend himself, then saw Rhayn still clutching the disputed dagger and hesitated. In that moment, he was lost. Huyar struck simultaneously with three fingers to the larynx and a kick to the knees. The half-elf dropped his partizan and fell to the floor, grasping at his throat.

  As the second templar fell, the wine vendor turned to flee. Rhayn leaped after him, burying the dagger’s blade deep into his back. The fat man dropped, his death scream upon his lips.

  Shrieks of terror and shock rose from the crowd outside. Men and women began to run, fearing the mad elves would come after them next. Cries of “Murder!” and “Call the King’s Guard!” rang down the street.

  Rhayn slammed the door to the shop, and Huyar used a stolen partizan to knock out the poles supporting the counter awning. The wooden shutters slammed into place with a loud bang, closing out the confusion in the streets.

  Rhayn looked to her father and found him standing in the center of the room, clenching his sword and staring at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Tada, were you really going to kill me?” she asked.

  Faenaeyon scowled and held out his free hand. “Give me that dagger.”

  THREE

  CARAVAN

  DANCERS

  OVER THE MELODY OF THE RYL PIPES CAME A STRANGE trill, a feral call almost indistinguishable from the song. The sound was hauntingly familiar, enough so that it weakened the music’s spell and released the sorceress from the ecstasy that had seized her. As Sadira’s pivoting hips slowed and her rocking shoulders wavered to a stop, she focused her drink-blurred eyes on the face of a nearby musician.

  “D’you hear that?” she asked, her slurred words barely audible over the bracing cadence of his finger drums.

  “Dance,” he said.

  “No,” Sadira replied, struggling to fight back the compelling waves of music that filled her head. “Something’s out there. We could be in danger.”

  The man, a nikaal with dust-covered scales and a black mop of hair, cocked his reptilian head about at odd angles, turning his recessed ear slits in all directions. When he heard nothing unusual, he repeated his command. “Dance!”

  Sadira stepped away from the dancing ring, where women of many races—nikaal, human, tarek, even dwarves—were leaping about a sour-smelling fire of dried inix dung. The men stood gathered around the circle, either playing instruments or simply watching the dancing women with eager eyes. They were all dressed in Nibenese fashion, with a colorful length of cloth wrapped around the waist, then passed diagonally over the upper body. To Sadira, it looked as though the saramis might come unwound at any moment, but
so far the robes had stayed in place even through the wildest gyrations of the dancers.

  Once she escaped the dancing ring, Sadira turned to examine the rest of the campsite, searching for the haunting sound that had interrupted her trance. The caravan had stopped in the ruins of a toppled tower, a circular basin half-filled with sand and lit by the flaxen light of the two Athasian moons. The small compound was surrounded on all sides by what had once been the tower’s foundation, a jagged wall that still rose anywhere from a few feet to a few yards above the ground. Atop the ancient wall stood a half-dozen sentries, their eyes fixed on the dark sands outside the camp. The sentries showed no sign of alarm, or even curiosity. Sadira began to wonder if she had imagined the sound.

  Hoping she would hear the trill again if she moved away from the music, the sorceress retrieved her cane and walked over to a large cask a few yards away. Next to the keg stood Captain Milo, an attractive, dark-skinned man with a well-kept beard and rakish smile. With Milo was his drive master, Osa, a female mul as hairless and as powerfully built as Rikus. She had a square face, with thin lips, enigmatic gray eyes, and a scar-laced scalp that suggested she had spent more than a few years in the gladiatorial ring. On the sides of her head were small holes, surrounded by lumps of fire-branded flesh that had once been ears.

  The captain filled a mug and handed it to the sorceress. “You dance well, Lorelei,” he said, using the name Sadira had been given when she joined the caravan.

  “It’s hard not to, once you’re out there,” the half-elf answered, noticing that the mul woman was watching her lips. “They’re playing more than music on those instruments.”

  “The music is enchanting,” the captain agreed, giving her a noncommittal smile. “And I am happy that you partook of it. Most passengers do not understand. They think the women dance for the men’s pleasure, not their own.”

  “I dance for both,” Sadira replied, giving him a crooked smile. “What’s the harm if I dance and a man watches? There are more dangerous things to do with an evening, and whose business is it, anyway?”

  “Perhaps the business of one of the gentlemen who was with you when we met,” Milo suggested. “I was under the impression that one of them was your …” he hesitated, looking for the right word, then said, “your special companion.”

  “Both of them were,” Sadira said, enjoying the astonishment her answer brought to the faces of the captain and his assistant. Smiling to herself, she took a long drink from her mug. The broy was warm and spiced with a pungent herb that disguised its underlying sourness while enhancing its enrapturing powers. “They’re both my lovers, but no man is master to me,” she said.

  “Nibenay is a long distance to travel just to escape men who have no claim on you,” observed Osa, speaking with the thick tongue of one who could not hear her own words.”

  “I travel not to escape someone, but on an errand,” Sadira said, realizing that her hosts’ questions were more than casual inquiries. “Why are you so interested in my reason for traveling to Nibenay?”

  “We must know the cargo we carry—”

  “Lorelei is not cargo,” Milo said reproachfully. He gave Sadira a friendly smile. “What Osa means is that we’re concerned for your welfare. Nibenay is not like Tyr. Lone women are always in great danger there. Perhaps you should stay with us in the compound of House Beshap.”

  From the way Osa frowned, Sadira guessed that there was more to this invitation than simple kindness—and more to their relationship than that of captain and drive master.

  “Thanks, but no,” Sadira said. “I’ll be safe enough.”

  The captain did not look discouraged. “Then you know someone in Nibenay?”

  “I can take care of myself,” Sadira answered. She lifted her mug to her lips and looked away, hoping to forestall any more questions.

  Milo waited for her to empty the vessel, then said, “You really must allow me to be your guide.” He took Sadira’s mug, drawing a frown from Osa, and started to refill it. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “Thanks, but no,” Sadira said, holding out a restraining hand.

  “To which, my guide services or my broy?”

  “To both,” Sadira answered. “I’ve had enough to drink. Besides, that’s not why I came over. I heard something earlier—a trill, somewhere out in the sands.”

  “Hungry lirr,” Osa said. “I see pack at dusk.”

  “All the same, have a look,” Milo ordered.

  “Guards have ears, not me—”

  “Do it!” the captain insisted.

  “Yes, Captain!” Osa snapped, reaching beneath her sarami and withdrawing a curved blade of bone. She set her square jaw and glowered at Sadira briefly, then looked back to Milo. “Three wives enough,” she growled, glaring at him fiercely. With that, she stalked over to the wall.

  “Three wives?” Sadira asked, watching the mul woman climb out of the campsite.

  Milo’s swarthy skin deepened to a darker shade. “Two of them stay in Nibenay.”

  “And the third?” Sadira looking toward Osa.

  “What a man won’t do to keep a good drive master,” the captain said wistfully.

  After Osa had disappeared into the darkness, Sadira said, “I was serious about that whistle, you know. I couldn’t quite place the sound, but I know I’ve heard it before—and it was no lirr.”

  “Perhaps it’s raiders,” said Milo. “If so, they’ll be sorry they picked this caravan. Osa may not be my most beautiful wife, but she’s by far the best fighter employed by House Beshap.”

  Sadira gripped the pommel of her cane more tightly. “Do you think we’re likely to be attacked?” she asked apprehensively.

  “It has happened many times before. The desert is full of elves and other thieves,” the captain said, shrugging nonchalantly.

  When he made no move to silence the camp, Sadira asked, “Aren’t you going to prepare for battle?”

  “No. The drivers need their music,” Milo said. “Besides, if we had to stop dancing every time someone heard a strange sound in the desert, we would be a sad caravan indeed.” He returned his gaze to the whirling figures, letting his head bob to the beat of the finger drums. “About your visit to Nibenay,” he said, still watching dancers. “I wish you’d reconsider and stay at House Beshap. If one of the sorcerer-king’s agents should happen to see you dance, you would never be allowed to leave the city.”

  Sadira was tempted to accept the offer, for few places in any city were as secure as a merchant house’s compound. Nevertheless, she wanted no watchful eyes, friendly or otherwise, tracking her movements while she was in Nibenay. “I won’t stay long,” she replied firmly, “and my acquaintances will look after me while I’m there.”

  “You mean those who wear the veil?” the captain asked.

  Under her breath, Sadira cursed. Although she had not given him much of a hint, the captain had guessed her plan accurately. Upon entering Nibenay, she intended to contact the Veiled Alliance, hoping that the secret league of sorcerers would provision her and help find a reliable elf—if such a thing existed—to guide her to the Pristine Tower.

  Sadira forced a laugh from her throat, trying to sound both amused and surprised. “What makes you say a thing like that?”

  Milo studied her for a moment, then motioned at the sorceress’s cane. “That does,” he said. “You carry a fine steel dagger on your hip, yet hardly seem aware of it, while you treat your cane as a warrior would a fine sword. If you walked with a limp, such a thing might be understandable, but one who dances as you do needs no crutch. Therefore, your cane must be a magical weapon, and you must be a sorceress.”

  “Very observant, but you’re wrong,” she said, wishing her mind were not so clouded by broy. “The cane’s value is sentimental. It belonged to my mother.”

  Milo smiled politely. “Was she a sorceress, too?”

  Sadira scowled, wondering if Milo intended to abandon her here. Like most common people, caravan drivers seldom tolerated
the presence of a sorcerer, blaming all spellcasters for the magical abuses that had reduced Athas to a wasteland. “If you’re so sure I’m a sorceress, why have you brought me so far?” Sadira asked.

  “Because you’ve paid for your passage, and I am an honest man,” Milo answered. “Besides, I know the difference between defilers and honest sorcerers. If you were the type who ruined the land to cast a spell, you would not be going to visit the Veiled Alliance.”

  The captain’s reasoning was logical. Although Sadira had never contacted any Veiled Alliance outside of Tyr, she had heard enough about the different societies to know none of them tolerated defilers. In spite of Milo’s reassurances, though, Sadira still thought it wiser not to admit her identity.

  “Perhaps you are the sorcerer,” she said. “You certainly seem to know more about the Veiled Alliance than I do.”

  “Not because I am a sorcerer, but because one of my wives dabbles in the art,” Milo said. He leaned closer to Sadira and, in a hushed voice, added, “She has been trying to contact those who wear the veil for many months. I was hoping you might assist her.”

  “I’m sorry, I really wouldn’t know—”

  Sadira stopped in midsentence, for again she heard the strange trill ringing above the ryl pipes. This time, being farther away from the music, she recognized the sound as the dulcet chirping of a singing spider. The half-elf had heard the sound only once before: on the other side of the Ringing Mountains, in the halfling forest.

  Milo frowned at the sorceress. “What’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t you hear that chirping?”

  The captain nodded. “A bird of some sort. I don’t recognize what kind but—”

  “Is wasn’t a bird,” Sadira interrupted. “It was a spider.”

  “A spider that chirps—and that loud?” the captain replied, disbelievingly. “You were right—you have had too much broy.”