Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  Faolen pulled up short as Tod had rushed up to him, and stood within breath-smelling distance of him. There was no scent of drink upon him, but Tod did smell vaguely of sewage, though a quick inspection did not show him to have been dunked in the stuff.

  “Where is he?” Faolen asked simply.

  “Over by the center o’ town, where the arse-brown don’t flow much. Kid prob’ly had the sense to stay to the nicer parts so’s he didn’t give his self away with the stink.”

  “Where is Jodoul?” Faolen emphasized. Information about the boy was well and good, but he only had so many accomplices with whom to catch him.

  “Last I saw, he was plannin’ to talk to the kid.” Tod shrugged, his gaze wandering to the floor. “Prob’ly dead. I warned him we weren’t the ones to stop him; you was. He thought he knew better.”

  “I did.”

  They all turned as Jodoul entered from the front.

  “Boy’s gonna be headin’ here soon as it’s dark,” Jodoul said, “so we best be ready for ’im.”

  “How’d ya manage that piece o’ magic?” Tod asked, incredulous, slapping Jodoul on the shoulder in congratulations—and chastisement for making him think Jodoul had died a vain death by the dangerous child.

  “Kid needed someone to trust. I think I was the first one he ran into what wasn’t mad at ’im or tryin’ to catch ’im,” Jodoul said. “Kid’s also got a noggin more twisted ’n’ a ship’s riggin’. Got’s ’im some voices in ’is head, buggin’ ’im like no one’s business. I says I know a fella who can help.” Jodoul smiled at Faolen.

  Strong in magic. Voices in his head. Oh, Jodoul, you have no idea how right you were. Faolen smiled in return.

  “Let us prepare for him, then.”

  * * * * * * * *

  The little shop had a back door. For a legitimate business, it might have been used for taking deliveries, and the comings and goings of the staff. Faolen and his companions had barred it so that visitors could only enter through the front, leaving it as an escape route only. As Faolen and Jodoul sat waiting, the bar was now leaning against the wall and the door stood open just a crack.

  “Remember, leave us as soon as you have made your introduction. I want you and Tod covering the two exits. If you hear anything befall in here that makes you believe me dead, shoot him as he exits. There is some risk that he might have a shielding spell, and kill you, but if I am dead, it may be your only chance at the staff. If he exits but nothing has gone wrong in here, leave him be. It may take time to win his trust,” Faolen said, going over the plan aloud with Jodoul for roughly the fifth time.

  Jodoul nodded, then cocked his head as if realizing something. “Hey, what if he don’t make lots o’ noise killin’ ya? How am I s’posed to know if’n yer dead then?”

  Faolen furrowed his brow. It was not a pleasant prospect, to say the least, but Jodoul had the right of it. If the boy was killing merely with the draw of the staff, two unschooled ruffians like Tod and Jodoul would likely not feel the disturbance in the aether as even a modest sorcerer would. Faolen stood, and began rummaging through the crates left lying about the back room of the establishment. He found a crystal decanter, and hefted it in his hands, liking the feel of it. He found some twine as well.

  Faolen set the decanter on the edge of the table, and tied the twine through the looping handle it bore. The other end he looped around his wrist with a short length in between. “There. If I fall to the floor, the decanter will as well, hopefully shattering loudly enough to wake you and Tod from your slumbers outside,” Faolen joked, preferring to jest over his potential death rather than consider it seriously.

  “Yeah, that oughtta do it.” Jodoul nodded. The two proceeded to wait in nervous silence for the killer child to arrive, if indeed he actually intended to arrive at all.

  Jodoul paced. Faolen sat still and quietly, trying to compose his thoughts: If only it is true. This could go much better than I had ever hoped. It will be delicate—

  A noise outside had Faolen shifting his vision quickly into the aether. Outside was a small Source but a powerful one. It had to be Anzik Fehr. Something the boy carried made a wake in the aether as it passed through, but was otherwise indistinct. Most objects of magic shone in the aether; the Staff of Gehlen drew the stuff in upon command. It did not release its hold except by the will of its wielder.

  Faolen let his vision resume in the light as the boy tentatively entered the shop. He looked just as Jodoul had described him: small, slight, and entirely unthreatening, unless you knew what the staff he bore was capable of.

  “Hello, Anzik,” Jodoul greeted him with nervous cheeriness. “This is my friend. His name is Faolen.”

  Faolen had judged the risk too high to be lying to the boy ... much. If he was a clever one, he would catch them in any slip. Their lies needed to be subtle and few.

  “Nice to meet you,” Faolen ventured politely, smiling disarmingly.

  “You are old.” Anzik frowned, looking intently at Faolen.

  Faolen’s eyebrows raised in mild surprise. Well now, I had not even thought about that casual little lie.

  “None of us wishes to be old. Would you want to give up being a boy to become an old man?” Faolen asked.

  As he did, he let slip an illusion he maintained habitually, with hardly any thought anymore. His hair greyed at the temples and retreated slightly. His skin lost some of its boyish luster, and grew a few wrinkles about the eyes and brow. Life extension had done well by him, but he hid its deficiencies behind a layer of illusions that were hidden from view even in the aether, though apparently not to such keenly observant young eyes.

  “Who are you?” Anzik asked. Having already been introduced, he could only assume the boy meant more than his name.

  “A friend of Jodoul’s and someone who can help you,” Faolen replied, picking the most promising of truths to share. “Jodoul can wait outside and guard us, to make sure we are not taken by surprise. I want us to be safe here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be just outside a ways, got it?” Jodoul said, taking up a short bow and quiver and heading for the back door, leaving the two sorcerers, young and old, Megrenn and Kadrin, alone to discuss their problems.

  “You do not want the staff?” Anzik asked suspiciously, once Jodoul had left. “You will not tell my father where I am?”

  “I will not tell your father where you are, I assure you. As for the staff, think of it as gold,” Faolen said. “Have a seat with me and I will explain.”

  He gestured to the empty chair that Jodoul had left vacant for all his pacing. The large table that had earlier shown the expanse of Zorren was now just barren. Anzik clutched the staff warily in both hands, and accepted Faolen’s offer of a place to sit.

  “Gold has value and men use it to trade,” Faolen said. “Dishonest men kill for it, steal it, do whatever they can to get it. Honest men trade and barter. They sell goods they make. They exchange it for services they offer. It is the way of the world. Sometimes men who have no gold need to barter instead. A man with bread but no gold can fill his belly, but will go thirsty. A man with ale but no gold can quench his thirst, but go hungry. If the two meet, with no gold between them, they can still meet both their needs by trading some ale for some bread,” Faolen lectured. It was a speech he had spent an hour working out in his head.

  “I see,” the clever boy replied. “You want to trade the staff for helping with the voices.”

  “Yes, but I am an honest man. I will not take it from you. I will not demand it from you. I will help you with the voices, and when we have taken care of them, I would hope that you would give me the staff in payment,” Faolen told him. He looked right at the boy, but Anzik did not make eye contact, preferring to look down at his lap.

  “Can you really make them stop?” Anzik asked after a pause.

  “Yes. When I was a boy, I had the same problem. A kindly man helped me and I intend to help you the same way.”

  “How?” Anzik asked meekly. “Father tried
to make the voices go away, but he could not.”

  “First, I need to find where the voices are coming from. Then I will go there to stop them directly. I cannot stop you hearing them; I must stop them trying to speak to you,” Faolen explained.

  “They are in my head. I hear them there. Everyone knows they are in my head,” Anzik whined, frustrated that Faolen seemed not to understand how the voices worked.

  “No, they are not. If I stand across the room and shout to you, I am not in your chair. That is merely where you are when you hear. Just as you can see in the aether things that others are incapable of seeing, you hear what others are incapable of hearing. The voices are someplace, and I must find out where to go to stop them.”

  “I don't know, then,” Anzik complained, sniffling. “No one talks to me about the voices. Even Father hardly does anymore.”

  “Ask the voices, then,” Faolen told him. For the first time, Anzik looked up and met Faolen’s gaze. “Ask them and tell me what they say.”

  “How do I do that?” Anzik asked, looking away again.

  “Ask the question in your head. Ask it out loud, so you hear it in there, just as you hear their voices. You have your own voice in your head. Make it heard,” Faolen instructed him. He felt an echo of his own past. He did not remember the words, but he had received similar instructions once, many summers ago.

  Anzik shut his eyes tightly, concentrating. “Where are you? Where are you?” the boy repeated under his breath.

  “You need to get a name for the place. Use their words, not your own,” Faolen advised softly.

  Anzik did not make any acknowledgment, but changed his mantra. “What do you call your place? What do you call your place?” Faolen noted with extreme interest that he had switched to speaking Acardian.

  “Are they saying anything back?” Faolen asked eagerly.

  “No! I will not be quiet! Tell me what to call this place!” Anzik shouted in Acardian.

  “Easy. Easy. Shout in your head, not with your mouth,” Faolen cautioned.

  Anzik was breathing hard, exerting himself mentally. His eyes snapped open and he looked up at Faolen distantly. “Pious Grove Sanctuary,” Anzik said, stumbling a bit over the Takalish words he was mimicking, clearly without understanding them. He looked as if he had been awakened from a nightmare.

  Faolen took the shaking boy in his arms and hugged him tight. “It will be all right. I know where to go now to make the voices go away.”

  “Anzik!” a voice outside shouted. “Anzik, please come home!” The boy curled tighter against Faolen, seeking his protection. “Anzik, I forgive you! I just want you safe! Anzik!”

  “I can help hide you from your father as well.” Faolen worked a bit of simple illusion to dim the boy’s Source from aether-vision. “If you do not use the staff, this spell will keep you from his notice for a few days. I take no payment until I have kept my end of our deal, do you understand?”

  Anzik nodded.

  “Staying here may be dangerous. I will tell you when it is safe to return. Go. Hide. Try not to hurt anyone until I have the chance to help you quiet those voices,” Faolen told him.

  Loosed from Faolen’s embrace, the boy did not speak another word, but left by the back door, staff in tow. The voice, presumably belonging to a desperate father, continued, but grew distant.

  Faolen looked to the decanter, perched unsteadily on the edge of the table, where it had slid when he thoughtlessly took Anzik in his arms. He untied the decanter, and looked for something to pour the contents into. He needed a drink.

  Chapter 17 - Bait and Switch

  The wooden planks beneath his feet swayed slowly, rocking back and forth as the Frostwatch Symphony masqueraded across the Katamic in the guise of a merchant ship. A day earlier, the ship had been loaded with mindroot, Kheshi silks, and several casks of Simmeran Sunset, one of the priciest Takalish brandies gold could buy. Shortly before putting to sea, longshoremen had hastily unloaded the mindroot and silks. The brandy was kept aboard in partial payment to the coinblades who had taken the place of the offloaded cargo.

  Zellisan sat in the hold with a dozen of his new compatriots, waiting for the ship to be attacked. Parjek Ran-Haalamar had hired twoscore guards for his bait ship, counting on Captain Zayne’s informants in the trade city to have already marked the Frostwatch Symphony as a target. If they reached Zayne’s hunting grounds before word of the exchange, the pirate would walk into a trap that he thought was his to spring.

  “Ain’t learned me to swim anyway. Why not wear mail, am I right?” one of the other coinblades remarked, trying to break the grim mood with conversation. He was a scraggly man, all arm and leg, with an egg of a face and a week’s unshaven scruff covering it. His posture suggested a military career to Zellisan, who knew the type all too well. Boring assignments, petty tyrants for commanders, and meager pay. Soon enough, any man good enough with a blade or bow starts wondering how much more coin he could pocket working for himself. A few even went through with it.

  “Me, I swim just fine,” Zellisan replied after an awkward silence that no one else seemed inclined to break. “You’ll see me strippin’ to my skivvies fast enough, if’n I go in that water out there.” He smiled, scanning the hold for signs of anyone with a sense of humor, or at least the bravery to show it.

  The men in the hold were the ones who would fight armored upon the deck, once the ship was boarded. They were to hold the middle ground, and keep Zayne’s pirates from gaining the helm, defending the ship’s captain. Almost to a man, they had agreed to keep well away from the railings, lest they plummet to a near certain death in the Katamic, pulled under by the weight of the steel they wore.

  * * * * * * * *

  “Open this thing up a little wider. I can’t breathe in here,” a bare-chested Feru complained, a note of rising panic and frustration in his voice.

  A sliver of bright daylight shone in through the wooden door, just enough to cast the inside of the crate into a stark contrast of light and dark that kept the eyes from fully adjusting to either. They were crowded inside with just a common bench to sit on and not enough room to stand. Sweating bodies rubbed uncomfortably together. Stowed weapons poked neighbors. The air was hot and more humid than the fresh sea air just outside. The door to the crate was disguised from the outside to look like any other side of the wooden box. It had leather hinges on the inside that let it swing wide open, and a rope handle to let the occupants pull it closed tightly to complete the disguise. Until pirates were sighted, they were leaving it open just a bit to get more air and alleviate the heat.

  The Feru coinblade reached out for the dark-skinned hand that kept custody of that handle. Before he could wrench that hand away from the door, another hand had a finger to the man’s throat. “Sit down,” Rakashi commanded sternly. “There is air enough to breathe. The fear is in your mind. Do not shame yourself with cowardice just before a battle.” The Feru man grabbed for the finger at his throat, but the hand it belonged to shoved him roughly back toward his seat. In the cramped confines, he was not welcomed back gently.

  “Who put you in charge here, anyway?” someone else asked snidely. Apparently the Feru man was not the only one growing impatient with the accommodations.

  “I am not in charge. I am just following the orders given by the captain, the man who will tell Parjek Ran-Haalamar who gets paid and who does not. No man on this ship is strong enough to defy all these hired blades.” Rakashi spoke the truth carefully, for he rather suspected that there was a woman who could. “Thus we will follow our orders. The door does not open more than to allow a fist through.”

  Glares met Rakashi’s answer. Rightly or wrongly, they went unnoticed, lost to the glare from the taunting sunlight.

  * * * * * * * *

  “I don’t like having ya up here, or on the ship at all, ya know,” Captain Rangelord groused, not so much as looking in the direction of the object of his ire.

  “You’ve mentioned it a time or two,” Soria co
mmented dryly, standing next to him by the ship’s wheel. It was late afternoon, and with Frostwatch Symphony heading south, the sun was slowly beginning its descent to their starboard side. “But if the pirates attack with the sun at their backs, it will be any time now. This is the best view besides the nest.” She had said much the same that morning, when the expected attack would have come from the east, with the rising sun.

  Tanner had won a contest that morning just after they set sail, and proved he had the best eyes of the bunch. That had earned him the honor of being the one to watch from up on high, in the crow’s nest. Soria did not begrudge him his victory, but neither would she accept being stuffed in a box or stowed in the hold as the rest of them had. Instead she watched and waited, giving vague license to the crew to go on about their work around her without actually getting out of their way.

  “If you weren’t a woman, I’d—”

  “—end up feeding the sharks,” Soria finished for him, but not in any way as the captain had intended. “There is a reason I commanded three times the sum of the others for this job. When this battle is won, you will see why.”

  “Tez-u-won Master—or Mistress I oughta say,” the captain spat on the deck. “Sack o’ fish feet, that’s what that’s worth. Got folk scared of ’em cuz they can fight without a blade. Well, them pirates’ll have blades and you’ll see what’s what. Not sure how ya snookered a man like Parjek Ran-Haalamar, but ya won’t fool me.”

  “Listen here, root-peddler,” Soria warned. “You’ve got a half dozen of your crew that could likely captain us back to shore somewhere. If you have a problem with me, I don’t mind settling it.”

  Soria was not so foolish as to think that the mindroot Parjek Ran-Haalamar and his associates offloaded would not be sold elsewhere. Trading in mindroot was a high crime in almost any place with a functioning government. When inhaled, it was a potent and addictive hallucinogen, vile enough to warrant universal disdain, though that was not the use that kings and governors feared. When ingested, it reacted with the stomach’s fluids, and killed horrifically in just moments. That was the sort of thing folk took a really strong stance against. Pirates, thieves, assassins, and—to a lesser extent—coinblades like herself, were all unsavory types that respectable folk kept away from. Poison-sellers were a level of scum below even those, and Soria might have considered doing the world a service being rid of a few, had she not a more immediate need of them for transportation to a meeting with Denrik Zayne.