Agents of Artifice p-1

by Ari Marmell

  For long seconds Kallist aimed, literally holding his breath. If he missed, he wasn't sure he had the energy to repeat the spell. Worse, should his bolt pass through the shambler and hit the angel…

  The beast turned its back, and Kallist squeezed the trigger, exhaling slowly. The crossbow bucked with a twang, hummed as its enchanted gears ratcheted the cord back to receive another bolt. And the projectile itself flashed through the air to sink, without the slightest visible effect, into the living muck.

  Again Kallist held his breath. A better mage could have targeted the spell directly, without the need for the bolt to carry it, but Kallist had barely managed the magic at all. Had he somehow bollixed it up? Had the bolt passed straight through, without striking anything solid? Would it even work on a creature without organs or muscles, bone or blood?

  So determined was his stare, his reluctance even to blink that his vision blurred with strain and rainwater. Thus, when his enchantment did begin to take hold, he almost missed it. So gradually that it could easily have been his imagination or a trick of the rain-bent light, the shambler's movements slowed. Each step grew more ponderous than the last, and the beast began to teeter on the verge of collapse as its feet struggled to keep up with its forward momentum. Though its strength had diminished not at all, it could not keep pace with the angel's thrashing, and with a burst of black feathers she erupted from its grasp. Her skin was mottled with gangrenous, festering wounds, her left arm hung limp where the bones had cracked. But her voice rose with power to shame the thunder, and in her one good hand she held her spear aloft, as though to sunder the clouds from the sky.

  And as her foe reeled backward, trying desperately to keep its balance, she dived.

  Slowed to a dull plodding by Kallist's spell, the shambler might as well have tried to outrun the lightning as to dodge the plummeting angel. So terrible was her stroke, the creature's glutinous hide literally opened up before her. Not merely her spear, but the angel herself plowed through the beast, bursting from its back in a spray of rancid mud and filth.

  Perhaps pain finally gave the lumbering construct a voice, or perhaps it was simply the rush of air between its sagging maw and the gaping fissure in its torso, but the shambler howled, a terrible sound of sucking mud and raging winds. Fungi and the bones of rats burst through its skin of muck, thrashing wildly, the legs of some horrible, dying vermin. Still, though it collapsed heavily to the roadside, supporting itself on one of its slimy arms, it stubbornly refused to die.

  Liliana, also crouched in the roadway, could only hope that it was near enough to death, for she could maintain her summons no longer. With a gasp she released the energies pent up within, allowed herself to relax her almost inhuman concentration. A death-pale face, now painted in sewage, turned questioningly in her direction for just an instant before the angel disappeared, drawn back to whatever lower realm had spawned her.

  Kallist didn't know if the cesspit creature was capable of recovering from such a devastating assault, but he wasn't about to wait and find out. Dropping the crossbow, he hefted his great broadsword and charged back down the alley, fully prepared to hack the thing into so many bite-sized morsels to keep it from rising once more.

  But Liliana was faster, or at least a great deal nearer. Though her vision blurred and her footsteps faltered, she stepped toward the thrashing monstrosity. It would be some time before she'd dare attempt so potent a summons, yes, but even at her weakest, Liliana Vess held plenty of spells at her beck and call.

  Foul fumes of diseased purple flowed from her hands, roiling against the wind. Where they passed, what few molds and random weeds had survived the struggle fell flat. At its strongest, the shambler's animating spirit could have easily withstood the arcane poisons Liliana now pumped into the soaking air, but now, its innards open to the outside, it lacked all such resilience.

  Kallist skidded to a halt, sword still upraised, as the creature spasmed. It bellowed once, its final call, and crumbled into mulch, already washing back into the sewers beneath the slow but steady rain.

  The tension finally left his body in a sigh of relief as heavy as the buildings looming over him. His shoulders drooped, the tip of his sword screeched against the cobblestones. Kallist opened his mouth to call to Liliana-

  And something heavy, flailing, and gnashing its teeth slammed into him from behind.

  Kallist toppled, long and powerful fingers on the back of his neck forcing his face down against the bruising roadway. His hand scrabbled for his sword, but even had he found the hilt, he couldn't possibly have delivered an effective stroke. Bright lights flashed once more before his eyes; his lungs and nostrils burned. Blood pounded in his ears, deafening him to the hissing and snarling of the beast on his back.

  It deafened him, also, to the sudden twang of the crossbow he'd dropped. The bolt flew wide, but near enough to make its point. The weight vanished from Kallist's back as abruptly as it had appeared, and he raised his aching head in time to see a small shape scurrying back into open drain.

  "What…" he gasped, trying to catch his breath for the fourth time in minutes, "What was…"

  "Sewer goblin," Liliana told him, even as she sagged onto the stoop of a nearby home, crossbow dangling from limp fingers. "I don't think they took kindly to us surviving."

  Kallist scowled, lowering his head between his knees as he struggled for breath. "What were they doing, anyway? They don't come out in the day, and they certainly don't summon elementals to waylay travelers!"

  "Unless they're bribed to," Liliana commented. "Greedy little bastards."

  "Semner?"

  "Who else? Probably decided to make sure we couldn't follow him, if we managed to get away from his thugs. Even he's not stupid enough to assume we're no threat to him, and it wouldn't have been hard to figure out where we'd pass. It's not like we had a lot of routes to choose from."

  Kallist opened his mouth to ask another question, snapped his teeth together when he lifted his head and finally got a good look at the woman beside him. Her flesh was pale and clammy, her entire body drenched. Even sitting slumped over as she was, her hands shook with exhaustion.

  "You don't look well," Kallist said brilliantly.

  "I need to rest," she admitted, and Kallist knew she didn't just mean physically. A summoning such as the one she'd invoked… Her essence must be dry as parchment. The swampy earth beneath Avaric was reasonably mana-rich and particularly suited to Liliana's style of magic-it was one of the reasons they'd moved there after falling out with Jace-but they were traveling, slowly but surely, away from it as they headed toward Favarial. Her recovery would take time.

  Time that the sudden burst of frenetic drumming from deep within the echoing sewers told them they did not have.

  Leaning on one another, each gasping for air and struggling for strength, they rose. One step forward, a second…

  "Damn it!" Kallist clenched his fists in helpless frustration and failed to notice Liliana's hiss of pain as he squeezed her smaller hand in his. "The little bastards stole the pack!"

  Every supply he had brought, every morsel of food, every comfort, had been in the backpack that he left behind after the angel pried him from the clinging sewage. And of that pack, there was no sign at all.

  "We could try to get it back," Liliana suggested. "They're just sewer goblins."

  It was an empty offer, and they both knew it. Kallist merely shook his head, and the weary couple shuffled their way along the urban chasm, struggling to leave behind the pounding drums, and the foul things that woke to their call.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was hardly one of Ravnica's richest districts. It lacked the impossibly wide avenues, lit by permanent lanterns of mystic lights. It had none of the towers that reached so high the clouds themselves struggled to climb them, nor the sweeping arches and delicate bridges that formed layer upon layer of city, stacked one atop the next until the ground was invisible from the top.

  But compared to cities on most other worl
ds, and certainly compared to the poorer districts such as Avaric, Favarial was lavish to the point of extravagance.

  Just as it had done with the hills, the mountains, and the swamps, Ravnica had annexed and absorbed the world's lakes without so much as a hiccup. Favarial was built above the surface of a deep body of fresh water the size of a small sea. The avenues and plazas stood supported by pylons that dug deep into the lake's murky floor, the buildings on great spans supported by those avenues and plazas. Unless one stood at the side of a roadway and deliberately looked over the edge, one might never notice the lake at all. Great bridges connected it to the mainland, allowing travelers and commerce to come and go at will.

  Indeed, it was the lake itself that provided most of the region's commerce. The surrounding municipalities purchased much of their fresh water from Favarial, whose River Guild-not one of the true guilds of the past, by any stretch, but powerful enough in its home territory-charged an arm and a leg to keep the rivers flowing. Let a neighbor fail to make a payment and the dams slammed shut.

  As this made Favarial an economic powerhouse, it was a popular destination for merchants, shoppers, and travelers alike. Thus, as the weary mages drew nearer their destination, as the skies finally cleared and the sun dried the sodden cobblestones, they found themselves joined by travelers from other communities. First a trickle, and then a veritable deluge as road after road joined the main avenue; travelers on foot, in wagons, on horses or great lizards, even the occasional domesticated wolf. Most were human, in this part of Ravnica, though some few were elves or viashino lizard-men, and none gave Kallist or Liliana a second glance as they took their place at the back of the line.

  For two and a half days, the fatigued couple had lived on rainwater and what food was available in the grimy bazaars of the poor neighborhoods through which they'd passed. The gamey taste of ivysnake still clung to Kallist's mouth, possibly because he still had a thin strand of the stuff stuck between two back teeth. The first night they'd been forced to camp in an alley, huddled together against the rain and the garbage, though they'd thankfully reached an area affluent enough to offer an inn on the second night. Between Liliana's lingering exhaustion and the fact that they had precisely two crossbow bolts to their names (the others having been in the stolen pack), Kallist could only give thanks they'd suffered no further attacks in their travels.

  And now that they'd finally arrived, as the zeniths of the highest buildings soared into view, Kallist remembered just how woefully unimpressive the district actually was. Yes, the people of the backwaters like Avaric found it imposing, but for a man born to the towering spires of richer neighborhoods, Favarial inspired only a resounding "Eh."

  The district's defenses, such as they were, consisted of heavy iron gates at the end of every bridge, and a low wall providing some measure of security from the lake itself. Guards stood post at those gates, jagged halberds and twin-pronged spears ready to repulse an attack that would never come, and otherwise did nothing worthwhile. None bothered to check on or question passing travelers, for what was there to check for?

  Shuffle. Step. Wait. Step. Wait. Shuffle. The line inched forward, and Kallist cursed every wasted minute, every pause. When Liliana leaned close and said, "It might be tough, but I could try to call something up to eat our way to the front of the line," he could conjure only a wan smile.

  As they neared, the temperature rose, the sun reflecting harshly from the still waters and lingering in an air that showed no interest at all in providing a breeze. It was still preferable to days spent soaking in the mosquito-spawning rain-but not by much. And only as they approached the gate did the din of the inner streets wash over them. Again, not as deafening or oppressive as Kallist had felt in other, larger districts, but after so long in Avaric, it was disconcerting enough.

  Hot, loud, bright, and smelly. So self-pityingly miserable was Kallist as he finally passed through the gate, he failed to notice one of the guards staring with abnormal intensity at him and his companion, before the press of the crowd blocked the armored woman from view.

  All that said… It looked like home to him, at least more so than Avaric ever had. Ornate carvings adorned the columns and high arches of the monolithic buildings- many of which were sculpted from a strange, aquatic-blue stone that gleamed like the lake below-and pennants hung limply from minarets of stone or crystal. The people here were dressed in a variety of bright, jovial colors, commonly seen among the middle classes who wanted to show that they could afford such frivolities as rich and cheerful dyes.

  And there were so very, very many of those people, probably at least half as many on this street alone as dwelt in Avaric entire.

  Kallist turned to Liliana, his mouth open to make some disparaging comment that she would doubtless find less pithy than he did, and felt a thrill of panic run through him. His hand lashed out, viper-quick, dragging her to a halt. Before she could so much as squawk a protest, he was walking, casually but quickly, off toward one side of the avenue.

  "What?" she hissed at him, mouth just beside his ear so that he might hear over the noise of the crowd.

  "Probably nothing," he breathed back at her, though he slackened neither his hold nor his pace. "But one of the things I learned in my years with the Consortium was that when a whole gaggle of armed guards starts moving in your direction, you want to make a quick trip elsewhere."

  "Is that so?" Liliana tossed her head, as though clearing her hair from her face, and casually glanced back. "So, um… What do you do when they start pointing at you and yelling, then?"

  "That would be run."

  They ran, shoving and elbowing their way through the crowds, crowds that seemed determined to meander as leisurely as possible, to cluster in every intersection, to gather thickly in the fugitives' path and to part like a curtain before the pursuing lawmen.

  Kallist and Liliana swiftly grew lost in the unfamiliar byways of Favarial. They knew neither where they were going nor how to return to where they'd been. And the guards, who knew every twist and turn, every nook and cranny, gained ground.

  They doubled back around blind turns, and the soldiers traced their route. Kallist cloaked them in images of native passersby while sending their own illusory doppelgangers fleeing down distant byways, yet somehow the guards always knew.

  So long had it been since Kallist had faced any real danger-Semner and his thugs aside-that his instincts had grown rusty indeed. Otherwise, he might have seen a handful of Semner's people, scattered across lower rooftops and balconies or hiding within the milling crowd, watching for any sign of deception and signaling to the hunting guards.

  A time or two, a thug raised a crossbow, tempted by a perfect shot, only to be dissuaded from pulling the trigger by a companion. As long as the spotters remained unseen, the guards shouldered all the risk. Should the shot go wide or draw the attention of whichever of the twosome was not the target, the results could be unpleasant indeed. And so they kept low and silent, serving only as eyes and ears, rather than hands and blades.

  Panting hard, sweating like a demon in church, the mages skidded around still another corner and found themselves staring down the length of an avenue. It was much like any other street, covered in cobblestones, lined by shops that stood far taller than they needed to, in pursuit of status and respectability. It also extended abominably, almost impossibly far before any other street or alleyway offered a viable crossroad. Before them, ambling from one establishment to the next, the crowds formed a living wall. Kallist and Liliana exchanged grim glances, and each knew the other's thoughts as clearly as if they'd spoken.

  There was no way they could cover the distance before their pursuers caught up with them.

  "If you've been waiting to surprise me with a flying spell," Liliana said grimly, "this would be an excellent time."

  Kallist frowned bitterly. "Jace, maybe, could do it. I don't have the first clue. What about your-"

  She shook her head. "I can hover, but it's not exactly a quick mea
ns of escape." She grimaced and turned to face the nearing pursuit. "We can take them, Kallist."

  "No. Killing city guards is never worth the repercussions. Trust me, I know."

  And then the time for talk was past. The citizens dispersed, blowing leaves scattering before a wind of armor and blades; Kallist and Liliana found themselves surrounded by a hedge of sword and spear.

  "Afternoon, officers," Kallist said, a sickly grin plastered to his face. "Is there a problem?"

  The man who pushed his way to the front was tall and slender, with an autumn-red mustache drooping over his mouth, and a chin sharp enough to serve as a backup weapon. Human, but perhaps with the faintest trace of elven blood in his ancestry, he wore a sulfur-yellow tabard above a shirt of chain, and a badge of red metal on his left breast in the general shape of a dragon. A mark of rank, probably, but damned if Kallist knew what it meant. Ever since the dissolution of the Legion, every district or aristocrat-employed security force on Ravnica seemed to go whole hog with their own signs and symbols.

  "You shouldn't have run," he barked, his breath heavy with arrogance and a few lingering traces of breakfast eggs. "My men and I don't enjoy chasing folk. You've just made things harder for yourselves."

  "But we didn't do anything!" Liliana protested, wearing her best wide-eyed, lips-parted, beautifully innocent face. "You frightened us. Of course we ran; we don't even know why you were chasing us!"

  She was good, no doubt; many of the guards found themselves lowering their weapons without conscious thought. But their commander, who had seen it all before and laughed at it then, reacted only to laugh at it once more.

  "How about that, boys? They didn't do anything. Guess we have to let them go."

  The youngest soldier on the squad turned toward his commander with puzzled expression. "Really?"