The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

  “Come on!” Jack yelled at Illyth, hauling her into the nearby conductor’s box and ducking for cover.

  At that moment each figure unleashed great bolts of brilliant lightning through the masked crowd, splitting the air with painful cracks! and then booming thunderclaps a second later. Brilliant blue shadows flickered and pulsed across the walls, leaving bright spots in Jack’s eyes even though he was not looking directly at the bolts.

  “Tymora’s teats!” he cried. “What now?”

  Outside people screamed in pain and fear. In the space of a heartbeat, the theatre became a scene of absolute bedlam. Ruthlessly, the robed figures shifted their aim and discharged their lightning wands again, burning great swaths through the seething press of nobles and merchants and Game-attendants who charged, fled, or cowered as their personal courage demanded. Suddenly the massive bulk of Randall Morran skidded into the conductor box, knocking both Jack and Illyth to the wooden floor.

  “My apologies, Sir, Madam,” the Master Crafter huffed. He was singed in a couple of places, but mostly unharmed. “Your selection of shelter seemed sound and well advised.”

  “Morran, what’s going on here?” Illyth demanded. “Is this some kind of drastic plot twist?”

  “No, fair lady. It seems that someone has taken this occasion to assault the noble and privileged among our Game players. We had nothing to do with those villains casting lightning bolts.” The bard’s speech was punctuated by another pair of deafening thunderclaps. Jack noticed that Illyth’s hair stood on end from the near miss.

  “I have no quarrel with the Faceless Lords,” Jack said. “Illyth, might I suggest a withdrawal from the scene?”

  She cringed, but nodded. “Which way?” she asked.

  “Behind the stage. There should be an actor’s exit unobserved by our assailants.”

  Jack scrambled up out of the box and turned to help up Illyth, crouched double to keep low. He glanced out over the theatre floor; several of the Faceless Lords were now embroiled in a furious scuffle with burned Game players, while others kept the crowds at a distance and continued their murderous work. Dozens of players seemed to have been killed or injured; the screams of the wounded and the wails of their companions filled the auditorium with a hellish cacophony of noise, still punctuated by the frequent crack! of more lightning.

  “Dear Oghma,” Illyth murmured, shocked by the carnage. “What could possibly bring this about? Who would want to do this, and why?”

  “I deem that a matter worthy of investigation but not at the moment,” Jack replied.

  He led her across the stage, darting for the wings. The Green Lord spied them and leveled a bolt of white death in their direction, but his aim was spoiled by a sudden assault from two angry young noblemen armed with small swords. The robed figure collapsed under multiple stabbings as Jack and Illyth dived headlong behind the curtains, followed a moment later by the Master Crafter.

  The actors in the skit Jack had interrupted seemed to have had the same idea. Unfortunately, they had discovered that their exit had not been overlooked. Standing in the doorway, two theatre ushers—the very same two that Tiger and Mantis had spoken with before Jack and Illyth encountered them—stood in the doorway with bared blades. Lord Tiger himself stood behind them, snarling in anger and vehemence. Several dead or unconscious comedians lay crumpled on the floor before the door.

  “Fox and Crane,” the lord hissed. “Time to settle our differences at last!”

  Jack understood everything in one moment of perfect clarity. For his own reasons, Toseiyn Dulkrauth and his mysterious accomplice had decided to strike at the city’s most indolent nobles and pretentious merchants by arranging a slaughter in the Game of Masks. Dulkrauth had replaced the theatre’s ushers with his own hired blades to seal the exits. Then he’d dressed assassins with a knack for magic in the robes of the Faceless Lords, equipping each with a deadly wand of lightning.

  “I would like to take this opportunity to apologize most sincerely for any inconvenience I have caused you, sir,” he stammered. “The lady and I were just leaving. Please, don’t let us interfere with your busy schedule.”

  He started to edge back, hoping that no lightning-armed wizards in hooded robes were watching the stage. Illyth, on the other hand, stood her ground and set her chin defiantly in the air. “Why, Master Dulkrauth? What do you possibly hope to gain from all this?”

  “Gain? New faces in the city’s councils, dear lady, terror and fear and consternation, chaos and uncertainty, the opportunity to profit by the deaths of rivals. You, I fear, are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The merchant captain nodded at his blades. “Kill the girl and the bard. Leave the fox-faced one for me.”

  Jack dragged Illyth back out onto the stage, rushing through the curtain. The Master Crafter darted in the other direction, toward the stage wings. The floor of the theatre was a charred wasteland, with a score of Game-goers dead in their seats and small fires smoldering everywhere from the touch of the lightning. People ran and screamed, two or three knots of men struggled with tall robed Faceless Lords, and behind him he could hear Dulkrauth and his mercenaries lunging after them in pursuit.

  “Jack!” Illyth cried in alarm.

  The rogue looked to her side; there the Blue Lord burned down a Game attendant and looked up, spying the two fugitives on the stage.

  Without a second thought Jack leaped up and down, waving his hands in the air. “Hey, you! I’ll wager you can’t miss at this range!”

  The murderer slowly raised his wand to point directly at the pair of them; Jack seized Illyth and threw her to the ground just as Dulkrauth and his armsmen burst out of the curtains right where they had stood. Then the Blue Lord loosed his bolt. White light crashed all around them like the fall of a brilliant hammer. Then the thunderbolt seemed to pick up Jack and fling him back down to the stage again.

  Ears ringing, he looked over his shoulder. Dulkrauth and his two swordsmen had been fairly felled by the Blue Lord’s attack. Before the sorcerer could correct his aim, Jack scrambled to his feet and helped up Illyth.

  “Backstage again!” he cried.

  “Where are we going?” the girl cried in the confusion. “Jack, you almost got us killed!”

  “I am improvising, Illyth,” he responded.

  He bolted for the stage exit, only to run headlong into yet another complication. A tall, stern-faced mage carrying a staff the size of a small tree stepped silently into the backstage area from the dressing rooms, an aura of power crackling audibly around him. He halted and gazed on Jack and Illyth with cold dispassion, speaking not a word.

  “Master Alcides!” gasped Illyth. “You don’t know how glad we are to see you! There is an ambush in the theatre—sorcerers are striking down all the Game players!”

  “Master who?” asked Jack. Then the name rang true. Alcides von Tighe, the archmage of the Wizard’s Guild, probably the most powerful wizard for a hundred miles around. Just the fellow to deal with a hornet’s nest like this, he thought. “Oh, of course. I recommend warding against lightning if you have any spells of that sort,” Jack volunteered. “You’ll find seven villainous fellows in the chamber just outside. Deal with them as you see fit; in the meantime, I am afraid I must escort the lady to safety.”

  Alcides conjured a small, winged monstrosity with needle-sharp fangs and evil yellow eyes. The devil hovered in the air before him, flapping its leathery wings while its tail, armed with a venom-dripping barb, lashed back and forth angrily.

  “Slay them both,” the mage commanded with an imperious wave in the direction of Jack and Illyth.

  “Master Alcides, wait!” Illyth cried out. “I am Illyth Fleetwood—”

  The venomous devil beat its wings once, twice, and then it darted straight for her, stabbing with its barb just as a knife fighter might slash and thrust with a poisoned blade. Illyth jumped back, tangled her feet in the curtain ropes, and fell heavily on her backside. Jack grabbed a small three-legged stool from the set
and threw it at the little monster, driving it back from Illyth. The creature recovered instantly and came after him. Jack drew the dagger at his belt and slashed wildly at the thing, trying to avoid its sting.

  “I fail to see how Master Alcides’s arrival has improved the situation,” he said to Illyth, as the tall stern mage strode past the stage.

  A sudden bright flare of lightning from just beyond the curtain threw a brilliant white glare all across the backstage. The mage looked back at them to see how its minion fared and then stepped out onto the stage. In the light, Alcides’s face was gray, almost insubstantial. Shadowlike.

  “It’s another one, Illyth!” Jack said. “A shadow simulacrum!”

  He defended against a sudden furious attack on the part of the imp, who missed with its venomous barb but managed to lock its small, sharp jaws on Jack’s left arm and started to worry at him like an infernal terrier. Jack gave out a strangled cry of disgust and pain and fell back into the curtain, but he managed to seize the monster’s stinger with his right hand and wrestled it away from his face.

  The archmage—or to be exact, his copy—stepped boldly onto the stage and was instantly targeted by several crashing bolts of lightning. They struck some kind of invisible shield or barrier surrounding him and died out as if they were nothing more than pretty lights. The shadow-Alcides grinned feverishly and filled the theatre floor with a great blast of fire that shriveled the Red and Black Lords to ashes and started the whole place burning merrily. Game-players still fought desperately to escape the killing place, hemmed in by Tiger’s armsmen at the exits. What can this possibly signify? Jack wondered for one fleeting instant. Then the imp started scratching at his face and throat with its claws while it still ripped and tore at his arm with its teeth and stabbed at him with its stinger. Jack howled in pain.

  Something big hit the devil from behind, then again, and again. The creature crashed into the stage floor next to Jack, bludgeoned there by a short board wielded by Illyth.

  “Hah! Take that!” the noblewoman cried. She jammed the end of the plank hard at the imp’s head, but the creature released its grip on Jack’s arm and twisted out of the way.

  The timber slammed into the stage only a few inches from Jack’s face, but he ignored it and reached out to seize the devil by the throat. Reversing its sting, he jammed the barb into the little monster’s belly and squeezed, pumping its own poison into it. The thing wailed in agony, a high scream like a tea kettle hissing on a hot stove. Then it disappeared in a puff of stinking sulfurous smoke. Jack coughed and gagged, but Illyth reached down and hauled him up.

  “Come on,” she said. “If your shadow was close to a match for you, we don’t want to be anywhere near Alcides’s shadow. He’s an archmage. Oghma knows what he might do next.”

  Jack risked one more look at the battle in the theatre. Hovering in midair, protected by a spell shield, Alcides directed radiant blasts of magic at whatever target struck his fancy—Game players, Faceless Lords, armsmen, or now at the city watchmen who appeared on the scene, trying to fight their way into the auditorium.

  “I agree,” he said. He clamped his right hand around the bloody bite wound on his left forearm, and led Illyth toward the stage exit again.

  This time, no one blocked their escape. They clattered down the short flight of rickety wooden steps leading into the alleyway behind the theatre and headed out toward the street. Smoke poured out of every window; people screamed inside, and a handful of Game-players and attendants scrambled out of windows facing the alley and jumped or fell to the dubious safety of the narrow lane outside.

  “There must be dozens of people dead,” Illyth said. “Oh, Jack, I just can’t believe that Dulkrauth’s plot was so murderous. What kind of person would do something like that?”

  “Be thankful we have survived more or less uninjured,” Jack replied.

  They reached the end of the alleyway. In the street, dozens of city watchmen and firefighters rushed about, trying to make sense out of the chaos. Mages from the Ministry of Art watched the building, preparing to use their magical powers to aid in the effort to quell the riot and extinguish the fire.

  “There he is!”

  Jack glanced up in surprise, Lady Mantis stood beside Ashwillow, the Hawk Knight, and several city watchmen. The conspirator pointed at him. “I saw him speaking with the mercenaries before the attack. That’s the man!” The watchmen nodded and advanced on Jack.

  “Is there any way this situation could get worse?” Jack muttered to himself. He raised his hands and adopted an expression of earnest contrition. “Ashwillow, listen to me. Lady Mantis seeks to shift the blame for this fiasco. She and her accomplice, Lord Tiger, arranged this whole thing. Now she hopes to convince you that I am in some way responsible.”

  The Hawk Knight narrowed her eyes. “You can explain it all to the magistrate, Jack Ravenwild. In the meantime, I am placing you under arrest on charges of murder, conspiracy, arson, assault, unlicensed magic, and high treason. Gentlemen?” The last remark was aimed at the watchmen who now closed in on Jack.

  “I understand, dear Ashwillow,” Jack said with a shallow bow. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I attend to my defense against these charges?”

  He started to work the spell of shadow-transport—only to have his feet kicked out from under him before he’d even muttered a single syllable. Someone standing behind him knelt and caught him in a hammerlock, beating his forehead into the cobblestones hard twice, then three times, until his ears rang and all he could see were stars.

  “I knew you were going to do that,” snarled a familiar voice. Marcus bound his hands tightly behind his back, and then gagged him as well with little gentleness. “There, that should keep you from working any spells. You’re not going to get away quite so easily this time.”

  Jack was hauled to his feet and held up by his arms, although his vision swam and blood ran down his face. He caught one glance of Illyth’s horrified face, and then he was wheeled about and frog-marched down the street in the center of a knot of watchful guardsmen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As might be expected of someone in Jack’s line of work, he was no stranger to the city’s gaols. Fortunately, he had endured no long incarcerations, nor had he ever been convicted of any serious crimes. More than once, he’d simply waited until no one was looking to charm a guard and talk himself out of prison or absented himself from the judicial process with a well-timed spell of invisibility or disappearance. In fact, Jack had acquired a dangerous level of confidence in his ability to avoid legal complications.

  This time, the city officials were not treating him as a common burglar, rumored fence, or suspected swindler. They were treating him as a murderer, traitor, and spy, whose known magical powers merited the utmost caution. He was fitted with a set of enchanted fetters that utterly blocked any attempt on his part to wield magic, then he was interred in the strongest, most secure, and incidentally most dismal cell in the city, in the prison-fortress of Ill-Water.

  Ill-Water was not actually located in the city proper; it was built on an artificial island of massive stone slabs a few hundred yards out beyond the harbor entrance, surrounded by the cold waters of the Inner Sea. Raven’s Bluff reserved Ill-Water for prisoners whose crimes, abilities, or stations were so far beyond those of the common criminal that no possibility of escape could be allowed. For cutthroats, brawlers, smugglers, and highwaymen, the city’s prison hulks offered weeks, months, or years of backbreaking labor. For crimes of a less violent nature, the Nevin Street Compter sufficed, but for those who had aligned themselves against the powers of Raven’s Bluff, Ill-Water was the fortress of last resort.

  Jack saw no other prisoners, no exercise yards, no mess halls, nothing of the outside. He was ferried to the island prison in the lightless hold of an armored prison barge, led through a cyclopean maze of winding stone passages and massive iron doors, and then finally deposited in an oubliette four feet square and about fifteen feet deep, reached only thro
ugh an iron trapdoor bolted and locked from outside. A grill of thick iron bars about a foot square in the center of the trapdoor provided the entrance for food, water, and a thin glimmer of yellow light. A similar grill in the center of the cell’s cold stone floor served as the means by which his wastes exited.

  And there he remained for some interminable time in the darkness, relieved only by the pale gleam of torchlight from some distant spot in the hallway above, and in the silence, sundered only by the unending dull thundering of the surf breaking against the prison’s massive foundations. Neither condition showed the slightest fluctuation or variance; before he’d slept even once, Jack had lost track of whether an hour, a half-day, or even several days had passed. He tried talking to himself, singing, thinking up dirty jokes, challenging himself with mental puzzles, marching in place, and straining at the iron fetters that bound him, but ultimately the tedium overcame him, rising up like a dark and sinister flood, drowning him in despair and futility so that he simply slouched on the floor and gazed upward longingly at the light.

  Jack had always imagined that any incarceration might be an arduous and exacting kind of adventure, an opportunity to survive a difficult experience and then escape from it in a particularly daring and skillful manner, the kind of experience that would only add to his fame and renown. What he had not expected was to be buried in a cold stone shaft and simply forgotten about. He hadn’t expected to be alone, with nothing but the mocking half-light and the maddening reverberation of the distant surf to keep him company.

  After he’d slept twice, he was awakened by a guard’s passage. Jack leaped to his feet in excitement, amazed at how so common an occurrence as a human being walking by overhead could seem like the most entertaining break in the tedium. The small grill in the center of the trapdoor opened; a basket containing a flagon of water and some tough black bread was lowered on a length of twine.