Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

“A bad time for the bit to disappear,” Karl grumbled, meaning Xinto. “I never trusted their kind.”

  Raven caught Nina’s eyes regarding Karl, a smile on her lips before she made her face more plain.

  She’d seen the Empress create an image on a wall, and she’d seen the Emperor and Jack appear on it, as if on TV. If images could be caught out of the air, then why not thoughts? Thoughts were real things, after all—alpha waves, electronic signals.

  She focused her mind on an interface, a two dimensional plane, which could trap thoughts that touched it. If she couldn’t understand Slurn, perhaps she could provide him with a canvas for his mental pictures.

  “Think about what you saw, Slurn,” she told him. “Think about the things you want to show us.”

  At first there was nothing, then wavy images. Raven concentrated harder, feeling as if there were a muscle in her mind she had never exercised. Slurn, realizing what she was doing, applied himself as well, reining in his imagination, forcing himself to relive the trip from Kor, through the mud, down small streams and then eventually, farther south, to what Raven expected he had seen.

  She saw columns of Wolf Soldiers, marching north, a man in a white robe, on a roan charger, at their center.

  “War’s beard,” one of the Volkhydrans swore. “Can you imagine the numbers?”

  “It’s the Emperor’s whole southern guard,” said another. He turned his face to Karl.

  “He’s moving on Kor,” he said, “and we’re right in his path.”

  Raven let the image slip out of the air, popping like a soap bubble. She laid a hand on Karl’s shoulder without thinking of it, needing his support to keep her from falling off the side of the bed.

  “Draining?” Nina asked her.

  Raven met Nina’s gray eyes and saw no sympathy there, more predatory hunger instead. Nina may have given her the basic knowledge to do what she did, but that hadn’t made them friends.

  “I’m alright,” she said.

  “We need Xinto,” Karl said, and turned his attention to Slurn. “Can you find him by his scent?”

  Slurn growled low in his throat, a frightening, saurian rumble. Clearly he could find them by their scent—he’d gotten himself here, after all. Raven knew he preferred to be at her side, guarding her, and he could in fact care less about the Scitai.

  “It’s important, Slurn,” she said, softening her voice, forcing herself to stand, even though her legs wanted to fold underneath her. She stroked the scaly jaw, looked into the slitted eyes.

  “We need him,” she said. “Can you do it?”

  He became still the moment she touched him, the agitated tail resting on the floor, the roar becoming almost a purr. Then like a flash he was out their third story window, into a tree that grew alongside the hotel.

  “Gaah,” one of the Volkhydrans said, “that thing makes me skin—”

  “That thing,” Raven said, turning on him, “is a friend of mine Volkhydran, and I owe my life to him. You’ll respect him, or you’ll get a taste of my power.”

  The Man swallowed and nodded. Nina had informed her the common people had a certain fear of those with any magic talent, and she’d do well to cultivate it.

  Another weapon to add to her arsenal.

  * * *

  And here you are, Xinto thought to himself. Back in a cage.

  In Galnesh Eldador they’d put him in a cell, eight strides from one end to the other, with a cot and a bucket. The lock to the cell had been magicked to prevent picking it. They’d taken his cloak away.

  Typical of the race of Men to put a spell on the bars but not the stone they were set in. It hadn’t taken him more than a day to find a loose stone in the wall above the gate’s hinge, to remove it and then to jar the gate just enough for him to squeeze out. In the end he spent more time finding his cloak than escaping.

  Here they knew better. They put him in a cage, bars all around him, and every one of them enchanted against him.

  But they’d caged him with his cloak still on him. Getting right to it, the Eldadorians had been smarter.

  Xinto extracted a bundle of thin metal strands from one of his inner pockets, and set about braiding them into a tiny metal rope. He had enough to do a rope three stories tall, but he only needed this one to go to a window on the far side of the room.

  He was alone in a dark, dusty room, three Man-heights by four. He’d heard them lock the door behind them. He hadn’t heard a sentry in the hours that he’d been here. He didn’t hear anyone talking.

  He knelt on all fours in the cage. Nimble fingers braided the metal quickly, the product of his effort curling into a pile beneath him. If anyone entered, he could simply lay down and pretend to sleep, covering the evidence.

  That didn’t happen, and soon he had a coil that could reach to the base of the window.

  The sun wouldn’t be back up for hours, but he had other work to do. He spent long minutes twining metal threads around the gate to the cage, in and out of the locking mechanism and around the hinges.

  With less than three hours until sunrise, he allowed himself a catnap. Nothing he could do now if he were discovered—he had to have this ready for the morning, and he knew he needed sleep.

  The first rosy shards of the false dawn roused him, stiff and groggy in his cage. He’d kinked his rope where he’d lain on it and had to straighten it, then began the arduous task of snaking it straight out toward the window. It had been shuttered, of course, but there were chinks in the shutters that would provide him with the sunlight he needed.

  Xinto had not been born with the gift of spell casting, however he’d been given an analytical mind instead, and with that he worked his own magic, including the ability to see how things worked, and how things interacted.

  This skill made him an excellent ambassador, and over time had enabled him to learn how certain spells could be discharged, especially those used for warding.

  The sunlight from the new dawn touched the metal rope, braided to be stiff enough to run from the cage to the window without touching the floor.

  The sun’s energy traveled up the rope and into the wire mesh around the gate and the lock. Its energy mixed directly with that of the spell that warded the cage and, with a blue flash, destroyed it.

  Normal light wouldn’t have done it, of course. It would make no sense that magic should require darkness. However the pattern of the wires on the bars, made to resemble a spider’s web, got the spell energy flowing and drained it.

  Xinto had seen this many years ago, when he’d watched a caster create such a spell. He’d spent long weeks figuring out the right method and the pattern, but it had saved him before and had just done so again.

  Quick as a wink he had his rope tucked back inside of his robe and removed a steel hook from inside a pocket. The lock popped for him in just a few second, and then the gate swung open.

  Free again! Xinto applauded his own intelligence and resolve. He’d slip out of the city, find Slurn, and then send him in for the rest of them, much more careful next time of his former guild brothers.

  “Well done,” a woman’s voice purred.

  He hadn’t seen her enter, nor heard a door open. He knew she couldn’t have been there all night. He’d have heard her breath, felt the weight of her presence.

  Xinto turned on his heel to see an old friend, whose acquaintance he had not made for over a decade. He might be, in fact, one of the few people who even guessed she was alive.

  He bowed low, in the tradition of the dying swan, a private joke between them. She grinned, the green eyes hawk-like under a mop of untamed red and gray hair. She stepped to her left, taking an open stance, the bandolier of knives across her ample breasts showing one missing: the one in her hand.

  Dressed in the usual tight-fitting black leather, she waited for him to make his move.

  Xinto knew better than to pick a fight with Genna, the only Bounty Hunter alive ever to have crossed in and out of Conflu with a party of raiders, and to beat the Guar
d at their own game.

  * * *

  Glynn Escaroth sat naked in the tepid pool, the sun warm on her face and bare breasts, the Man they called ‘Jack’ sitting next to her with his hands in his lap, looking more than anything like a child caught raiding the larder.

  The Swamp Devil perched like a living gargoyle on the boulder at the far end of the pool, clawing the tangles from this long mane. Their horses nibbled at the grass along the pond’s end, the dog lay on her back, basking with the sun on her teats.

  They’d sat here for over an hour, speaking very little. Glynn felt relatively confident Jack had peed in the pool beside her.

  “How long will they make us wait?” Jack asked them.

  “I stayed here for four days before they saw me,” Zarshar said, not looking up from his hair. “I brought a haunch with me, though. I don’t expect we should hunt here. If we’re still here past tomorrow, you’ll have to choose one of your horses or that dog.”

  Jack seemed appalled. Typical of the race of Men to form such strong attachments to the beasts around them. Well, she needed her horse and had no fondness for the dog.

  In fact, she felt sure the Swamp Devil had only made the statement to torment the Man.

  Jack, of course, sidestepped the issue. “Well, I doubt they’ll just starve us,” he said. “Be just as happy if they let me put my pants back on before they talk to me, anyway.”

  Glynn sighed. She’d bared her body in front of Uman-Chi when weakened after her song. The Swamp Devil saw her as nothing more than a food source, and she could barely differentiate between the dog and the Man on an intellectual level, making this seem less personal.

  At the same time there was no point in making the Man uncomfortable, so without preamble she rose up out of the water and crossed to her saddlebags, withdrew a cotton slip and donned it. When she turned back around, Jack was out of the water and hopping up and down next to saddle, yanking his pants up to his waist.

  At least then she understood what the young girl saw in him.

  “You two make less sense to me than the dog,” Zarshar said.

  “That’s because she’s another fanged animal,” Jack countered.

  Glynn opened her mouth to respond when she saw the face of an Uman in the brush past her horse.

  His skin looked pale, as if he rarely saw the sun. Her eyes adjusted to the shade and she picked out more faces, more eyes, those of Uman and Men, one Toorian and then a second. All of them wore white robes. She turned to her left, to her right, seeing no less than fifty Druids.

  She had no idea that there existed so many. She searched for Zarshar and found his eyes.

  “I smelled them before you put your clothes on,” he said. “The dog had them before me.”

  The dog rolled back over onto her stomach, her ears up, her tail thumping the ground. Much as she acted as some kind of guard, she saw no threat from these.

  “You are well met, Sirrah,” she told the closest one, “and we are well convenienced in your grotto.”

  He smiled and stepped from the trees. True to her counting, forty-nine others did the same.

  She looked for one among them whose reputation she knew, a member of the Daff Kanaar called, “Dilvesh,” and did not see him.

  Fifty-one druids then, no less.

  “Your relation with the Emperor has you well benefited,” she noted.

  “An it be so,” a young woman told her, of the race of Men, as tall as Glynn with glistening blonde hair down past her elbows and eyes blue as the sea.

  “We are not met,” Glynn said, extending her hand, knuckles up in the manner of the gracious guest.

  Not because she expected the other to recognize the Uman-Chi form, but in fact to ensure she did not. The first rule of any new encounter was to establish the other’s ignorance.

  Her surprise was immeasurable, then, when this woman addressed her dainty fingertips with her own, in the manner of the welcoming host, in the feminine, and put her left foot behind her right heel, and curtsied.

  “I am Vedeen, of the Lone Wood,” she said, “first sister among the brethren, and keeper of the One.”

  “The One?” Glynn asked her. One who fights as does the sun? she thought. Was this it, finally?

  She spread her arms wide and rolled her wrists in the manner of the presenter, in the feminine. “The One,” she said. “This place, of course. The Lone Wood—One among the rest.”

  Glynn sighed. She would have been surprised to find it that easy.

  “We would ask a boon of you, however, in return for your safe passage.”

  Glynn lowered her face and spread her hands, palms up, in the tradition of the humble supplicant. “If I can be at your service,” she said.

  Vedeen smiled. “Then I would hear your song.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Who Fights, as does the Sun

  Slurn crept up out of the sewer into a crumbled courtyard surrounded by a battered wall. To his left he saw a window that someone had boarded over. On the other side of that window, he would find Xinto of the Woods. The scent wafted unmistakable from within.

  She whom he yearned for, this child of Men, called Raven, bid him come here, bid him find this thing, this Scitai, who spoke his language.

  Always, it surprised him that he loved her so much. Even now his cold heart warmed for her, his mind held in it to one side the image of her face, the feel of her fingers on the side of his jaw.

  So he’d hunted through the night, followed false trails, even found another Scitai hidden in a hovel, a vile creature reeking of the alcohol Men and Uman drank. On more than one occasion he’d been seen by Uman, and once followed down into the sewer. He’d had to kill then, not that it bothered him.

  He’d killed Uman before.

  He slithered from the sewer grate he’d dislodged to the puddle of shadow at the base of the ruined wall. The ground felt dry against his scales, dead grass and leaves littering parched soil. He followed the wall to the stone base of the building, and that to the space under the window, ever watchful for some sentry or passerby who might see him. Sure he’d gone unnoticed, he raised saurian eyes to the base of the window, peeping inside through a crack.

  * * *

  Genna put her weight on the balls of her feet. She’d watched Xinto for hours, first wondering what he was doing, later marveling at his ingenuity. While he’d slept, she’d even gone so far as to obtain her own bundle of wire strands, storing them in the heel of her left boot. She could think of a million uses for them.

  Xinto had expected someone to watch from a crack in the plaster or a peephole. He hadn’t seen the mirror in the upper corner of the room by the door, or the groove in the wall beside it. Genna had watched him from three rooms away, through a system of mirrors, each larger than the one before.

  Bounty Hunters, after all, had their ways.

  Xinto had been brought here with a sword. He didn’t have that now. As a trained Bounty Hunter, he could kill with his hands if he had to, however he wouldn’t likely match a ready Master like her with a weapon drawn.

  “You started all of this, you know,” she told him.

  She watched the startled reaction. She knew Xinto of the Woods. He never blamed himself for anything.

  “I did?” he challenged her, the quizzical expression under his beard almost comical. “I suppose I should have left myself to the Bitch of Eldador—”

  She shook her head, her long red hair brushing the naked skin on her back. “I don’t mean this stupidity—this is nothing. This is a pretense to bring you home. Do you really think we care who spies on the Emperor?”

  “Then what?” he began.

  She wanted to scream. How could anyone be so stupid? Xinto was supposed to be one of their cleverest operatives, yet look at all of the trouble he had caused.

  “He was a vagabond,” she told him. “He was no one. So you put him in the possession of an Uman-Chi Prince, and you set him on the road to be an Emperor.”

  “Mordetu
r?” Xinto demanded. His eyes opened up wide as saucers. “You think that I—”

  “Did you, or did you not, take pay from Ancenon Aurelias to assemble that team he took into Conflu?” she pressed him.

  He sighed. “Of course—I put you with them, didn’t I?”

  “And did you, or did you not, send him Lupus?”

  Xinto’s shoulders slumped. “You couldn’t have expected me to know—”

  “Aiiiiii!” this time she couldn’t contain her frustration. “You spent a month with him,” she said. “A month! I was with him less than a week before I knew there was more to him than a suit of armor and a sharp sword.”

  “Then why didn’t you put him down?” Xinto countered, daring to take a step forward. She took a tighter grip on her dagger and he stopped, seeing the warning in her eyes, no doubt. “You had him—from what I’ve gathered, you had him naked and unarmed. You could have taken him at any time—”

  “By then I needed him to stay alive,” she hissed. “By then I’d fallen for his charm, his wit, his evil way. By the time I could have taken him, I was struck down and, after that, he had that bitch watching over him, and no one could get to him.”

  “And then you left,” Xinto said, taking another step. He either had a weapon concealed or he thought himself fast enough to get to hers. “At the Battle of Tamaran Glen, you took to the trees, I assume, and you got out of range of his woman.”

  Genna remembered that day. The battle against an enemy that no one could have beaten, her elation when Shela fell, her shock and horror when Lupus charged out of the woods on his stallion, directly into the mass of the Confluni army, to kill himself without her.

  That day she knew, no matter what else happened, he would never be hers. On that day, she realized how much love a man could have for a woman, and she herself would never experience it. Not from the only man she’d ever wanted it from.

  She’d leapt up into a tree and traveled for daheeri through the canopy, leaving her allies to their fate. When finally she set foot on solid earth, she’d come to the gates of Tamara, where she took refuge in the Bounty Hunters’ lair.