“Uh,” began Boltac, then realized that the emptiness of the pit was anything but empty.
At the very edges of the feeble light cast by the torch were creatures keeping to the dark. Some walked, some crawled, some shambled, all moved silently and whispered in unison: “Release. Release. Release.”
Boltac tore his eyes away from the shapes in the darkness and looked at Samga. “Why are you helping me? Why do you betray your Master?”
“Do you have a Master?”
“No.”
“Do you want one?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. This is my King,” Samga nodded towards the UnderKing. Then he looked up and said, “He is my captor.”
“Okay, well. Good enough for me. Now, let’s talk about how we are going to do this. We need to be patient. Take our time. Make no mistakes. We’re only gonna get one shot at this guy.”
Samga’s expression did not change when he said, “He has bled the boy dry to lure the Flame, and soon will sacrifice the woman. By so doing, he shall weld the Flame to his power.”
“What?”
“It is blood Magic. The force that binds mother to child, father to son, and clan to clan. Very old and very powerful,” said Samga.
“You forgot very crazy,” said Boltac.
“He hungers for power and cares not how he gets it.”
“En-henh. Okay, no offense to your hospitality here, King, but we need to get a move on. I’m late for an appointment to do something stupid.”
Not opening his eyes, the UnderKing said, “Blessings be upon you, One who has Chosen.”
“En-henh. I see what you did there.”
As Samga walked away, the broken ones skittered out of the range of light. Boltac followed. He didn’t feel lucky, but at least he didn’t feel broken anymore.
38
When the Wizard returned to his sanctum, Asarah crept as far under the table as her chain would allow. She sat wide-eyed and frozen like a rabbit who hopes the fox does not see her.
But at that moment, Dimsbury had no attention to spare for her. As soon as he entered the room he was drawn to the Flame. He muttered to himself, “Brighter. More resolved. But how can this be?” Dimsbury looked around the chamber. He waved a hand at the wall sconces, and they burst into flame, overpowering the uncertain Magic Flame and filling the room with an honest, if sooty, light.
A glance down revealed the cause. From Relan’s body, a rivulet of blood flowed across the floor to the dais on which the Flame sat. “Could it be?” Dimsbury asked. He bent, dipped his fingers into the blood, and held them above the Flame. As blood dripped downward into the confluence of Magic, the Flame was transformed through a brilliant range of hues, and seemed more substantial at the end of it.
Dimsbury turned to what was left of Relan and said, “You’re not completely useless after all, what a pleasant surprise!”
The Wizard wasted no time in having Relan strung up by his ankles over the Flame. What little blood remained in the poor boy dripped into the cool, hypnotic light. The Flame lapped greedily at the blood and became more focused and defined with each drop.
Asarah wept at the gruesome sight. She wept for Relan, who had tried to be a Hero and had failed. And now the stuff of his life was drained out to… it was horrible. She wept for herself, surely about to meet the same end. And yes, she wept for Boltac. He was no Hero. He was not equipped even to save himself. But still, he had come for her.
She had forgotten her earlier words, but now they came back: “But that’s how she knows that he truly Loves her.” Boltac wasn’t a prince. This wasn’t a storybook or a saga, but he had come for her. It was not what she expected from romance, but it was true. Or had been. Now Boltac was dead, never to return. And she had been so cruel to him.
Grief piled upon grief and sorrow upon sorrow. But she was so afraid, she dared not give voice to her pain. Silent tears streamed down her face as if they could flood the interior of the earth.
When Relan’s blood stopped flowing, Dimsbury swung him away from the Flame and hacked the cords holding him up with a knife. The lad’s body fell to the floor in an awful heap.
Without looking at Asarah, Dimsbury addressed her in a voice loud enough to make her jump. “My dear, I have good news and bad news!”
She did not answer. She did not even move.
“The good news is that I no longer require you to be my cook.”
All thought left Asarah. She screamed.
“Seize her!” Dimsbury commanded. The screaming was perfect, thought Dimsbury. It was all according to form, the way such things were to be done. But the Orcs did not move towards her. This wasn’t right at all. It made her scream seem pointless and silly.
Exasperated, Dimsbury exclaimed, “Her, there under the table. Grab her. Her. THAT ONE!” He made wild, uninterpretable thrashing gestures with his hands. “The screaming one!”
The Orcs finally got the idea and seized the woman. As they dragged her out, she struggled so violently that she knocked herself unconscious on the table leg. As Dimsbury watched the Orcs tie her feet to the ropes that would dangle her above the Flame of Magic, he wondered aloud, “Where is Samga? He was here just a minute ago.”
39
Rattick had not pushed his luck. After killing the boy, he had left the Wizard’s presence as quickly as possible. Sure, there was the question of payment owed, but Rattick knew as well as anyone that dead men collect no tolls or tithes. Best to stay alive, for there was no profit in death. The Orcs carried Boltac’s sack high above their heads, fighting over it as they raced to the Great Hall. Rattick followed in the shadows, waiting for his chance to grab something of value before he escaped from the madness of the Wizard’s lair. Why were rich people always so dangerously out of touch with reality? Rattick wondered.
The Great Hall was ambitiously named yet modestly furnished. A large cavern off the main passage, it was a darker analog of a refectory at a traditional boy’s school. Large wooden tables with benches had once been lined up here. Now half of them were pushed into a jumble at the far end of the room. A mock fireplace carved into the living rock was full to overflowing with bits of discarded bone and gristle. Here and there, a wolf nosed through the scraps. Even to Rattick, this jumbled room looked like the end of a civilization.
Concealed by his cloak, he climbed the rough chamber wall and shimmied down a thick iron chain to a long unused chandelier. There he took up his perch and watched and waited.
The Orcs cleared a space in the center of the room where they fought over the bag. Claws darted in here and there, trying to snatch the contents. The room quickly filled to capacity with the brutish creatures. The noise of their disputations was deafening. The smell of so many of them, packed so close was debilitating. Rattick began to wonder if the chandelier had been a terrible idea. But he remained still and silent. There was nothing else to do.
Soon the bag was upended, and the contents spilled all over the floor. For such a tiny, plain bag, it was shocking to see how much it contained. Among the miscellany–the occasional weapon, rations of food, bits of apparel–came sack after sack of coin. They poured from the opening, landing on the floor with solid, seductive clinks of loot. What would they do with the gold? Rattick wondered. He decided to wait until they were tired of fighting amongst themselves. Then he would swoop down and collect as many of those sacks as he could.
Rattick’s dreams of avarice were shattered as he watched Orcs claw the leather bags apart and cram the gold pieces in their mouths. They clawed and fought and ate until all of Boltac’s gold–of which there was a substantial fortune–had disappeared into their monstrous gullets. Rattick sighed and felt an emotion that was very much like grief. Ah well, the dungeon had been good while it lasted, he thought. He’d wait for the creatures to disband then he would sneak out like the thief he was.
But the Orcs did not leave. Their squabbles gradually died down until, bloated on coin, they fell asleep under, on, and around the tables.
Rattick cursed his luck and shifted his cramping legs. How much longer would he be stuck up here? He waited until the strange snores of the Orcs below wafted up to his ears. Then he uncoiled himself from his perch and climbed back down.
He snuck through the sated and sedate creatures as quietly as he could. When one near the door snorted heavily and rolled over, Rattick swore he could hear coins rattling in his belly. A plan suggested itself to Rattick. And, with Rattick, where there was a plan, there was almost always a sharp knife involved. He drew his cruel blade from the sheath on his thigh and considered how he might do this quietly. With an ordinary person, he would just cram a hand over the mouth and slide the dagger down into the neck. This would sever an artery deep inside the torso so that the person would bleed to death internally in a matter of seconds. It was very clean and very professional. Rattick prided himself on his knowledge of this assassin’s technique.
But with an Orc, this presented a number of problems. Not least of which: how do you cover a mouth that has tusks? And he had seen how brutishly powerful these things were. He doubted that they would die quietly. How could he hope to hold this one down? He hunkered in a nearby shadow and considered his prey. As he did, out of habit, he drew a whetstone from a pouch on his belt, spit on it, and began to sharpen the already razor-sharp knife. There was gold enough here. He just needed to figure out how to cut off a piece for himself.
When he heard a noise from outside, he replaced the knife and sharpening stone and then hid his hands under his robe. As the clawsteps drew closer, he closed his eyes so that the whites of them might not give him away when whoever it was entered. This was an old and important trick of Rattick’s. Hiding was a fine art, relying as much upon psychology as camouflage. The only time people looked carefully at a room was when they first walked in. Once they believed they knew who and what was there, it became very difficult for them to see anything new. It wasn’t so much hiding in plain sight as hiding in someone else’s self-enforced blind spot.
He heard another Orc enter the room. There was a shuffling and a scraping of claws. But there was no sharp intake of breath. No sudden movements. Rattick remained unseen. Then the Orc spoke, but in the human tongue.
“It is safe, they are all asleep,” said a voice both alien and familiar to Rattick. He opened his eyes and saw Samga, the Wizard’s clever Orc. And entering the room behind him… BOLTAC! In spite of his own general and considerable sneakitude, Rattick jumped at the sight of Boltac and struggled to stifle a curse.
“Well, somebody had a party,” said Boltac. “Did they eat everything?”
“Most likely just the metals.”
“Good, ‘cause there’s a couple of things it would be nice to have,” Boltac said as he searched the wreckage of the room. After a few moments, he held up a half-chewed, heavy wool mitten. “I suppose the other one is too much to ask for. See if you can find a wand, or the sack.”
Samga held up a shredded mass of fabric that had once been a Magic sack. “You mean this?”
“Ah, crap,” said Boltac. He took the burlap from Samga and examined it carefully. The torn shred contained nothing. Boltac turned it over and then over again. As he folded and unfolded it, something fell out onto the floor. It was a small, lacquered box. “Enh. Well, it’s better than nuttin’,” said Boltac as he tucked the box inside his tunic. “Well, if that’s all we got, it looks like we’ll be doing this the hard way, unless…” Boltac looked around the room at the sleeping Orcs and their bloated bellies. “You know, Samga, there was a lot of gold in that sack of mine. An awful lot. Did they eat all of it?”
“They kept eating until there was nothing left to eat,” Samga said with a shrug.
“En-henh. Not sophisticated and restrained like you.”
“As you say,” Samga said, surveying his kin with sadness. “All of your gold is gone. Such a shame.”
“It’s not gone,” said Boltac, “It’s in your friends’ stomachs, here. Important distinction.”
Samga did not understand much of anything humans said. The gold was eaten. And that other word, he had never heard it before, “Please, what does this word ‘friend’ mean.”
“Ya kiddin’ me, right?” said Boltac.
Samga gave him a flat Orc-ish look that admitted of no humor.
“Okay. You, Samga, you’re my friend. You are helping me, ergo, you are my friend,” said Boltac.
“But I am just hurting The Master,” said Samga.
“Yeah, it’s a trade. You help me by getting me out. I help you by hurting The Master, and we both benefit. Trade makes friends, Samga.”
“But you cannot be friends with such as I. I am beneath you.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. Beneath me? I mean, ya short, there’s no way around that. But I know good people. You, Samga, you are good people. Uh, Orcle? Whatever, c’mon. I still got a lady to rescue.”
Then Boltac noticed his Magic-detecting wand, trapped under a sleeping Orc’s leg. “Hey, uh, Samga, could you…” He pointed at the wand. “Probably better you than me if this thing wakes up.”
Samga lifted the leg and retrieved the Magic-detecting wand. It, too, had been gnawed on but had fared better than the bag and mittens. Boltac used what remained of his tunic to wipe the saliva from it.
“Okay, this will do, now let’s get outta here.” They returned to the door. Rattick thought that Boltac looked right through him–right into his eyes–but Boltac’s eye was drawn to something on the right side of the door.
“Hey,” Boltac said, “The sacred Lantern of Lamptopolis.”
“Lamptopolis?” asked Samga.
“Eh, never mind. It’s a long story. The damn thing doesn’t really work that well for me, but, as I always say, you can never have too much light or too much water.” Boltac reached down and grabbed the lamp by its handle. As he held it up, it blazed forth with a clear, brilliant light that filled the room as if the sun had been harnessed and dragged into the bowels of the earth.
Samga hissed and averted his eyes. Rattick covered his eyes to protect his night vision, but otherwise stayed absolutely motionless. For an instant, he was completely exposed, but there was nothing to be done.
“Holy crap!” Boltac said, and dropped the lamp with a clatter. Its light gradually faded away. Rubbing residual spots of brilliance from his eyes, Boltac stood over the lamp, confused. “I don’t understand. I mean, I’m not–”
“We must go!” said Samga.
Boltac looked up and realized that the Orcs, awakened by the commotion, had begun to stir. He grabbed the remnants of Themistre’s Bag of Holding and wrapped them around the lamp handle. This time, when he picked up the lamp, it did not light. He flipped a loose end of the burlap over the lamp’s motto. “Burns with the Flame of a True Heart,” Boltac muttered. “En-henh.”
One of the lethargic Orcs saw them go. The creature cried, “Hork!” but it was a half-hearted protest at best. The gold, heavy in its belly, made it difficult to rise.
Rattick slipped out of the shadows. How had Boltac survived his fall into the bottomless pit? And where was he headed now? Rattick sensed chaos. And where chaos rode, there were always plenty of spoils for the taking. He followed the Merchant and his unlikely guide.
40
“Samga. There you are,” said Dimsbury. He stood on the dais next to the Magic Flame. Above the dais Asarah hung by her legs. “Thank the Gods you have returned. Pass me that knife over there so I may open this woman’s neck.” Asarah attempted a scream, but it was muffled by a gag, which Dimsbury now tightened. “I must say, woman, I enjoy your company much more now that you are quiet. I will almost be sad to see you go. Samga, the knife!”
From over his shoulder, Dimsbury heard Samga say, “No.”
“‘No’? What do you mean ‘no’? There is no ‘no’!”
The Wizard turned to see a smiling Boltac standing next to his prized creature. “Samga, what do you have there? And wherever did you find it?”
“Back like a bad
penny,” said Boltac.
“Before we get to the question of how,” Dimsbury said wearily, “I must ask you: why?”
“I’m here to do you in.”
Dimsbury gestured, vaguely, at Relan’s body, now discarded along the wall. “Yes, that was his idea as well. What makes you think you will fare any better?”
“I am not an idiot.”
“Idiots are always the last to find out,” said Dimsbury
“Eh-henh. You want I should say touché or something, or can we just get down to business?”
“Very well,” said Dimsbury, and picked up a medium-sized silver whistle from his desk. “I shall let my staff handle the light work.” He placed his lips to the whistle and blew. No sound came from the whistle, but Samga writhed in pain.
From outside there was a groaning commotion. Soon, metal-bloated Orcs streamed into the room. They snorted and growled and clanked and bitched in their brutish language about being awakened from their post-gluttony slumber. And, if such a thing were possible, they seemed even more frightening and contentious than Orcs usually did.
Dimsbury drew himself up to his full height. He lifted his arms and electricity crackled along his fingertips and the surface of his robes. In full voice, he began his mighty, doom-filled pronouncement. “Tear him–”
“Hang on,” said Boltac, “Hang on. Sorry to ruin your speech there. But I’ve got one of those too.” Boltac reached for his charm necklace. For the first time in a long time, he felt very, very lucky. He placed the tiny silver whistle to his lips and blew.
Nothing happened.
“I’m sorry, is that it?” asked Dimsbury, his voice dripping with contempt.
The Merchant Adventurer Page 16