Pathfinder Tales - Shy Knives

by Sam Sykes

  In which case, this next bit was probably going to piss it off.

  If it were capable of being pissed off, anyway.

  I whirled to the rack of staves, looked for the most twisted, ugliest one—those are the most powerful ones, right? Wizards love twisted stuff—and held it out before me like a lance aimed at the clockwork.

  “Now!” I screamed.

  The staff, to my inexplicable surprise, did absolutely nothing.

  “Go!” I shook it at the golem.

  It simply lay there in my hands, not doing anything more impressive than your average stick.

  “Come on, asshole! Do something!”

  Apparently, whatever the magic words were to this thing, those weren’t it.

  The golem sprang forward, syringe-arm thrusting out to impale me. I leapt aside, tumbled low as its arm swept over my head, narrowly missing me. Whatever magic bullshit was working this thing, it wasn’t stupid. It was learning my moves, even as my moves were slowing down, thanks to the blood weeping out my back and the soreness racking my body.

  I crawled backward, holding the staff out defensively before me.

  “It doesn’t work like that, woman,” Fennoc called out from inside his cell. “The staff’s spell requires contact. A touch.”

  He’d been around here long enough. He would know, wouldn’t he?

  I crawled to my feet as the golem turned on me. Muscles were aching. The wound in my back was still bleeding. I was losing breath quickly. This thing was a machine, reliable and sturdy—the longer the fight went on, the better odds it had.

  Had to even them.

  Had to make it count.

  I took the staff in both hands, gripped it like a club. The spell needed contact? I was going to give it all the contact it could handle.

  I rushed toward the golem. It whirred, as if in surprise, and swung at me. I darted to the left, grunted, and swung at its helm with all my might. It connected solidly. I heard a snapping sound.

  And in the brief instant between the staff snapping in two and the bright burst of light that followed, I suddenly realized that most people don’t take advice from demons for a reason.

  Light filled the room. A wave of concussive force erupted, knocking me off of my feet and sending me flying backward, where I struck the wall and dribbled down to the floor like a wine stain. There, breathless and dazed, I lingered.

  Moments passed as I tried to find my breath. More moments passed as I tried to find my feet. I don’t know how long passed before I was finally able to stand up mostly straight and look through swimming vision.

  But in all that time, I didn’t get stabbed. That had to be a good sign, right?

  I looked for any sign of my opponent and found several. In pieces. All over the room.

  Its syringe-arm was at the threshold of Fennoc’s cell. Its arms and torso were scattered across the floor. Its legs wobbled unsteadily before me before collapsing. Its empty head lay at my feet, clicking and whirring, along with the assortment of magical detritus inside that had been scattered across the room like entrails.

  Had all those potions I had hurled at the thing somehow weakened it? Or had it just gotten the worst of the blast, and I’d been lucky?

  I didn’t care. At that moment, the fact that I was alive—aching, bruised, bleeding and about to collapse, but still—was more than enough to make me happy.

  Until I heard another ticking sound. Until I heard another set of metal boots setting down upon the stone floor. Until I wondered if there were more than one of those things here.

  I almost didn’t want to look up. And when I did, the noise I made was half groan, half scream. Another column nearby, tucked away in a corner I hadn’t noticed, was unfolding itself. Its saw-arm came to life with a screeching song. Its hollow voice spoke.

  “Do not be afraid. This will be painless.”

  “No,” I whispered. And I meant it.

  I couldn’t take another. The last one had almost killed me. I searched for anything that wasn’t either broken, shattered, or likely to kill me. And found nothing but Whisper on the floor nearby. I grabbed him up, but he felt weighty in my hands, as though he already knew he was useless.

  “She keeps a command scroll,” Fennoc said from his cell. “In case they go rogue. There, on her shelves. Second from the top, at the very end.”

  I was at the shelf and rifling through it, my fingers brushing against the scroll, when I realized that he was probably lying again. This was likely the most fun he’d had in ages, watching me stumble about blindly, using magic that would kill me. That scroll would likely set me on fire or turn me into a newt or … or … some other magic crap.

  I chose the one next to it—no telling if this would be any better, but I’d at least not give Fennoc the satisfaction of deceiving me.

  The floor trembled with the metallic groaning of armor as the golem advanced, saw-arm raised high and screeching.

  I tore the scroll open, glanced over it—the magic words were meaningless to me, but at least they were written in Taldane. Lucky break. No telling what it would do, but I had to try. I started reciting the words phonetically, straining to be heard over the squeal of metal as the golem advanced toward me. From the cell behind me, I could hear Fennoc.

  “What? What are you doing? That’s the wrong one, you—”

  I didn’t hear him. I ignored his voice, forced mine louder as I continued to read. The golem rushed toward me, blade outstretched, so close I could see the reflection of my lips in its bronze just as I finished the last word.

  Bright light.

  Breath left me.

  Feet left the ground.

  I felt airy, insubstantial, like I was being lifted up and away.

  Wrong scroll, then.

  Ah, well. Today was just full of lessons, wasn’t it?

  That was my last thought as the light grew brighter, blinding, engulfing me until everything around me simply disappeared. And a moment later, so did I.

  18

  Safehouse

  I’ve mentioned I hate magic before, right?

  I’m starting to think you might not realize just how much I hate it. I could write essays on how much I hate magic. I could paint portraits depicting, artistically, my loathing for magic. Men would fall to their knees and forsake gods upon seeing these portraits. Women would weep.

  I came out of the spell—teleportation or some crap like that—and emerged into a dark room. My internal organs seemed to arrive just a hair after the rest of me did. That would explain, anyway, why I collapsed on the ground and expelled everything I had eaten onto the tiles.

  Tiles. Cold. Clean-smelling. I knew that, if nothing else. Wherever I was, it was completely pitch black. And though I had probably tipped off whatever else might be here with me by the spatter of my lunch on the floor, I didn’t dare call out.

  On your feet. Find a wall. Get your back covered.

  Old instincts die hard, and the instincts you get in a Katapeshi back alley don’t come much older. I leapt to my feet and scrambled backward, one hand out to feel for what I might be coming up against, the other hand on my knife. I found cold brick before anything else and quickly pressed myself up against the wall.

  A natural human reaction, to panic in the dark, which is why so many things that want to eat us like to lurk in lightless depths. Fear is good, keeps you alive. Panic just makes you tastier. Do this work long enough, you start to know that fighting blind is like any other trick: do it enough times, you get a routine.

  Step one: get your back to a wall. Check.

  Step two: listen. I slowed my breathing, listened past the thumping of my heart, extended my ears. Thirty seconds is the minimum; anything that doesn’t need to breathe for that long is in there with you, you’ve got bigger problems.

  Step three: find out what you’re working with. I reached overhead, extended my arm all the way before I felt the ceiling. Six and a quarter feet tall, more or less. I pressed my arm against the wall, edged to the ri
ght and felt a corner after about two paces. Small rooms, small comforts. Anything in here with me, I’d have heard it by now. But who was to say this wasn’t a cell or a trap or some other magic bullshit?

  Step four: pray. But that’s usually assuming steps one through three didn’t go well. Since I didn’t think Norgorber would be listening, even if he was the kind of god to grant wishes, I didn’t bother.

  I continued edging along the wall, my hand outstretched, until I felt it brush against something round and cold. My fingers lingered a hair too long and the room was immediately filled with a bright, blinding light.

  Since I didn’t get incinerated, disintegrated, or turned into a swan or some other magical crap, I didn’t mind shielding my eyes while they readjusted to the light cast by a globe, like what I had seen beneath Vishera’s house. When they did, I saw I wasn’t in a cell.

  And I wasn’t alone.

  On the floor in front of me was the top half of the golem, its various limbs twitching with a slow, mechanical mindlessness. The rest of it—its legs and torso—were somewhere else. It must have reacted to the magic, got part of itself torn through while the rest was left behind in Vishera’s laboratory.

  And that’s why I hated magic. It only ever works out by chance. You stick someone with a knife, it does what you think it’d do. You use magic garbage on someone, who knows what’ll happen?

  Still, at least it worked out in my favor this time. I took a breath and began to look around the cell. No, not a cell …

  Really, I don’t know what you’d call it. Four walls, a ceiling, a door. Same size as a cell, but none of the fun stuff: no shackles, no benches, no pile of filth in the corner or bed of straw. Aside from my puddle of vomit, the room was scrubbed clean from top to bottom, barely any dust on the floors, the walls …

  Or the crates stacked against them.

  Not many, only four, and not very big. It took only a little knife-work to pry open one of them. Inside, I found jars of preserved food, dried peaches, strips of salted meat that I didn’t think anyone would mind me helping myself to. The crate beneath that held canteens of water and a few bottles of wine, as well. Beneath that: durable, simple traveling clothes. And under that, short blades and other concealable weapons.

  Someone, apparently, was ready for a long trip.

  The last organ to resettle itself inside me was my brain. The realization hit me hard. This must be an escape route. Whatever her paranoid fantasies of Qadirans invading or Cheliax breaking into her house, Vishera wanted to make sure she had a way out. That scroll I used must teleport to a fixed location, a place she could make her escape from.

  But where? Another house across the street? Another city in Taldor? Or an entirely different nation? Was I in a safehouse she had constructed elsewhere, dozens of her thugs waiting behind the door to gut me once I came out? Was I even on the same plane?

  As much as these thoughts terrified me, they weren’t what made a cold pang of dread settle in my stomach.

  How far away, I wondered, was Dalaris?

  It wouldn’t be long before Vishera realized she’d been infiltrated. It’d take her even less time to extract whatever information she needed out of Fennoc. And once she learned her secret was blown, she’d move her timetable up and make her move on Dalaris.

  Which meant I didn’t have much time to reach her.

  Which meant I’d better stop fretting and see where the hell this gods-damned door behind me led.

  A turned wheel. A groan of metal. The door swung open into darkness that was free of goons, elementals, demons, or whatever the hell might have been waiting to kill me.

  Small comforts.

  I found the wall in the dark, felt my way out. I could feel the ground slope up beneath me. Cold brick turned to damp, sodden earth. As the path shifted ever upward, something ahead of me shimmered, as though the darkness were water that someone had thrown a stone out of.

  Two more steps and I emerged out of darkness and into night. Which, while still darkness, was a darkness I remembered. A vast, grassy plain stretched out before me. Behind me stood the hole I had just emerged out of. After a breath, it shimmered again and the image of more grass grew over it.

  More gods-damned magic.

  The urge to vomit at this realization was suppressed by the urge to get back to Yanmass and get Dalaris out of danger before Vishera could act.

  Fortunately, I could see Yanmass from where I was. Unfortunately, it was nothing more than a collection of pinpricks of light in the distance. Easily a day’s trip on foot. And that was a day I didn’t have.

  But before I could feel the stress of that realization hit me, a brighter light caught my eye. I glanced down the hill I was standing on, across the plains to the collection of lights on the road nearby. And my heart quickened at the thought that I might have just had one of my first lucky breaks.

  I recognized these lights. First Solace, the caravan-rest, stood not a mile away from here. Which meant I could get a horse there and be back in Yanmass in a few hours.

  I squinted as the lights within the little village grew brighter. Funny, I didn’t remember there being quite so many lights there last time.

  Nor did I remember it being quite so on fire.

  And I definitely didn’t remember it being surrounded by a horde of centaurs, running rings around and firing flaming arrows into it.

  Some folk might have screamed at this realization. If I hadn’t thought it would mean vomiting again, I might have as well. But as it was, I merely sighed and started down the hill.

  After all, I had the feeling that I would need to save my screams for later. There was bound to be a lot of call for it tonight.

  19

  The Sound of Thunder

  So I bet you, like most sane folk, would wonder at the logic of trying to sneak into a besieged camp when you need to be elsewhere.

  After all, given that I only barely made it through the rings of centaur warriors running around First Solace, the chances of me making it out on a horse were slim to none.

  You’d probably point out, like most sane folk would, that I’d need one hell of a miracle to pull that off. And you’d also probably point out that Norgorber isn’t exactly the sort of god that gives out miracles.

  To which I would probably call you a bit of an asshole, and then point out that even a slim chance of a miracle was better than the day’s journey back to Yanmass that would surely see Dalaris dead.

  I would do that, anyway, if I weren’t running screaming across a field.

  Arrows were flying over my head: fiery volleys shot from the marauding centaurs behind me, returned shots fired from defenders behind the low walls ahead of me. I didn’t bother trying to dodge them—after all, it’s not like either of them were actually aiming for me. But that stopped being a comfort around the third time one just barely grazed my ear. Now, I ran with my legs bloodless beneath me, everything in me in my lungs, trying to force breath through me as I rushed for the relative safety of First Solace.

  “Incoming!” I could hear one of the defenders cry out as I neared the wall. “Bring it down!”

  “No, you idiot!” someone else barked back. “Shoot the things with four legs!”

  Among this chatter, I didn’t hear anything like “hold your fire” or even “aim away from the girl on the field.” But then, I suppose I wouldn’t have, either. At the very least, they didn’t shoot me or stop me from reaching the wall and vaulting over it. Not that a Katapeshi girl in black leather out of nowhere wasn’t suspicious, but I imagined they had more important things on their minds.

  Such as everything being on fire.

  My legs gave out, sent me collapsing against the wall. As my lungs strained for breath and my body worked blood back into the rest of itself, I got a good look at just what kind of a world of shit we were in.

  The warehouses were currently up in flames. Caravan guards were rushing to them with buckets of water from the nearby well, coaxed by the shrieking terror of
whatever merchants happened to be stranded here. The soldiers on the walls were a hodgepodge of other merchant guards, armed with bows, crossbows, and whatever else that shot as they clumsily returned fire over the walls.

  But I could tell from their errant firing that they weren’t doing much more than shooting anything that moved. Just as I could tell that they wouldn’t be doing much good against an enemy as mobile as the centaurs. I didn’t even need to see the collection of dead and wounded guards lying at the center of the caravan village.

  Of course, since I did see them, I had a keen appreciation for just how badly this was going.

  I reached out to whoever was on my left—a young guard with a dented helmet and a crossbow he was currently cranking back—and slapped his leg.

  “Hey. Hey!” I barked, drawing his attention. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “The merchants, idiot,” the guard said. “They better pay extra for this crap.”

  “No, who’s in charge of the defense?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t sign on for a defense.”

  I slapped my own face. “Norgorber’s nuts. Just tell me who started shooting back first.”

  The guard grunted, pointed down the line. I caught glimpse of a plumed helmet, and beneath it, a grizzled-looking face. He barked an occasional order to the two or three guards around him, which went ignored by the others.

  A veteran, then.

  Good enough.

  I crept low around the wall, reached him in short order. “How long ago did they strike?” I asked.

  He didn’t bother to look back at me. He barely even bothered to growl. “Half an hour. Came out of the gods-damned night. Tore apart a wagon I just sent out and circled the town.”

  “Any idea how many?”

  “Too many.” Finally, he bothered to look around. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Yes, asshole. That’s the important question right now.” I spat on the ground. “Which way did they come from?”

  “East,” he said. “Now either pick up a bow or start praying. Once we run out of arrows, we’re gonna need gods.”