Rising, Pharaun noticed that the dying male’s garments were as tasteful as his coiffure.
“Who’s your tailor?” Pharaun asked, but the renegade merely fell facedown. “Ah, well.”
The wizard strode on to one of the outside doors, unbolted it, and shoved it open. Perhaps the casters were magical, for they worked as well as ever. The panel rolled easily and quietly aside.
On the other side was a sheer drop to the glowing palaces a thousand feet below. Silently thanking the dead guard’s House, he touched the stolen brooch and sprang over the edge.
chapter
TWENTY-TWO
Pharaun could float down a thousand feet, or he could fall, relying on levitation to slow his descent at the end. The latter course was dangerous. If he waited too long to counteract the pull of gravity, he would break bones or even pulp himself when he landed.
Still, he chose to plummet, because of what he saw beneath him.
He’d lost track of time inside the rogues’ citadel, but it was plain that the Call had gone forth around the black death of Narbondel, when most dark elves had gone home for the night. With few drow about to contest them for possession of the streets, the undercreatures had erupted from their kennels to kill, loot, and destroy. Pharaun couldn’t make out individuals, but he could see the mobs as great surging, formless masses like the living jellies that infested certain caverns, and he could certainly see the fires they were setting. He could smell the strange, foul smoke of burning stone, and he could hear the goblins shouting.
Perhaps the embattled commoners looked to the noble Houses for succor. If so, they waited in vain. Sorcerous power flashed white and red from the windows and baileys of the stalactite castles as the nobles struggled with their own rebellious slave soldiers. For the time being, at least, the drow were pinned down, unable to brace the marauders outside their own walls.
A house was growing larger and larger beneath Pharaun’s boots. He made himself lighter than air but still slammed down hard. The impact knocked the wind and the sense out of him, and when his wits returned, he was bouncing upward again.
Restoring a portion of his weight, he achieved a more graceful landing, flattened himself against the roof, and peered about. The goblins weren’t running amok in his immediate vicinity—not yet—so he jumped down onto the street. Glad the Bazaar was just three blocks away, he dashed in that direction.
He’d almost reached his destination when a motley assortment of scaly little kobolds, pig-faced ores, and shaggy, hulking bugbears surged from an alley. So far, the revolt was going well for them. They’d manage to lay their hands on spears, swords, and axes, and bloody them, too.
Pharaun ran even faster. A javelin flew past him, but the thralls didn’t chase him. Evidently they were more interested in other prey.
When the wizard reached the marketplace, he cursed, for the riot had arrived there ahead of him. Undercreatures were looting and burning the stalls, creating patches of dazzling glare. Some of the merchants had fled. Others attempted to defend their wares, unsuccessfully if they relied on goblin underlings for assistance.
Pharaun skirted the edge of the Bazaar, witnessing scenes of carnage as he skulked along. Laughing, a goblin flogged his master’s corpse with a scourge. A bugbear used her manacles to strangle a merchant. Trapped in a blazing stone pen, riding lizards hissed and scuttled back and forth in fear.
The first stall Pharaun had hoped to find intact was burning merrily, and the second was crawling with gnolls, growling, whining, and barking as they pawed through the vendor’s goods. The Master of Sorcere knew of only one more possibility on the perimeter of the Bazaar. Should that one be lost to him as well, he would either have to venture deeper into the burning, orc-infested maze of stalls or conceive another plan.
Warty, bearded ogres overturned a twelve-wheeled wagon, dumping out the dark elves who’d been making a stand inside. A walking mushroom, taller than any of the brutes, and, with its slender, fluted stem, far more graceful, swung wide to avoid the little massacre.
Pharaun slipped around the slaughter as well. A few more strides brought him to a scene that, after the carnage he’d just witnessed, seemed almost unreal. The westernmost portion of the marketplace was quiet. Some of the merchants had armed themselves and taken up positions outside their tents and kiosks, but they seemed calm and unafraid.
Over the course of an adventurous life, Pharaun had witnessed the same phenomenon before. Under the proper circumstances, it was possible for folk to remain essentially oblivious to a pitched battle raging just a few yards away.
The wizard ran on. Ahead, a luminous green circle scribed on the ground surrounded a commodious stall built of hardened fungus. A heavyset male stood in the doorway with an arbalest in his hand and a toad, his familiar, squatting on his shoulder. He wore a nightshirt, and his feet were bare. The merchant scowled when he spotted Pharaun.
“Stay back,” he said, his throaty voice even deeper than Ryld’s.
Pharaun halted, took a breath, and wound up coughing, thanks to the smoke fouling the air.
“My dear master Blundyth, is that any way to greet a faithful customer?”
“It’s the way to greet the madman who attacked a patrol only yesterday.”
That was right, Pharaun thought, it had been only yesterday. So much had happened since, it felt like a year.
“My past indiscretions no longer matter,” the Mizzrym said. “Do you have any notion what’s going on?”
“You mean the smoke and commotion over yonder?” Blundyth nodded to the east. “I guess a merchant’s eliminating the competition. It’s nothing to do with me, though I’m ready if trouble spills this way.”
“Would that were true,” said Pharaun. “Alas, none of us is truly ready for tonight. Have you glanced up over the roof of your shop?”
He pointed to the orange light presently flickering in the east.
“The nobles are up to something,” Blundyth said. “Maybe some of the Houses have joined forces to wipe out a common rival. Again, it’s nothing to do with me.”
“You’re mistaken. All across the city, the undercreatures are rebelling.”
Blundyth snorted, “You are mad.”
“Don’t you or your neighbors own thralls?”
“Of course. They’re off somewhere.”
“Indeed. Off preparing to cut your throats.”
“Just go away, Master Mizzrym.” Blundyth shifted his grip on the staff and added, “We always got along. Don’t make me hurt you.”
“The orcs pose a considerable threat. I know how to oppose it, but I need your help. I still have credit here, don’t I?”
“I don’t sell to outlaws. I don’t want any trouble with the priestesses.”
Pharaun looked into the merchant’s eyes and saw that he’d never convince him.
“Too bad. You’ll regret this decision. In just a few minutes, most likely, but by then it will be too late.”
The master turned and strode away, but once he was out of Blundyth’s sight, he circled back around. Creeping through the cramped spaces between the booths, he approached the burly drow’s stall from the side. As he skulked along, he listened to hear if the undercreatures were coming closer, but he couldn’t tell. He suspected that one of the cursed sound baffles was muffling the noise.
At any rate, he reached the dimpled fungal structure without any orcs attacking him. He swept his hands through a mystic pass and whispered an incantation. The protective circle of light winked out of existence.
Pharaun ran to the stall, floated upward, and swung himself onto the roof. The petrified fungus supported him like stone. Blundyth cursed and came stalking around the side of the stand, his crossbow at the ready. Pharaun thought he’d better make sure the merchant didn’t get a chance to use it.
The wizard jumped off the roof onto Blundyth’s back. He knew he hadn’t executed the move as nimbly as poor Ryld would have, but it worked. It slammed the merchant to his knees. The toad hopped
away.
Clinging to his victim, the master drove his dirk repeatedly into the big male’s side. Sometimes the blade plunged deep, and sometimes it caught on a rib. Blundyth flailed and bucked for a while, couldn’t break free, then tried to aim the arbalest back over his shoulder. Pharaun ducked away from it. Finally the merchant fell sideways, pinning his attacker’s knife and hand beneath him.
Pharaun dragged his hand free, but didn’t bother with the dirk. He was about to procure a set of vastly superior weapons. He wiped his bloody fingers on Blundyth’s clothing, then rose and headed for the entrance to the stall.
Blundyth’s neighbors watched him, but didn’t interfere. As the dead male might have observed, his murder was nothing to do with them.
The wizard’s supply shop was as well-stocked as usual. Jars, bottles, and boxes stood on limestone shelves, and a greenish mirror glowed on a wooden stand in the corner. The air smelled of spices, herbs, bitter incense, and decay.
Blundyth’s piwafwi lay carelessly draped across a chest, and it was the first item Pharaun appropriated. The cloak fit him like a tent, but it had the customary row upon row of hidden pockets. Next he examined the vials and drawers, finding the magical components that corresponded to the spells he had prepared. With every one he filched, he felt a little better, almost like a cripple regaining the use of his legs.
As he worked his way across the room, he spotted a pair of boots sitting atop a little cupboard. They were plainly special in some way, for the maker had tooled runes into the leather. Without his silver ring, Pharaun lacked the ability to instantly discern what virtues they possessed, but playing a hunch, he decided to take the time to try them on.
The boots squirmed, molding themselves to his feet, then quivered against his flesh like an animal eager to run. He took an experimental step, and the magical footwear kicked off on its own, augmenting the strength of his legs and propelling him all the way across the shop in a single bound.
Not bad, he thought. Not as good as a flying carpet, but helpful nonetheless.
He took a few more strides, getting the feel of the boots, then headed out. Just as he exited the shop, a howling, shrieking cacophony exploded out of the air. An instant later, a horde of undercreatures—orcs, mostly, with a sprinkling of long-armed goblins—came charging out of the stands of stalls and kiosks to the east.
Blundyth’s neighbors gaped in utter astonishment. For some, the instant of consternation was fatal. The undercreatures swarmed over them like ants harvesting the carcass of a mouse.
Some of the remaining merchants bolted. Others shot their hand crossbows, or conjured flashes of magic. One optimist sought to cow the rebels with threats, invective, and commands until a scrofulous orc, slopping the liquid out of a tin bucket, threw some of Syrzan’s liquid fire on him. The incendiary ignited flesh as easily as stone.
His great blanket of a piwafwi flapping around him, Pharaun ran. Each amplified stride bounced him off the ground, but thanks to the virtues of the magic boots, he always landed softly.
A pair of orcs glared at him and hefted their spears. He whispered an incantation, and a ragged blackness, the essence of death itself, danced among the undercreatures. They collapsed, already rotting.
For the moment at least, Pharaun was in the clear. He raced on, while all around him, his city went down in blood and fire.
“You must know some song, some magic, to track an enemy,” Houndaer said.
“If I did, I’d be singing it,” Omraeth said curtly. “Now be quiet. If the masters hear us coming, they’ll do their best to evade us.”
“He’s right,” said Tsabrak, scuttling along on his eight segmented legs. “Shut up, or we’ll never get this done.”
Houndaer was wearing Ryld Argith’s greatsword strapped across his back, and for an instant he fairly quivered with the urge to try it out on his companions. He wasn’t used to such insolence, not from other males, and certainly not from a degraded creature like a drider.
Yet he restrained himself, because he needed them. He prayed he’d be the one to catch up with the fugitives, who’d made him look a fool in the eyes of the other renegades, but he knew he couldn’t kill both of them by himself.
Tsabrak raised his hand and whispered, “Wait!”
“What is it?” Houndaer asked.
Instead of replying, the half-spider started taking deep breaths. His nostrils flared. He turned this way and that, then crouched down to sniff along the floor. His front legs bent, and his arachnid lower body tilted like a tray to bring his dark elf head down.
“Did you pick up the scent?” Houndaer asked.
He felt an upswelling of excitement, and made a conscious effort to quell it. He didn’t doubt that Tsabrak smelled something pertinent, but over the course of the last hour, the brute, whose metamorphosis had evidently altered his perceptions, had picked up the trail several times only to lose it again.
“Follow me,” said Tsabrak, nocking an arrow.
The drider led his companions to the arched entrance to a training hall, where target mannequins stood in shrouds of spiderweb and a tally board hung on the left-hand wall. Over the years, the chalk had lost most of its phosphorescence, but Houndaer could still read the score of a fencing bout in faintly gleaming ciphers.
Peer as he might, however, he could see no sign of Masters Argith and Mizzrym. He gave Tsabrak a questioning and somewhat impatient glance. The drider responded by pointing at the floor.
When a proud noble family had held the castle, a workman in their employ had painted the floor with pistes and dueling circles. Like the chalk, the magical enamel still radiated a trace of light. At one spot, a spatter of blood was occluding it.
Houndaer’s pulse ticked faster. He looked up at the drider and mouthed, “Where?”
Tsabrak led them toward the tiers of seats on the right. The noble noticed for the first time that a space separated the sculpted calcite risers and the wall.
Elsewhere in the castle, one hunter shouted to another.
Relax, thought Houndaer. It’s my kill.
He held his breath as he and his underlings—for that they were, even if they, by virtue of belonging to the conspiracy, imagined otherwise—peeked around the edge of the steps. Master Argith was sitting cross-legged a few yards down the aisle.
The Tuin’Tarl instantly pointed his crossbow. Indeed, he nearly pulled the trigger before he took in all the details of the scene. His former teacher sat motionless, his eyes shut. To all appearances, he was unconscious, or in any case oblivious to the advent of his foes. Master Mizzrym was nowhere to be seen.
Ryld’s passivity left Houndaer unsure as to the best course of action. Should he and his minions summarily dispatch the spy or seize the opportunity to take him prisoner? If the weapons master was dead, he couldn’t tell them what had become of his partner.
Then the noble realized that while he’d stood pondering the matter, Tsabrak had drawn back his bow string and sighted down the arrow. Houndaer lifted a hand to signal him to desist, then thought better of it. Master Argith was a superb warrior even by the standards of Melee-Magthere. That was why, when a student, the Tuin’Tarl had admired him so, and had been so eager to recruit him. Perhaps it would be wiser to kill him while they had the chance.
Besides, Houndaer was reluctant to risk the vexation of giving Tsabrak an order and having it ignored.
He lifted his hand crossbow. He and the drider took their time aiming, and why not? Ryld was still unaware of them.
Tsabrak released the string, and Houndaer pulled the trigger. The shafts leaped at the still-motionless weapons master. The noble had no doubt the two missiles would suffice. They were flying true, and the heads were poisoned. It was strange and vaguely unsatisfying to dispatch a master of war so easily, as if it was vengeance on the cheap.
Then, when surely it was too late to react, Ryld moved. He twitched himself out of the way of the crossbow quarrel and caught the hurtling arrow in his hand.
Swiftly
, yet somehow without the appearance of haste, the weapons master flowed to his feet and advanced. His bloody thigh didn’t hinder him in the slightest. His face and eyes were empty, like those of a medium awaiting communion with the dead.
His voice pitched deep, Omraeth sang a quick rhymed couplet. Power glittered through the air. Evidently the spell was supposed to afflict Ryld, but as far as Houndaer could observe, it didn’t. The huge male just kept coming. Tsabrak loosed another arrow, and the teacher slapped it out of the air with his broadsword.
Tsabrak and Houndaer dropped their bows and drew their swords. The drider spat poison on his blade. They’d engage Ryld while he was still in the cramped space behind the seats with no room to maneuver. Omraeth took up a position behind his comrades, where he could augment their efforts with bardic magic.
Houndaer felt a pang of fright and willed the feeling away. He had nothing to fear. It was three against one, wasn’t it, and the one had no mail. Indeed, by the look of him, he might not even have any wits.
Except that then he proved he did. Ryld touched the vertical surface that was the back of the steps. He summoned darkness, blinding his foes.
Houndaer hacked madly, and sensed Tsabrak doing the same. Darkness or no, when the spy lunged forward, they’d cut him to pieces. Their swords split nothing but air.
After a few seconds, Omraeth shouted, “Come back this way! Now!”
Houndaer and Tsabrak turned and blundered their way toward the sound of their comrade’s voice. The drider’s envenomed sword bumped the Tuin’Tarl’s arm, but fortunately without sufficient force to penetrate his armor and piwafwi.
When Houndaer stumbled out of the murk, Master Argith was in the center of the salle. Under the cover of darkness, he’d made it to the top of the steps and bounded down the other side. He had a good chance of reaching the exit unchecked.
He didn’t take it, though. Standing in the center of one of the faintly luminous circles, he settled into a fighting stance. He hadn’t scrambled over the steps to flee, rather to reach a battleground more to his liking.
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