They eventually hit another southern street but by then it was almost evening. The buildings lining the block were a style of narrow, two and three-story row houses, but the legionnaires passed them by until finding something even smaller. The structure they settled on was built low to the ground and only had two rooms, a larger one in front that seemed to have been a shop floor and a smaller storage area in the back. It looked as though someone else had used the place before as a camp at the last Opening, as the wide gaps for windows facing the street were sealed with old shelving and bric-a-brac crammed into them. A huge old desk was beside the hanging front door, suitable to wedge it shut.
The legionnaires did so once inside. They only lit a single candle as there was not wood for a fire without pulling the barricades loose from the windows. The four men and one woman sat around the candle, shivering as the dark night outside brought a numbing chill to the barren city. They choked down cold rations of middling quality with the brackish water.
There was no dinner conversation. Afterwards the Sarge lit a second candle and looked around the back room. He returned and hauled the Duchess roughly to her feet by the bindings around her wrist. Claudja gave a startled cry and Phin leaped to his feet beside her. The Sarge smirked and shoved the Duchess into Phin’s arms.
“No point in posting guards, as we wouldn’t see anything coming until it was bashing in the front door.”
The Sarge cut a strap off a now empty ration pack and tossed it to Phin.
“There is an old drain pipe in the back wall. Tie her Grace to it so that she can’t get her hands at the knot. Don’t want her creeping about in the dark, looking to slit our throats.”
Claudja’s steely eyes flashed at the man. “You would be first, Sergeant.”
He grinned at her and winked. Phin started to move Claudja with a hand on her arm but she jerked away, spun, and spit in his face.
“You will be second,” she sneered. She turned regally on her heel and strode into the back room with her chin held high.
The legionnaires cackled and Phin felt himself blush as he wiped off his face with his sleeve. He followed the Duchess into the back and found her already seated against the back wall, next to the candle sitting on the floor under a ceramic pipe that at one time must have drained a basin or sink. She put her bound hands next to the pipe, about head high as she was sitting, and whispered as Phin knelt beside her.
“That was for their benefit. I am trusting you, Phinneas Phoarty.”
Phin blinked. He had not spoken his last name to her, but of course the legionnaires had called him by it. The Duchess was paying close attention to everything around her.
He laced the strap around the bindings on Claudja’s wrists. There was a hole in the top of the pipe through which he could have threaded the end to bind it securely, but he only looped the strap over the top. She noticed.
“Don’t try anything,” Phin said, loud enough for the others to hear and looking Claudja in the eye so that she knew he did mean it. For now. She nodded.
“Where is the knight who was with me?” she whispered before Phin rose. He had no idea who she meant.
“I don’t know,” he said as he turned to leave the room. The Duchess made no further sound.
Phin took off his coat, which was big enough to do Claudja for a blanket, and dropped it within her reach. He picked up the candle and took it with him back to the main room, leaving her in the dark.
The legionnaires chuckled as he returned, and Ty asked “You see what being nice gets you?” Phin ignored them and set down the candle by his backpack. He was the only one who had managed to take any luggage from the Dead Possum inn, apart from the Sarge’s satchel. Phinneas Phoarty withdrew the long gray robes of Abverwar from his pack, and slid them on over shirt and trousers.
There was a drama to the outfit, which was really the whole point. Phin shrugged his shoulders and the long gray folds whispered together mysteriously as they settled and the voluminous sleeves obscured his hands. Phin did not raise the deep hood that would have shadowed his face, but as he turned to look down his nose at the legionnaires the three of them looked back with more trepidation than they typically showed his way.
“Give me the book,” Phin said. Without fully being conscious of it the familiar garment had brought back the rasping tone to his voice. The voice of a Wizard.
“What book?” the Sarge asked.
Phin looked at the man as he would have a foolish child.
“The book with which you mean for me to transport us all to Ayzantu City. I heard Horayachus’s words in the inn, Sergeant. Before the place fell on his head. Something about the priests there giving us all the gold we can carry, or else the Burning Man’s wrath finding us all.”
The Sarge smirked, and patted the satchel at his side as if it were a small dog. “When the time comes, Wizard. Not before.”
Phin narrowed his eyes. “Are you unacquainted, Sergeant, with the simplest tenets of magic?”
The Sarge stared back. “I know there’s a lot of muttering. And some wiggling fingers.”
The Sarge wiggled his own, and Phin tried not to look at the lonely two on the man’s left hand.
“It is a bit more complicated than that. Even for an incantation in a book, I can not simply read a spell from a page and have it function. Not a spell as powerful as what we are discussing. I must first learn its elements, the sum of its parts, and more. Otherwise, it can go dreadfully wrong.”
“How wrong?” Rickard asked. Phin looked at the sandy-haired Beoan.
“We are discussing a spell that could teleport five people from this place over the many, many miles to Ayzantu City. Picture your entrails spread between here and there, hanging from tree branches and the like. Or imagine how the five of us might look were we fused together as a single mass of limbs, flesh, and bone.”
Rickard paled and Ty muttered, “Gods, Phoarty. I just ate.” The Sarge only narrowed his eyes.
“How long will it take you to learn this thing right?”
“Depending on the complexity, quite a while. As of now I am unsure even as to the nature of the spell in question. It could be an invocation to activate an enchanted aura or item, or a free translocation dweomer that only functions in a particular place. Whatever it is, it is surely powerful magic.”
The Sarge did not look pleased, but Phin’s last bit of jargon seemed to decide him. He opened the satchel and stood up, holding out the heavy book Phin had only seen once before, when he had read from it briefly to prove to the legionnaires that he knew the old incantation language of Tull.
Phin accepted the dark leather volume but the Sarge held on to his end with his mangled hand, thumb beneath it and two fingers on top next to the hacked nubs of ring finger and pinky.
“You will have maybe two days,” the Sarge said. “Less if we are lucky.”
“I will see what I can do,” Phin said. The Sarge let his end of the book go, but he had noticed how diligently Phin kept his eyes off the mangled hand. The renegade reached out with it, brushed something that was not there off of Phin’s shoulder, and straightened the collar of his wizard robes with two fingers.
“This should not have to be said,” the Sarge spoke lightly. “But just so we are clear. If you get cute in any manner and we, say, appear somewhere other than the streets of Ayzantu City…”
The Sarge patted Phin’s cheek smartly.
“Let’s just say there is more than one way to get entrails into a tree. Do you follow me, Phoarty?”
“I do.”
“Outstanding.”
The three legionnaires moved to settle against the walls without blankets or anything to rest their heads against other than their own breastplates. Phin blew out one candle and took the other to a corner. He hiked his robes to sit down with his back to the room and set the book in front of him. The candle sitting in a little tin dish was thin and would certainly not last long. Phin blew it out, licked a finger and thumb, and pinched the wick. He whispe
red a short phrase, not a true spell but only a cantrip so simple it did not require memorization, and a steady blue flame appeared between the tip of his thumb and finger. It gave off a meager light but no heat at all, and Phin fastened it to the wick where it stayed without burning. He set the candle down above the book and opened to the first page.
Phin was still reading hours later when a tremendous roar shook the whole city to its foundations, hunched over with his face close to the words on the pages and so engrossed that he never heard the deafening sound. He made no move until Ty grabbed his shoulder and hauled him over backwards, shouting his name.
“Phoarty, what was that?” the legionnaire screamed.
“What was what?” Phin asked on his back.
The roar came again, and Phin certainly heard it this time.
It was a hellish sound, perhaps even literally. It came from outside somewhere but it pierced into every corner of Vod’Adia through bolted doors and solid walls, sounding like the world splitting asunder. It was not the sound of a raw explosion but rather a sustained roaring that somehow implied a dreadful awareness behind it. Something announcing its presence. With authority.
“What in the names of the Nine Gods is that?” Ty howled, dragging Phin who was shivering now out of the corner as if he should somehow know. The legionnaire’s face in the soft blue light was wild with terror, and behind him the Sarge and Rickard stood back-to-back with their swords held out and trembling before them. The roar came again, for the third time, and everyone cringed like mice caught in an open field by a thunderstorm. Phin nearly curled up into a ball. Ty’s sword fell from his numb hand and the broad-shouldered man choked out a sob.
Then it was gone, like a cloud had passed before the sun. Light and warmth returned. The icy fingers dug into Phin’s heart began to relax, then slowly withdrew. He took a shuddering breath.
“Sh-Shieldmaiden save us,” the Sarge quavered, bringing his mangled hand to his face and hanging his head. Rickard sat down heavily on the floor. Ty sputtered something at Phin but the wizard uncoiled and moved to pick up the unburning candle, then to sounds of protests from the legionnaires he ran with the light into the back room.
Phin’s coat was lying under the pipe but the Duchess Claudja was on the other side of the room with her back wedged into a corner, sitting with her knees up to her chest and her bound hands over her head, trembling. Phin hurried over and knelt beside her.
“It is all right,” he said. “Whatever it was, it is gone.” He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder but was aware of the legionnaires in the doorway, and knew it would not look right.
Claudja raised her face. Like all of them she had acquired a fine layer of gray dust on her skin, and that on her cheeks was broken by the trail of a single tear from either eye. Her eyes moved over Phin’s shoulder to the Sarge and she stilled her trembling with an act of will. She spoke through clenched teeth.
“You there. Get me the hell out of this place. Take me to Chengdea and ransom me to my father. He will pay you every bit as much as will Ayzantium.”
The Sarge blinked, then a wry smile pushed the last lingering traces of fear off his face.
“Sorry, your Highness. We passed through that place on the way here. I know the look of a realm teetering on the brink of disaster. There’s not enough gold left in your Daddy’s coffers to get a fellow drunk.”
The Duchess screwed her eyes shut and grimaced. She turned her face away from both the Sarge and Phin, and her shoulders shook once more before she steadied them. Phin balled his hands at his side to keep from touching her, stood up and walked away.
As he passed the Sarge, the man grabbed Phin’s arm.
“You know anything yet?”
“What?”
The Sarge nodded at the book lying open in the corner.
“Oh. No, not really. The text is very old, and dense.” Phin’s arm was still in the Sarge’s grip and he raised an eyebrow at the man. “There are spells written within it, but I first need to understand them in the context of the whole. I am confident that I can, but for now…for now I should memorize my regular spells for tomorrow.”
The Sarge’s eyes were on Phin’s. Phin did not know why they were not green anymore, as they had been back in Camp Town, but thought it must have had something to do with the ring the Sarge had lost along with the ring finger. The jewel had also been the green of a shining emerald. Nothing else made sense.
“Nifty little fire you have going there,” the Sarge said, tilting his head at the candle without breaking eye contact.
“That is nothing,” Phin said. “A parlor trick.”
The Sarge nodded. “Not like the spell you used to flatten that wench with the braid and the whoopin’ stick, back at the Dead Possum.”
“No,” Phin agreed. “Not like that.”
The Sarge looked at Ty, and at Rickard, then back to Phin.
“How many men do you think you could knock out with one of those spells, at the same time?”
“No more than one.”
The Sarge nodded. “And how many times can you cast it?”
“A handful,” Phin said, though he was thinking three.
“There are different kinds of handfuls, Phoarty.” The Sarge released Phin’s arm and patted it with two fingers. Phin stepped around him and moved toward the book.
“Nice job tying-up her Grace,” the Sarge said to Phin’s back. “And you told her we are going to Ayzantium, eh?”
Phin stopped. The Duchess had let that slip out in her fear but Phin had hoped the legionnaires had not caught it. He turned around.
“I did, to calm her down. I thought that was preferable to having her think she had been taken for…other reasons.”
Phin looked meaningfully at Ty, who glared back at him.
“Bad idea,” the Sarge shook his head. “The Fire Priests of Ayzantium are frightening enough to a Daul. You should have come up with a lie.”
“I am afraid I am a bad liar,” Phin said.
The Sarge chuckled, and it was a sound somehow more evil than any roar in the night.
The legionnaires moved to settle back down where they slept, as it was still a couple of hours before dawn. Phin was exhausted himself, but he moved back to his corner and shut the book he had been reading. He put it back in the leather satchel and removed his slim traveling spell book from an inner pocket of his robes. He pinched the blue flame off his candle as he could not maintain the cantrip while meditating over spells for the next day, and relit it mundanely with a flint.
It took Phin a few minutes to clear his mind enough to concentrate, for there were too many thoughts running around inside his head. Chief among them was the fact that judging by what he had read so far, there was nothing at the heart of Vod’Adia that would allow teleportation to Ayzantu City. Nor to anywhere else that he wanted to go.
Chapter Thirty-One
Zeb had swapped the blankets and tent he had shared on the road with Phinneas Phoarty for a bedroll provided by the Shugak as the party had marched out of Camp Town. The Shugak gear consisted of a flat floor mat stuffed unevenly with feathers and down, and two large blankets big enough to cocoon a hobgoblin. Though the cloth was coarse it was roomy and warm, and it did not smell like it had ever been used. That had not been true of Zeb’s previous bedding by the time he got to Camp Town.
The roominess only became an issue when a monstrous roar boomed over Vod’Adia, shaking Zeb out of a dream that had just been getting good. He blinked in the darkness until a second roar sounded and with no thought or plan he tried to scramble to his feet and run. The wide blankets tangled around him and he tripped over his own armor on the floor. Zeb tried to throw his arms out to break his fall but the blankets had them pinned against his chest. His fall was interrupted by someone else in the dark, someone that grunted as Zeb careened off them. Zeb hit the ground and rolled out of his entanglement, then crawled until his face bumped against a helmet. He popped it on his head and scuttled in the direction he thou
ght his weapons might lie.
A third roar sounded in the night like a detonation, in time with the door to the stairs crashing open. Someone ran in and put a boot in Zeb’s ribs, then sailed over the top of him with a cry. Zeb kept crawling. Voices in several languages were shouting as his grasping hand found a wooden stock. Zeb grabbed it and staggered to his feet, got his back to a wall, and raised what he hoped was a weapon over his head with both hands.
Heggenauer stuttered in the darkness, then paused and spoke more clearly. A white light filled the chamber with blinding suddenness. Zeb cringed and blinked until the chaos around him began to settle into identifiable shapes.
The big blonde acolyte was across the room from Zeb, dressed in skivvies but with his shield raised and his mace held aloft, a nimbus of white light shining from the head of the weapon. John Deskata’s tower shield was in a corner, dark hair and darting eyes visible above the rim and the blade of his Legion short sword poking around the right side. Uriako Shikashe was sitting upright in his bedroll, holding the longer of his two swords by the scabbard with his right hand ready to draw the blade. The samurai’s hair was loose of its top-knot and hanging to his shoulders, and his head was tilted to one side as he listened intently.
It had apparently been Tilda who had run in and tripped over Zeb. She had then sailed halfway across the room and crash-landed on top of Nesha-tari, who was kicking and spitting furiously in her own bedding. Tilda stumbled backwards and her heel hit a pack on the floor. She fell on her back but rolled up to her feet even as she snatched a heavy dagger out of either boot, standing in a crouch in the center of the room with her blades before her. She snapped her head and wild eyes around the room so rapidly that her long braid jerked in the air.
“Everybody heard that, right?” John’s voice asked from behind his shield.
Amatesu walked in through the open door next to Zeb and he barely stopped himself from braining her with the crossbow he was holding over his head. Amatesu shut the door behind her and put her back to it. Her face was set, but pale, and Zeb could hear her breathing through her nose.
The Sable City tnc-1 Page 38