by Dorian Hart
THE VENTIFACT COLOSSUS
DORIAN HART
THE VENTIFACT COLOSSUS
© 2015 Dorian Hart
Cover art by Gareth Hinds
http://www.garethhinds.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead,
is unintentional and coincidental.
Comments and inquiries should be addressed to
Dorian Hart
27 John Street
Reading, MA 01867
or sent via e-mail to
[email protected]
For Cris, Frank, Jodi, Kate, Kevin, Kristi, Lonnie, Peggy and Rob
I could ask for no finer Company
CHAPTER ONE
DESPITE THE WOOLEN hood that masked his face, a few drops of wind-blown rain found Dranko’s cheeks and wiggled their way through his latticework of scars. The largest and deepest scar—earned eight years ago when he was caught applying glue from the church bindery to the inside of the head chaplain’s hat—tended to divert rainwater into the corner of his mouth. Every minute or two he wiped his cheek with a damp sleeve.
He lurked in an alley’s shadow and watched the citizens of Tal Hae hurry along the street. A chilly breeze whipped stinging needles of water sideways into their faces, which made it the perfect day for Dranko to ply his trade; people were inattentive to their surroundings in a rainstorm. They would be casting their eyes downward to avoid puddles, while their minds would be on dry rooms and warm fires.
His patience was rewarded in the hour before noon when a likely looking mark walked past his alley. A fancy merchant was trying to keep the rain from his fancy clothes with a fancy umbrella, while the wind played havoc with its fabric. A bodyguard walked ahead of him, head tilted down to keep water from his eyes. The bottom of a coin purse peeked from beneath the hem of the merchant’s silk tunic.
Dranko smiled. They never learn.
After drying his face one more time, he slipped out of the alley and started the tail. At first he ignored his target and instead scanned the foot traffic for the two blocks ahead and the block behind. He took stock of everyone in his field of view. A doddering old woman lurched around pools of rainwater; a pair of waifs chased a weaving path between rain barrels and dripping vendor carts; a despondent young man with a basket of bread took shelter beneath an awning. Dranko didn’t need to locate the city guardsmen, as he knew their routes and positions by heart after years of experience. He’d long since memorized every side street and narrow lane that might be useful during a hasty exit.
Satisfied he had plotted a safe approach, Dranko strode forward, drawing a small knife but keeping it concealed beneath his cloak. He caught up with his prey. The knife flashed. The coin pouch dropped into his off hand. The merchant kept walking, oblivious.
There was always a chance of such thefts being spotted by a meddling third party, so Dranko turned calmly down a small side street, then darted into an even narrower alleyway before scaling the back wall of a dilapidated chandlery. Once on the rooftops he scooted from building to building in a low crouch until he was several blocks from the scene of his crime. Only then did he sit with his back to a crumbling chimney and examine his gains.
It wasn’t much. Given the tailoring of the merchant’s clothes and the muscles of his bodyguard Dranko had expected better, but turned inside out the money pouch produced only one silver talon and six copper chits. Still, it would pay a week’s rent and keep him fed for a couple of days, and “fed” was not a condition he took for granted. He returned the coins to their purse, stuffed the purse deep into his pack, and splashed along the puddled rooftops towards his home.
Four blocks from his abode on Fishwife Row, on a gently tilted roof atop a row of weather-beaten tenements, Dranko stopped, lay flat, and cocked an ear. Over the din of the rain came an unusual cry from the street below. Had he been spotted by the Tal Hae constabulary? Had someone been tracking him since his bit of larceny? It was always a danger in his line of work. But he heard the cry again, and this time there was no mistake: it was one of pain. He peered down from the roof. An old beggar crawled into a narrow alley, its cramped width littered with damp, smelly refuse. The poor man slumped against the wall and clutched his ankle. Dranko squinted; there was a pool of blood forming beneath the beggar’s leg, mixing with the runoff from the building wall. His filthy rags were soaked through.
“Gods damn it.” Dranko pulled his head back and out of sight. He’d wait, is what he’d do. He’d wait, and someone else would come along and give the man aid.
Three minutes later there came another pained shout, and the sounds of sobbing cut through the hammering of the rain. Once more Dranko poked his nose over the edge of the roof. The beggar attempted to stand but collapsed and lay still.
I’m wet, thought Dranko. I’m cold. I’m tired. I just want to get home and drink something besides rainwater.
Thunder pealed in the pipe-smoke sky.
Damn the Gods. You especially, Delioch.
Dranko unslung his pack and pulled out a rumpled cream-colored robe with faded gold trim. It was too small for him; now in his mid-twenties, he’d grown broad-shouldered and pot-bellied since the church elders had given it to him. It was a struggle to get the wet fabric sorted out, but he managed to pull the robe over his street clothes. From a small pocket inside the pack, he fished out a cheap pendant on a silver chain and forced it over his hood. Both robe and pendant featured the stylized open-fingered pattern that indicated Delioch, God of the Healing Hand.
Properly attired, Dranko carefully descended the wall and approached the beggar. The old man’s ankle was broken, a compound fracture, bone poking through the skin and blood leaking out.
“What happened?” Dranko’s voice was low, gruff, almost guttural.
The beggar looked up, squinting into the rain. When he saw Dranko’s face, he shrank away, cowering against the wall. Dranko sighed—he knew the beggar had ignored his robe, his necklace, and probably even his alarming network of scars. Others, including some in the church, had looked at him in the same way many times over the years. What the beggar noticed were the tusks. Two thick teeth like small boar tusks protruded from Dranko’s lower jaw, marking him as goblin-touched.
“I’m not gonna stand here in the rain all day,” Dranko growled. “You want me to heal that ankle, or would you rather bleed to death in a pile of garbage?”
Water plastered the vagrant’s straggly hair to his face. “I was begging for coins,” he croaked. “All I wanted was a chit or two for a meal, but he pushed me aside. I fell, and my leg…”
Dranko leant down and examined the break. Gods, it was an ugly one. For all his expertise at healing—the one skill for which he had shown aptitude during his time at the church, if one discounted scaling walls and picking locks—he wasn’t sure he could fix this. He didn’t have any of his salves in his pack, only a small roll of bandages along with a few dirty rags. In the best case this poor fellow would live out his days enduring a painful limp.
But maybe…
Some of the more senior priests at the church could channel the divine restorative power of Delioch, but Dranko and his ch
urch had parted ways years ago, long before he had mastered any sort of proficiency in the art of divinely inspired healing. Faith, piety, and devotion—these were the things that determined the strength of healing one channeled through Delioch. That’s what Mokad had always told him, especially during his scarring sessions. But despite Mokad’s sharp-edged ministrations, or perhaps because of them, Dranko’s devotion had never been a thing worthy of mention. Though Dranko had tried channeling several times, he had never been successful.
He took a deep breath.
“This is going to hurt.” Dranko offered the man a leather strip from his pack. “A lot. So bite on this and not your tongue.”
None too gently he put the strip in the beggar’s mouth, and before the old man could protest, he twisted and pulled on the broken leg. His patient screamed through clenched teeth.
“It beats being dead.” Dranko prodded the wound with his fingers, felt the bone beneath the bloody shreds of flesh. “Now hold still and scream quieter. I’ve got to get this right or you’ll live out your life a cripple.” He nudged everything back into place as best he could.
Delioch, please let this work.
With one hand clutching his pendant and the other gripping the old man’s ankle, Dranko shut his eyes and entreated his God. “Lord, I pray for healing, that this man be made sound and whole.”
Nothing happened. He spoke the words again, louder. “Lord, I pray for healing, that this man be made sound and whole!” The beggar spat out his bit and screamed in agony. Dranko had rolled the divine dice and lost.
“Lord! Please! I pray for…”
A chill ran through his body, like he had swallowed a bucket of ice water. The beggar stopped screaming. Dranko’s hand grew bright, and a thrilling warmth flowed down his arm into the man’s wound. For all of Dranko’s transgressions, and surely Delioch knew them just as well as Mokad, the God of Healing found him a worthy vessel.
Bones knitted, veins reattached, skin closed. It was more than his own body could endure. Dranko passed out a second later, falling limp beside the beggar in the rain.
* * *
Sometime later Dranko awoke in a fit of coughing, a rivulet of rainwater seeping into his open mouth. The slick wet cobblestones pressed cold against his scarred cheek as he lay on his side, still in the tiny street where he had cured the beggar.
I did it. I channeled.
His body felt drained of its defining energy, as though he had gone a week without food or sleep. He tried to recall the feeling of Delioch’s divinity rushing through him but couldn’t muster up the memory. What he had was a surety that he had served as a conduit for a power infinitely greater than himself. Also, a splitting headache.
There was no sign of the beggar. Dranko set his back to the alley wall and surged to his feet, an unwise maneuver that brought dancing lights to his eyes. He leaned heavily against the wall and willed himself to stay conscious. When his senses returned in full, he cast about for his pack, but there was no point. Someone had lifted it while he napped. His hand dropped to his belt; at least his knife was still there. But his newly acquired coin purse was gone, along with an old apple and some expensive burglar’s tools he’d kept in the bottom of the pack.
Dranko’s first instinct was to rant and rail against the heavens. He had offered up a piece of his soul to heal a stranger, and this was his thanks? To be robbed? A curse upon his god came to his lips, but he left it unspoken. Yes, he had taken Delioch’s name in vain on dozens of occasions before now, for all the indignities of his life, but this time he lacked the animus. He had channeled! Forget all of the scorn heaped upon him at the church; Delioch had worked His perfect grace through Dranko’s scarred body.
Now he was feverish and weak. A channeler was not merely a conduit for Delioch’s might; some of his own essential vitality was given irrevocably to the supplicant. A bit of his soul was gone forever. Doubt and fear crept into his heart.
I’m not doing anything better with my soul these days. Maybe that’s why Delioch let me put it to good use.
He glanced up at the wall of the building, and the thought of climbing it made his head spin. But he was in his priestly raiment, soaked though his robes might be, and seeing as no one had come along to arrest him while he was unconscious, there was no reason not to walk the rest of the way home.
Dranko lived on the third and highest floor of a rotting tenement that leaned precariously over Fishwife Row. He rented a squalid room from a coarse woman named Berthel, who in four years had shown a complete lack of interest in repairing the holes in the roof or purchasing any charms to keep away the bugs. The climb up two flights of stairs left him winded and faint, and he barely had the wherewithal to strip off his drenched robes and change into dry clothes before collapsing into a rickety chair.
He had set out a collection of pots and buckets to catch the drips on days like this. One of them nearby was misplaced, and a puddle was forming on the warped wooden floorboards. Dranko stretched out a foot and nudged the bucket beneath the drip. When the sound changed to the plunk of water into water, he closed his eyes. All he wanted now was to have a few minutes of relaxa—
“Drank-ooooooooooo!”
The sound of his name carried over that of a fist pounding on his door.
“Go away,” he groaned. “We’re closed.”
“Dranko, open up. Rent’s due.”
“That’s why I want you to go away.”
The door opened. Berthel was large, loud, lazy, and never waited to be invited in. She stepped carefully over the drip-catchers while pretending not to notice them.
“And how are we today, beautiful?” she asked.
“Poor.”
Berthel laughed. “Then being a bit poorer won’t matter much, will it? How about that rent?”
Dranko rubbed his temples. “I had it, but I got rolled on the way back here. Someone took my pack, and my pack had your coins in it.”
“You? Someone robbed you?” Berthel gave him a look of pure skepticism.
“Yeah. Me. So how about I pay you next week with an extra silver thrown in to reward your patience?”
Berthel crossed her arms and said nothing.
“Hey, look, when have I ever gone more than two weeks without paying rent?”
“Last month.”
“Er, okay, fine, but when have I ever gone more than four weeks without—”
“Yes, yes,” said Berthel. “One week from today, with two extra silvers, and I won’t kick you to the curb.”
Dranko sat up a bit. “Thanks. Though maybe I should hold off paying you until you’ve done something about this drafty strainer I live in.” He looked pointedly at his collection of containers.
“Right.” Berthel laughed again. “You got somewhere else to go?”
Dranko paused. He imagined the sanctuary of the Church of Delioch, God of the Healing Hand, where those who needed succor were given harbor and comfort. Six years he had spent beneath that roof, wearing out his welcome day by day and year by year until, drained of patience, they had turned him out. His one friend there, a girl a couple of years his junior named Praska, had tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened.
“No,” he said. “I guess I don’t. Now if you don’t mind, your perfume is obscuring the aroma of my chamber pot. Also I have to figure out where my next meal is coming from, and after that your rent. One week, I’ll have your money.”
“I know you will,” said Berthel. “And…are you okay? I mean, whoever took your money, did they hurt you much? You look like crap, even more than usual.”
Dranko grimaced. “I’ll be okay. Thanks, Berthel.”
His landlady turned and picked her way between the buckets to the door. “Oh, almost forgot. Some kid came by today and left this for you. Said it was important.” She produced a small envelope and tossed it to Dranko, who caught it deftly before it could land in a puddle. “I didn’t know you could read,” she added, then gave one last braying laugh before departing.
&nb
sp; Dranko turned over the letter in his pruned fingers. Its beautiful wax seal and fine calligraphy were an absurd opulence in his grungy apartment.
“What in the twelve Hells is this?”
He ripped open the envelope and slid out a thick beige card.
You will appear at the tower of the Archmage Abernathy in the city of Tal Hae at sundown on the first day of spring in the year 828.
Dranko peered with suspicion at this unlikely invitation, its words glowing with faint enchantment. He flipped it over, saw that nothing was written on the back, then ran his fingers along the heavy parchment. From his time working in the church’s bindery he knew that this sort of paper was rare and pricey. (Among his dozens of scars from Mokad was a long one on his elbow, testament to a moment of carelessness wherein he had knocked over a pot of ink and ruined a sheaf of vellum.) The expense of the paper made the obvious conclusion—that this was some odd prank—harder to countenance, though it was still more likely than him being summoned by the elusive archmage of Tal Hae.
His life not having much overlap with wizarding circles, assuming there even were such things, Dranko knew only the usual street gossip about the archmagi. Powerful, mysterious, and never seen outside of their stone towers, the archmagi were said to be working on some grand project on the orders of King Crunard himself. Typical citizens had heard only faint rumors of them, rumors they probably disbelieved.
Other possibilities: the letter was a ploy to lure him either into a trap, or out of his house so someone could rob the place. The first of those was more likely. Unless someone desperately needed buckets of rainwater or a stiff straw mattress with a few fleas in it, his apartment was not much of a target for premeditated burglary. But a trap, that he could believe. Careful though he was, his cutpurse hobby had occasional repercussions. Someone may have tracked him home after one of his outings, and now was planning revenge.