Magesong

by James R. Sanford

  "Everyone look down," he commanded. "Cover your eyes at once!"

  He strode forward, taking out his ceremonial dagger, and began cutting a line through the mystic rune. It took much of his will to finish, and he had to call upon the strong mental discipline taught in the Sardonyx Tower in order to do it. He turned around.

  The men all stared at him, wide-eyed in the moonlight, like they were idiots.

  This amateur had become more than troublesome. I should have killed him in Libac's garden, thought Ephemeris. Now he would have to take the men back to the ship and perform a ceremony of mind-clearing before they would be of any use to him. He could go on alone. Something about the large, barrel-chested man bothered him though. He had a deadly aura about him.

  In any case, Ephemeris knew that he would have to break the spell on his crew before they could sail, so he decided to do it now and use his men to make sure the quarry did not slip away when he caught up with them again. It had been a long time, but he still knew every back street and hiding hole in the city. Let them spend themselves running, he thought. Then when they were resting unaware, he would take them. And for the affront of the dunking he had given Ephemeris, the amateur would suffer death by the Ashen Hand, even if he surrendered and begged for mercy.

  Beyond the rooftops, from out of the highlands to the north, lightning flashed across the sky. The wind shifted and the breeze blew harder.

  Reyin could smell a damp freshness to the air as he and Farlo squeezed through the end of the narrow passage and stood at the top of Bodoval's lift. All lay quiet in The Barrel. Bodoval and his donkey had gone to wherever they made their nightly rest, and the peddlers' booths stood dark and empty. Open windows flickered with candlelight on all seven levels of The Barrel, but a few folk still sat on the catwalks in front of their homes and shops, the bright awnings rolled away in favor of the stars, now becoming obscured by low clouds scudding in from the northeast.

  "Wait a moment," Reyin told Farlo, turning back to the opening between the warehouses.

  He made wide passes with his arms while muttering in low tones, as if he held conversation with an invisible being, then finished by drawing a line across the alley with his finger.

  "He will give me warning if our enemy comes this way," Reyin said as he rejoined Farlo.

  "Who will?"

  "Never mind. Let's go."

  They followed a walkway to their right past some mud-and-wattle huts, going a quarter turn along the rim of The Barrel before finding the open door of the Topmast Inn. A large platform stood there where the rickety sidewalk cut sharply away.

  The one-handed innkeeper sat at a large crate, dicing with a thin and weathered old man beneath a wooden rack that held bottles of wine and rum. Two sailors ate sausages at the long board, using long knives as utensils. None of them looked twice at Reyin in his fine suit of half burned-away clothes, as if they were too bored to care, or saw it every day.

  Farlo plucked two silver buttons off the shards of doublet hanging from Reyin's shoulders and slapped them down in front of the ex-harpooner.

  "Will this get us a room for a couple hours?"

  The innkeeper scooped up the buttons and examined them front and back. "More than enough. It'll cover the price of dinner as well, if you want some."

  "You bet we do," Reyin said. "But first, can you tell me which door is Mr. Bodoval's?"

  The one-handed man told him and went to fetch their supper.

  "What do you want with him?" Farlo asked.

  Reyin tore the rest of the buttons from his ruined jacket and threw the remains to the floor. "Just need to do a little business. I'll be right back."

  He placed the canvass bag into Farlo's hands and looked him hard in the eye.

  Five minutes later the deal was done and he went back to the top in Bodoval's lift. A bowl of mussel stew lay waiting for him on a large crate where Farlo sat. The only condiment was a bowl of sea salt. Reyin took a handful of the salt and poured it into his small leather purse.

  "What's that for?" said Farlo.

  Reyin shrugged. "For luck."

  As he took his first bite he looked at Farlo. "You did follow me. I'd thought so."

  "I was afraid that footpads would get you in that fancy suit. I waited around the back, then I saw that . . . that man sneak out with a sack of swag and climb into a wagon. The driver was the big pirate with the blunderbuss."

  "So you figured they had it and trailed them?"

  "I didn't so much think about it. I just sort of knew they had what we came for."

  Reyin blinked in surprise. "Not bad, Farlo. Not bad."

  As soon as the meal was over, they climbed the ladder to the room where they had stayed before. Reyin fell down onto the cot, immediately pushing himself into a sitting position against the wall. He was afraid to sleep and too weary to trust himself. He lighted the lamp.

  They listened to the wind rise. Thunder rolled across the city like the echo of a great cannonade, and they heard the first splatter of rain on the thin roof of their rooftop cabin.

  "So soon," Reyin murmured. "He must be very powerful."

  Staring at his hands he said, "I — I didn't think it would be this hard. He effortlessly throws fire and calls for a storm, while I spend myself with a few simple tricks."

  He stood and went to the porthole window, searching the rain-slashed night for any sign of pursuit.

  "I'm so scared, Farlo. I've studied these arts since I was a boy, but up against this magician I'm still that boy. I have no skill to compare with his."

  He turned back to his friend. "He's going to kill me, Farlo. If he can call a storm then he can call down lightning as well. He's going to kill me and I don't know how to stop him."

  "Shut your ugly mouth before you make me angry," Farlo snapped. Reyin could see that he wasn't joking.

  They sat in silence for a time, the rain drumming harder and harder. Then Farlo opened the canvass duffle and let it fall, seeing for the first time the strangely-carved device they had voyaged a thousand leagues to find. He reached to touch it then stopped.

  "This is the captured spirit?"

  "That is only the device of imprisonment. E'alaisenne is trapped within."

  "Is that its name?"

  "Yes. It means something like earth-rain-healing."

  "Why does every third man seem to want it all of a sudden?"

  Reyin smiled grimly. "Libac thought it was an old relic. A pretty box. This magician is a member of a secret society that believes it will give them powers that make throwing fire seem like child's play. And I think they are right."

  He stared at the device for a moment before he spoke again. "I have to tell you something. This is important. If we can't stop him from taking it back, we must destroy it."

  "What? Are you mad?"

  "We're now involved in something that is bigger than just one village. We're now playing with the lives of whole nations. With the new power they seek, the Supplicants of the Final Grammarie could ruin the world, and what they themselves don‘t realize is that they could destroy the Essa itself."

  "If I can't stop him from taking it back, I'll be dead and the world and your magic go to blazes," Farlo said savagely. “It can't become more important than it already is to me! And it should be the same for you. Think of Kestrin."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You don't even know why you're doing this, do you? No one does anything this dangerous, this miserable, for themselves or even for the whole world. I'm doing it for my wife. And you‘re doing this for Kestrin, whether you know it or not."

  Reyin fell silent then and Farlo carefully retied the canvass bag. After three days of fasting, the mussel stew was dragging Reyin into an unwanted sleep. Lightning sparked behind the cloth-covered window, thunder following closely, and the little room trembled.

  "Farlo. I need to lie down and rest. If I fall asleep, wake me when you think a half-hour has passed."

  "No more than that?"

  "It's all
we can allow."

  "And then what?"

  "We keep moving. If we can stay ahead of him and get far enough away then I can do something to help mask us."

  "Is that our only hope?"

  "Yes," Reyin said. "I'm afraid it is."

  And with the storm crashing all around him he lay down with his head on his arms.

  Reyin's eyes flew open. He sat up.

  The lamp was out, but room stood awash in dim light coming up through the open hatchway to the room below. Farlo knelt there, the reversed shadows on his face making him look unfamiliar.

  "He's here."

  "How?" Reyin wondered aloud. "The watcher should have — "

  What a fool he had been. After the first two surprises, the other magician had been on guard, looking for more traps with his witch sight at every turn. He had seen the watcher and, apparently, had dismissed him with ease.

  Reyin threw himself down beside Farlo, finding an angle where he could remain in the dark and still see most of the common room. The innkeeper stood face to face with the sorcerer, who now wore a broad hat and a dripping cloak that glinted with an oily sheen. The ruby ring still perched on his left hand while his right was covered by a grey glove. On the back side of the glove, white pearls traced the bones of his hand. Five grim sailors armed with cutlasses and storm lanterns gathered behind him.

  "Who," the innkeeper demanded, "are you to be giving orders in my place?"

  One of the sailors opened his coat and drew a pistol.

  The ex-harpooner laughed. "You don't expect me to believe you have a dry pan after being out in this rainstorm?"

  "Let's find out," the sailor sneered.

  In an instant, the innkeeper had the point of his prosthesis up against the magician's throat. "Now tell your boys to get out of here, while you still have a voice to tell them."

  "There's no need for threats," the man called Orez said, pretending fear. He cautiously reached under his cloak with the gloved hand and took out a Jakavian gold sovereign. The innkeeper probably didn't make that much in a fortnight.

  "Just take this for your trouble and allow us to leave quietly."

  The fellow opened his one good hand. The sorcerer made to place the coin there in his palm, but touched him with the glove instead.

  The innkeeper froze, his mouth going wide. He tried to move, tried to speak, but his mouth only opened in silent agony. His dark skin, the color of tarnished bronze, shriveled and dried as he watched, turning quickly to an ashen grey. The doomed man trembled for a moment, his hair now completely white, then his eyes dissolved into a fine powder as he fell dead to the floor. His empty sockets stared up at Reyin.

  The old man with the dice sat paralyzed in disbelief, and the two seamen at the board now sidled toward the doorway, their hands empty and raised.

  Orez ignored them. "It is here," he said to his men. "Search all the rooms."

  Reyin fought to keep his gorge from rising. An eldritch glove with the power to kill — he had not thought such a thing was possible.

  He put his mouth close to Farlo's ear. "Get ready to run."

  "Where?"

  "Just be ready. Here goes."

  The sailor with the pistol still gripped it in his fist. The priming powder in the pan might be wet, but it was likely that the load had stayed dry. Reyin had seen his rival throw fire and knew something of how it worked, though Ty'kojin had never let him try. Voiding his mind of all reason, indeed of the very foundations of logic, he opened his spirit to the primordial elements. All he needed was a spark, just a spark. A candle on the long table dimmed a little.

  The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space as the pistol discharged, spewing a cloud of thick black smoke.

  Reyin didn't wait to see if anyone had been hit. With shouts of confusion echoing the shot in the room below, he leapt to his feet and grabbed the canvass sack with one hand. He passed the other hand across one wall of the little room.

  The nails holding the boards in place popped free, and Reyin kicked the loose planks away, the tempest outside howling in the breech. He pushed Farlo through the gap and plunged after him. As they picked their way across the top of the mud-brick structure, barely able to see its boundaries, Farlo pointed to the taller roof of a tavern that was built against the back of the Topmast Inn.

  “Give me a leg up to that rooftop, then I can reach down and haul you up with me."

  Reyin shook his head. "No. We must avoid the high places or we will die by lightning. We have to stay low."

  "How low?"

  "Once we get down in The Barrel we'll be safe. No magician alive is skilled enough to call lightning into so deep a place."

  "Then let's go. I assume you have an escape arranged with Bodoval?"

  "Yes." If the storm hasn't driven him indoors.

  The only safe place to dismount the roof lay right in front of the entrance to the inn. They hit the catwalk running, Reyin slipping on the smooth, water-soaked platform. Then they were sliding along the hand rail, approaching the top of the lift. Behind them, the door of the inn burst open, a black silhouette framed there. In front of them lightning crackled across the sky, the blue-white flash revealing a massive man who stood blocking their way, a fire ax in his huge hands.

  Reyin hesitated as Malor raised the ax, but Farlo suddenly doubled his gait, sprinting directly into the path of the hewing stroke, a knife somehow appearing in his hand. The ax came down with killing force. Farlo threw himself into it.

  Lightning flashed again. Malor lay thrashing at Farlo's feet, blood spurting from his chest to be lost in the falling rain.

  "Keep going," Reyin said, pushing Farlo ahead of him.

  They skirted past the dying sailor and broke for the top platform of the lift where the giant basket hung in apparent readiness. Farlo held his left arm tight against his side.

  "The son of a pig got me," he said as they ran.

  Reyin looked over his shoulder. The other magician stepped from the sheltering doorway into the fury of the storm, pausing a moment to attune himself with its energies.

  "Bodoval," Reyin cried as he and Farlo fell into the basket, "Now! Quickly!"

  The seven-story depression was a well of blackness. Reyin couldn't tell if Bodoval still waited at the bottom.

  The sorcerer reached skyward.

  "Bodoval! Now!"

  "Schingzhe Zhiz!" Orez screeched in an unearthly voice, swinging his arm down in a sword stroke.

  The gondola bearing Reyin and Farlo fell away with no warning, plunging rapidly into the rain-swept darkness below. Then they were blinded by a scintillating flash that filled their vision, the explosion smashing them down into the bottom of the basket.

  Blackness. Rain.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Reyin heard from high above, "Get down there and see if they're still alive. If they are . . . well, they've slain Malor — exact your vengeance as you see fit. Just bring me the treasure box."

  Someone was dragging him out of the gondola.

  "Find them, boys!" came a shout over breaking thunder. "They're hiding down there somewhere."

  Farlo's voice: "Did it hit us?"

  "It was damn close," Bodoval answered. "It looked like the bolt struck the beam right above you. Lucky it didn't crack and bring the whole thing down."

  Suddenly Reyin could see their faces and knew where he was.

  "Try to get up," Bodoval said. "The ones chasing you are stuck on the third level. They've split up to look for a way down and they'll find it soon."

  They sat sprawled a dozen paces from the singed basket, beneath an overhang where a small lantern swung from a hook. Reyin still held the spirit box under one arm. Bodoval had ripped away Farlo's left sleeve and Reyin watched as dark red blood welled out of a deep, smiling wound across his triceps. Working quickly, Bodoval wrapped the bloody sleeve twice across the cut and tied it off tightly.

  "That won't do for very long," he said.

  Reyin staggered to his feet. "You had best go hom
e now."

  "If you're going out the tunnel you'll want to take this." He handed Reyin the lamp.

  "And you take our thanks."

  Bodoval shook his hand then slipped away.

  Reyin looked over his shoulder. The pursuing sailors, well lit by their storm-lanterns, gathered at the third level where a long ladder reached all the way to the bottom. He quickly led Farlo into the grotto.

  Surprisingly, the floor of the tunnel ran with less than an inch of water. It must drain into the sewers somewhere, thought Reyin.

  The lamp Bodoval had given them cast a circle of dim orange light that was but a few steps wide. They couldn't see the side walls or the people who rested there, but they heard a low moan ahead, then the sound of strained breathing. A tall, skeletal man suddenly crossed into their light right in front of them. He was naked save for a scrap of cloth hanging from his hips, and his hairless skin shone ghostly pale. The man's eyes flashed red in the lamplight and then he was gone.

  They went on, picking their way carefully now as the footing turned slippery and treacherous. With a flash of lightning they saw the end of the passage not far ahead. Another flash, and a cloaked figure stood there.

  "It's him," Reyin whispered. "We must go back."

  But the sailors had already entered the tunnel, holding their lanterns and cutlasses before them. They went slowly, searching.

  Farlo's jaw tightened. "I don't think I can take more than two of them with this bad arm."

  Reyin shuttered his lamp, but the wet walls of the grotto now cast an aurora that left no shadowed place. Dozens of vacant eyes stared out at them from shallow niches.

  The sorcerer advanced toward them with deliberate steps, the ashen glove held poised.

  "I will suffer no more indignities at your hands, amateur," he said calmly. "But I am curious about you. I will have to dreamspeak you after I have taken your life. We all know that while the living can lie, the dead must tell the truth. I am particularly interested in who taught you and where they are now. . And I want to know other things. Do you even know what you have there?"

  Sudden anger drove away all of Reyin's fear, and he spat out the words contemptuously. "How could the Unknowable Forces permit someone tainted as you to wield power?"