Bloodspate: A Song of Agmar Tale

by Frances Mason

  What should he do?

  Cautiously he probed the hole with a toe. There was a flash, then darkness. Corin blinked and swayed. He closed his eyes. It made no difference. He could see nothing either way. Without reference to his eyes though he could sense more clearly his situation. He was still on his feet. Had the Lord of Law thrown a flashing cracker at him to blind him? But he smelled no smoke. And he was still alive. And conscious. He wasn’t being bound or bashed by manglers. The Lord of Law didn’t laugh at his predicament. He was simply in darkness. Complete, utter, darkness.

  He opened his eyes. The darkness was deep. But not complete. There was a thin line of light. It was horizontal and slightly above his head. There was a small circle of light too. No, not a circle. A keyhole. It was a door. His eyes adjusted quickly. A door at the top of a short stairway, under which the light from the next room streamed. Here the smell was musty, mouldy. He looked around. There was a solid wooden column behind him and rafters overhead. There were shapes of barrels. Crates large and small. And there were racks. Rows of racks. Diamond shaped apertures. And round shapes in them. He touched one. A bottle. He was in a cellar. How had he got from the rooftops to a cellar?

  He walked back to the column. Once again there was a flash, but this time he had sensed something the moment before. He had closed his eyes. He opened them again. As he had sensed from the slope beneath his feet, he was on the rooftops. He was standing near the hole. He closed his eyes again as he probed the hole with his toe. He felt disoriented for a moment, but he could smell the cellar. He stepped forward, and turned, opening his eyes. He examined the floor. There was a patch of darkness near the column. Like the one on the rooftop. Some kind of magical portal.

  Corin turned back to the stairs. Careful to not cause a squeak, he climbed them and looked under the door. He could see a light beyond and feet further down a corridor. Men’s voices. They were too close for him to leave the cellar. He descended the stairs and took out a flint, tinder and taper. As good as his eyes were in the dark they were not good enough for exploring this area in detail. The light by the door would obscure any slight light coming from below the door if anyone looked this way.

  He lit the taper and looked around. It was much as he had thought. A cellar, but also a general storeroom. If the Lord of Law had come through here the storeroom might not be as ordinary as it seemed though. He lit a small candle with the fading taper and searched more carefully. There was a lot of wine and crates of desiccated meat and dried fruit. No fresh food.

  There were also a lot of chests. Elaborately carved with bas reliefs and scrolling. Carefully checking for traps he opened several of them. Expensive cloth and clothes. Rolled tapestries. Richly coloured silk tunics and flowing dresses. Woollen hose and linen breeches, some in new styles, some that only aged gentlemen and ladies would wear. All too expensive for commoners. No easily movable wealth though. Nothing easy for an honest thief to carry.

  This stuff had probably fallen off a cart when being brought up to the city from the port, a common “accident” for traders in the city. The thieves’ guild didn’t rely so much on the individual thieving skills of its members, but rather on the coordination of corruption and distribution of its benefits. Corin snorted in disgust. It was another reason for him not to want to join the guild. They reduced it to a boring business, with little risk, and little excitement. For him it was an adventure, and an art. He closed the chest he had been examining.

  Then his eye fell on another chest. This one was unusual. It wasn’t more elaborately carved than the rest. It wasn’t carved at all. But the wood was a deeply varnished mahogany. Its surface was flawless. When he examined it closely he saw that unlike the others it actually was trapped. The trap was sophisticated too, part of the lock mechanism. It would shoot out at exactly the angle a lock picker would hold his tools as he shifted the last cylinder of the lock. It would get most thieves, who would be excited at nearly having picked the lock. There would be no key that could be safely used. Only a locksmith or thief could open it. And the locksmith would die of the poison on the needle. Most thieves too.

  He placed the candle on an elaborately carved chest near the plain mahogany chest.

  He used an unconventional tool to adjust the angle of attack. The needle shot out, then the lock clicked. Before lifting the lid he checked again. Then slowly he lifted the lid a small way and checked again. There was another trap. Before he finally opened the lid all the way he found two more trap mechanisms, each released at a certain elevation of the lid. Someone really didn’t want this chest opened and expected thieves to try.

  But what was inside? Another chest.

  This one was elaborately carved, with a set of scenes from myth. The battles of the gods. Corin went through the same process with the second chest as the first but found no traps on the inner chest. Inside the inner chest was another. This one was small, of beaten silver with gold tracery. He was tempted to take it out, but checked and found another trap. What was inside that would cause someone to layer so many traps? Perhaps a more thuggish approach would be more effective. A large man with a hammer could pulverise the outer chests and avoid the traps, although he might damage the inmost chest.

  Carefully he lifted it, finding yet another trap, a string trigger connecting its underside to the chest it sat in. He cut the cat gut string. Gingerly lifting it out he placed the small silver chest, which was no larger than a large man’s fist, on to one of those other chests in which clothes were stored. He wondered whether it might be better to take it with him, through the portal, back to a private room at an inn to examine at his leisure. But he couldn’t contain his excitement. Was this a treasure of the Lord of Law? Maybe it was just a treasure of one of the guild master’s business associates; but maybe, just maybe…. He checked it for more traps, found none. It wasn’t even locked.

  He opened it.

  Inside was a huge ruby. While it was an impressive ruby he had seen similar before and the number of traps seemed excessive. Then the ruby flashed. It was only for a moment. It must have been the candlelight. Corin moved the flame below the lip of the chest so that it couldn’t directly reflect. But the light within the ruby only intensified, as though a flame danced within it. Not at its centre, but in every flawless facet. In fact, now that he looked more closely the facets seemed less sharply defined. They shifted with the flame. But no matter how the edges of each facet shifted the whole seemed to be a perfectly symmetrical arrangement. It defied reason, and Corin felt he was going insane contemplating the impossibility of what his eyes saw.

  A searing pain shot up his arm and he realised he had, without being conscious of it, reached out to touch the ruby, if ruby it was. He jerked his hand away, but the pain didn’t stop. It spread, to his shoulder, through his chest, into his heart, across his face, into his gut and groin and legs and feet. His whole body was on fire. And then his brain.

  He was in a blacksmith’s forge. He saw a huge blacksmith hammering at a blade, and the blade flowed. Fire flowed along the smith’s arm, along his great hammer, which seemed an extension of his clenched fist. The flame wrapped around the blade. The water and flame fought and hissed in rising snakes of steam. The smith raised his hammer-fist again. Corin saw his eyes. His eyes were fire. His arms and chest were fire. His heart was fire. And he beat at the blade and the blade coiled its watery tentacles around his hammer-fist, but he kept beating at the blade. And fire and water hissed and filled the forge with steam. Everywhere was steam. Nothing could be seen.

  Then all was blackness. He drifted, as on a sea. A warm dark sea.

  Corin opened his eyes. He was in darkness. He was on his back. He couldn’t move. But he could feel no bonds. Fire burned in his veins and made him gasp. As he breathed in he smelled the by now familiar mustiness of the cellar, or storeroom. He tried to sit up. His muscles were stiff, as if he had been lying there on the hard cold floor for hours. He tried tensing his muscles and slowly they came to life. He sat up. He reached aro
und and found the extinguished candle beside him on the floor. Finding his flint and tinder he relit it.

  The flickering flame revealed everything as it had been before he had passed out. The mahogany chest and the other within it were open, one inside the other. The small silver chest was open on the top of the clothes chest. Inside of it the facets of the fiery gem still shifted and burned with an eerie inner light. Quickly he closed the lid. This was one treasure he would rather leave behind. He was sure there must be gold somewhere here. He replaced the small chest in the larger, resetting what traps he could as he closed the outer chests. Occasionally he felt a fiery pain streak up his arm and constrict his chest. Gradually the pain faded though.

  He returned to the position of the portal, then thought he would snoop around some more. Surely there would be gold somewhere in this place. There had to be. He blew out the candle and returned it to the small pack of tools he always carried with him when working.

  The door opened, flooding light into the dark cellar. Corin’s instinct was to escape but all he could do was slink into the shadows. The light fell on the place where the unnatural darkness of the portal lay in front of the column. At the top of the stairs the Lord of Law stood, the light spilling around his slim form into the cellar, his albino eyes seeming lit with an inner fire. Corin slid behind a large barrel. The Lord of Law closed the door behind him and locked it, then descended the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs he hesitated. He tilted his head slightly, sniffed. Corin cursed himself. While the light of the candle would not penetrate far it would leave a distinct smell behind. Then the Lord of Law stepped into the portal and vanished. Even if he wanted to flee that way now the risk would be too great. The Lord of Law might be waiting on the other side to see who would come through. Holding a dagger to stick in Corin’s back. Corin waited for a count of a hundred in case the Lord of Law returned. Then he ascended the stairs. He checked under the door.

  He could hear voices, but they were muted, distant. He tried the door. It was locked. He took out his tools and picked the lock. Then he opened the door and slid into the hall beyond, closing the door carefully behind him and relocking it.

  Corin carefully made his way through a labyrinth of corridors, checking for traps as he went. He avoided the corridors down which he heard voices or footsteps. The spherical glass lamps, glowing with strange, steady, will-o’-the-wisp radiance, were at distant, irregular intervals, as if the place had been designed for those who preferred the darkness. Eventually he came to a dead end. He examined the wall. There was no obvious trigger. But then it occurred to him that if it was a secret door, he was on the secret side of it. He pushed gently, and it swung slowly open. He slipped through and it closed behind him with a click. The trigger to open it clearly resetting.

  He was standing behind a tapestry. The sound of voices was a loud buzz here. He peered past the edge of the tapestry into a bedroom. Its bedstead with columns ornately carved with the shapes of flying fish and rutting gods and beasts and castles with conic roofs and elegant maids and visored knights was draped with fantastically colourful tapestries, and rich furniture stood about the room. Between the bed and armoires and cupboards and shelves and divans were thick plush rugs with fantastic shapes of beasts mythical and legendary; lions and unicorns, elephants and giraffes, hippogriffs and centaurs and whales. The ceiling was painted with all the constellations of the zodiac: the boar, the mermaid, and all the rest that astrologers used in their prognostications.

  Corin didn’t step out into the room though. From where he stood, holding aside a tapestry he could see that a woman slept on the bed, facing in his direction. She snored softly. He watched her face. It was pale and beautiful. It was flawless. He could see, even in the soft glow of light emanating from the opposite door, that it was like finest porcelain. Her beauty was odd, inhuman. It didn’t shift as she snored. In fact her mouth was closed. He edged his way along the wall behind the tapestry towards the bed.

  From here he could see that her beauty wasn’t only flawless, it was humanly impossible. Her skin wasn’t merely like porcelain. It was porcelain. He examined her more closely. She was a human sized doll. Putting his ear close to her he could hear the whir of clockwork gears. The snoring sound, like the rest of her, was too regular. She was put here to deter any potential discovery of the secret door.

  Beyond the bedroom was a corridor extending to a smokiness at a slatted door from beyond which came much of the buzz. Another long corridor extended to the left. This one, unlike the one he had left, was well lit, though not brightly.

  He could hear voices clearly here. There were many of them. He smelled cooking food. Peering through a crack between a door and its frame he saw a kitchen, cooks and scullions rushing back and forth; and beyond it a smoky room beyond a long bar at which scarred, disreputable looking men surreptitiously sipped at their ale, as if wary of being in any way observed. Thieves.

  As the cellar suggested, he was in a tavern. But what had happened to the Lord of Law? Voices shouted at each other in the kitchen, and from and to the tavern common room beyond. He was in a long corridor. There were several doors along it. Like all taverns in North Bank, its back parts were the home of the keeper and his family, and probably many of his scullions and cooks too. If it let rooms, in an establishment large enough for that big a kitchen, there would be maids to take care of them, as well as the needs of the proprietor.

  Corin went along the corridor. There was no mustiness here. It was unusually clean for a North Bank residence. The walls were freshly painted. Pictures were hung along it, as well as apophthegms, embroidered and framed. Plush, patterned rugs were laid along the floorboards, which were not buckled at all by age. Instead of torches or candles, the walls were all lined, like the labyrinth beyond, with lamps of spherical glass, in which light glowed evenly, softly, as though will-o’-the-wisps had been imprisoned within. Corin knew where he was. There was only one tavern in North Bank with such lighting. It was used in the theatre and bear pits above too, to reduce the chance of fire in the thatch. He was in Ilsa’s Inn, front of the thieves’ guild, beneath the theatre and brothel. He had never ventured into this part before. Only the Lord of Law’s vassals and trusted servants would be invited into these private apartments. He checked at the next door beyond the kitchen, on the opposite side of the corridor.

  He smiled. Not only was he in Ilsa’s Inn. The labyrinth beyond was the way into the guild hall of the thieves, the semi-mythical Courts of Law. So there was more than one way in. And now he knew it. He returned to the bedroom and checked for traps around the secret door. He quickly found it. He guessed it would be triggered only from this side, and would reset whenever the door closed. He deactivated it, found the slight indentation where the hidden switch resided, and pressed it. He stepped through. Voices were approaching along the labyrinthine corridors of the thieves’ guild. He stepped back, allowing the door to click back into place before the thieves reached it.

  He moved swiftly across the room and into the corridor. Voices came from the kitchen as he passed it, looking for an open door. In one was a stairway. He took one step up and peered around the corner. He became aware of a presence behind him. He would have to move quickly to avoid both the approaching threat from the stairs above him and avoid being seen by the thieves emerging into the corridor from the labyrinths of the guild. There was a partly open door across from the stairs. Whatever was inside it was unlit.

  As his muscles made to project him quickly across the intervening space the fiery pain he had first felt when touching the huge ruby shot up his arm again. He reached out for the wall to catch himself. He knew that whoever was behind him was much closer now and he tried to turn, hoping to swiftly strike while he had the element of surprise. Something struck him hard across the face as he turned, then again as his head was turned by the force, across the back of his head. He fell into darkness.

  Chapter 2: King of Cripples

  He awoke bleary headed. Someone was peering i
nto his face. The face looked familiar, but in this state he couldn’t think who it was. He was well dressed, like a dandy. He wore a scarlet cape over a shining black jerkin over a mauve silk tunic, puffed slit breeches of blue velvet, and tight green hose. He was handsome, not tall, but thin, with pale skin, as if it had never seen sunlight, and albino pink eyes in which a flame seemed to flicker. A trick of the lantern light? Despite the eyes and complexion, his hair, which hung straight to his shoulders, was raven black, with only a few strands of grey at the temples. Now Corin recognised him.

  The Lord of Law squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Body and face contorted in pain. Usually dextrous hands fumbled at his jerkin, one hand desperately reaching within and drawing out a silver phial, elaborately engraved and inlaid with gold. He unstoppered and drank from it and a sublime peacefulness came over that handsome face. His body relaxed. Corin wondered whether the Lord of Law was an addict.

  He returned the phial to his jerkin then reached out and touched Corin’s face, caressed it, gently, even tenderly, but with the firmness of a disciplining mother gripped his chin and held it as he held the boy’s gaze.

  He released Corin’s chin and addressed him in a gentle voice, affected like a noble’s. “Come to join us, little Corin? Good. Please excuse the manners of Randy.”

  Randy, one of the guild’s most vicious enforcers, or manglers as they were called, stood behind the Lord of Law’s shoulder, thumping a small wooden club into his hand, grinning through rotten teeth. Corin tried to move, but found he was tightly bound to a chair. Beyond Randy was a stairway down.