As the Crow Flies

by Robin

  “What happened?” I asked, slowly sitting up. The witchlight had rolled away, coming to a stop against the base of the statue.

  Magic! Magic! Eeeevil magic! Not ours, no, no!

  Dizzy as a child’s spin-toy, I could only sit there, squinting at the room until it finally settled down again. I crawled over to retrieve the light and tuck it away, and when I ventured to stand I wobbled alarmingly, as though every ounce of energy had been sapped from my body. I should have perhaps contemplated how this would further complicate my career, but instead I worked on figuring out how to get that pendant.

  He can’t reach it! What will we dooooo? the voices wailed.

  “I can’t think with you crying like that,” I complained. “Hush.” And they did. I blinked and looked about. As I did, I laid eyes on my discarded halberd, and couldn’t help a smug chortle. It took a minute or two to work the pendant up over the statue’s head, but I am a thief, and such dexterity is part and parcel of my profession. Careful this time, I reached toward the disk as it swung from my halberd. Nothing happened, except an impatience to hold it, to wear it, to possess it. “Is this going to hurt?”

  Don’t know… It is ours! He is ours… Take it. Take it!

  I took it. As I settled it around my neck, a sharp prickle went through me from head to toe. Little wisps of green just like those from the Ghost Walk followed then disappeared. I moved my hands; they seemed to work just fine. I took a few cautious steps and, aside from the remnants of dizziness and weakness, I didn’t have any trouble with that, either.

  Is it well? Does it work? He can hear us…

  “I could hear you before,” I grumbled, “and I would just as soon not.”

  They said nothing, but joy practically glittered all around me. Retrieving the witchlight from my pouch, I examined the amulet, which was indeed a slice of sheep horn polished smooth. The carving depicted two narrow, vertical rectangles with another horizontal one across their tops. Faint lines in a ray pattern decorated the lower edge. It looked uncannily like the disk Old Jelal had shown me. “What is it?”

  Door, it’s a door. Portal… entry… exit… passage… means…

  “What does it do?”

  A small silence and then the rustling whispers again, like dry leaves in the wind. The voices talked right over themselves, and I had to listen carefully, but I thought I could actually understand them better. Allows… makes an opening… a passage… ours, ours, it is ours…

  Yes, that was clear as mud and just about as helpful. “Very well, then.” I tucked the disk beneath my layered tunics, lying against my skin, warm and right somehow. It did not tingle nor make me glow, and it was mine now. I put the light away again, reasoning to save it for urgent situations. Halberd against my shoulder, I went back to the center aisle and finished my trek down the length of the room. Upon the back wall hung a magnificent tapestry. Another dragon. At least this one looked more heraldic than violent, though with those outstretched talons it was probably just me feeling wishful. Behind this tapestry, according to the map, I would find the door.

  Behind the tapestry were two doors.

  Duzayan didn’t give very good directions.

  Awkwardly, I gathered the tapestry in the middle to tie with a leftover piece of one of the guard’s sashes. A portion of each door was visible to either side, separated by several feet. I stood in front of them and tried to impose my memory of the secret map on them, to no avail. How could I know which was the correct door? I needed to make a choice and soon. The men I’d drugged would only be unconscious for so long (hopefully), and eventually their replacements would come along. I needed to be long gone before that. Luckily, I am a very practically minded man. I tested both doors, and then, taking the two rings of keys—one obtained mere moments ago and the other liberated earlier from the captain of the guard—I searched for the one that would fit the locks. None of them did, which had me scratching my head for the space of a heartbeat or two, then I recalled Melly’s secret key. A secret key for a secret door…

  Holding the witchlight close to the opening of the door on the left, I studied it carefully. I couldn’t help a smile when I realized that the lock itself was a deception. The hole was inset, and Melly’s key fit perfectly into the depression, but I couldn’t turn it. That required some thought, and it occurred to me that perhaps the pendant itself served that purpose. I had the guard’s similar pendant. Fitting it to the hole worked like a charm. The latch clicked and I pushed the door open. The passage beyond yawned as black as pitch.

  Holding my little light up, I ventured in a few steps to a landing of sorts, with a torch in a bracket and a half-barrel holding several more. Further, the passage turned left and became stairs going up into the mountain. But was it the correct upward-going steps? And did they have to be so narrow? Did the gods really believe that prolonged entombment would relieve me of my dislike of tight, dark places?

  With a huff, I went back out to repeat the process on the other door. In a mirror of its mate, it possessed a small entryway, torches, and turned to the right. The hideously cramped stairs, however, disappeared going downward. I needed to go up, so I took the torch from the bracket, closed the door, left it unlocked, and freed the tapestry to fall back into place. The subtle signs I left marked my choice as the downward passage. With flint and striker, I lit a spark to set my new torch burning nicely. Witchlight tucked away again, I braced myself and stepped into the left-hand passage, closed and locked the door, and began my ascent into the lair of the dragon.

  22

  More on Bearding Lions

  I hadn’t gone very far before I turned around and started right back down again. How could I possibly vanquish a dragon? It didn’t matter how small it looked, I am a thief, not a warrior. A clever thief, you say, would have brought along the handy and oh-so-capable fighter who had been his companion for the last fifty-some days, and to be truthful, I had considered it because there was, as we all know, a dragon to deal with and even if he couldn’t deal with it successfully, he would have made an excellent distraction. However…

  I had not been certain I could get Tanris into the building with me, particularly if it was magic-warded. I am, as I have previously mentioned, accustomed to working alone, and he had his own ideas about doing things. I can count on me implicitly, and I rarely argue with myself. And then Tanris would refuse to leave Girl behind; I would refuse to take her. I did not need another encumbrance, and she was unpredictable at best, particularly considering the danger involved. I would happily use her as dragon bait, but couldn’t imagine Tanris condoning such a thing, and then he would protest leaving her behind to become a hostage when the good brothers discovered our absence—and they surely would. I didn’t care about that, either. I had not asked her to come on the journey and didn’t count her my responsibility. Rather than quarreling pointlessly, I had simply bid Tanris good night, promised to continue working on my plan, and retired to my room. The poor fool hadn’t suspected a thing in spite of our association over the last decade or so. I slipped a note under his door, short and not too cryptic: "Gone for the prize. Leave now. Will catch up or meet where we first planned last stop for supplies." I didn’t want to leave the name of the town, but Tanris knew where we’d planned to resupply for the last journey of our trip before all of our plans were unceremoniously rearranged by Raza Qimeh.

  I had a plan for everything—and still found myself going up and down the secret stairs, dithering over my choice. I had been selected specifically for this job, and I was very good at what I did. Up I went.

  I couldn’t fight a blighted dragon alone. Down I went.

  I would die if I didn’t trade the egg for the antidote to the poison. Up again.

  This time, I decided, I would go all the way to the top and then sit down for a while to go over the details rather than wasting my energy going back and forth, which wasn’t practical at all. I prided myself on my practicality, and this ridiculous vacillating upset me tremendously. I had to take w
hat was in front of me and do the best I could, period, no hesitation. I am no coward, but I could see nothing sensible in confronting a dragon face to face. “I am an expert thief,” I reminded myself. “I have been in perilous situations before. I will simply slip in, nick the egg, and be out again before the dragon even knows what happened.”

  The ascent didn’t take very long to wind me; even all the climbing we’d encountered on our trip didn’t compare to the vertical route I now traversed. Inside the mountain, the distance covered felt like a great deal more than what it appeared from the outside. It was difficult to measure time and space on the winding stair, though much to my relief the stairway widened after a few turns. Landings here and there broke up the monotony, and I discerned openings leading off to either side and sometimes doors, as well as lengths of passage between stairs—and some of them, passages and stairs alike, opened into cavities of utter darkness. I wondered where the apparently man-made openings led and what lay within these secret places, but although tempted to explore, my curiosity was tempered by two things: first, time was pressing, and second, I am really, sincerely not keen on underground tunnels or chambers.

  As I climbed, I found myself considering questions I had avoided whilst denying the existence of dragons and dragon eggs. Why did a dragon live in this region? Surely some enterprising hero ought to have made the tedious trip into this remote outback to rid the world of the terror and claim his glory and possibly riches. Was it protected?

  Well, yes. I realized suddenly and with some chagrin that the brothers really were protecting it, but why? What sort of magic did dragons possess, and was their magic common among their kind, or did it differ from dragon to dragon? Was the egg alone magical, and was that why Duzayan wanted it so badly? Was he going to raise himself a dragon and—what? Somehow challenge Emperor Gaziah?

  Amazing as a dragon might be, one single dragon in the face of all of Gaziah’s vast armies seemed a pretty pitiful opposition. Magister Melly had not, after all, razed the empire, nor even carved out a nice little kingdom for himself, and he obviously had access to his very own dragon. I could understand why no one would want a kingdom in this dreary, wet, stark locale, but that begged the question why anyone would live here at all, which was neither here nor there in the overall scheme of dragon things.

  Back to Baron Duzayan and his egg-gathering.

  What had he said about it? Not much, to be sure, but—Duzayan had said I wasn’t going to steal this item he wanted so badly from another wizard, but from a dragon. Stinking, duplicitous son of a bowlegged cow! Even if Melly wasn’t actually holding the egg in his hands, he certainly stood between me and the dragon, and Duzayan had known this, as his letter proved. As a wizard, he was naturally treacherous and deceitful, but he wanted this egg and had gone to great lengths to get it. But did he warn me about Melly? No, he did not!

  I stomped up another ten steps, but fatigue swiftly put an end to such foolishness. Turning around, I sat myself down on the stone. Well-supplied by the brothers with torches and light, I contemplated the unhappy turn of events. What did it mean? Perhaps Duzayan didn’t want the egg at all, but he wanted to put Melly out of commission. Why then, send a thief? But he hadn’t, had he? He’d sent a highly skilled thief and a fairly efficient, but by no means famous, warrior.

  Did he mean for Tanris to kill him? I couldn’t imagine that happening. Tanris wouldn’t kill in cold blood.

  I sat for a while longer, and while I came to no certain conclusions about anything, I did get a good rest. Thirsty, I refrained from drinking, afraid my flask of water wouldn’t last for the duration of the trip. My legs ached already, and I had to wonder if I would be able to make the return trip. I could just imagine myself tottering along on wobbly legs, only to pitch myself inadvertently down the steps—probably at the longest stretch.

  With a heavy sigh, I levered myself up and resumed my climb. The halberd made a pretty good walking stick, and I fantasized about using it to slay the dragon. I was going to have a hard time convincing anyone of the truth of my tale without witnesses. Maybe I should have brought Tanris and Girl along…

  Up and up I went, and it came to me that it wasn’t difficult at all to guess which of the brothers made this trip regularly and which chose to stay in the temple below to partake of the good meals provided by an adept cook. After an age or two, a small gleam of light ahead made me quicken my pace. The end was near! Keeping close to the wall to avoid tumbling into the depths of an open chasm, I turned the corner, expecting to see the dragon’s lair opening up to the sky, and hopefully no dragon.

  There was more light though not as bright as I’d hoped. Unfortunately, there was also Melly.

  Another brother accompanied him, Three, possibly. He wore a look of evil glee as he nudged Melly's arm and pointed at me.

  Melly’s face twisted into a strange smile. “Ah, Fajhal,” he greeted, recalling the name I had given him upon our introduction. “Or is it Crow? Or perhaps something else altogether?”

  “Melly.” I sighed. Of course this wasn’t going to be easy, and Duzayan’s pile of lies continued to grow. He might protest that he could not know Melly’s intentions, but I would still hold it against him. Bitterly.

  “I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, his horrible smile segueing straight into an expression of astonishment.

  I would have waved a dismissive hand, but they were both occupied. “If I address you by your proper name, will our relationship change?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well then, Melly, what can I do for you?”

  He blinked, clearly taken aback by my question.

  “Cheeky rascal,” Brother Three muttered.

  “Duzayan is a short-sighted fool. He always has been and sending you here just goes to show how desperate he’s become. You can’t really have thought we were going to let you get away with your ill-advised plan, can you?”

  Oh, ill-advised was it? “Actually, I’d rather hoped you were completely oblivious. It always makes things easier.”

  “You must think me an idiot.”

  “Either that, or I am a hopeless optimist.” I smiled.

  Brother Three gasped.

  Melly lifted both hands and said something I could not understand, but the air all around me crackled with little white and green lightnings. Abruptly, an army of ravenous, invisible ants was devouring my skin, inside and out. I couldn’t breathe. Shocked, I stumbled back several paces. The whisper of voices sprang up all around me, but I couldn’t focus on them through my panic, couldn’t tell if they offered anything useful. As Melly advanced on me, chanting and full of dire purpose, I backed down the steps as quickly as I could, which did nothing to fill my lungs but provided me with a perfect opportunity to strike back. It didn’t take much to pretend a stumble and a fall. I flailed for balance—and hurled the halberd wildly at the wizard. I did not care how it hit, only that it made contact.

  Alack and alas for him, he had all the visual acuity of a cave rat.

  Trailing behind him, Brother Three yelled a warning, but too late. The halberd struck Melly, his cry bringing an end to his chanting even as the weapon parted cloth and skin. The point caught in the shoulder of his robes. He tottered and yanked at the thing, which only succeeded in damaging him further and putting him more off balance. Brother Three grabbed at him. Melly screamed.

  Over he went into the gaping hole, flailing his arms and legs and taking my lovely halberd with him.

  “Master!” Brother Three cried, horror etching his features as he looked into the depths. I doubted he could see anything; I’d tried earlier, and the torch light didn’t carry very far.

  Leaning against the wall, I sucked in great breaths and thanked the gods of good fortune, halberds, fissures in mountains, air, and every other appropriate subject I could come up with, certain the wizard’s demise had been far too easy and I had many, many gods to thank.

  “You!” Brother Three screeched, turning a livid look upon me. “I am
going to kill you. I am going to make you hurt in ways you’ve never even dreamed!” he spat, and he lifted his hands in exactly the same manner his erstwhile master had done, except his fingers curled into vicious claws.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be a wizard, too, would you?” I asked and looked about for some sort of inspiration for dealing with him.

  He didn’t answer in words I could comprehend; he didn’t need to. More white and green lightnings erupted around me, and they hurt. Horrendously. Whatever spell he cast at me hurt worse than Melly’s, which had only frightened me and robbed me of air. Acute pain stabbed my gut, twisting and pulling and tearing. I screamed loud and long, until that, too, robbed me of breath.

  Brother Three jabbed his clawed hands and stalked toward me, his voice rising in pitch until he screamed, too. The Voices shrieked through the passage and a violent wind sprang up, tugging at Brother Three’s hair and robes and making the flames of the torch I desperately gripped in my hand dance wildly. “The torch!” I hissed. “Don’t put it out…!”

  The pain bent me over nearly double, and it was a battle to shove myself upright again. Twisted nearly in half, my free arm clutching my tormented belly, I forced one step at a time, faster and faster, closing the space between us. The wind howled around me, but barely touched me. Painful green lightnings flared across my skin, bright enough to penetrate my clothes.

  He did not pause in his incantation, but his own steps slowed, confusion dawning on his infuriated features. What was I doing? Why wasn’t I lying down and dying?

  In truth, I could not answer the latter except to say I was not just going to lie down and die for anyone, most particularly a hateful wizard posing as a priest.

  Good intentions be as they may, I didn’t make it all the way to my goal. Every step was more excruciating than the last and twisted my body in wrenching spasms of agony. I fell at his feet and lay there panting and making terrible noises in my throat.