“Let’s go,” Arborn said, as they watched the last of the Rats disappear through the Waypoint, headed toward an uncertain (but probably dire) future.
A guttural warcry erupting violently from his throat, Arborn sprang on top of the sea of crypts between the stairs and the Waypoint, startling both undead and goblin. Ishi stood and followed behind the ranger at a slower, more stately pace, a grim expression on her lips as she walked purposefully toward their foe.
“They live!” cried the goblin, grabbing a variety of sacks and packages stacked on a nearby crypt. “You must get me away, quickly!”
“Bide,” Pentandra heard the undead monster breath, as he turned to face Arborn’s oncoming assault. As the big man wound up to strike, instead of dodging the blow Ocajon calmly raised his hand . . . and took almost a foot of sharp, rusty steel in the center of his palm for his troubles.
As soon as the point stopped its progress, Ocajon turned to the goblin. “Go now!” he ordered. “Summon my brothers to avenge me.” Then he turned back around, just in time to see Arborn drop the spear, still embedded in his palm, and draw his sword.
The fight that resulted was impressive, but Pentandra had other duties. As soon as she saw Ocajon turn away from his ally, she slunk quickly up the shadowed rows of stone crypts until she was near the fight. Ishi was standing behind Arborn, she saw, muttering words of encouragement as the ranger dueled the Nemovort, spear impaling his left hand, sword on iron staff.
“You really don’t know when to give up, do you?” the undead creature remarked, impressed, as the Kasari warrior tried a furious combination of blows that clanged against his iron staff. “Don’t you realize? I cannot be killed,” it boasted. “Slay me, and my master will merely call me forth again and see me in a better body.”
“Slay me,” Arborn said, through gritted teeth as he tried desperately to avoid the strikes the undead monster returned, “and my wife will gut you like a river fish!” he replied.
“Your wife?” chuckled Ocajon. “How quaint. Was that the girl upstairs?” he asked, spinning with his staff in an attempt to strike Arborn in the chest. The ranger found his blade just barely stopping the powerful strike. “Pity she had to die like that. Pretty girl, I suppose . . . for a humani.”
Pentandra wasn’t quite ready to strike from her position, but she could not allow such an insult to stand. Instead of attacking Prikiven as she’d planned, she contented herself with a wild, well-placed slash that separated his hand mid-way between elbow and wrist with a bright spray of blood. The heavy-bladed scimitar sliced through sleeve, fur, meat and bone without effort. The Annulment device fell to the floor with his hand, followed quickly by Prikiven, who screamed and clutched at his stub of a wrist.
Instead of picking up the sphere and deactivating it, as she’d intended, she overheard the snide way Ocajon addressed her husband about her death and vowed to respond. She slipped up near to the undead’s back, took careful aim . . . and when Arborn brought the Nemovort around, without thinking about it, her mind saw an opening and she struck.
With one decisive thrust she quickly stabbed her new curved blade directly through Ocajon’s head, impaling his brain temple to temple with the sharp point of the scimitar. She struck hard enough to bury the tip of the blade in the top wooden crypt door, pinning the monster to the tomb.
Whatever dweomer Ishi had laid upon the ancient sword discharged into the creature, igniting a smoldering burn in response to the blade’s touch in its flesh. An eruption of evil-smelling fluid - it was too thin and too blackish to be blood - erupted from the wound, making the bile rise in the wizard’s throat.
But Pentandra could not spare the effort to vomit. She was being dramatic.
“No,” Pentandra answered, quietly, as she watched the life -- undeath? -- leech from Ocajon’s dead human body. “I’m a pretty girl for any species,” she said, her chest heaving slightly from the exertion of her sudden blow. “And you really, really shouldn’t . . . piss me off,” she sighed, and nearly collapsed, though she never let loose the hilt of her blade.
The Nemovort quivered and jerked as the blade that transfixed its dead brain twisted what remained into a putrid pudding. It even tried to get out a few words, but Pentandra was too tired to listen. With a twist of her wrist she wrenched the long-unused sword to the right and left, doing as much damage as possible, before she pulled her blade free and watched the former human/Alkan hybrid fumble to the ground.
“That was nicely done,” Arborn said, picking up the iron staff from the floor.
“I thought you said . . . they were . . . hard to kill,” Pentandra panted, her head swimming.
“I guess you got the runt of the litter,” he ventured as he pulled his ancient spear from the corpse’s hand.
“What about the goblin?” Ishi asked, pointing to the wounded gurvan, who was clutching his wrist painfully and watching his powerful patron expire.
“Let’s find out what he knows,” Pentandra said, picking up the Annulment sphere and deactivating it. She felt her arcane power return to her in an overwhelming wave, and Everkeen quivered as it “awakened” and flew obligingly to her hand. “I’ll just cast a truthtell . . .”
“I regret I cannot allow that, my lady,” Prikiven gasped between clenched teeth.
“I really don’t see how you can stop it,” Pentandra said, preparing the spell.
“I couldn’t have,” the goblin agreed, “until you turned off that sphere . . .”
Too late, Pentandra realized what she’d done. While the sphere was active, neither she nor the gurvani shaman had access to their powers - Ocajon likely used his Death Force, perhaps channeled through the iron staff, to power the Waypoint spell, just as Ishi had used the Life Force to destroy him. Once dead, his gurvani confederate was trapped without power . . . until she’d deactivated the sphere that bound them both.
The gurvan turned his face away from her, his eyes scrunched closed, and muttered something before Pentandra or Arborn could stop him. Her husband tried valiantly -- Arborn threw his spear quickly and with great force . . . but Prikiven was already fading into the Waypoint spell he’d cast. The weapon clattered harmlessly against the flags of the crypt’s floor, the gurvan nowhere to be seen.
“I think I can follow him!” Pentandra insisted. “I can use Everkeen!”
“Penny, no!” Arborn shouted at her. She was about to ignore him and try to trace where the goblin had escaped to. But a sharp wave of sudden force sent her baculus skittering back into dormancy.
“Enough, Daughter!” snapped Ishi, irritated. “You’ve slain your foe and driven the others off. Your apprentice is safe from pursuit, for the moment. And you are utterly exhausted, both physically and magically,” she pointed out. “Go home and get some sleep before you fall over.”
“But . . . but Everkeen can track him! I can see where he’s going!” she said as she hurriedly cast a magelight above them.
“We know where he’s going,” Ishi insisted. “The lost citadel of Anthatiel, the cursed City of Rainbows. Now the city of cruddy ice and dirty slush, enfiefed to Korbal by Sheruel,” she said, rolling her eyes, “and absolutely crawling with all manner of foul folk. Not the sort of party one arrives to unprepared. While you and your pretty stick might be able to trace him, should you even discover how to follow him, you would be dead within moments.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?” Pentandra asked, despairingly.
“Get some sleep!” ordered the goddess. “Have you not had enough excitement for awhile? You have done your part, and I mine, in slaying this abomination and protecting Vorone. Sleep, mortals, and know the town is safe . . . for now. In fact,” she said, listening for something Pentandra could not hear, “I believe I must prepare for today’s meeting, in just a few short hours.”
“Meeting?” Arborn asked, curiously. “With the priestesses of Ishi?”
“Those boring old sluts?” dismissed the goddess. “No, no, this will be much more exciting. I’ve invi
ted all of the other managers on the streets of Perfume, Glassblowers, and Jewelers to my hall to discuss a cooperative association,” she said, smugly. “What they don’t know is that the House of Flowers has been doing so well that I’ve managed - with the help of a few stalwart admirers of more than modest means - to buy up the debt of each house.”
“Managers?” Arborn asked, confused.
“The other madams and whoremasters,” Pentandra explained to her naïve husband. “You bought out their debt? You plan on shutting them down? That would give you a monopoly on . . . lust,” she said, choosing her words wisely.
Ishi looked horrified. “Of course not! Are you mad? No, I merely want to better coordinate our efforts. Ensure all of our employees are treated well, keep our pricing fair and reasonable, establish certain professional boundaries . . .”
“Ishi’s tits!” Pentandra said, automatically, as she realized what Lady Pleasure intended. “You don’t want a monopoly . . . you want a cartel!”
“I like to think of it more as a guild,” Ishi said, demurely. “Indeed, your work at the Arcane Orders was an inspiration. After all, if the magi could manage to make a pretense at organization, why cannot whores do the same?”
“Won’t that . . . anger some of the managers?” Arborn asked, diplomatically. While he was not nearly as familiar with Vorone’s nightlife as Pentandra, he’d seen enough of the worst of the violence and degradation of the slums around the nicer quarters in town, and knew that most pimps were not nearly as reasonable about their businesses as Lady Pleasure.
“Let them be angry,” Ishi said, with a sneer in her voice. “No man should have a right to the trade between a woman’s legs - it’s indecent. All of the male pimps will be turned out of the business by the time we’re done,” she vowed, proudly. “Any who are reluctant . . . well, they shall face some consequences,” she said, batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion.
“What kind of consequences?” Arborn asked, innocently.
Before Ishi could replay - and likely scandalize her husband into impotence for months - Pentandra intervened.
“Let the nice goddess play with her toys, Arborn,” she said, with a yawn. “Besides, after a few days of spontaneous orgies, somehow I think that trade will see a downturn for awhile. With the Rats mostly gone, there shouldn’t be too many ‘managers’ left to cause a problem. Now,” she said, repeating her yawn as she tossed her sword and baculus into pockets in her ring, “take me home and put me to bed and don’t touch me for a week . . . or there will also be consequences!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Conclave
Pentandra was almost unnerved by the quiet that broke out in Vorone after the confrontation between Ishi and the Nemovorti Ocajon. But in the days that followed Ishi’s Night, Everkeen detected no signs of the undead anywhere near the environs of Vorone. Whatever Ishi had done to ward the town with her unorthodox magic had driven away the vile monster and its companions . . . though their matter-of-fact use of the Alkan Ways was disturbing to Pentandra. She shuddered to think what might have happened had the vile beast unleashed its powers on the unsuspecting citizens of Vorone. Considering their collective state at the time, it would have been pure carnage.
The town barely knew the danger it had been in. It was dealing with a municipal hangover of legendary proportions.
Four straight days of revels culminating in orgies all over town had dealt a powerful blow to all involved. As memories were hazy, at best, over the experience, much was denied or forgotten.
But the lasting consequences of the event – known ever afterwards as Ishi’s Night, though it lasted four days – haunted hundreds of Voroni. Pregnancies, infidelities, and erotic transgressions of all sorts caused widespread domestic strife. The Town Watch was too busy just keeping jilted lovers and distressed spouses from each others’ throats to have responded in force to an attack of undead.
Father Amus ordered the ecclesiastic courts, which heard cases involving moral issues, to devote a week to untying the complicated knots the divine visitation had created. He also convened a quick ecclesiastic council to verify and announce that it had, indeed, been a divine event, citing Ishi as the likely divinity involved.
No one argued. Indeed, that seemed to be the only rational explanation for the irrational behavior. But that also made it possible for the ecclesiastic courts to hand out writs of forgiveness and exemptions to religious students under vows of celibacy and the like, grant divorces in some cases and marriages in others, and otherwise contend with the aftermath. While that didn’t eliminate the consequences, it did mitigate them.
In a week the event was like a dim memory, and in a month it was a legend. Everyone had a story or three from that fateful period. And some had a bit more as a result. In a month the natural consequences of the excesses of Ishi’s Night began to appear as unexpected pregnancies took root. A lot of pregnancies, in a lot of unexpected quarters.
Not everyone was upset by Ishi’s Night. The Duke, at least, seemed quite pleased that the goddess had blessed his reign so rigorously. He was strutting through the palace like a cockerel, now, far less hesitant and far more confident than he had been when he first arrived in Vorone. He was agreeable to all sorts of accommodations resulting from the affair and liberal in granting exemptions and pardons in court.
The one bit of frustration that remained for Pentandra was how stoically Alurra took the entire thing. She was focused neither on the carnal excesses of the event or the storm of gossip that followed. She wasn’t even particularly perturbed at the news that she was being hunted by undead. In fact, the girl seemed far more interested in her lessons than anything else.
When questioned about the events of that faithful night, she had answered readily enough . . . but there was a hesitation that told Pentandra she was holding back information.
“So, you knew that you were being pursued by these undead?” she asked Alurra at breakfast, a few days later. “Is that why you left home?”
“Antimei said it was the only way to protect the village,” Alurra said, sipping her watered beer. “It was after me, for some reason, and if I left then it would leave everyone else alone . . . for now,” she added, thoughtfully. “I was ahead of it by three or four days the entire way,” she boasted. “My friends kept us in front of it. It doesn’t travel well during the day,” she reported.
“And it didn’t occur to you to mention you were being followed when you arrived?”
“Antimei said not to,” Alurra said, shrugging. “She also said not to breathe a word of it to the Spellmonger, else he’d drop everything and come here, and that could be disastrous.”
That was the end of it. No amount of prying could persuade Alurra to reveal information once Old Antimei told her to keep it confidential. It was frustrating, but it also told her that the girl could be trusted with information of import. The dictate not to inform Minalan had her worried, however. Not because she was afraid she would need his help and not get it, but because it suggested that there was far more going on with the Spellmonger than her friend was telling her.
But he did confirm, mind-to-mind, that the spell on Alya had been broken . . . but only when Sevendor enjoyed an abbreviated version of Ishi’s Night itself. Even in lending assistance, the wild goddess could not be content with anything less than riotous excess.
Within a week, the court had resumed business more or less as usual, and Pentandra found herself catapulted from the exciting life of a protecting enchantress to the far more mundane – and boring – life of a professional court wizard. There were meetings to be held. Examinations to be scored. The Mirror Array to be overseen. Discussions with the Spellwarden of Vorone about a better magical defense against future incursions of undead and gurvani were put on the agenda for consideration. And the Duke had to be informed, discretely, about the new threat to his realm and his capital city.
Arborn, thankfully, was not seriously injured from his battle in the crypt, though he had s
ustained a number of serious bruises and minor injuries from Ocajon’s iron staff. The Duke allowed him to postpone his planned excursions into the northern woodlands, once Pentandra explained the danger he had saved the town from and begged the boon during a personal meeting with the lad in the Game Room.
Anguin was impressed with the tale of their struggle in the crypt (she wisely omitted Ishi’s role, as explaining Lady Pleasure’s dual nature could complicate things, she could see) and it really didn’t matter to him if the ranger took a few days rest before he continued his duties.
Duke Anguin was too full of Spring and a young man’s attitude to worry about schedules and such, anyway. His mind was elsewhere.
“I was talking to Count Salgo about the 3rd Commando,” he said, changing the subject during their discussion toward one he was more interested in. “After discussing things with the Spellmonger, I think we’re going to invite them to Alshar.”
“We’re hiring them?” she asked, surprised.
“More like inviting them to take our allegiance,” Anguin said, thoughtfully. “We can’t afford to hire them outright, so the plan is to ennoble their leadership and divide the men among them, for the time being, to shore up a couple of different weak points in our defenses. After a year of faithful service, the non-commissioned officers will be granted estates and the men will be granted the right to freehold with Ducal support.”
Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) Page 70