Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan

by Tanya Huff

  It seemed she needed the wizard in order to get home.

  "Wonderful." The word echoed slightly. "Incentive."

  ***

  The doll-wizard was not in the tower. The tower held no magical items of any kind – everything was show without substance.

  And speaking of show...

  Terizan looked out over a city that was almost, but not quite, Oreen. Like the workroom, like the tower, everything had been reversed – mirror imaged – but that wasn't the most disturbing change. Oreen never slept. The streets were never empty of people. The air was never still and quiet.

  This Oreen looked and sounded abandoned.

  No. Never lived in.

  It was nearly midnight on the other side of the mirror, a dark night with a cloud covered crescent of moon. A thieves' night. On this side, a cold grey sky shed a cold grey light and a thief would have to be very good indeed to move through the city unremarked.

  According to the storyteller, there had once been three towers in Old Oreen.

  If she had to search Oreen for the doll-wizard, the logical place to start would be at one of those two towers. Which tower, though? Which of the defeated wizards seemed the most pissed off about it? On the ruins of one tower – a middle class neighbourhood. On the ruins of the other – the Sink.

  Personal prejudices suggested she should head towards the middle class neighbourhood. Fortunately, she was merely prejudiced, not delusional.

  One problem: this was not the Oreen the towers had disappeared from, this was her Oreen, a copy of the city on the other side of the mirror, and in her Oreen there was only one tower. She could see the Sink. She couldn't see the tower.

  Maybe when she was closer.

  How do you get to the Sink?

  You slide in on shit of your own making.

  She left the tower by the front door. It moved easily on heavy hinges, bare of the enchantments it held on the other side of the mirror. The path to gate was crushed rock; nothing more, nothing less. But when she reached the street, the same broad open street that lead on this side to an empty city, the hair lifting off the back of her neck suggested it might be wiser to stay out of sight.

  By the time she reached the Street of Tears – the road that had once lead between a long demolished jail and the executioner's block in the Crescent and that now marked the edge of the Sink – her instincts said she wasn't alone even though she'd seen and heard nothing. As a rule, her instincts were good and Terizan was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  Might have been nice if they'd stopped me from walking into the mirror in the first place, though. Or if they'd made some noise during that whole here's a challenge you can't resist thing.

  Slipping into the Sink, she worked harder to stay hidden.

  "But you won't get caught, you're the best."

  This would be the worst possible time to disprove Balthazar's statement.

  The air was so still she could feel it slide past her as she moved and the silence left her no masking noises to hide behind. On the bright side, the filth and decay that usually choked the Sink's narrow streets had form but no substance. Given a choice, she'd have taken the filth and decay, no matter how hard it was on the sandals.

  With no sound and no change in the light, time became hard to hold, but she moved as quickly as she could – on the ground until she could feel the presence of magic dancing over her skin like a thousand invisible ants, then up by way of a barrel and a lean-to that leaned in several directions at once. Finally, crouched on cracked slates beside a collapsed chimney, Terizan peered across an alley at the tenements filling the space the tower also filled and wondered what in the names of the small Gods was she supposed to do now. She could feel the tower but she couldn't see it, and that would make breaking into it just a little more difficult than usual. How did a thief, even the best of thieves, break into a feel…

  She froze. Held her breath. Tried to stop her heart from beating so loudly inside her chest. She wasn't alone on the roof.

  It was behind her. Whether it had been tracking her from the beginning or had merely found her was irrelevant – it was there. And coming closer. Hunting her. This close, the sense of it was all sharp edges and rage, warring with the sense of the second tower.

  What does a good thief do when the situation can't be salvaged?

  They steal away.

  All things considered, not very helpful.

  Running like all seven Hells however, that sounded like an option.

  Breaking cover, Terizan sprinted for the edge of the roof and flung herself across the gap. Alleys in the Sink were conveniently narrow. Unfortunately, buildings were less than structurally sound. Under normal circumstances, she'd have never jumped without being certain of the footing where she intended to land.

  Not normal circumstances.

  As she left the roof, the Hunter filled the space she'd just vacated. Displaced air blew by her, as though it too were fleeing.

  On the other side of the alley, her feet slammed down on ancient yellow bricks. Ancient yellow crumbling bricks.

  Terizan had joined the thieves' guild because a cornice had crumbled and she'd fallen a story and a half. Here and now, fingers scrabbling for purchase on disintegrating clay, she realized that this fall would be a whole lot worse. The last time, death hadn't followed her to the ground.

  She forced herself to go limp – drunks survived falls that would have killed more upstanding citizens – then, closing her eyes, she silently cursed all wizards and their servants.

  Soft sand cushioned her impact, leaving her winded but essentially unharmed.

  Her eyes snapped open. She'd expected worn cobblestones, a cracked skull, and rending teeth, not a raked garden surrounding what had to be the second wizard's tower.

  A quick roll tucked her under the cover of a stone bench. She lay there unmoving, counting her heartbeat, until it became clear no one had seen her.

  Or they had seen her and were waiting for her to further commit herself.

  I should be committed. On the bright side, she could only feel the tower, not the Hunter. It hadn't followed her over the wall. Or off the building. Or through the magical veil...

  Point was, it hadn't followed her, and that made the garden of an invisible, displaced wizard's tower safer than the city.

  The second tower looked a lot like the first. The biggest difference was in the number and design of the windows – there were more of them and they all boasted decorative stonework on lintels and sills, creating a thieves' stair window to window and right to the roof. Given that the whole place pulsed with magic, the last thing Terizan wanted to do was actually enter the building, but if the second wizard's workshop was in the same place as the first's, and the second wizard wasn't in the workshop, and the doll-wizard was, she could be in and out the open window in two shakes of a cat's tail.

  And what if the second wizard was in the workshop?

  What if the doll-wizard wasn't?

  Telling herself to stop borrowing trouble, Terizan crossed the sand from rock to rock, and started her climb. She needed the doll-wizard to get home. She would therefore find and leave with the doll-wizard.

  High enough to see over the wall, she balanced on a protruding lintel, jammed her fingers into the space between two bricks, glanced back over her shoulder, and nearly fell. The city both did and didn't exist – rippling in and out of sight like a desert mirage behind a curtain of heat.

  More wizardry!

  Stifling a snort, she started to climb again. At this point in the game, there wasn't going to be less wizardry.

  Below the edge of the window that matched the workroom window in the first tower, she pressed tight against the brick and listened. The silence was so overwhelming she feared for a moment that she'd gone deaf and lightly rubbed a finger against the ledge of dressed stone just to hear the soft shrk shrk.

  Not deaf then. Good.

  Her breathing shallow and as quiet as she could make it, Teriza
n adjusted her grip, and peered in over the window ledge.

  The workshop looked so much like the one she'd first broken into that she wasted half a heartbeat wondering if she'd gotten turned around and was at the wrong tower. Then she started noticing the differences. No mirror – magic or otherwise – dominated the inside wall. More scrolls were piled haphazardly than shelved. And in a space hurriedly cleared by shoving a jumble of odds and ends aside – where one of the odds was an emerald as big Terizan's thumbnail and one of the ends a string of tiny gold skulls – stood a doll about a foot high, wearing a set of badly carved wizard's robes.

  No sign of the second wizard.

  Unless it had been the wizard chasing her through the city.

  Best not go there...

  Because if it had been the wizard, Terizan noted, pulling herself up and into the room, there was no way this could end well. She dropped silently then paused for a moment crouched under the window to make sure her arrival had gone unnoticed. No point in moving away from an exit she might have to suddenly use.

  When no alarms sounded and no magical flares went off and no wizard appeared shouting curses, she hurried across the room to the doll. It didn't look like much. It certainly didn't look like it had once been alive. It looked… well, it looked kind of skinny and ineffectual, if truth be told.

  Now she'd found what she'd been sent for, time was of the essence. Terizan didn't know where the other wizard was – in bed, in the kitchen, in the privy – and it didn't matter, she had to be back on the other side of the mirror before he, she, or whatever returned to the work room and noticed the doll was missing.

  She pulled the grappling out of the chestpack and shoved the doll in as gently as haste allowed. With the hooks set, she dropped out the window, slid to the ground, shook down her gear, used the stepping stones to re-cross the garden, climbed to the top of the wall and…

  Oreen continued to pulse in and out of sight. Sprawled along the capstone, she fought the urge to puke as she closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and rolled off the wall. Considering how she'd gotten into the tower grounds, there seemed to be only one logical way to get...

  Ow!

  Cobblestones, this time definitely cobblestones.

  A hand down, both feet up and under her, and her shoulder blades were pressed hard against the nearest building before her eyes were fully open. New bruises could be inventoried later; it was more important to get out of sight. She could feel the Hunter again, the scrape of sharp edges, the burn of rage, and it...

  Something between a sound and a feeling drew her gaze upward. Terizan could see only crumbling yellow brick and above it the unending curve of pale grey sky, but she knew the Hunter was perched on the edge of the roof directly above her. Staring down. At her. She froze, knowing she couldn't move fast enough to avoid its attack.

  She felt it... Move away?

  Heading for the stairs?

  A terrifying supernatural hunter that preferred to take the stairs? That cranked the terrifying down a notch or two, released her from her paralysis and lent speed to her feet. Maybe it hadn't followed her over the tower wall because it couldn't make the perceived jump between the buildings, not because of magics designed to keep it out. If she went up as it came down, if she took the high road across the city, the thieves' path that used the spaces between the buildings as much as the buildings themselves, it would either come again to a place it couldn't cross, forcing it to find a way down then up again, increasing her lead and chance of escape, or it would hunt from the ground, held to the longer, significantly less direct path.

  If she could just reach the other tower – the first tower – she'd be safe.

  Unfortunately, after a run across the rooftops, as she dropped down into the mirror-Oreen copy of the hiding place she'd used to study the doll-wizard's wall back when the night was new, she felt the Hunter's presence in front of her. It had apparently also realized that if she reached the first tower she'd be safe and hadn't bothered following her.

  On the bright side, it didn't seem to be aware of her.

  On the other hand, she had no idea of how to get past it.

  Muscles trembling, joints aching, Terizan slumped to the ground and fought to keep her laboured breathing from giving her away. Her chosen craft tended toward intense moments of specific exercise rather than marathon exertions. Between the climbing of two towers and the crossing and re-crossing of half of Oreen, she was exhausted. She had no energy left to fight the Hunter. Of course, as she had no actual fighting skills exhaustion was less of a problem than it sounded.

  "And the next time someone feeds you a line of crap about how you're the only thief good enough to steal an enchanted wizard back from inside a mirror," she asked herself, one hand tucked under the chestpack to rub at pooling sweat, "what are you going to say?"

  Terizan, you're an idiot.

  Harsh, she acknowledged, opening the pack's ties with trembling fingers, but true.

  The doll looked no worse for its trip across the city. Reaching deep into the thief pocket, Terizan pulled out the brass amulet the servant had said would return the wizard to his human form, stolen from the servant's apron when she'd stumbled before going through the mirror. A good thief realized that getting in was usually the lesser part of the job – getting out again with the goods, that was the tricky bit, and it helped to have a little leverage.

  The Hunter brushed against the edge of her senses, coursing like a hound for a scent. It knew she'd arrived.

  Amulet poised to drop over the doll's head, Terizan hesitated.

  If she brought the wizard back here, tucked in the angle between the houses with her, he'd demand an explanation. Before she could give one, the Hunter would be upon them and, with the wizard's attention on her, they'd be doomed. He had to come back to his power with his full attention on the Hunter.

  Setting the doll so that it faced out toward the street, Terizan crab-climbed up the narrow end of the angle and jammed herself between the two walls, a double body-length from the ground. All she had to do now was drop the amulet over the doll's head.

  Which would be a lot easier if her hands would stop shaking.

  Okay, on three.

  She could feel the Hunter approaching, moving fast and with the kind of purpose that suggested it had discovered exactly where she was.

  Oh, screw it.

  She dropped the amulet.

  No flash of light, no coloured smoke – a doll one moment, a wizard the next. And the moment after that…

  "Oh dear!"

  Which, as an initial reaction to the Hunter, didn't sound very martial. Or very wizard-like for that matter. Terizan had to admit she'd been expecting something more along the lines of "Be gone foul fiend!" Or maybe an instant flare of eldritch fire.

  He's cowering. That can't be good.

  Fortunately, the eldritch fire came an instant after the cowering and, as the after images faded, Terizan realized among the magic she could sense, she could no longer feel the Hunter. Skinny and dishevelled the wizard definitely was. Ineffectual, apparently not.

  His body language suggesting confusion more than victory, he'd only just begun to turn toward her when a poof of displaced air announced the arrival of the second wizard. Suddenly in the alcove behind his former captive, the second wizard's hands came up and the air began to crackle. Terizan adjusted her grip on a protruding brick, briefly considered the Guild's position on non-violence, let the lower half of her body swing down, and kicked the second wizard in the head.

  He dropped like a rock.

  Because it suddenly seemed like a bad idea to be on the ground between wizards who were clearly not friends, Terizan managed to regain a foothold on the opposite wall, bracing herself back in the angle. When she looked down, the first wizard, the doll-wizard, was frowning up at her, the centre of his brows nearly touching his nose.

  "Do I know you?"

  "No." How much should she tell him? How much would it be safe to tell him? How safe wo
uld it be to lie to him considering that even if she could get the amulet off him, he wouldn't become a doll and she needed him to get back through the mirror? She flipped a mental coin and went with the truth. "I’m the thief your servant hired to steal you back."

  The wizard blinked; the movement slow and deliberate enough that Terizan tensed for magic. "Ahmalayz hired a thief?"

  No magic. Just a puzzled question. "It's a long story."

  "I'm sure it must be. I wasn't aware you could hire thieves. The same way you hire a… a gardener?"

  Her fingers were starting to cramp. "Something like that."

  "Oh." He glanced down at the other wizard then back up at her. "You're very thorough."

  She shrugged as much as her position allowed. "I'm the best."

  "I see. I guess you'd have to be, though, wouldn't you?" They stared at each other for a long moment then the wizard gestured toward his tower. "We'd better be going before Zafran wakes up."

  "You're not going to turn him into something unpleasant?"

  Pale grey eyes blinked again. "Should I?"

  "He turned you into a doll."

  "Yes, well I sent him…" Another gesture, this one taking in their immediate surroundings. "…here. Things even out don't they?" Without waiting for an answer, he turned and started across the street toward the gate.

  Figuring Zafran still had a way to go before he settled the score, Terizan dropped to the ground and hurried to catch up.

  "So, this is what Oreen looks like." His tone was conversational, mildly curious; they might have been walking home from the market.

  "You live in Oreen."

  "I don't get out much."

  According to the stories, he didn't go out at all. "How did that other wizard…"

  "Zafran?"

  "Yeah, him." Terizan might be fool enough to think she could steal a wizard-doll from inside a magic mirror, but she wasn't fool enough to make free with a wizard's name. Names had power. "If he's been here for so long, how does he know how Oreen looks?"

  "He doesn't. Zafran's landscaping runs to nothingness and fog. This seeming of the city came from your mind."

  "My mind?" Suppressing a shudder, she glanced around at the reflection of home and protested, "My mind doesn't like an empty Oreen."