Ususi said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Then I won’t tell you where to find the mine. If I’m not with you, there’s no chance you’ll get into the heart of the mine, anyway. You need me.”
Iahn said in his no-nonsense manner, “If you come, I can’t guarantee you’ll survive. You’ll be safer here.”
“If I don’t come with you, how can I be sure you’re holding up your end of the deal? Besides, I already told you—my family is leaving no stone unturned in searching for me. If I can get out of the city, they’ll never find me—I’ll be safer if I’m not here.”
Ususi thought the mine was likely a fortified Datharathi holding, where Eined might be more easily recognized than in the thronging streets of Vaelan, but she held her tongue. Regardless of the vengeance taker’s ability to discern betrayal, the wizard hoped Eined’s appearance wasn’t evidence of an elaborate conspiracy meant to snare her and Iahn.
Iahn said “Very well. You’re with us.”
Ususi frowned, but Eined smiled.
The vengeance taker continued. “We have little time to waste, Eined. Are you ready to leave immediately? I’d like to go straight to the docks.”
“Yes. I travel light these days.”
The sun glistened on the waves rolling in toward the pier.
Iahn bartered for passage across the Golden Water to Huorm. The smell of fish mingled, not unpleasantly, with the salty tang in the air. Iahn was relatively new to wide bodies of water, but he was coming to enjoy the broad vistas he’d experienced since leaving Deep Imaskar.
Yonald, ship steward for Smoke and Fire, named a ridiculous price for passage.
Iahn merely shook his head. He said, “We’ll pay you one quarter of the price you’ve named now, and that amount again when we safely reach the opposite shore.”
Eined, in her hood, and Ususi, still in the disguise Iahn had fashioned for her earlier, stood nearby. Dockworkers rushed back and forth, loading and unloading crates and barrels from the holds of the half dozen merchant ships tied up along the pier.
The wizard noticed several people whose backs were not bowed beneath the weight of crates. They were moving along the dock.
“Iahn,” Ususi said, stepping to the taker’s side, “look!” She gestured down the pier where the stone causeway met the shore. Half a dozen men and women strode purposefully toward them, shoving aside dockworkers with disdain.
The one in the lead, a burly red-haired man, yelled, “Eined Datharathi! We have a writ, signed by Xaemar Datharathi of Datharathi Minerals, that remands you into our care! Surrender yourself!”
Eined gasped and stepped behind Iahn, so that the vengeance taker momentarily occluded her from the approaching group. Eined whispered, “Zel probably stationed men at all the city exits! I should have guessed he’d do that. Damn! I wish we had splurged and chartered an airship!” The vengeance taker said nothing, merely watching the men as they approached, confident their purpose would be revealed shortly.
The redhead halted, facing Iahn and Ususi, and he looked at Eined. “Please come with us, Madam Datharathi. For your own safety. You’re sick, and your family wants to help you.”
“Help me? I don’t need their kind of help!” Eined’s voice quickly rose in pitch. Iahn could tell she was scared. She didn’t need to be.
The vengeance taker looked the red-haired man in the eye and said, “This woman has secured our services for all her needs. If she is unwell, we will see to her health. If she has other concerns, they will be met. Leave. You are distressing our patron.”
The man shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve got our orders direct from the top man in Vaelan. You have no standing here, outlander.”
“I give you one warning,” said Iahn. “If you and these others do not vacate this pier immediately, I shall judge your presence to be a threat to our patron, and take appropriate steps to eliminate that threat. Permanently.”
The redhead crossed his arms and moved his feet to a wider stance, a clear challenge to Iahn’s pronouncement. A woman with a nasty scar that connected her left eye to the corner of her mouth moved to stand at the man’s left. An oddly doughty halfling with an oversized club stood at his right. Behind the red-haired man stood three more men in uniforms proclaiming them to be of the watch. Apparently, no one was accustomed to hearing ultimatums made by agents of Deep Imaskar. Then again, they had probably never encountered or even heard of a vengeance taker before.
Too bad, thought Iahn. Their ignorance won’t protect them from judgment.
Yonald, the ship steward, took a few paces back. He, in contrast to the newcomers, was a smart man—and more perceptive than the redhead, who had exactly three more heartbeats left in him.
The arts of judgment studied by the protectors of Deep Imaskar were widely varied. They included the ultimate poison (that produced by a damos), intimate knowledge of anatomy and its key weaknesses, weapons, and magic. With so many options, Iahn nearly insulted his profession by simply stepping forward and pushing the red-haired man off the pier.
Ususi made a throwing motion toward the group, releasing a vivid cone of clashing colors that shimmered over the five assailants, giving them a sickly appearance. The three uniformed watchmen instantly slumped to the pier. Iahn could see that they still breathed and were merely unconscious.
The two remaining antagonists, the scarred woman and the halfling, were apparently well paid. They attacked instead of running away. The woman charged Iahn with a dagger in each hand, the snarl on her face distorting her expression into something even more bestial. The greasy, hulking halfling threw his club end over end and struck Ususi in the shoulder. Eined screamed.
Iahn didn’t much care if he killed the dagger-wielding woman or the halfling. They had been warned, so their continued defiance could legitimately be answered with extermination. But he suddenly worried that killing a citizen of Vaelan might hurt their chances of securing a ship berth. He leaned forward and left, deftly evading the woman’s first knife thrust. As he leaned, he separated his thinblade from the hilt of his dragonfly blade so he had the thinblade in his left and the deadly dragonfly blade in his right. He countered the woman’s first dagger thrust with his thinblade, piercing her arm just below her shoulder blade. She shrieked and dropped the dagger. Iahn leaned forward to avoid her second thrust, then sliced the second dagger—and a few fingers—from her grip with a savage flick of his dragonfly blade. The woman collapsed, holding her mauled hand and howling in shock.
Iahn spun and saw the halfling advancing on Ususi. Eined cowered behind the wizard. The halfling wielded a short sword forged of black iron. Red glowing runes swirled on the blade. Not good, Iahn judged. The tempo of his heart increased. He lunged, weapons ready to dispatch Ususi’s assailant.
Before the halfling reached her, and before the vengeance taker could confront the halfling, the wizard pointed a finger at her attacker and uttered a sharp incantation. As if discharged from a thunderhead’s swollen belly, a jagged electric lance briefly connected Ususi’s finger and the halfling’s head.
Blinking away the afterimage, Iahn saw Ususi casually blow a slender remnant of smoke from her finger. Of the halfling, all that remained was a charred smear and a few smoking oddments of the little man’s equipment. The short sword still gleamed evilly in the sun. Iahn kicked it over the edge of the pier, and heard it splash into the water.
Ususi nodded at the vengeance taker, turned to Yonald, and said, “Sorry about the … interruption. If I recall, Iahn quoted you a price we’d be willing to pay.” She pointed at the steward with the same finger she’d just used to fell her attacker. “Does that work for you?”
Yonald gulped and nodded.
Iahn rubbed his chin. The wizard knew how to imply a threat nearly as well as someone of his discipline. Of course, as a wizard of Deep Imaskar, Ususi had the power to back up her warnings.
Soon enough, they were aboard. The crew cast off, and the ship sailed northeast across the Golden Water,
toward the port city of Huorm. Eined said it was their first stop on the journey to the mine.
Yonald gave Ususi and Eined his cabin for their use. No doubt he booted some lesser crewman from his or her cabin, who in turn booted another sailor. Ususi retreated to the small berth as soon as they boarded. Her invisible uskura followed her, as it always did when left without specific commands.
Yonald’s cabin was of the sort Ususi appreciated—neat and tidy, with every article stowed efficiently. She found a slender drawer that contained a few sticks of incense, and she lit one. The glow of the small taper soothed her. The blanket on the cot was clean, too. She massaged her temples and sat down. The passage would take a little less than a day, but she was tired from the recent excitement. What she really wanted was a nap. Her head felt heavy and full—a sign that a headache might rise up to torment her. Sleep sometimes quelled the pain before it came home to roost.
Sleep claimed her almost instantly, but lightly. She dozed, aware of the gentle rocking of the boat and the shouts and calls of a crew seeing to the ship’s needs. As sometimes happens on the edge of wakefulness and sleep, Ususi imagined she could see what was going on outside her room. No doubt her imagination painted the scene from the sounds she heard, but nevertheless the vision seemed real. She saw two crewmen in the stern repairing a sail with thick thread. Four men crawled in the rigging, cursing and tying stays and furling sails. A nother, the lookout, sat higher yet, calling out landmarks. Two officers smoked pipes on the main deck as they discussed their route, supplies, and crew schedules. Ususi saw Iahn at the prow, gazing across the water with his icy, penetrating, but impenetrable eyes.
What was the vengeance taker looking at? A cloud hovered on the horizon, dark with rain. Ususi realized the cloud might be the vanguard of a savage storm, for it quickly swelled and billowed forward, blotting out more and more of the heavens. The cloud was like an eclipse, but of the entire sky. Iahn continued to stare forward, as unresponsive to the sight as a statue. The lookout did not cry a warning; the officers did not cease their smoking. What was wrong with them? Couldn’t they see the danger to the ship? Shouldn’t they be striking the sails, battening hatches, or something?
The darkness rushed forward, accelerating and growing as if some death god were pulling a grave shroud across the firmament. Darkness, absolute, thundered down on the wizard, and all sound and light were instantly quenched. Ususi cried out, but her voice was mute and her limbs apparently shorn from her. The more she struggled, the less she could feel her own presence. She was drowning in night.
As the formless, churning void clutched her, a slight sensation trickled back into her extremities. Some new force drew her, accelerating her through the nothingness.
The silence was shattered by awful sounds that smashed at her eardrums, followed by a vague, grim hum that promised an unutterable fate. Screaming, she plunged toward a blot of even more concentrated void.
Before Ususi could be pulled into the bizarre singularity, she saw a flicker of light. Like a flood victim finds temporary deliverance from the torrent by grasping a passing branch, Ususi caught herself by focusing on the glow.
Within the glow was a woman who looked like Ususi. But the woman’s eyes were empty, hollow orbits.
It was her sister, Qari.
Qari reached out from the glow into the darkness where Ususi trod and said, “Take my hand, Sister. You shouldn’t be so afraid of the dark, you know. Darkness is my constant companion. It doesn’t terrify me. I’ve learned to make a friend of it.”
Ususi strained toward the hand. She struggled to rediscover her missing limbs. Or should she just will herself forward? She yelled, “Qari, where are we? What’s going on?”
Qari swiveled her head so that the shocking emptiness of her missing eyes was indisputable. Qari said, “You need to embrace the darkness, as I have.” So saying, she reached up with her other hand and pointed at the sunken, cavernous pits where eyes should have looked out.
“No!” Ususi screamed, and she woke.
Sun streamed in through the edges of the small porthole. No storm of darkness thundered outside. She heard once more the yells of the crewmen as they went about their duties.
Nothing but a dream … but the taper she’d lit before lying down was dead, its tiny glow snuffed.
Kiril Duskmourn’s legs ached as if she’d ridden the stone destrier for days. Because she had.
Thormud insisted they always travel at night, avoiding villages and cities. They’d just passed a sizable town that Thormud had called Sezilinta. Normally, the fewer people Kiril saw, the better. And traveling in the dark usually suited her just fine, given her star elf heritage. But not tonight.
Tonight the sky was uncharacteristically heavy with clouds that veiled both moonlight and starlight. A constant spit of fine rain fell, slowly wetting every surface and penetrating every covering. After just a quarter day’s travel, Kiril’s hair was matted with moisture, and water continually dripped into her eyes. Her sodden clothes were cold and clammy, even in the desert. She could hardly see more than a few yards ahead through the misty rain. And the stone seats that at first had seemed reasonably comfortable now worked at rubbing her skin raw. Plus, the seats were cold. Once, she mentally compared the seats to tombstones, then she couldn’t banish the image.
She was more miserable than usual. And given her normal demeanor of low-grade irritability, that was a feat.
Worse yet, the old dwarf was in a talkative mood and kept badgering her with questions about her past. He should know enough not to pry, she thought. But maybe he was feeling the effects of the cold rain, too, if he was willing to rouse her ire by questioning her—and she’d given him clear signals that she’d rather be left alone. Was Thormud actually trying to get a rise out of her, just for some diversion on the long journey?
“So tell me again,” Thormud asked Kiril from his seat ahead of her, “how old did you say your sword instructor was? Seven hundred? That’s old even for an elf, I hear.”
Perversely, she decided not to give in to the geomancer’s pestering with her usual stream of invectives. She merely grunted.
“And what about the human you were working for right before I employed you—he looked like he was ninety if he was a day. For humans, that’s standing with one foot in the grave.”
Kiril shrugged, knowing the dwarf couldn’t see her. Her silence was answer enough. Another drop of water splashed into her left eye, and she roughly wiped it out.
“And me—I’m no dwarf lad in my first hundred. In fact, I’m probably in the last fifty years of my career.”
“So?” Kiril finally asked.
“It’s just that I wonder if you know anyone who isn’t old.”
Kiril grunted again. She said, “You know how I hate most people?”
“Yes …”
“I pick all my acquaintances old so they don’t live long.”
Thormud paused for a moment, then, “Ho ho! I’ve discovered my companion has secret aspirations to entertain, after all these years! She’s bitter, no doubt about it, but witty, too.”
“Why don’t we pass the time with you telling me about all the different layers of sediment below us, like usual?” asked Kiril. “That way, you get to yammer on and on about something you care about, and I get a nap.”
“That’s more like the elf I know.”
Kiril restrained herself from reaching forward and throttling the dwarf’s thick neck. Instead she said, “Let’s rest. You said we might reach Adama’s Tooth tonight. My muscles are all cramped with the cold. I can protect you better if I can get the blood moving in my arms and legs again. If we face any more of the creatures like we fought a few nights ago …”
Thormud made several gravelly noises as if he were gargling pebbles. He was speaking Terran, commanding the stone destrier. The great creature’s pace slackened to a trot, a walk, then ceased. It squatted down, allowing its riders easy egress.
Kiril stood and nearly slipped on the rain-soaked
stone of the destrier’s back. Thormud, despite his graceless manner, walked sure-footed off the destrier to the ground below. Anytime the geomancer walked on stone or earth, his footing was assured. He carried an earthlamp, whose normally warm glow was rendered pale and cheerless in the sleet. Xet rode on the dwarf’s shoulder, unconcerned with the endless spray.
Thormud looked around the desolate landscape—what was visible through the mist—and said, “You broach an excellent point. That which faced us earlier was potent. I think it’s time I call in a few favors for additional aid.”
“Favors?”
“The elemental lords of the earth may hear my entreaty, and may respond with aid.”
“Calling in the big swords, eh? Good idea.”
The dwarf went about his preparations, which to Kiril looked identical to the preparations Thormud made before every geomantic endeavor. In other words, utterly monotonous. But what else was there to do?
First Thormud used the butt of his selenite rod to scratch an intricate circle into the earth. Then he poured colored powders into the four outer quadrants of the circle—red, blue, white, and brown—and finally black and white at the center, in a commingled pile. He had once told her that the powders represented the elements, but she had always believed only four elements built all of reality. Fearful of an overlong explanation, Kiril never asked why he used six colors.
Next the dwarf usually began mumbling in Terran. Not this time, Kiril noticed. Instead, he reached into his robe and brought forth a small package wrapped in leather. The package looked suspiciously familiar.
Kiril stopped her pacing and cleared her throat, trying to get the dwarf’s attention. No luck—or he was ignoring her.
At the center of his circle, the dwarf unwrapped the package and revealed the purple crystal within. It was the remnant of the creature they had faced down a few nights ago.
“Thormud, you phlegm-brained flea haven, what are you doing with that?”
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