The Sorcerer's Abyss (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  “So what if it is?”

  “So do you remember what happened last time you got yourself into trouble? A lot of people died coming for you, Wolf, and Sandy. It’s something you need to think about before you do something stupid—again.”

  Ellyssa’s face reddened in a conflicting state of shame and anger. “I’ll tell you what I told Allister: I don’t want anyone’s help. Whatever problems I find, I will deal with on my own.”

  “You can pretty much bet that won’t be a problem.”

  “Good!”

  Roger let out an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that you’ve become so unpleasant to be around.”

  A thunderous roar cut off Ellyssa’s response and the small glen grew darker as an enormous shadow partially blotted out the sun. Sandy raced by overhead and released a thunderous clap of lightning into her own clearing half a mile away. Even from where Ellyssa and Roger stood, they both felt the shockwaves as the dragon released spells of elemental fury.

  Sandy had undergone a breaking very similar to Ellyssa. They had beaten her with chains and forced her to kill. Like Ellyssa, they had stolen her innocence and replaced it with determination born of fear of ever being another victim. Since regaining her freedom, Sandy devoted her time to learning the magic of her draconic heritage, flight, and fighting. She was big now, nearly the size of a draft horse in the body alone. Her neck and tail easily doubled her length.

  Using the knowledge she attained from delving into her egg memories, and from what Allister was able to find in Azerick’s big book, Sandy frequently practiced in a larger clearing to the east. Its level of destruction was far greater than what Ellyssa had inflicted upon hers. Sandy had torn entire trees from the ground, set large swaths of forest aflame only to extinguish it by summoning torrential storms.

  Roger looked toward the flashes of lightning and fire to the east.

  “She’s almost as bad as you when it comes to obsessive practice.”

  “Maybe she wants to make sure anyone who tries to hurt her again will regret it. Maybe she wants to be strong enough so they can never hurt anyone else ever again.” Ellyssa’s visage grew dark, and she began walking in the direction of North Haven.

  “What are you talking about, Ellyssa?” Roger called after her in frustration. “You sound like you mean to do something preemptive. Didn’t you learn anything from your capture?”

  Ellyssa shouted back without looking. “Yes. I learned to kill!” She ducked her head and whispered, “Without remorse.”

  It was a long walk to the city, but Ellyssa’s legs had gotten used it. She had made the trek many times to scout out the streets in search of slavers and those with whom they cavorted. It was a lot harder these days as the entire operation was forced to go deep underground ever since King Jarvin required all officials to enforce the law against abductions and slavery. It did little to lessen the cases of abduction and made it more profitable for those willing to risk imprisonment and even death if caught trafficking humans. The King even had a sizeable navy now patrolling the seas to combat the worsening pirate situation, but they rarely caught slavers. The slavers simply tossed their precious cargo overboard and let the chains carry them to the sea floor long before the King’s ships could board and investigate.

  They were still here though, and Ellyssa knew how to find them. It was not difficult for a lone girl to find a slaver if she knew where to look. All too often, a girl found them without looking. Her plan was simple. Walk the streets where she had spotted several suspicious characters. It was not hard for her to pass herself off as a homeless girl just looking for a doorway to protect her from the rain.

  The slavers were getting wary as well. It was why she had been wandering around these parts every night for the past several weeks. New faces were looked upon with suspicion. Twice she had been accosted by thugs and degenerates, but neither had been slavers, and she sent them on their way with some painful lessons regarding the treatment of women.

  Once she formulated her plan and began practicing with intent, her nightmares had lessened substantially. This fact alone convinced her she was on the right course in her life. As long as slavers, Captain Jake and Sonjay in particular, hunted the streets, Ellyssa would never find peace. The solution was simple; she would kill them all.

  Ellyssa huddled under an awning outside of a shop missing so many cedar shingles it only kept off about half the falling rain. She used a tattered canvas sack, like one a sailor may have discarded in favor of one in better shape, to ward away the chill and the rain that inevitably found its way through the leaky roof. She looked sick and half-asleep, but the reality was that she was very healthy and alert. Her diligence looked to have finally paid off as two groups of men, maybe five in all, approached her from two different directions.

  Ellyssa stood up and nervously cast her eyes between the two groups of men. She looked like a frightened rabbit, too terrified to run from the wolves closing in on her. However, the emotion coursing through her veins was not fear, but hatred and rage. The eyes of these men were indistinguishable from the ones who had taken her. Perhaps they were even the same men. They would know where Captain Jake was, and she would make them tell her where.

  “Easy there, girl,” one of the slavers called out as if to coax a stray dog toward them. “We ain’t gonna hurt ya. We just want to take ya to a nice place out of the rain and maybe get some food in ya. Wouldn’t ya like that?”

  When the men approached close enough for her to smell them, Ellyssa bolted between the only opening the two groups left her. The false kindness of the men vanished and they all began shouting orders to each other and hurling curses at the girl for making them chase her. Three stayed on her tail while two others split off to get ahead of her.

  Ellyssa ran quickly down the alleys and narrow streets but made sure she did not lose her pursuers. The slavers probably thought she was running blind, but she was leading them exactly where she wanted.

  Several exhausting minutes of running ended with the girl trapped in an alley dead-ending in a solid wall of stone. She stood huddling against the wall, shielding her face with her arms as she pleaded for mercy.

  “Please, sirs, please leave me be!”

  All five slavers shared a laugh at the girl’s helpless pleadings as they casually approached, one holding a large sack, another with a belaying pin ready and willing to knock her senseless at the first sign of a struggle.

  “Keep your trap shut and there’ll be no problems. There’s no place left to run.”

  All five men stopped as the girl started laughing, stood up straight, and faced them without the slightest hint of the fear filling her a moment ago. “Congratulations, you caught me, but I am afraid all you will find here tonight is your death. Whether your death is quick or painful is up to you.”

  “Shouldn’a made this difficult, girl,” the man with belaying pin said.

  He took two swift steps forward and hurled the small club. The pin passed right through the space between her eyebrows and struck the wall with a sharp crack. As disconcerting as that was, the true panic set in when the laughing girl simply vanished.

  “She’s a ghost!” one man shouted. Several of them turned around to run only to find Ellyssa blocking the end of the alley.

  “Oh, I’m far worse than that,” Ellyssa said, practically cackling with delight.

  Two of the slavers looked at each other and rushed the girl, drawing blades as they ran. This earned them the opportunity to die first. Ellyssa’s laughter was lost in her fury as she pulled at the Source, commanding it to do her bidding. Errant energy caused her hair to stand on end and limned her in an ethereal light making her look positively terrifying, like some avenging spirit come to punish the men who had led such wicked lives and caused so much pain.

  Twin bolts of azure energy lanced out from her hands, each catching one of the men rushing toward her. The force of the strikes crushed ribs, scorched flesh, and hurled them back even farther tha
n they had run forward. The other three men looked about frantically, desperately searching for a way out. Their desperate searching was short-lived as ropes snaked down from the rooftops, wrapped around the men’s chests and necks, and hoisted them several feet up the wall. The slavers gagged and kicked wildly as the ropes threatened to cut off their airway. The men looked at Ellyssa with terrified eyes as she strode forward.

  She looked up at the nearest dangling slaver. “Where is Captain Jake?” Ellyssa asked.

  The man gasped loudly as the rope loosened enough for him to speak. “I don’t know, I swear! I don’t know Captain Jake!”

  “Wrong answer,” Ellyssa informed him without emotion.

  The rope retightened its grip, hoisted him several feet farther up the wall, and then dropped him. The rope snapped taut three feet short of the man’s feet touching the ground. The crack of his neck was audible in the dark alley and his struggles immediately ceased. Ellyssa looked at the next hanging man and repeated the question.

  “H-he ships out of the Isles of Ash ever since he got himself a whole lot of gold. Bought himself a new ship and everything. I don’t sail with him. Never have! I don’t know where he is now, I swear!”

  “Do you know how he got his gold?”

  “N-no, I don’t,” the man croaked hoarsely.

  “He got it by selling me,” Ellyssa informed the slaver. “But he hasn’t been paid in full, and I need to make sure he gets everything he has coming to him. What is the name of your ship, scum?”

  The slaver whined pitifully. “S-sea Phoenix!”

  “Is it at the dock now?”

  “P-please, I can’t say nothin’!”

  With a twitch of her finger, the rope hauled the man a couple feet higher up the wall.

  “Dock three! Please I don’t wanna die!”

  “How many of your captives begged for their lives, slaver? How many begged for their freedom? How many did you let go?”

  The man dropped and ceased his struggles and pleading. Ellyssa stepped toward the last man still alive. The aroma of his soiling himself was almost overpowering, but Ellyssa refused to balk.

  “Please, I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” the man said.

  “I want to know where Captain Jake is,” Ellyssa said once again.

  “T-the Isles of Ash! Black Harbor!”

  “You know for certain he is there now?”

  “Yes! Yes, he’s there now! You can get him!”

  Ellyssa smiled a humorless smile. “You’re lying to me aren’t you? You don’t know Captain Jake or where he’s at.”

  The slaver tried to think through his panic and grasped at any straw to save his pitiful life. “Sea Phoenix! Our ship is the Sea Phoenix!”

  “He already told me that. You have no useful information for me, do you?”

  Ellyssa turned away and proceeded to walk out of the alley, the slavers pleas for mercy following her out until they abruptly cut off with the punctuating snap of the rope. “No remorse,” she whispered into the night.

  It did not take Ellyssa long to reach the docks since slavers rarely travelled far from their ship. Carrying trussed and bundled captives through the city was a tricky endeavor, especially with the Watch actually enforcing the King’s law. It was not a great hindrance since most work in the city was found near the dock ward. Many of the desperate called it home even if that home was in an alley or wooden crate.

  Given the small size of North Haven’s harbor, finding the slave ship was quite easy. It sat moored at the end of the long pier where several men stood guard, watching for the City Guard and the rival thieves’ guild. Ellyssa did not understand why the slavers and the thieves’ guild were unable or unwilling to work together, but she was thankful for it. Slavers were largely thugs and brutes with little skill beyond sailing and preying upon the helpless. The thieves were far better organized and employed a host of skills that would have made Ellyssa’s job much harder and much more dangerous.

  Ellyssa was furious these scum operated right in the open with no shame and little fear. Whatever plan or tactic she had thought up vanished as she watched the men on the dock and crawling about the ship. All she saw was Captain Jake, Sonjay, and the rest of the slaver crew who had captured her, tormented her, and delivered her into the hands of those sadistic wizards in Bakhtaran.

  The men on the dock guarding the ship went on alert as Ellyssa approached. When they saw it was a young woman, their tension turned to amusement. The men struck an easy pose, leaning against a coil of rope or a pier pillar but made ready to spring on the girl as she drew near. Their first thought was she was a prostitute looking to make some quick coin. If she was, she was stupid for she would find nothing here but a boat ride to hell.

  “Hey, girl,” one of the men called out as Ellyssa drew near, “you out here looking for a good time?”

  Ellyssa smiled, “I guess you could say I am.”

  The man who spoke to her and one other were leaning against coils of stout rope used to tie off ships to the dock. The ends of those coils snaked up with a flick of Ellyssa’s wrist, wrapped around the men’s chest and throat, and flung them out over the harbor where the ropes dragged them to the bottom until the bubbles stopped. Two of the three remaining guards drew cutlasses and charged, only to be hurled back with a pair of magical strikes, crushing their chests and depositing one into the harbor and another twenty feet into the ship’s rigging. The last man looked around in terror and jumped into the water before Ellyssa could deal with him.

  The brief but terrified shouts of the men and display of magic caused an immediate uproar aboard the ship. The crew began shouting orders, a bell clanged loudly in alarm, and they began forming a defense. Several men lowered crossbows and the twang of their strings accompanied the buzzing of deadly quarrels. The bolts flew by or dropped to the dock with a clatter as they met Ellyssa’s magical shield.

  Ellyssa countered by raking lightning through their ranks, striking down those she hit and sending the others ducking behind masts, crates, and anything affording a measure of concealment. Her strike started several small fires, which only added to the mayhem as she stepped across the gangplank and boarded the ship.

  Seeing their crossbows were useless, a dozen or more sailors rushed forward in hopes of overwhelming her by sheer numbers. Ellyssa struck out with bolts of energy then an entire wall of force as the men nearly trampled her underfoot. The wall blew most of them back but, forced to spread it out over such a large area, it did little except buy her a few moments of time. She used that time to open a gate to the far side of the ship where only a few men stood at the ready. One nearly succeeded on cleaving her skull with a hand axe before Ellyssa was able to shake off the disorientation of using her gate.

  She spotted the man lunging for her out of the corner of her eye and struck out almost blindly. She clipped her attacker in the shoulder with a bolt of energy, spinning him around and over the nearby railing. Three others immediately converged upon her with cutlasses held high. Ellyssa sent tendrils of power into the ropes crisscrossing the rigging overhead and pulled them down to her. She directed them against the three men and hurled them far out into the inky black water of the harbor.

  Ellyssa allowed herself a moment to gloat as she turned back to face the rest of the crew and deliver unto them her furious judgment. It was nearly the last thing she did in this life. Her eyes went wide as she stared at the heavy ballista set amidships and aiming its lethal payload squarely at her. Before she could finish processing what was about to happen, the ballista crew triggered their massive weapon with a loud clatter.

  An iron ball the size of a grapefruit struck Ellyssa right in the chest and hurled her back where she fetched up painfully against the gunwale near the prow of the ship. Had her shield not blunted most of the force, she would likely be spread out all over the deck in a great bloody mess. She tasted copper as she tried to get to her feet and blood filled her mouth. A second artillery piece on the other side of the deck was
about to finish what the first had failed to do. Her shield gone, strength failing, and bleeding from somewhere within her body, Ellyssa fell back and over the low railing just as the crew loosed several feet of heavy chain, tearing through the space she had been occupying.