by Matt Forbeck
A wheezy noise came from the basket, echoing against its metal shell. “You’ll need to be a better shot than that, Yabair,” the Ruler said, her voice rattling inside the dead elf’s chest. “The years have not been kind to your aim.”
“If I’d wanted to put the bullet between your eyes, I would have done so,” Yabair said, his words calm and assured. “For now, it’s enough to disable your unfortunate pawn.”
I understood. Yabair hoped to be able to chat with the Ruler of the Dead through the Voice’s body, but that would mean playing a dangerous game. He might want to trick her into revealing something that the Guard could use against her and her army, but it seemed to me just as likely that he or one of his soldiers would slip up and accidentally give her an advantage instead.
“Not a word, Gibson,” he said to me, “or you’ll suffer a similar fate.”
That had made me shudder all the way back to my cell.
CHAPTER THREE
I was still shivering with thought of the Ruler of the Dead as night fell across Dragon City. Or maybe that was just the cold that seeped into me through my cell’s cut stone floor. The jailers there hadn’t provided me with a pot to piss in, much less a blanket to stave off the evening’s chill.
It was cold enough at the Garrett’s altitude during the day, but I could see my breath fogging the air in the little bit of moonlight that filtered in through my cell’s glassless window. Yabair had thrown me into the highest and most isolated of the cells, which sat atop a lonely tower that stabbed out from the mountain’s highest crag shy of the Dragon’s Spire itself. The wind howled around it like a banshee, its wailing harmonizing with that of an actual ghost secreted away somewhere in the prison’s lower levels.
As you went down through the prison’s levels, the cells became less like rooms with a view and more and more like actual tombs. By the time you reached the bottom, you’d find yourself inside of rooms reputedly more secure than even the dwarves’ Vault, which hunkered deep in the heart of the Stronghold. Maybe I should have been grateful I’d not been locked up in one of those living graves, but at least then I’d have been warm.
Yabair had confiscated my wand, but like any other wizard, I didn’t need it to cast spells so much as focus and direct them. I didn’t have much mojo left after the day I’d had, though, and the Garrett had been ensorcelled to be proofed against all sorts of magic. I took a gamble though, and I laid my hands on a section of the floor beneath me and muttered a few secret words. It began to glow with a soft light and — better yet — a hint of warmth. I curled up on top of it and tried to find sleep.
The winds seemed to carry the noises from the city below right up to my window though. I could hear people screaming in the distance. Gunshots seemed to echo from all over the place, coming in sporadic bursts. And the dull roar of the zombies’ groans as they battered themselves against the Great Circle rose and fell like the waves of a raging sea.
Sleep still hadn’t found me when I heard the door to my cell unlock with the grating of metal on metal, followed by a solid click. I considered pretending to be asleep, but I didn’t see how that would grant me much of an advantage. In any case, I was too curious to just lie there, so I spun about, sat up, and waited.
The door creaked open on rusty hinges that maybe hadn’t seen oil since before I was born. Someone slipped inside then and shut the door behind her. “Good evening, Max,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough, Alcina.” I suppressed an urge to get up and choke whatever resembled life out of her.
She stepped into the moonlight streaming in through the window, and she was just as gorgeous as ever, a stunning, raven-haired beauty with violet eyes and porcelain skin. The sight of her stole my breath away — not because of her looks but because she was supposed to be imprisoned in one of the most secure cells in the Garrett.
I ought to know. I put her here.
“Is that anyway to treat an old lover?” she said, running a delicate finger across her pale lips. “I thought we’d meant something more than that to each other, once upon a time.”
I pushed myself to my feet and kept my back toward the wall with the window in it. “We didn’t exactly end our relationship on a good note.”
“Oh, that?” she said. “It’s all water under the bridge, Max. Long forgotten, I’m sure.”
“I still remember.” She’d tried to rip my throat out. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to forget.
She flashed a coy smile at me. It showed all her teeth, including the fangs that stabbed down where her canines should have been. “I don’t blame you for dumping me,” she said. “I might have done the same thing myself, in my breathing days. You should know, though, that I never meant you any harm.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
She smiled. “Not in the long run, silly. Sure, it might have hurt at first — a lot, even — but you’d have gotten over it. And you’d have been so much better after you joined me.”
“For the last time, no thanks.”
She pouted at me, feigning hurt feelings she didn’t really have.
“What are you doing here, Alcina?” I said. “This can’t be a social visit.”
“Why can’t it? It’s not like you get up here to my shelf of the mountain all that often, right? I thought I’d take the opportunity to offer you a proper welcome.” She edged toward me.
“You’re a prisoner, not a jailer.” I stepped backward as nonchalantly as I could manage.
It was an old reflex, wanting to keep my back against the wall. It wasn’t like she, as a lone person, could circle around behind me without me noticing. She was so damned fast it wouldn’t likely matter anyhow. I’d been damn lucky to get the drop on her the last time we’d met, and I’d been prepared, with my gun and wand in hand.
Right then, I don’t think I’d ever felt so naked in my entire life.
“That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?” she said. “I reside here, that much is true, but it is at my choice and under my conditions.”
I had a strong urge to call for a jailer then, but if what she said was true, it wouldn’t do me a lick of good. I’d only seen one of them once so far, when he’d come to bring me a bowl of cold gruel and a mug of dirty water for my dinner. He’d been a cruel-faced man who’d not said a single word to me, just sniggered at my plight. I didn’t think he’d be much help to me either way.
“I’ve been stuck in this prison for years now, Max,” Alcina said, a vicious smile on her face. “How long did you think it would take until I was running things here?”
I shrugged. “To be honest, I hadn’t given it — or you — much thought.”
“That’s so human of you.” She pulled a glassy globe from a pocket in her skirts, where she must have been holding it the entire time, and she gazed into it, watching the moonlight catch and refract in it. “You people never think of the long-term effects of your actions, do you? It’s always about what works for you at the moment instead.”
“That’s hardly fair. Weren’t you human once too?”
“That was a long time ago, love, but that’s why I know.”
“Maybe it’s been too long,” I said. “It’s been so many years since you drew your last breath you’ve forgotten what it’s like.”
I’d meant that as an insult, but from the way Alcina smiled at my words, you’d never have guessed it.
“Isn’t that exactly how you got yourself tossed in here in the first place? Thinking for today, and tomorrow be damned?”
“You’d rather I thought like an elf? Or a dragon?”
“They’ll all likely live a lot longer than you.”
“Tell that to the Emperor. I’m sure he’d love to hear it.”
She peered at me, curiosity dancing in her eyes. She’d looked at me like that back when we’d been dating too. It had taken me a long time to realized that she’d been sizing me up for a meal. The only thing that had saved me then was that she liked
to play with her food.
“Are you saying you’ll live longer than the Dragon?” She giggled. “Such bravado.”
“I’m here, and he’s not.” I shrugged. “Those two facts are tightly connected. I may not live longer than him by the number of years, but I’ve already lived later. Since I was never going to rival the centuries he spent here, I’ll have to satisfy myself with that.”
She twirled the glassy ball between her fingers, and it sparkled in the moonlight.
“What’s that?” I asked, which I knew was just what she wanted me to do.
“A present,” she said. “From Yabair.”
That got my attention. “Couldn’t he just give it to me himself? He knows where I am.”
“He could have,” Alcina said, “but he left it to me.” She tossed me the ball.
I caught it, grateful I was able to react fast enough, before it landed on the stone floor and shattered into a million useless pieces. Wary of what it might be and what it could do, I refused to look into it and kept my eyes trained on Alcina instead.
“Don’t you want to use it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I need anything you or Yabair is willing to offer me.”
“Hold on to that thought,” Alcina said. “You’ll come to regret it.”
I hefted the globe in my hand. It was bigger than my fist, and I could barely fit my fingers around it. I had an idea what it was and why she’d given it to me, and if I was right I didn’t want to mess around with it. I whipped it at her head instead.
She dodged out of the way with inhuman speed. She was fast enough to avoid the incoming globe, but not to catch it. It zipped straight past her and smacked into the stones of the far wall.
Rather than shatter, though, it bounced off the wall with a clunk and dribbled back in my direction. Alcina laughed at me as she threaded her way back out through the door behind her.
I leaped for the door as it closed, but I wasn’t able to get my foot wedged between it and the jamb before Alcina yanked it shut. I heard the thick sound of its the lock’s bolt being thrown.
“Be careful of what you toss aside, Max,” she said to me through the cell door’s bars — which made me feel safe from her for the first moment since she’d arrived. “You never know how useful it might prove. You have a hard road ahead of you, and you’re bound to need all the help you can get, no matter from which quarter it might come.”
With that, she melted away into the darkness of the hallway beyond, leaving me there alone with my thoughts and that damn crystal ball on the floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
I resisted picking up the crystal ball for as long as I could. The noises continued to rise up from the city though and kept me awake, and my mind kept concocting all sorts of wild stories about who or what had made the noises and why. After fighting it for the better part of an hour, I gave in.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of the crystal ball itself. They were hard to come by, sure, especially ones as sturdy as this particular model, but I knew how to operate it just fine. That was the kind of thing they taught first-year apprentices at the Academy, and while school might have been a distant memory for me, I recalled enough of what I’d learned there to be able to fire the damn thing up and get it working.
What bothered me, though, was why Alcina had given me the crystal ball and whether or not she’d really done so with Yabair’s blessing or that of the Garrett’s jailers. The fact that she could just walk in and out of my cell with impunity put me on edge. I’d figured at that the least I’d be safe inside the Garrett — at least from everyone except Yabair and the jailers. I’d never guessed I might have to worry about the other inmates.
I’d put a fair number of people in this place over the years, and I didn’t relish the thought that any of them might be able to take advantage of the confusion and terror gripping the rest of the city to take their revenge on me. It was bad enough just having to deal with Alcina. As Yabair had intimated, he’d have to look long and hard to find anyone in the city who would miss me if I died tonight, and I can guarantee you he could skip right over the Garrett to save himself time.
So I put my back against the door and sat down in front of it, then gathered the crystal ball into my lap and peered into it.
Some people liked to lock their crystal balls with catchphrases you had to mutter to get them going. Most of them were things like “Show me” or “Let’s see what we can see” or some other abracahooey, but this one hadn’t been magically locked. As soon as I concentrated on its darkened surface, a light grew inside of it, beckoning to me.
I concentrated on what I wanted to see most, and nothing happened. I’d hoped to have Belle’s face leap into focus inside the glass, but the ball wasn’t attuned to her — and I didn’t have enough control over it to force it to find her — so it came up blank. I’d have to try something else.
Rather than think of a person — which was hard to find because they rarely stayed in one place — I mentally conjured up an image of the Quill instead. This time, the light that glowed inside of the crystal changed to the color of the glowglobes I had hanging all around the bar, and the main room snapped into sharp focus. I spotted Thumper behind the bar, right where he was supposed to be, but the place stood mostly empty.
At this hour, the bar should have been hopping with activity. It would have been on just about any other night. Today, though, most of the chairs remained resting upside down on their tables, indicating that Thumper had never opened the bar up to the public today.
I couldn’t say I blamed him. We’d had a terrible day there, and by the time he would have been thinking about opening up the Quill’s doors for the evening, word should have reached him of the Dragon’s death and at whose hand the Emperor had died. I mentally moved the viewpoint about the room and saw that he’d barred the doors from the inside.
I turned the viewpoint back to the bar area, and I saw Thumper talking to someone. The ball didn’t allow me to listen in on the conversation, but that was probably by design. For one, it was damned hard to create a crystal ball that could not only spy on anyone in the city but listen in on them as well. They were rarer than tombstones around here.
For two, I felt sure that Alcina didn’t want me to be able to set up communications with anyone outside of my cell. It was one thing to let me watch my home city burn. She knew how that would tear me up inside. But if I could hear my friends’ voices, I might have taken some kind of comfort from them, and that was something that Alcina couldn’t tolerate.
Despite that, my heart leaped when I saw that Thumper was talking to a group of people sitting at my table in the bar. They included Moira, Kells, Cindra, Kai, and — best of all — Belle. They looked grim as they discussed topics I could only guess at. They were battered, scratched, and muddy, and some of them had been badly bloodied, but they were there.
And they were alive — at least for now.
They spoke to each other with purpose. Belle seemed angry about something, but I could only guess what it might be. Moira looked as scared as I’d ever seen her. She kept massaging the stump of her wrist and glancing at the thick length of wood that barred the front door, as if it held both promise and peril. Cindra moved her arms with energy and abandon as she spoke, only settling down for a moment when Kells reached out and took her hand in a tender grasp.
Kai looked pissed. I’d known him for years, and I’d often seem him angry about one thing or another. When you’re an orc living in Dragon City, there’s plenty to be mad about. Right then, though, he looked like he wanted to snatch up his shotgun, march down to the Great Circle, and take on every last member of the Guard there, just to prove a point. He seethed with fury that he couldn’t begin to comprehend how to control, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before he gave up trying.
I wondered where the rest of them were. Danto was missing, as were Johan and Schaef. I wasn’t surprised about the dwarf and the halfling. They weren’t part of our original crew, a
fter all, as much help as they’d been over the past couple weeks.
Danto’s absence, though, worried me. I’d expected him to be with the others. Had he been hurt while escaping from the Guard? Had the Dragon killed him without me noticing it? Or was he just busy somewhere else?
I decided to take a peek into his tower, and with a few mental acrobatics, the viewpoint inside the crystal ball shifted to the main room of his place. I didn’t see him there, but I spied his apprentices rushing back and forth, shouting at each other about all sorts of things. I recognized the looks on their faces right away: determined yet scared. They were preparing for a fight, perhaps even war.
Danto had shielded the rest of his tower from prying eyes like mine. Even with as wonderful a specimen of a crystal ball as this, I couldn’t spy any further into his place. After casting around for him on the lower floor for a few minutes, I gave up.
I decided to try the Wizards Council instead, but the Academy had just as many seals protecting it as Danto had placed upon his home, perhaps more. Still, I was able to peer into the main courtyard, where I could see seasoned wizards shouting at green apprentices, ordering all sorts of preparations to be made. The young wizards there — the students — wore the same looks of terrified stubbornness that I’d seen among Danto’s apprentices.
The older wizards, though, all looked plain terrified instead. They knew all too well what they were about to face, and from the pain on their faces, I could tell that few of them believed the city would survive. The best they could do was delay the inevitable, if only for their students’ sakes.
These were only the wizards charged with supervising the apprentices. The wisest of their kind were missing, probably sequestered in the council’s chambers, arguing about what to do. I wondered if my father was among them and if he’d heard that it was me who’d killed the Dragon.
I didn’t know what he might think of that, but I suspected if he’d been able to visit me, he’d have shaken his head and given thanks that my poor mother hadn’t survived long enough to witness this horrible disaster their only child had heaped upon the Gibson family name. That might sound harsh, but he’d done that exact thing the day I’d left the Academy, ignoring the question of whether I’d quit or been expelled, much less the reasons why. That had been the final wedge driven between us: the idea that I was such a rotten son that it was a good thing that my mother was dead.