Seeing his livelihood suddenly rolling away, the merchant dropped his belts and ran after the cart shouting for help. Azerick also ran after the cart shouting for all he was worth to get people to notice the runaway cart so they could get out of the way. He feared that the errant cart would strike a pedestrian, but he had chanced it anyway. He would never get another chance like this and he meant to make the most of it.
As luck would have it, the people were rather alert today and quickly dove away from the rampaging, leather-laden cart. Azerick was surprised at the force with which the cart slammed into the jewelry maker’s stand. The runaway cart knocked over tables, sent wood and glass display cases crashing to the ground, and scattered jewelry and leather items everywhere.
Azerick raced ahead of the leather merchant and was the first one to reach the cart and overturned jewelry stand. Before the Jewelry seller could recover from the shock, Azerick scooped up several pieces of shining loot, along with several pieces of broken glass which sliced into his fingers, and shoved them into his pockets. He made a second grab at a few more pieces and then made a dash out of the square before anyone realized what he was truly up too.
Azerick ran for several blocks, ducking in and out of alleyways and side streets to put as much distance between him and the accident scene. He decided to duck down one more alley then take a rest before he made his way back to the others. He turned into the alleyway and ran into a large youth about three or four years older than himself and twice as big.
Both boys went sprawling from the impact, and a few pieces of stolen jewelry went ringing onto the cobblestones. Azerick looked up from where he lay on his back and saw two other boys already helping the larger boy back up. The other two youths were perhaps a year or two older than Azerick, but they were not nearly as large as their friend was. All three glared at Azerick as he got his feet back under him.
“Hey, Hugo, this little squirt just knocked you down!” said a lean, red-haired boy.
“No kidding, Carrot? Gee, I hadn’t noticed,” Hugo said and clapped Carrot on the back of his bright orange head.
“Hey, look at what he dropped,” exclaimed Rolly, the other boy, as he reached down and started picking up the dropped bits of jewelry.
“That’s mine, give it back!”
“What else you got, worm?” Hugo demanded as he advanced on Azerick.
“Nothing, now give me back my stuff.”
“Hand over everything you got, or you’re gonna get pounded real good,” Hugo threatened, smacking his fist into a meaty palm.
“Yeah, hand it over, chump, or we’ll pound you real good,” Carrot parroted.
Before Azerick could respond, the three boys lunged at him and tackled him to the ground. Azerick rolled with the hits and quickly sprang back to his feet. He launched a quick right jab into Carrot’s nose and landed a solid kick into Hugo’s stomach. Hugo’s mass trapped Rolly beneath it as the larger boy went sprawling back onto the ground.
Azerick ran down the alley as fast as his feet would take him with the three young thugs in pursuit. He ran down alleys, through buildings, and even across the rooftops at one point, but he was unable to shake his pursuers.
Azerick was not familiar with this part of the city, but it soon became apparent that his assailants were. They seemed to anticipate his moves and often were able to cut off his retreat, forcing him down differing alleyways. It occurred to him that the thugs were herding him like a sheep, but he did not know to where. The answer was soon revealed when he found himself at the end of a dead-end alley.
“He’s trapped in the alley,” Azerick heard one the boys call out.
Azerick looked around quickly, but the few doors that emptied into the alley were solid and locked. The cornered street rat searched desperately for another way out. The three thugs ran into the now empty alley and looked around in bewilderment.
“Where’d he go?” asked Carrot?
Hugo looked up then down before pointing to a sewer grate.
“There, he went into the sewer. Let’s get him,” Hugo said as he made for the portal.
“Are you sure you wanna go down there?” Rolly asked, “We already got what he dropped. Maybe that was all of it.”
“No, he’s got more or he wouldn’t have run I know it. Now let’s go.”
The three followed Azerick down into the sewers, which reeked as bad as only a sewer could, and looked around in the darkness.
“It’s really dark down here. Carrot, climb back up and find something to make a few torches,” Hugo ordered.
Carrot came back a few minutes later with several planks of dry wood, some discarded burlap, and strips of canvas. Hugo took the strips of material and wrapped it around the pieces of wood before lighting them with his tinderbox. The torches gave off a weak, flickering light since they had no pitch or oil on them, but they worked well enough for their purposes.
“All right, come on. He couldn’t have gotten far without any light,” Hugo insisted.
Rats scattered at the light of the flickering torches and noise of the three young men as they traversed their way through the muck. Meanwhile, Azerick made his own way down the pitch-black sewers, running a hand along the slime coated walls and feeling his way along. He kept track of each turn he made and how far each run was between any turns in order to memorize his route.
The concern of getting lost was prevalent in his mind. Azerick ran his hands along the wall and discovered he had reached a dead end. He turned around to make his way back the way he came when he heard voices and saw a flickering of light.
He walked to the very back of the tunnel hoping that they would not come down the passage he now occupied, but he had no such luck. He could just make out the trio of goons at the open end of the corridor he was in, and they were coming closer.
Azerick began to feel blindly along the walls hoping to find a ladder rung and climb out. He was having no such luck and he glanced over and saw that the three thugs were getting closer. He was just about ready to set himself to fight when his hand touched a stone that gave a little. He pulled on the stone hoping that at least he could pry it out of the wall, throw it behind the boys, distract them, and maybe send them along a different route.
Azerick pulled the stone out, but he couldn’t pull it away from the wall. He realized that it was attached somehow, so he gave it a twist hoping to break it free from whatever held it. He twisted the stone but instead of breaking off, it rotated in his hand and he heard a slight scraping noise and felt a slight breeze on his face. He twisted the stone some more and a very faint light shone through a now revealed doorway. Azerick pushed the stone back into place, and without even pondering his good luck, dashed through the doorway and found an iron wheel on the other side of the door. He turned the wheel and the door slowly swung shut and closed with a light click.
A faint, yellowish-green light glowed from some sort of lichen growing on the damp stone walls. He made a small slash with his finger through the glowing substance. A dark line was now visible on the wall and his fingertip now had a slight glow. The light was very dim and did nothing to illuminate the passage. Still, it was better than the blackness of the sewer. Azerick carefully made his way along the narrow corridor, following the wall since he could barely see his own feet.
He had crept forward only a dozen feet or so when he felt a small section of the floor shift under his foot with an audible click and grating of rusting metal. Pure instinct drove him to the ground as a snapping sound preceded a clash against the wall just a couple feet over his prone form. He felt something light but solid ricochet off the wall and drop onto his back.
He reached back with his hand, plucked the object off his back, and sat up. The object was a rusty crossbow bolt with a shaft made of solid iron. Wherever he was, it was set to dissuade visitors with lethal intent.
There was no way he could continue without risking being killed by one of these traps. He needed light but he had none, nor anything with which to make it. He
supposed that he could wait out the three thugs and go back into the sewer, but he was unsure if he could find his way out from there. There was also the possibility that they could also find the secret door and then they would have him trapped.
Azerick knew he needed to proceed and hopefully find a way out. He looked at the glowing substance on his hand wondering if there was some way he could use it. He did not see how. Even if he scooped up a handful of the stuff it would not produce enough light to see by.
Use it.
Azerick’s body tensed at the unexpected command. “Who’s there?”
Use it.
It was then that Azerick realized the voice was not coming from within the passageway but inside his own head. He did not recognize the voice as he replayed it in his head. At first, he feared that it was the same voice from his dreams—Sharrellan, Goddess of Death. But this voice was different. It was neither male nor female and it held no malice.
“I don’t know how. How can I use it?”
Look and you will see.
Azerick looked at the lichen. He had been looking at the lichen for several minutes. What did it mean? He held it closer to his face and looked harder. On instinct, he stopped looking at the glowing substance and looked beyond it.
Beyond the visible illumination, Azerick spied silvery threads no thicker than a spider’s web and the feeling of power lying somewhere unseen. If he could feed some of that power into the lichen, maybe he could get it to glow brighter. But how? Azerick kept his eyes unfocused and tried to grab one of the silver threads, but his fingers passed harmlessly though it. On a purely instinctual level, he willed the thread with his mind and watched as it began twisting and writhing like a tendril of smoke in a faint breeze.
He grabbed more of the threads with his mind and gently attached them to the glowing moss. As more of threads found purchase within the azure aura, the lichen began to glow brighter. It was mentally taxing and several times Azerick lost focus and was forced to start over. Azerick had no idea how much time had passed since he began, but all thoughts of Hugo and his lackeys had vanished, and his stomach began rumbling.
His hand now glowed in a bluish light with the intensity if a candle. He could see for several yards down what appeared to be a rather long passageway. Once he overcame his amazement at what he had done, Azerick continued his exploration on his hands and knees, carefully crawling along the floor, looking and feeling for any more triggers.
Azerick found three more trapped floor plates by the time he reached the first intersection. Each time he located a trapped floor stone, he wiped a bit of glowing lichen onto it to mark its location. He did not know how long the lichen would continue to glow after it was scraped from the wall, but he hoped it was long enough for him avoid the booby traps when he made his way back out. He came across more than one sprung trap where either time or an intruder had snapped the trip wire. He guessed it was likely the former as he saw no skeletons or traces of anyone injured.
In the few hours he explored this place, he was able to find three side rooms, a main chamber that was about thirty feet long on each side, and two cleverly hidden doors that led to a narrow corridor that held the crossbow traps that fired into the hallways.
Unlike the crossbows, some of the traps were powered by a powerful, tempered-steel spring and were still active. Coated in a tar and grease, the springs kept them functional long after the wood and sinew parts of the others rotted away. It was these that had tried to skewer the young explorer.
Azerick had no way of knowing how long the place had been abandoned much less how long it had been here, but he knew it had been a long time. Years at least, probably stretching back several decades given the amount of dust and the condition of some of the more degraded items he found.
The entire subterranean complex was mostly empty. Only a few tattered and rotted wall hangings, carpets, and empty wooden crates littered some of the rooms. He was certain there were more rooms but figured it was time to go back to the family, tell him what he had found, and show them the loot he had stolen.
Azerick left the hidden complex using a trap door he located at the end of one of the halls instead of leaving by way of the sewer entrance. The trap door was bolted from the inside and he was able to work it free and slowly lifted the door up just enough to peer out.
Azerick could see nothing but darkness all around his point of view. He made out the shadow of a wall just a few feet to his left and was just barely able to make out a distant wall about forty feet ahead of him. Azerick lifted the door completely and quietly climbed out of the hole. He was now standing in the distant corner of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse.
He wiped the glowing lichen off his hand using a discarded piece of cloth. Azerick was not ready to try and explain why his hand was glowing. He then found an opening where a door once stood and carefully ducked outside and into the night. Thankfully, the abandoned warehouse was located in the squatters’ district where he and the others made their home so it would not be much of a walk.
As he worked his way home, he noticed was the smell of smoke and an orange glow from further within the district. His stomach clenched and heaved in horror as he ran toward the orange glow, which looked very close to where his home was.
The anxious lad pumped his legs as hard as they would go, fear pushing him to run on as fast as his feet would carry him. Azerick was about four blocks from where his home was when he saw the first licks of flame. A few seconds later, he realized that his worst fears were born out.
His home was on fire along with a couple of nearby buildings. Dozens of people formed a bucket brigade and threw pail after pail of water onto the fire. Men and women passed the empty buckets back along a second line and immediately refilled them with water from a horse-drawn cart that had a massive water-filled cistern strapped to its bed.
Nearby buildings were being torn down by another team of horses to help prevent the spread of fire to the other nearby structures. Azerick looked through tear-blurred eyes at all the people hauling buckets, tearing down adjoining structures, and at those just watching the spectacle and waiting perhaps to relieve someone on the bucket brigade. But he could not see a single face he knew.
Of his foster family, there was no sign, but he did recognized one face in the crowd. It was the hard, evil-looking man. The same man he had seen threatening Jon a few weeks ago. He tried to creep closer but as he did, the man turned, walked away, and disappeared beyond the crowd and into the night.
The fires were put out by early dawn, but nothing could extinguish the anguish in Azerick’s heart. People began to walk home, all exhausted from their night’s toils and muttering about the “damn squatters” starting fires.
Azerick continued to look at the smoldering ruins after everyone had gone their own way. He heard one of the guards say that the constable would be out later in the day to inspect the area for the cause of the blaze.
Once everyone had left and the ruins had cooled down, Azerick began to walk amongst the remnants of his former home. Another home and another family lost. Why was he cursed like this? What had he done to warrant such continued loss and pain?
He saw an object in the burned out rubble and walked over to inspect it. It was a doll scorched nearly beyond recognition. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw the bones, also burned beyond recognition. Azerick shifted a large plank of wood and saw discovered more bones beneath. Intertwined with each other, he could tell were two sets of grisly remains. One set much smaller than the other. Azerick was certain that the remains belonged to Maggy and little Beth. He fell to knees and began to sob once again at the sorrow that filled his soul and threatened to tear him apart.
The heartbroken boy knelt there in the ashes and soot of the burned out building, holding the doll for what seemed an eternity. The sun was nearly overhead before he picked himself up and wiped a soot-stained hand across his tearing eyes, creating a black smear across his face. He walked to a large section of wall that had b
urned and fallen but not broken up. Like a lean-to, it was propped up against another structure that had somehow survived the blaze.
Azerick crawled beneath the wall and saw that it was leaning against the stone room where he had slept. The door was shut tight and, for just a moment, a flicker of hope touched him that made him think that perhaps not all was lost.
He grabbed the iron handle and quickly pulled his hand back due to the heat that remained in the metal. He inspected his hand, but the metal had not burned him badly. Azerick pulled the sleeve of his shirt over his hand and grasped the handle again. He could still feel the heat through the sleeve, but he was able to withstand it enough to turn the handle and pull open the solid door.
Azerick stepped inside the stone-walled room and looked around. The wooden shelves showed signs of scorching but were intact. He spied his bag toward the back in the center of the room. It too was intact with only a few signs of burnt fabric around the frayed seams at the top of the bag. He opened it up and pulled out his books, carefully inspecting each one and placing them reverently back into the bag. His clothes and books smelled strongly of smoke and probably would continue to do so for a long time, but they were otherwise unharmed. At least one god took pity on orphans it seemed.
Azerick hefted his bag onto his shoulders and stepped out of the ruined building. Before he left for good, he turned, bowed his head, and said a prayer for the second family he had lost.
As he stared at the ground, Azerick spied another object lying in ashes where the front door had been. He bent down and scooped the object up with his free hand. It was a large iron spike. Azerick thought this an odd thing for he had not seen any around the home before. He looked at the still standing doorframe and saw uniformly shaped indentations in the charred wood. He walked back to where another door to the outside had once stood and sifted through the ashes until he found more identical iron spikes.
The Sorcerer's Ascension (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 10