The Sorcerer's Ascension (The Sorcerer's Path)

by Brock Deskins

  “Of course, Peg, I know you have. What is wrong?”

  “Then why’d ya come back and kill me? Look at me, boy. Already your foul curse is on me. Ya killed me, boy. Ya killed me sure as sure. Go on now and let me die in peace.”

  “No, Peg,” Azerick wailed, “I did not want you to die, I did not mean to!”

  “Meaning don’t mean nothin’ when you’re dead. Go on now, I can’t hardly talk no more,” Peg slurred around his swollen, blackened tongue.

  Azerick ran from the store, sprinted down the harbor front past the long piers and moored ships until he saw a ship with someone he recognized shuffling about on the deck.

  “Bran!” Azerick called out as he ran the length of the long dock. “Bran, you have not left yet. I don’t know what is going on. Everyone is acting strange and dying. I think the plague has come to Southport. We need to get out of here.”

  His friend turned toward him, his face already showing the signs of death. “It’s no plague, Az. It’s you, you are the plague. I was too slow. Everyone on the ship is dead already. I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway. Andrea is long dead, killed by your curse when she met you, just like the rest of us.”

  “No! I did not kill her! It is not my fault!”

  “Yes it is. Do you know why she was out the night the slavers took her?”

  Azerick shook his head.

  “Her father put his hands on her again. He did that sometimes when he was really drunk. Just his hands. They fought and she ran off even though she knew it was dangerous.”

  “No, no, no,” Azerick moaned, not wanting to hear it.

  “You could have kept her safe, Az. You knew what it was like for her, but you kept your nice, safe little haven all to yourself. You were safe from the depredations of the city above. You let her die. Your selfishness let her die,” Bran accused him.

  “It is not my fault!” Azerick vehemently denied. “I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died: mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.”

  “Now you begin to see,” Bran told him. “Everyone around you dies. Your family died because you are cursed, and Andrea died because you were a coward, because you were too much of a coward to try to keep her safe. Better to let others take her. That way you would not feel the weight of responsibility. Your conscience could be clear. She would be dead, but you could deny culpability. But you know the truth. You know it was your fault.”

  Azerick barely heard Bran’s last words. His own thoughts were echoing inside his head too loud for him to focus upon his friend. I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died: mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.

  “They all died because I did not keep them safe. I may not have been able to save father, but I should have been there for mother, Jon and the others, and Andrea,” he said, talking to himself as he left Bran behind.

  Azerick awoke in a cold sweat, somehow knowing it was not the nightmare that woke him. Someone was coming. He heard someone open the trapdoor hidden beneath the burned out timbers of the tanner’s shop then a sudden cry and thump of a body hitting the stone. He sprang out of bed, grabbed his knife, and prepared to defend his home. If the gods cursed him, then his enemies would suffer under the spell of his shadow as well. He would make certain of that.

  ***

  Half a dozen men surrounded the trapdoor in the burned out remains of what appeared to have once been a tannery. All six men were slavers and normally would have been hunting the streets for valuable targets on this moonless night. Instead, they had followed Kaleesh, one of their own that claimed he knew where one of the men, or boys as it turned out, lived. The man in charge of the slave ring had put out a very sizable reward for the capture of whoever it was that had cost them a fortune by freeing their last shipment of slaves and making them all look foolish.

  Kaleesh had been with the group that had chased the boy into the squatters’ district before losing him thanks to the help of what many thought was the thieves’ guild. Kaleesh had not gone back to the warehouse, now rendered useless by the infiltrators’ knowledge of its existence. Instead, he stuck around the dilapidated ward hoping to find where the boy had gone to ground.

  Kaleesh was an experienced thief out of Bakhtaran and knew that they had chased the young intruder to his warren like hounds running a fox back to its den. It was as much luck as skill that led him close enough to the hidden entrance to let him spy the street rat sneaking away the next day. The boy was cautious and far from inept, the fact that he was still alive testified to some measure of skill, but he was not a real thief like Kaleesh was.

  The swarthy-skinned, hook-nosed Sumaran knew there was no need to follow the boy throughout the city, although he easily could have without detection. It was simpler to wait for the boy to return, who used far less caution than he should have, and pinpointed the location of the trapdoor for Kaleesh.

  Kaleesh considered ambushing the lad inside his own home, but he could not be certain if there were others living inside. He was confident that the boy was not a member of the local guild despite their apparent interference. Still, entering another’s lair by oneself was unwise, so he decided to let a few of his closest cohorts in on the plan. He would take half the reward and split the remainder between the others. It was still very profitable, much more so than if he had foolishly told the entire company. Telling the boss directly was even more foolish. The thieving bastard would have simply ordered everyone down the hole and not paid out at all.

  “The way in is under here,” Kaleesh told his group. “Raheem, you go first and we’ll follow you down.

  Raheem lowered himself into the dark hole, climbing down the metal rungs of the ladder bolted to the stone wall of the shaft. He had only descended a few steps when the ladder rung suddenly pulled out in his hand. Raheem’s stomach lurched with the terrifying sense of falling. He reached out desperately to grab onto another rung as he plummeted into the darkness, but his weight pulled the slick rung out of his hand.

  The slaver never knew what struck him when he hit the floor below. His entire body convulsed and contorted as waves of agonizing electricity coursed through his body, created by the magical ward Azerick had managed to reproduce.

  Kaleesh heard Raheem’s body strike the ground and was glad that he had decided to let the fellow Sumaran be the first to descend. He never did like Raheem and figured that if the boy trapped his lair, as he himself certainly would have, then let Raheem find the first one.

  “Be careful and watch for more traps,” Kaleesh told the others.

  Jonah went next, followed by Kaleesh and the others. Jonah climbed carefully down the ladder, reaching with his leg when he came to the missing rung. The next step was slick and coated in grease or animal fat.

  Jonah supported most of his weight with his arms until he was able to get his feet firmly on the next rung, avoiding touching the slick rung with his hands. He saw where the missing rung slipped into a slot in the sides of the ladder. It let a person step on it without incident but the moment they leaned back, it slid right out of the slot. The bar itself dangled from a stout cord against the wall just a few inches in front of his face.

  He was only two rungs from reaching the bottom, just three feet above where Raheem laid, when the step moved. The rung only shifted a fraction of an inch, but that was enough to pull the cord that disappeared into a crack in the wall, which pulled the trigger of the crossbow hidden behind it. The slap of the cord striking the spring steel bow heralded the death of Jonah. The former slaver dropped the last few feet, landing atop Raheem with a quarrel protruding from his side just below the armpit.

  Bah, two men dead and they had not even reached the den’s floor! The god’s only know how large the place is. It could cover half the damn city for all he knew. The first flickering doubts began to fill Kaleesh’s mind. Maybe he had better go back and tell the others? No! It was just one street rat, he was certain! The rest of the
m would just have to be more careful.

  “Now the rest of you watch what you’re doing!” the Sumaran hissed up the shaft.

  Kaleesh grabbed the sides of the ladder with his hands and the inside of his feet, slid the rest of the way to the floor, and then motioned the others to follow him the same way. One after another, the other three men slid to the bottom and joined the Sumaran in the gloomy passage, looking warily for signs of any more traps.

  Kaleesh could hear the men’s fear in their breathing as they all stared up the dimly lit passage. A luminous fungus grew on the walls, adding a small amount of bluish light to the dim, yellow light of a low turned oil lamp placed at what appeared to be a four-way intersection perhaps thirty yards ahead.

  “Death awaits all who enter here,” an eerie voice whispered down the passage. “Flee! Run while you can, body thieves, you vile purveyors of flesh, run!”

  Kaleesh’s men looked ready to do just that until he froze them with a glare that promised a knife in the back of the first man to flee.

  “It is just a boy playing tricks with you,” he growled at his men. “I know who you are, boy! I know your face! It is you who had better run if you can!”

  Laughter, more disconcerting than the eerie whispers had been, filled the dank passage. Only Kaleesh’s unspoken threat kept the men behind him from running away and fleeing back up the ladder.

  Azerick watched the first man that attempted to climb down the treacherous ladder strike the ground, landing on the ward he had created. The narrow, secret passage behind the wall hid far more of the traps, ready to unleash their hidden death upon anyone unfortunate enough to find their triggers. When the second slaver triggered the crossbow and dropped atop his associate, Azerick’s fear at the intrusion became anger then a grim sort of amusement.

  When the dark-skinned man threatened him after hearing his spooky warning, he could not help but laugh at the fear the man tried desperately to conceal. His friends were even worse at hiding their emotions than their apparent leader was. He could smell the sweat rolling off their already normally pungent bodies. Fear sweat had an altogether different odor to it than the stale stench of poor hygiene.

  Azerick watched through small holes in the wall revealed by simply pulling out a stone not mortared in place. He saw the swarthy man take the lead and move like a man who knows something about the art of thievery and trap setting. His movements reminded him of the way the guild thieves moved, careful and precise, spotting and avoided the trigger plates that would spell his death.

  It was obvious that this man was too skilled to trip any of the traps that lay hidden along the floor, so Azerick was going to have to take a more direct course of action. When Kaleesh stepped passed another trigger plate, Azerick simply pulled the trigger on the crossbow himself. With a speed and agility that shocked Azerick, the man dropped to the floor as the bolt clattered off the wall just above his head.

  Cursing, Azerick grabbed the handle of a short spear and thrust it through a murder hole in the wall, stabbing the man directly behind Kaleesh low in his side. Azerick drew the spear back and stabbed again as the man cried out in pain but was silenced by the second thrust that pierced his left lung. The other two men behind him shouted out in terror and turned to run despite Kaleesh and his threats.

  Before they could move, Azerick was already tugging on a rope that appeared at the bottom of the wall, ran through a pulley at the bottom and a second one at the top of the wall before disappearing again into the ceiling. The rope pulled the stoppers from two clay jugs filled with lamp oil. The oil poured through the cracks in the ceiling and rained over the two men at the rear of what was left of the raiding party.

  Slipping in the oil, the two men turned and sprinted back toward the metal ladder.

  “Stop, you fools, or he’ll kill you both!” Kaleesh shouted at the fleeing men, but his words fell on deaf ears.

  With their shoes soaked with oil, climbing back up the ladder was proving difficult. Shins banged into the metal rungs as their feet slipped, but fear lent strength to their arms and they managed to pull themselves up. Just below the empty space where the slip-bar dangled, a square hole appeared in front of the lead slaver and an angry pair of hazel-green eyes, lit by the yellow light of a lamp, stared directly into his terrified orbs.

  The eyes vanished as quickly as they had appeared Azerick thrust a flaming brand through the opening in front of him, igniting the intruder’s oil-soaked clothing. The slaver emitted a terribly keening as his garments burst into flames. In his terror, the slaver released his hold on the ladder and fell right onto his partner desperately trying to clamber up the ladder past him, setting his own combustible clothing aflame.

  Both men fell screaming as twin, flailing balls of fire, landing in a writhing, screeching pile upon the corpses of Jonah and Raheem. Kaleesh pressed his hands over his ears in an attempt to block the horrible screams the men made as they flailed about the floor for one or two agonizing minutes before they finally fell still.

  Kaleesh’s nerves were worn to the breaking point. He knew he could not flee. The hell-spawn of a boy would not let him, not alive anyway. His only chance was to find him and kill him first. He focused his thoughts and knew he could do this.

  “Do you think you have won, boy? Those men were all fools, but I am no fool! I am of the Faslum fee Sariq, the most feared group of thieves and assassins in all of Sumara! I will not fall for your tricks! I will find you, and I will gut you. To the abyss with the reward! Delivering your corpse with the skin flayed from your body will be my reward! Do you hear me, boy? I am Kaleesh, and I swear this to you!”

  Kaleesh ignored the deranged laughter that reverberated from behind the wall and echoed through the passageways. He knew where the boy was hiding now, and that would allow him to avoid his tricks and traps. Then he would find him and drag him out of his little cubbyhole.

  So wrapped up in his thoughts of vengeance, Kaleesh almost missed the obvious trigger plate just below his hovering foot. Kaleesh smiled, extended his leg beyond the trap, marveling how those other fools would probably have stepped right on the thing that was so obvious to his dark-trained eyes.

  His world exploded in a brilliant flash of pain as his foot fell through the floor. What had looked to be solid stone was nothing more than fired clay, painted and weathered to look exactly like the stone surrounding it. Kaleesh’s foot dropped through the shattered clay cover and tripped the spring-loaded steel jaws that waited beneath. Steel teeth piercing his soft flesh and grated against the bone, inaudible over his cries of agony.

  The slaver looked through tear-blurred eyes as the boy emerged from the shadows of the passage ahead like a cold and remorseless wraith coming to exact its revenge.

  “Who are you?” Kaleesh shouted past the tears of pain and terror.

  “I am the hand of Sharrellan, and you are caught in my shadow,” the boy said as he scooped up the curved sword Kaleesh had dropped.

  Kaleesh stared in horror as the boy’s shadow, dimly cast by the flickering lamp just ahead, draped itself across his pinioned form. He let out one final scream of terror before the boy drew back the blade and swung it forward with all his might, silencing him for all eternity.

  Azerick stared emotionlessly at the head that rolled to his feet, staring up at him wide-eyed with a look of horror permanently etched upon its face. He tossed the sword aside and began the grisly task of dragging the six corpses to the sewer entrance of his lair, one by one, and tossing them into the filthy water where they would probably find their way into the harbor in a few days. Less if it rained heavily.

  “At least my financial situation has improved,” Azerick said to himself as he stared at the small pile of coins and valuables laid out on the small table in front of him.

  “You want me to be the hand of Sharrellan, the reaper’s shadow?” Azerick shouted at the ceiling and the gods supposedly living far above. “I will be your hand, goddess of death. I will be your hand against everyone that threate
ns me or those close to me! I will send you so many vile, tainted souls you will have to open another circle of hell to keep them all!”

  Outside, high above the city of Southport, the low rumble of thunder echoed across the dark, cloudless sky.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was easier to recreate the ward the slaver had destroyed than it had been that first time, but such protection had thus far proven unnecessary. It had been several months since the failed invasion of his home, and if anyone else knew where he lived, they had apparently decided to leave him be.

  It did not mean that Azerick did not face any struggles. He owed money to the thieves, and his food supply was running short. Azerick scanned the crowd milling about the merchant quarter market. He was looking to pick a mark out of the hubbub that may provide him with the means to buy a meal or two and pay his taxes to the guild.

  There, Azerick thought to himself. A doddering old man in flowing robes. His disarrayed hair, scruffy beard, and mismatched shoes made him appear like a vagabond without two coppers to rub together. Nevertheless, his robes, although a little worn and gave clear evidence of what he had for breakfast, were of a good quality material.

  Azerick liked marks in robes because they were loose, flapped in the wind, and were easy to slip his quick hand and nimble fingers in to pinch a purse. The young sneak thief plotted out his working area once again, now in relation to his target’s location and movement along with his escape routes.

  Aha, the old geezer’s path would take him right by a fruit and vegetable stand. Azerick casually walked through the market square, nonchalantly browsing among the diverse items displayed on the various counters and tables like a casual shopper just perusing the day’s wares.

  Most market sellers kept a keen eye out for thieves and pickpockets and could spot the amateurs of lesser skill and quickly run them off. Azerick knew how to blend in and dress for each job and location. He wore clothes of, if not good quality, at least passably better than your typical street urchin or beggar. He always wore the best he could steal or buy depending upon which option was most available.