The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  "So how many ethermancers could he have with him?"

  "He will not be alone. If many of the other ordons have been slain, or fled the city, leaving the priesthood bereft of other leaders, there is no telling how many of the clergy might have rallied to Adaine. In times of uncertainty, people always look to prophets for answers."

  "It sounds like you're saying he could have his own army."

  "It sounds like that because that is what I am saying."

  "Then it sounds like I'm saying you should go in first."

  The blocks surrounding the Exchange had largely been colonized by the city's guilds—wine, textiles, goldsmiths, and so forth—but as Gladdic led the way to the west, the neighborhood soon shifted from the contemporary style of contiguous buildings to houses that were more like little towers, just large enough to house an extended family or two. They had heavy, iron-banded doors, grilled windows, and stout, no-frills designs.

  There were plenty of gardens around each building, with little paths snaking between them and hedges separating one plot from the next. Each block was surrounded by proper roads and most were enclosed by fieldstone walls, though many of these had been disassembled over the years. Supposedly, there was a network of tunnels between many of the tower-houses, which had allowed people to travel between them even when they were under siege.

  These defensive features would have sounded ridiculously paranoid, except that they had been adapted during the Valesian Turmoil, a time when Mallish weakness had coincided with an ascendance of the Western Kingdoms, and Bressel had been under regular siege for a generation or so. In fact, the residents of the Redoubt District, as the area became known, had made a heroic last stand against the Westerners, saving Bressel from total capitulation.

  This had been about three centuries ago—Dante's knowledge of Mallish history was poorer than it should have been, considering the nation was among the largest ongoing threats to Narashtovik—but to this day, most of the current residents of the Redoubt could trace their direct lineage to those same freedom fighters, and were quite proud to do so at the slightest prompting whenever they got drunk.

  Blays gave a subtle nod to the people in the street ahead of them, who were working their gardens with well-maintained hoes, mattocks, and pitchforks. They had the distinct posture of people pretending so hard that they weren't looking at something that it was immediately obvious that they were.

  "A little livelier over here, isn't it?" he said. "People still going on with their lives and such."

  Dante grunted. "I wouldn't call that a good thing."

  "What? Not looking forward to all the witnesses you're going to have to clean up?"

  "Why aren't they afraid to be out on the street when the rest of the city is hiding out like they just kissed their older brother's sweetheart?"

  "Because they believe that someone is protecting them," Gladdic said. "Let us hope it is not the same people we are looking to find."

  They carried onward, slowing a little to defray suspicion. The Redoubters continued to watch them from the corners of their eyes, but nobody was dashing off to inform on them. Then again, if the locals were using the tunnels to get about, Dante would never know about it.

  As they neared the center of the district, they crossed a small moat that smelled of silt and pollywogs. Ahead, a group of taller and prouder towers stood against the sky. Many had cords running between them for the passing of messages, goods, or even people, giving the structures the look of an old fence that all the pickets had fallen out of, leaving only the thick posts and the cobwebs strung between them.

  As soon as they walked into the shadow of these larger buildings, Gladdic grimaced, slapping at his own forehead.

  "Either he's stroking out, or I'd say he's found it," Blays said.

  "That tower there." Gladdic inclined his head toward a white spire. "Adaine is inside."

  "Or at least his shoes are."

  They withdrew half a block, putting a few of the tower-houses between themselves and the building. Dante sent one of his dead beetles high into the sky over the tower and a second bumbling slowly past its windows. Neither one seemed to draw any ethereal probes, so he sent them circling closer.

  "Gladdic," he said, "do your former colleagues know I can do this?"

  Gladdic lifted a white brow. "Do they know that you can reanimate the dead as your playthings? Yes. It's one of the reasons they hate you."

  Dante uttered a wordless sound of dismay. "Well, we can't go in blind. We're not even sure they're here. I have to risk it."

  He sent the beetles closer yet, mind embedded in the nether that tethered them to him. He didn't feel the slightest twinge of ether as he landed them on the tower's window sills, one on the ground floor, the other near the top. The insects folded their wings and scuttled through the windows, which were unshuttered on account of the warm summer day.

  The beetle on the top floor nearly walked straight into a sentry gazing through the window who was set back just enough so his figure wouldn't show to anyone watching from below. The room held four men in all, each keeping watch on the city.

  "I'd say we've found the loyalists," Dante said. "Now let's see if I can find their captives."

  Sentries held the reinforced door on the ground floor as well. The rest of it was kitchens, where servants cut up fruits and vegetables harvested from the garden while another plucked a chicken in an adjoining room hardly big enough to do the work.

  Dante sent the beetle at the top downward and the one at the bottom upward. The second floor was sleeping quarters, currently empty, and a barracks of bored soldiers. The penultimate floor was as quiet as a monastery, which was exactly what it seemed to be: monks sat at wide, tilted desks, studying manuscripts, turning away to make the occasional note. Heart beating harder, Dante stilled the beetle, withdrawing from it until his sight tunneled. No one seemed to notice its presence.

  The second beetle ascended to more luxurious living quarters. The floor above that had been converted into a chapel, with stations of prayer for all twelve gods of the Mallish Celeset. A single man was there now, his face long, handsome, and haunted. He wasn't much older than Dante and ether climbed up and down his fingers in intricate patterns, as if they were trying to craft runes or to spell words.

  Then came another room full of monks at work. Above it, however, he finally found the prison.

  Dante partially withdrew. "Third floor from the top. They're being held in separate rooms. Both locked up in chains. Which wouldn't be a problem, at least not for Sorrowen, except that they're both being watched over by a pair of priests. And that there are another dozen priests on the floor above them. Oh right, and another dozen on the floor below them."

  "It's been a while since I learned my figures," Blays said. "But thirty seems like a lot more than three."

  "That isn't even counting the soldiers. This is a bad situation. It might be better to wait for them to move Raxa and Sorrowen somewhere else."

  "Better hope the place they're moving them to isn't a graveyard."

  "If it's crazy for us to go in by ourselves, we can solve this problem by not going in by ourselves. We go back to the Drakebane, come back with an army, and storm the tower."

  "So we unite the city behind us by declaring war on half of it. Remind me how you were allowed to be put in charge of Narashtovik?"

  "By murdering half its Council," Gladdic said.

  "I didn't kill them," Dante muttered. "Not most of them."

  "Blays is correct. It is self-evident that if we launch a frontal assault on the Golden Hammer, we will forfeit all hope of swaying them to our side. And we will alienate much of the mob as well."

  "So what does that leave? Sneaking in and smuggling the two of them out? How do we do that when the entire tower's filled with ethermancers?"

  "Allow me to propose an insane idea," Blays said. "We go up and talk to them. I know it's not as fun as chopping people up, but I've heard it sometimes works."

  "This f
orfeits us all advantage of surprise," Gladdic said. "More, for negotiations to work, there must be something we can give them in exchange. What have we to offer?"

  "We could offer to not blow their tower into rubble. Or we could just kidnap some of them and set up a prisoner exchange."

  "A more cunning solution. But if anything goes wrong, it's likely to lead to war."

  "Yes, that tends to happen when you invade another nation's capital and assassinate its king."

  "We are operating on the assumption that we must take this chance despite the likelihood it will set back the pursuit of our objective," Gladdic said. "But the two assets held captive are just that—assets. There is a point at which they must be considered spent."

  Dante felt his face darken. "I told you, we're going after them. They're our people."

  "This is so. Yet what kind of people are they? Brilliant generals, perhaps? Charismatic leaders? Indefatigable warriors? No. One is an acolyte and the other is an outlaw who terrorized Narashtovik. I have heard you are a skilled player of the norren game of Nulladoon?"

  "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "If you have won a single game, you must have learned that the role of the skirmishers is to be sacrificed to protect the sorcerers and heroes."

  Dante might have objected that Nulladoon was just a game, but that fact only seemed to make Gladdic's argument stronger: if you lost a game of Nulladoon, the only consequence was that you then owed the winner a favor. Yet if sentimentality caused him to lose the chance for a united Bressel, countless lives would be lost to the White Lich.

  He lowered his eyes to the dirt, then jerked up his head. Three sparks of the Golden Stream fizzled away from him. "You know what else is key to winning Nulladoon? A skillful use of the terrain. Do you know the history of this place?"

  "Bressel?" Blays said. "Well, for a long time, nothing about it was very good. Then I was born here, and a brief golden age ensued until the day I left, after which everyone was sad all the time."

  "I'm talking about this neighborhood. The Redoubt."

  "It has been famous ever since the Valesian Turmoil," Gladdic said. "The city would have been lost without it. Perhaps the entire kingdom."

  "Do you remember how the people held out even when the Valesians besieged them?"

  Gladdic pursed his mouth in annoyance, as if insulted by the basicness of the question, then smirked. "You mean to use the tunnels."

  "It would be a shame to let a good tunnel go to waste."

  He closed his eyes. Shadows swam toward his hands. He sank them into the dirt, making a slow zigzag toward the white tower housing the small army of ethermancers. He came upon a hole in the ground, following it onward. At first, the walls were bare dirt, partially collapsed in places, but they were soon lined with bricks. He traced the passage to the base of the tower.

  "The tunnels are still there," he said. "At some point in history, someone piled up a plug in the one leading to the tower, but I can clear it out in a matter of seconds."

  "That covers getting inside the tower and getting away from it." Blays made a twirling gesture. "Now what about the part where we have to sneak past a score of sorcerers?"

  "Well," Dante said. "You see."

  "And what about the guys they have watching Sorrowen and Raxa at every second of the day?"

  "We'll…distract them."

  "With what? The volume of our blood after they rip us to pieces?"

  "With anything. It doesn't matter what."

  "Except that it can't be sorcery, or they'll know they're being attacked by sorcerers. Which is the same reason you can't use sorcery to sneak past them, since they'll feel what you're doing, and then you won't be doing any sneaking anymore, will you?"

  "Then we won't use nether. Although maybe we can get away with ether." Dante swung his head toward Gladdic. "Does the priesthood know we've been working together?"

  Gladdic thought for a moment. "Prior to the unexpected turns of events in Tanar Atain, we were waging war against each other for a year. I expect it is still widely believed that we are mortal enemies."

  "So they think you're still on their side?"

  "They would have no reason to think otherwise."

  "Then we'll use the tunnels to get inside the tower. Once we're in, we head straight up to where Sorrowen and Raxa are being held. Gladdic, you tell the priests watching them that you're there for the prisoners. Then we walk right out through the tunnels."

  "Surely the priests will inquire with Adaine before allowing the prisoners to be taken from them."

  "Then we create an emergency. As we're going in, I'll knock down a nearby building. Then you tell the guards they're needed outside immediately."

  "Because the horrid Dante Galand is attacking the city," Blays said. "And he has to be put down like the ravening dog that he is."

  "This could work," Gladdic reflected. "Yet it still does not strike me as a wonderful idea."

  Dante tightened his mouth. "If you hadn't noticed, that tends to be how we do business."

  "If the two of you are coming inside with me, you should be dressed as priests as well. I know a chapel nearby. It should have the proper vestments."

  "Go grab them while I open the tunnel. We'll meet back here in a few minutes."

  Gladdic nodded, took a look down the street, and headed away with long strides. Dante closed his eyes and moved back into the earth. The tunnel leading to the white tower was connected to another tower nearby. There, a bit of smoke was rising from one of its chimneys, strongly implying it was currently in use.

  Working on the assumption that breaking into somebody else's home was counterproductive to the goal of subterfuge, Dante headed down a winding path between the two towers until he came to a hedge a few feet to the right of the tunnel hidden below. He reopened his small cut, which had scabbed over, and moved into the earth. Dirt loosened and flowed away, excavating a tight tunnel slanting down to the main one below.

  He climbed inside, then widened the access tunnel a little more in case they wound up needing to exit it in a hurry. He whistled to Blays. Once he'd climbed down through the rich, fresh-dirt-smelling extension, he got out his torchstone and blew on it, illuminating the three hundred-year-old tunnel.

  "Smells like old," Blays said.

  "We're lucky that's all it smells like. I'm surprised they haven't filled these with trash. Or worse."

  Dante headed toward the white tower, which was perhaps fifty yards ahead. A few rats skittered away through damp leaves and other piles of stuff too old and decayed to tell what it was or even to have much of a scent. Beetles stopped to stare at them, antennae twitching.

  Messages had been scratched into the brick walls long ago, but most were utterly cryptic: numbers, times, a handful of words. Once upon a time, these messages between the defenders might have been responsible for saving the city, but the meaning within them had been lost long ago.

  He came to the plug spanning the tunnel. He stopped to sense for any trace of sorcery in the air, then used the shadows to bore a man-sized hole through the plug, which was a simple matter, as it was nothing more than dirt and rocks packed tight by time.

  The way to the white tower was now clear, but they backed up and returned to the surface, which was painfully bright after the dimness of the underground.

  There was now the matter of setting up the "emergency" to justify them taking custody of the prisoners. They began a brisk walk around the neighborhood and were still in bowshot of the white tower when they located a crumbling tower with sagging shutters and its front door ripped off. Dante sent his beetles flying through the interior.

  Satisfied that it was abandoned, he moved his mind into the ground beneath the foundation. He opened up several pits there, round spaces with thin bottlenecks leading upward under the building. Dirt began to trickle into the pits like sand into an hourglass.

  Dante dusted off his hands. "All set."

  Blays squinted. "Isn't it supposed to collapse?"
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  "It will in a few minutes. Probably."

  "Ah, then we'll 'probably' not get caught as infiltrators and then executed in town square."

  "I can read earth, and this is going to collapse soon. If you don't believe me, you're welcome to wait in one of the pits I just dug beneath the building. I'm sure it'll be much safer there than trying to sneak into the tower."

  They headed back to the spot of the meet. Gladdic returned within another five minutes. They waited to get back in the tunnel before donning the gray robes the priest had brought back for them.

  Blays twisted his neck, frowning down at the shapeless garment. "Do you guys really think the gods feel flattered to be worshipped by people who dress like twenty pounds of potatoes?"

  "You should be glad we wear robes," Gladdic said. "It is said that the early priests worshipped naked, so that nothing might stand between them and the gods."

  They headed down the tunnel. Dante's every instinct was to hold the nether close, but he kept it at bay, where none of the monks and priests in the tower might sense it. He was grateful that his boots were oiled and watertight against the things squelching beneath them.

  The tunnel began to slant upwards. It leveled out into a room so squat it induced Gladdic and Blays to stoop their backs. The walls were piled with moldy chests and rotten sacks. A hatch was set into the ceiling. Dante tried and failed to push it open. Blays gave him a disdainful look, braced his palms against it, and pushed up with his legs. Dante would have sworn it was nailed shut, but it opened with a hard squeak.

  Blays pulled himself up, then reached down for Gladdic. Dante followed them up into a dim storage room. He found a candle, lit it, and blew out his torchstone. He hadn't explored the whole tower and was afraid they'd have to wander around like idiots, but he recognized the hallway the storage room opened to, and pointed Gladdic to the stairwell.

  People were clinking about in the kitchens down the hall, but Gladdic threw back his shoulders and stiffened his neck, donning the mantle of the Ordon of Bressel, amongst the highest religious authorities in the nation, and stepped up the stairwell. Dante kept behind him, head bowed within his hood.