by Ember Lane
Draylane stuffed his mouth too and slurped on his wine with still-full cheeks. I waited until he finished chewing, waiting for my answer.
“The Thief seeks to remake that which has been destroyed. He has the first part—the Stalker Stone—he seeks the next. The Stalker is leading him to it, but there are problems. Others covet the individual stones, rather that the restored one—nine cores are better than one, according to them. Others want the whole thing destroyed, fearing the world will be cracked again.” He cackled a bit. “And then there’s the gnomes. We’re not quite sure what they’re up to, but your Pog’s fate seems inextricably linked to one of them.”
“Crags?”
“Crags Trollhunter? No, not him. Unsurprisingly it is Thadius Hawkwind—inventor of the chaos portal. Well, inventor in the loosest terms—more the gnome who stumbled on the first and then led the whole lot of them through.”
“Thadius Hawkwind,” I repeated, trying to get a grip on the whole thing.
“Yes,” said Draylane, nodding profusely. “You see, we think The Thief is trying to cheat, but for the life of us, we can’t fathom how he knows what he does. How he knows how to cheat.”
I kinda got it, but kinda didn’t. “So you think Pog’s teaming up with this Thadius Hawkwind so that Thadius can open random portals and help him in his quest to find the bits of this master stone.”
Draylane’s flimsy-looking jaw dropped open. “Well, I do now. Are all you players so devious?”
“He’s hunting something and this Thadius invented portals. It isn’t rocket…too much of a stretch.”
Jade sighed. “You’re forgetting two things. First, chaos portals are named just that because there’s no rhyme nor reason why they appear or where they go.”
“There is that,” Draylane acknowledged.
“Secondly, Thadius is currently locked up in the dungeons under The Temple of the One True God and is a guest of The House of Merran.”
“And there’s that.” Draylane squeezed his temples, making a strangled noise like a cat in pain. “It’s coming back,” he said. “Quickly, Alexa, I must tell you this. You must trust us. We couldn’t let you get processed by the city wizards—the purple robes. They would have seen you for what you are—a player—and then they’d have tried to find your origin and checked out your story. All player records are kept at the univer—aaargh!” He began to wobble and shiver. Jade jumped up, pulling him up by his armpits. “No, not yet!” he shouted, but Jade just pulled his feeble body away, and through a door. “You can’t be found because you don’t exist!” Draylane shouted as the door slammed shut.
It was the second time in as many days that I’d been told that. I touched my arm, brushing my fingers along it, feeling its feather-like touch. I certainly did exist. I just wasn’t on some kind of ledger or another. A creak squeaked out, and the door burst open. I expected the girl, Jade, to rush back in, but Sedge filled its frame. He ran in, kneeling before me and reached out, touching my cheek. “You okay?”
“Fed and watered,” I said, trying to hold back the tears of relief that were forming in my eyes.
I heard a door slam, then running feet. “We were followed.” I looked at the doorway and saw Samuel’s panicked face. Jade barged past him.
“Followed? What way did you come back?”
“The usual…” Samuel slapped his forehead.
“Quick,” Jade muttered.
“What is it?” Sedge asked.
“They’re coming for her.” Jade shoved the table out of the way and pushed a pile of books to one side. She lifted up a flap in the floor. “Get in,” she barked.
Sedge and I swapped glances and both scurried to the hole. He jumped in first, then held himself for a second before composing. “You could have told me it was a ladder,” he said and then vanished. I followed, looking down the hole first. Gulping, I swung my legs around and felt for the first rung. “We’ll catch up. Ask for Lazmador!” Jade shouted at me, and I clambered down, the falling hatch barely missing my head.
26
The Featherers
Despite my climbing skill, my legs shook. Like the ladder that fell to the bridge to nowhere, this one dropped at least a hundred feet. Unlike the other, it fell from the ceiling to the rocky floor of a vast cavern, which, from my nervous glances down, held a fair-sized subterranean…city…though city was a bit of a stretch.
“Gotta say,” Sedge Prentice’s voice rang out. “There’s never a dull moment where you’re concerned.”
I’d heard that before…several times.
The cavern looked familiar, though I knew it couldn’t be. It had a remarkably similar rocky wall to that of the Gilden Lode but without the Gilden veins or the luminescent blue river. But it wasn’t just the look of the place, it was its essence; it felt the same. From my chanced glances, the cavern curved around in a large sweep that the ladder angled away from. Behind, a large central core of rock, like a mushroom stalk, provided the other wall. The muddle of dwellings below looked like one of the refugee camps back on Earth, sprawling, irregular and made up of mismatched temporary-looking buildings. We climbed down and down.
A small girl dressed in no more than rags greeted us at the ladder’s bottom.
“Bronze,” she said, and held out her hand.
Sedge gave her a bronze coin. “Can you take us to…” He looked at me.
“Lazmador’s.”
“Silver,” she said.
“What was the bronze for?” Sedge asked, reaching back into his pockets.
“Holding the ladder.”
Sedge shrugged and handed the silver over. The little girl skipped off.
As we made our way through the ramshackle buildings, I began to realize why they looked like makeshift dwellings. They were made of scavenged bits and pieces. Rotted tree trunks, chipped slates, broken bricks, cracked sheets of marble, and crazed terracotta. Basically, anything that had failed to make up one of the buildings up top had been scavenged and used down here, and so yellow was the dominant color. Curiously, the place was reasonably devoid of people—elves, dwarves, or whatever, but the few that did walk past us or poked their heads out of their doors, dismissed us as being of no interest almost immediately.
“It’s daytime up top,” the little girl told us. “All on the day shift are working, all who came off the night shift are sleeping.”
“Sounds like a blast,” Sedge mumbled.
We threaded our way through the chaotic refuge, all the while following the curve of the cavern. Eventually, we came to a relatively clear area where the buildings just stopped, replaced by piles of seemingly random materials. The girl turned toward the central core. Here, a series of wood cabins hung from it, interconnected with lashed ladders. The small girl aimed for the sole one that reached the cavern’s stone floor. “Lazmador,” she said, and pointed up.
We exchanged glances and both shrugged, ambling toward the ladder, where Sedge stepped aside. “It’s you they usually want to see,” he mumbled. I noticed his grin was not so big anymore, more a resigned look. “One thing after another,” I heard him mutter, as he climbed up behind me.
A pair of booted feet and an outstretched hand waited for me at the top. Lazmador was around my age but peculiar. “Alexa Drey, I presume.” He pulled me up.
He looked like a pirate. Long, black hair was tied into a dozen ponytails, each with a colored band at its end, and he had a twizzled moustache curled at its ends. His tan jacket looked like it might have been an army officer’s at one point, and he had knee-length boots with flaps turned down at the front. A brazenly frilly, white shirt burst from his jacket, tucked into gaudy, electric-blue pants.
“How do you know me?”
“Really?” he said, arching one slug-like eyebrow. “I know everything that’s going on in this city. I even sent the purple robes after Sedge just to flush you down here. It is Sedge, isn’t it?” he asked, as he looked around me, then bringing my hand up and inspecting my new rings. His free hand reached
for my face, brushing a fingertip down the five studs on my ear. “Soulbound trinkets are just so hard to steal. Honeyed tea?” He sighed and twirled around.
Sedge was still half on the ladder, so I moved forward to let him in, holding back until he was standing at my side. The room was only about fifteen by twenty, and had two ladders heading away to other, higher huts. A scattering of eclectic furniture gave me the impression this was some kind of meeting place. Lazmador had his back to us, fanning a round slab of stone that radiated heat.
“This is a mana-infused hearthstone. Now, I myself have no magic, so I can only use the basest of magic artifacts—anything under ten mana a minute. I had this stolen from The House of the Jester on Regent Lane.” He turned, two teas in hand. “It lets me entertain guests.” He passed me a mug and then Sedge. “Please, sit.”
Lazmador sat as well, and then pointed to a glowsphere. “We have no light here, either, well, no natural light. I had that stolen from—”
“We get it; you’re a thief,” Sedge muttered.
“A thief, yes, not The Thief—a fine distinction these days.” Lazmador looked right over us. “Jade, Sam, please, come in. Draylane having an…episode?”
I looked behind to see Jade already in the room, and Samuel peeking in.
“You sent the purple robes?” Jade spat.
“Naturally,” Lazmador said without flinching. “How am I going to perform the role of informant if I don’t inform?” Lazmador sighed. “Tea?” He fluttered his eyelids. “Come on now, Jade, tea?”
“Okay,” Jade said, dumping herself down next to me.
“You got away, didn’t you?” Lazmador pressed. “Sam, you’re the clued up one. You know how complex politics is in this town. Tell her, will you?”
Sam coughed. He clearly didn’t want to tell Jade anything. Lazmador passed out two more teas. “So, Alexa, how’s your little mission faring so far?” He smiled a toothy-white smile.
“Not so well,” I muttered.
Lazmador raised his eyebrows. “On the contrary, I think it’s going very well. This morning, you had zero chance of rescuing your friend. Oh I know you place a lot of faith in the Karaktorian princess and the lump of a Valkyrian, but did you seriously think they’d be able to sneak around this city unnoticed? Did you pay no attention to events in Merrivale—that dimwit-filled place that still had at the very least three, and probably many more, spies in it? And then you came here, this festering place of politics and deception, and expected it to be easy to go unnoticed? The spy is not quite the spy you thought, eh?”
I glanced at Sedge, but his expression was curiously neutral, as though he was trying to mask his true feelings. “How am I closer to what I came here for?” I asked.
Lazmador stood. He started to pace up and down the little room. “Because I am a master criminal. Jade’s guild is a guild of three, and the poorest guild housed in the poorest section of Shyantium—one that’s reserved for street vendors and fishermen. They could help you get close to The Thief but not as close as some.” He coughed and glanced around. “The Lowlands Embassy might manage to get you an audience with one of Merran’s closest advisors, but that wouldn’t get you close to The Thief, as Merran’s keeping his dealings with the boy close to his chest, but there are people who have dealings with Merran…” He winked at me. “So…”
“What can you do?”
“Me?” He tapped his lip. “An adjacent room? A nearby stairwell? The roof over his head? How close do you want to be? My guild is called The Featherers, and it is us, not the wizards, who run this place. So yes, you are a lot closer than you think. What do you think my members do?”
I shrugged.
“We clean their floors, sweep their roads, and we water their flowers. We keep their books, run their trades, and feed their children. We are everywhere, and we are nowhere. We are The Featherers.”
Dramatic silence. Lazmador stood, arms outstretched.
“Are we supposed to clap?” Sedge asked.
Lazmador slumped. “A little applause is appreciated.”
“Can you take me to him?” I asked, ignoring his plea.
“Now?” Lazmador pursed his lips. “No, not now.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you got the gist? I play on more than one person’s side, Alexa. I am in the service of The House of Reavers, The House of Merran, those of Drake, or The Forty-Third Sect, and a few others. I spy for Sutech Charm—especially where his daughter is concerned, and I made a deal with The Thief. I just have to make up my mind if I’m going to keep it.”
“Why? Are you going to sell him out?” I spat.
“I just don’t trust him. Got a feeling that the little mite just may have bested me in the negotiations. We’ll see. Either way, in a day we’ll know. So, you have that time to learn what you need to know, freshen up, and get ready for the grand finale.”
“And just what can you teach me that I need to know?”
A familiar laugh rang out, and Cathelina walked down one of the ladders. “The two things you so dearly need,” she said, and stood next to a grinning Lazmador.
“May I present, Cathelina. A more perfect plan could not have been conceived.”
“To do what?” Sedge asked.
Lazmador leaned in. “To get you here, now, right where The Thief wanted you.”
“Eh?”
Cathelina laughed again. “It seems we are all parts of a puzzle that is slowly coming together. At first I thought it random chance—fate steering me, but I think your little friend, Pog, is infinitely more capable than I first realized. You, Alexa, and you, Sedge, plus Star, Mezzerain, and Glenwyth, are all part of his plan. He is relying on you for his escape.”
“So, what do I have to do?”
27
Scoping With Sedge
It was barely twilight, but the stars were already dotting the darkening sky. Jade ran up the side of the building. She’d swapped her robes for boots, tight-fitting black pants, a black, hooded jacket, and her face was bound with a black scarf. They’d given me similar clothes, Sedge Prentice too. We followed, the two-story building was simple fare given our climbing skills, though Jade had spent the last few hours teaching us how to scale it without making a sound. She’d taught us how to find the shadows, how to use them as our own. Sedge had called her a Rogue—some form of gaming compliment, and she’d just laughed. “Wizard first, Rogue second. When you’re part of the weakest guild in a city of rats, you learn not to be seen.”
She folded herself over the eaves, scurrying up the roof’s hip, crawling along its ridge, then vanishing into the moon-cast shadow of the dwelling’s puffing chimney. I followed, mirroring her every footfall, moving as silently as I could.
“Okay,” I whispered. “What am I looking at?”
Sedge fell in beside me, squatting on the ridge, his breaths nearly silent. The city sprawled out in front of us, a flat disc that rose up toward its center like an upturned spinning top, its impressively tall spire in its middle. The tower’s top glowed amber like a great fire was burning inside. It reminded me of the priests I’d bested—the priests of The Combinium—all that time ago in Castle Zybond. At first I shivered at the thought and wondered if the two couldn’t be one and the same, but guessed a tower was a tower, a pyre just a pyre, and dismissed it.
“So that’s…”
“That’s the Temple of the One True God.”
“Called?” Sedge asked.
I assumed Lamerell, or Poleyna, but Jade shrugged. “Not called anything; the place is run by wizards, and wizards can’t make their minds up about the simplest of things. Some houses name the god Lamerell, others Poleyna, or Belved. Some just say that the god has no name. When you can manipulate magic it’s hard to accept a god can compete with you, after all, you can truly move mountains.”
I laughed at that, the phrase so familiar. “Have you met Cronis?”
“The Crimson Mage? No. But I have a battered copy of one of his scripts hidden back at the lod
ging. I read it most nights in the hope some of his brilliance might rub off on me.”
“Cronis?” I said loudly, not meaning to and quickly covering my mouth.
Jade turned. “You’ve met him?”
“Spent a while with him he’s…”
“A legend,” she said, clearly in awe.
“The One True Wizard,” I said. Sedge sniggered.
Jade held my gaze for a moment. “You don’t understand, do you? Cronis’ magic is barred here. His reputation is guttered. Yet those of us who follow his magic, who try to mimic his colors, fail time and again to even understand the basest manipulation. We study what scraps we have, but we are missing so much.”
Guilt flowed through me—slightly more than my usual amount. The things I’d taken for granted in this land, they just seemed to grow and grow and riddle me with remorse because I’d wasted so much of their precious time. “If this all works out, I can show you where he is,” I muttered.
She gasped, but then sagged. “To follow that path would be the end of this one.”
“Well,” I said. “I can’t say too much, but I know the place has an academy, and it’s light on students at the minute, and Cronis does love to teach.”
Okay, I threw that last part in, but her eyes were wide with hope, and Lincoln had told me he needed new blood to fill his city.
“And Samuel and Draylane?”
I nodded. “Heck, the place in question could accommodate Lazmador’s whole tribe.”
Realizing I’d overstepped, I tried to scramble back onto the imaginary ledge I’d just jumped off, but it was too far away. My big mouth and me needed a silence skill.
“Think of it,” she whispered, and shivered though the night was far from cold. After a while, she broke for her melancholy. “Getting back to the city.” Her finger darted out. “ Those lesser pantheons circle the temple to The One True God, then the Eight Universities of the Eight Magics ring those pantheons with each surrounded by a Park of Reflection. Then you have the Mastery Quarters, wedges of buildings devoted to the base subjects of creation. Study is the key in these quarters with the boundaries of mathematics, astrology, astronomy, alchemy and the like being tested daily. The city is just a city after that. The business of servicing those scholars and wizards for coin radiates out from its center. The poorest of the poor near the lakes and the even poorer under the city itself.”