Bazil Broketail (3 page)

“I’m sure he’s everything you say, Relkin. But it is an invasion of privacy to do things like that. I think you should have asked me, to my face.”

Relkin hung his head; he’d blown his chance, it seemed. And he’d been so sure that this girl would help them. He’d misjudged her, not thinking she would care to be asked her age.

“But I will help you if I can,” she said.

“You will?” His hopes which had lain so obviously in the dust, sprang back to life. How could she say no to him?!

“Of course, I’ll have to get past the scrutineers.” Lagdalen was troubled by that thought. She had never before stolen or smuggled anything, and thus had never suffered the fear of discovery by the scrutineers.

“Ah, yes, but you are a Senior Novice. You can use a dissembling spell and walk past the scrutineers with no fear of detection.”

“I can, but the scrutineers are said to always be attracted to the novice that dares to wear a cloaking spell in their presence.”

Relkin accepted this with a resigned shake of the head.

“Well, yes, indeed this is the reason our benefactor in the chamber won’t smuggle the stamp out for us. He and the other workers in the chamber are always scrutinized very carefully when they leave at the end of the day.”

“Yes, I see.” And Lagdalen did see. Relkin had aided her, it was true, but now he asked her to risk much in order to get him the stamp. What if he were a spy? There was much talk just lately concerning spies who had been sent to infiltrate the city.

The great enemy to the north was putting forth its strength once more. The dread shadow of the Masters of Doom lengthened across the world.

Then she reconsidered. No dragon would serve the evil Masters. The dragon race’s hate for the Masters was undying and universal, the thing that bound them to the people. And if Bazil were not a spy, then how could his dragonboy be one?

Lagdalen shrugged to herself. Paranoia was abroad these days, and it was easy to fall victim to it when spy scares were so common and rumors so strong.

“Anyway, once I’m past the scrutineers, what am I to do?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be watching outside the gates for you.”

“You just walk down the Strand and I’ll contact you when I’m sure it’s safe and you’re not being followed.”

Horrors, what would that do to her reputation, already besmirched through her infatuation with Werri?

“But if they catch you, I will come forward and confess, this I swear to you by all my ancestors.”

She smiled. “But Relkin, you don’t know who your ancestors were. How can you swear by them?”

“Then I swear by my own conscience, which would never let me be should I betray you, Lagdalen.”

“Well, thank you, Relkin. I think that will do. Still, one other thing troubles me.”

“Yes?”

“The nature of this dispute you had with your former employer. What was that about?”

Lagdalen studied him carefully. This was crucial—she knew the killer’s mark would show if it was there.

“We had a contract with the Baron of Borgan. Borgan, if you’ve never heard of it, lies near Ryotwa in the Blue-stone Hills. The baron decided dragons were too expensive, so he bought maroon trolls—terrible things, they breed them out of elk and turtles.”

Lagdalen blanched. “But trolls are forbidden throughout the Argonath.”

“Funny how many there are, though. Baz and me have spent our lives fighting them, mostly down in the Blue-stone country.”

“But why?”

“They’re cheap. They eat slop and they’re easily contented. Give ‘em weak beer and sex with farm animals, and they’re happy.”

Lagdalen was revolted. “That is disgusting!”

Relkin nodded. “I always thought so, myself.”

“So what happened?” she said.

“When?”

“When this baron brought in these trolls.”

Relkin half-closed his eyes and shrugged. “There was trouble.”

“Trouble? What sort of trouble?”

“Well, the maroons get aggressive when they’re drunk and the baron gave them too much beer. Eventually they challenged Baz, and there was a helluva fight and Baz had to kill one of the damned things and broke the legs on the other. The baron wouldn’t pay us after that, and he owed us for six months.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, we thought about robbing him but we didn’t want to be branded outlaw. We just wanted honest soldiering work, that’s what we do best. So we broke our contract and slipped off into the hills and came up here. We heard about the New Legion they’re raising, you see.”

Of course, the New Legion had brought in recruits from far and wide.

Lagdalen stifled her fears. She detected no trace of deceit in his face and she was trained for such work.

“All right, Relkin Orphanboy, I’ll help you. But if you’ve lied to me, I’ll find out and then you’d better watch yourself!”

Lagdalen looked back to the lines of witches. Under the moonlight their hair was long and silver, their faces were etched with harsh lines and their eyes sunk in shadow. She knew that one day she would stand among them and recite the Greatspell. It was an idea with both attractive and frightening qualities. They seemed so grim, so purposeful, so far removed from the life she currently knew. She wondered if she could ever learn such patience and determination, ever be accepted among their ranks.

Close under the North Gate’s looming towers, each sixty meters tall, a fire had been lit. The High Priestess Ewilra led the male choir of the Temple in singing the hymns of the Fundament, and many in the crowd sang along with them while the witches rested briefly, all the preparatory declensions, descriptions and convolutions having been uttered without a mistake.

The final declensions were soon to be said. Herbs were burned carefully upon the altar and the sweet smell of their smoke wafted out to the crowd.

Now the witches gathered themselves for the final utterances, ninety lines of power, forged from dekademonic principle. The crowd’s excitement rose to the climax.

The drums thundered and it began.

The lines came forth quickly and the power of the spell-saying rose until a field of tension hung over the scene like an invisible fog. The voices grew loud, the last lines were virtually shouted, with the crowd shouting along beside in a vast euphoric mass.

The fires flamed up brightly and the drums and cymbals crashed and it was done. The Greatspell was said. For a long still moment there was an absolute silence, not a cough, not a whisper, not even the sound of a bird broke that quiet.

Then the trumpets blared, the people cheered, and the music became loud and general.

Now in solemn march the populace set off behind the witches to pass in and out of each great gate and through the city streets between them. First they entered the North Gate, which was under the control of the spirit Osver.

“To Osver and his health!” they shouted, and broke out flagons of ale to toast the gate warden.

Then they passed into the city and down the broad expanse of Tower Street with the great mass of the Tower of Guard behind them and the graceful Tower of the Watergate ahead.

At the Watergate they toasted Yepero’s health, and since her spirit also guarded the harbor they continued to cry her name as they marched to the west of the city along Dockside and Southside.

Here the marchers were hailed by the sailors on the ships at dock and the merchants and their retainers, leaning out from the balconies of the tall white-fronted buildings that lined the street.

Ships from every port in the Argonath were there, along with the great white ships from the Isles of Cunfshon, and the merchants included representatives of every great trading house on the eastern shore of land.

Eventually they reached the West Gate, where they sang the hymn to Him, the female spirit that guarded this gate.

From there the procession turned and went back across the city on the West Road and Broad Street to the Hinge and the plaza at Afo’s Gate.

And here everything came to a sudden stop.

Cries of horror and rage erupted from the head of the column. The priestesses wailed and wept. The witches broke into declamations and began an immediate purification spell.

Troopers of the King’s Guard came pushing their way through to the gate. They were joined by all the constables in the city. The hue and cry grew by leaps and bounds.

But the evil was done.

Over the center of the gate projected a beam with a lamp on its end. Hanging from the beam by a rope around its neck was the corpse of an older woman, much abused and tormented. Someone had placed it there unseen during the day when the city was virtually empty.

The woman’s body was a horror. She had been most foully used for the casting of an evil spell; something from the book of Fugash, perhaps. Her right hand had been cut off and shoved wrist foremost into her mouth, so that now the dead fingers projected like obscene tongues into the air.

To those with the deep knowledge of the evil art this was called the “Hand of Leotha,” and was a sure sign of necromancy of the malign path.

The left side of her face had been peeled and the flesh gouged away to the bone. The right eye was missing and the left eye glared in death-fixed horror, its lids removed. In three places on her body the flesh was burned and charred where a red hot bar of metal had been thrust through very slowly. Her feet were nailed together.

Such an abomination on the day of the Fundament was a mortal assault upon the Greatspell.

Great Afo, the spirit that protected the gate from an assault from the outside was of course powerless to protect his fane from such an assault. Somehow the human guards had failed in their task.

With such abomination there would have to be lengthy purification spells recited that very night and the Greatspell itself would have to be re-said the next day.

Relkin and Lagdalen were far back in the procession and heard of the horror at the gate long before they could glimpse it over the shoulders of the Guards. As the crowd inched past, now silent, with drooping banners, they saw merely a limp form hanging from the lantern beam above the gate.

To reach this place the culprits would have had to enter the gate building and lean out of the window set directly above the beam.

When a search of the gate was made the body of a young guardsman was found, his throat slashed, tucked behind some chests in a storage room on the ground floor.

Relkin and Lagdalen were borne away past the scene and up Wrights’ Street. Around them people babbled madly and the rumors grew wilder by the minute.

“Who would do this?” said Relkin, stunned by the evil apparition.

“We have great enemies here in Marneri, but we do not mention their name since it only adds to the shadow they seek to cast,” replied Lagdalen.

Relkin knew at once who she meant, and he shivered. Down in the Bluestone Hills they’d had plenty of problems, but never anything directly connected to the Masters of Padmasa, those cold intelligences that sought to rule the entire world.

Since the destruction of their servant Ingbok and the fall of Dugguth, there had been relative peace and security in the coastal provinces of Argonath. The memories of the horror had faded.

“Ginestrubl, we call them,” he muttered. “The undying ones. I am afraid they are more forgotten than remembered now in the Bluestone country.”

“That is one of their names, and they are not forgotten here in Marneri.”

“So they have their agents here, in the heart of Argonath.”

“So it would seem, Relkin Orphanboy.”

“What will happen? What will the king do?”

“They will search the city high and low, they will question everyone, but they will not find the evil person who did this.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because this is just the latest of many outrages. And nobody has been apprehended for any of them.”

“What happened?”

“Similar things to this, but only with animals.”

Relkin shook his head. “The dark magic always requires life.”

“It feeds on life. It destroys life—all life.” They turned onto North Street in silence and went past the narrow houses of the elf quarter. Lagdalen’s thoughts returned to Werri and she blushed. It was awful to admit it, but her father had been terribly, terribly right. Werri never loved her; he was incapable of such emotion. It all seemed frighteningly clear to her now. The elvish folk were the allies of the people, but they were more distant than the dragons in many ways.

Back at Tower Square they separated after agreeing to meet the following morning outside the administrative block of the Tower of Guard. Relkin went on down the hill to the vast hulk of the Dragon House, while Lagdalen turned in at the near gate to the tall brown stone pile of the Novitiate.

The day after Fundament Day dawned grey and cold with a sharp wind from the west. The Marneri witches rose early—the Greatspell would have to be re-said, although now there would be no feasting and dancing on the green to distract them in the saying of it.

The city also arose and went about its business. Trading ships put in at the docks on the inlet. Smithies’ fires flamed in the north ward, looms and spinning wheels hummed along Foluran Hill. But everywhere tongues wagged over the horror witnessed on Fundament night.

Grim faced, the witches went forth to recite the spell, and while they did so the constables, assisted by the priestesses, worked their way through the city sifting for clues.

The city of Marneri was now protected by walls in which the great magic was steadily weakening, hour by hour. This somber thought dispelled the happy atmosphere that normally pervaded the city after Fundament Day. And yet the city was the hub for an entire region; its life and rituals had to continue, despite the sense of outrage and alarm that pervaded the place.

In the red brick Dragon House there was great bustle and commotion, for instance. For this day, the first of winter, marked the beginning of the contests among young dragons and recruits to win places in the New Legion.

In the stalls the dragonboys strapped on the great steel breast plates and helmets. They stropped and burnished dragon blades and shields. Only when everything was perfect would they allow their dragons to take their places in the stalls at the amphitheater. The final contests were begun.