Bazil Broketail (49 page)

Before Lagdalen could reply her thoughts were frozen in her mind by the sight of Lessis suddenly waking and raising her head.

“Lady!” she exclaimed, thinking that perhaps she was having an hallucination.

Lessis blinked, looked at Lagdalen and smiled. “So we are not dead yet! I’m glad of that.”

Then Lessis looked at the cat. “Ah, old friend, you are still here in this place of death. Well, I am glad to see you and I know you have come to repay your debt. I’m afraid I must ask you to pay it in full because our peril is great and I am close to death, and though I would accept my death, I may not. The cause we serve still has need of me and thus I must live. You understand, old friend, I am sure.”

The cat was unperturbed. The rats, however, were restless.

Lessis noticed. “I see all of you, and I see that you have done very well for yourselves. There are many more of you than there used to be.”

Relkin felt his skin crawl; the rats milled about. The rats were pleased! There was a feeling of rodent exhilaration rising all around him. Well, there were a hell of a lot of them, that was undeniable. Lessis spoke again.

“But I am getting ahead of myself. I will need a few things. I have lost a lot of blood and there is little time.”

Relkin edged forward.

“What can we do, lady?”

“Ah, Relkin Orphanboy. I should have known you would have survived. Along with my Lagdalen. Well, there are some things I need and I must ask you to go forth and fetch them.”

Relkin jerked his thumb up. “From the city?”

“Yes.”

“I can do that—I already found a way to get there.”

“Of course you would. When I first laid eyes on you, boy, you were stealing something, do you remember?”

He swallowed. “Yes, my lady.”

She smiled. “Now you have to steal again, but you cannot allow yourself to be caught this time.”

Relkin vowed that he would not.

“Good, because you must go to the Magicians’ Gar-den. There are certain mushrooms that only grow there. What I must have is a golden cap; it is a little thing, no more than the size of a button on your shirt. The magicians use it for many things, but it is crucial to what I must do here. I need that, and I need a candle and a means for lighting it.”

“Where will I find the Magicians’ Garden, my lady?”

“Describe to me what you saw on your previous trip.”

Relkin quickly did so.

“Good, then we are close to the forge, and that means we are underneath the vault. You will have to find a window and climb the wall to the first battement. From there you will be able to see the Magicians’ Garden. You will see a blue pagoda that stands at one end of the garden.”

Relkin leapt to his feet.

“Wait,” said Lessis. She coughed, her eyes were unnaturally bright.

“There will be difficulties. At the wall to the garden-listen closely.”

Relkin bent over to hear her words.

The most difficult part was not at the gate to the Magicians’ Garden, as Lessis had predicted, but getting from the interior of the keep, which surrounded the vault of the Doom, onto the exterior wall and back again.

The only way Relkin could find was through a recessed slit window that would allow him to jump across to a place on the outer wall where he could see a group of potentially useful handholds. It was a five-foot gap between the walls. Below the handholds was a sixty-foot drop to certain death.

Relkin decided that getting across to the wall was possible, even relatively easy. What was going to be impossible was getting back without help.

Thus Lagdalen had to be placed at the narrow window with a rope or a belt or something that he could cling to for long enough to allow him to get a leg through and hoist himself back inside.

This meant that Lagdalen had to accompany him on his way back into the labyrinth of passages that honeycombed the vault and also had to remain there, hiding in a storage closet and coming to the window to look for Relkin every fifteen minutes or so.

The recessed window was at the top of a stairway that connected the southern dungeon complex to the midlevel of the keep where the guard force was concentrated. It was a quiet spot at the head of this stairway—apart from an occasional guard, nobody passed this way. Still the risk was extreme and what remained completely unknown was whether Lagdalen would have enough strength in her arms to hold the leather belt while Relkin hung on it and scrambled to get up to the window.

Once he was on the outer wall things grew simpler. Relkin crept along the wall to a gate tower. There he found good handholds and went up and across the wall below the gate tower turret. There was a guard in the turret, but he heard nothing as Relkin skulked silently past just ten feet below.

The outer wall of the keep was covered in rough stone with many handholds; for Relkin it was relatively easy to descend while remaining in the shadow between the wall and the gate tower.

He reached the ground without incident after passing over the roofs of a couple of storehouses that were built very close to the gate itself. He dropped eventually into a dusty little alley that ran down to the broad avenue that led to and from the Gate. The blue pagoda in the Magicians’ Garden was clearly visible, not far away.

He»hurried through the streets of Tummuz Orgmeen. Close to the keep they were not crowded. Further down in the lower valley of the city lay the ancient quarter, and here the crowding was immediately noticeable, but around the keep were the Guard barracks and other structures of the Doom’s rule, along with the magicians’ temple and their garden.

At the garden he thrust himself into a line leading to the entrance. About half the people in the line were boys, some older than himself, some younger. Most were raggedly dressed, a few wore velvets and silk with white hose and purple garters. These youths even wore white wigs and rouge on their cheeks. Such affectations marked them as senior apprentices to important magicians. However, all the boys in line were magicians’ apprentices of one level or another, and none looked twice at Relkin in his scruffy, travel-worn garb.

At the gate each boy was questioned briefly by the guard. Relkin said what he had rehearsed with Lessis, that he was the apprentice to Spurgib, magician of the Fifth Advent. That he was to collect a golden cap mushroom for the good master Spurgib. When asked for Spurgib’s password, Relkin said “Ralta!” and he was waved through after a check in the guard’s code book.

How Lessis knew a password for a magician actually resident in Tummuz Orgmeen was something Relkin could not do more than guess at—truly the Lady in Grey had friends in many strange places.

The garden was a maze of tiny pathways and small plots of ground filled with bright flowers, dingy fungi and numerous esoterica of the plant world.

Relkin saw a pair of wizened old men tending to a group of shrubs with maroon-colored leaves and black stems. Carefully they brushed the leaves with milk and patted down the soil around the stems.

Beyond them a burly fellow in a black suit was harvesting “death’s fruits” from a tall tree with white bark. The fruits resembled tiny skulls and each contained enough poison to kill twenty people.

From another old man Relkin got directions to the patch of golden caps that was being harvested for that day. He joined a short line of apprentices being served by another old man with a protuberant nose.

When his turn came he received a single mushroom and wrapped it in a twist of coarse paper. Then he returned to the street and made his way back to the alley. From there he climbed back over the roofs and onto the outer wall.

He soon reached the top of the wall and stood there for a moment regaining his breath. He was on the point of moving on when a door, not twenty feet away, opened with a crash.

Relkin dove for cover around the side of the gate tower. Two guards strode out onto the wall. They were coming his way. Quickly he slipped back over the wall and climbed down to a buttress where he clung, perched high above the city on the outside of the wall.

His handholds were poor, his feet were barely able to keep some purchase on the slope of the buttress. He couldn’t stay there for long, even if he wasn’t seen from below.

The men came to a halt just above him and remained there while discussing a bonus that had not been paid and for which they were waiting with some anxiety.

Relkin gave up on getting back to the little window where Lagdalen was waiting.

He had to find a way down this buttress, or at least to a lower level where he could find better holds. Carefully he eased himself sideways and then down, groping for toeholds. When he was fifty feet further down, he found a narrow but serviceable ledge that ran along the wall. It marked the spot where the walls had been raised with the advent of the Blunt Doom in Tummuz Orgmeen.

On this ledge he made rapid progress, heading for the next tower set into the wall. He reached it and continued to descend, now protected by shadow from prying eyes below. Soon he was back in the maze of alleys. He began to circle to the far side of the keep, which stood on the eastern margin of the old city of Tummuz Orgmeen. Ahead, looming above the old quarter was the outer wall of the great arena built by the Doom’s slaves for the amusement of the populace.

He passed into the ancient soukh and was soon lost in the dust and noise of the great market. Here was the heart of the city, a place that had been a great city long before the coming of the Doom.

But though Tummuz Orgmeen was a trading city, astride the natural trade route into the Hazog, it was a city that had always been steeped in a cruel reputation. It was a city of old evil, a place where the savage nomad tribes of the great steppe turned to corruption and decadence. Upon these old patterns the Masters had merely imposed the iron rule of their terrible creation.

Around him nomad traders haggled with the city folk over everything from horseflesh to rugs to fruit to metals. The din was tremendous, but to Relkin it was no more distracting than the hum of activity in the cities of the Argonath. Marneri was like this, too.

Then he passed through the slave market and understood at once the great difference between the cities of the Argonath and their enemy. In the Argonath no one was a slave, all were free albeit hampered by economic bonds to city, village and clan. As Relkin understood this he saw anew just why he was here, why he had been caught up in this titanic struggle.

On the auction block an attractive young woman was being disposed of to an audience of wealthy folk. She was stripped naked for them while the auctioneer gestured to her sexual charms with lewd gesture and leering tone of voice. Her face betrayed no feeling whatsoever; it was as if she was carved in stone. She could have been Lagdalen. The thought chilled his heart.

He passed on. There was a group of young Teetol warriors; they still had traces of their face paint. They were chained at the neck, their eyes still blazing with the fury of their forests. Examining them were a group of paunchy contractors in need of fresh hands for moving stone and brick. Relkin pitied the poor braves, torn from their lands and deprived of their freedom, now doomed to a short and brutal life as overworked stone carriers.

Then he saw an elf in a cage like a wild bird. The despair in the elf’s green eyes was so palpable that Relkin’s heart was struck anew with sorrow.

He wrenched his eyes away; there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do here and now about any of it, except to return to the Lady Lessis with the mushroom he carried in his pocket.

He passed a large pen full of old women, worn-out slaves put up for sale to the magicians for their cruel experiments.

A whip cracked, someone screamed in pain.

He went on with his face drawn unnaturally tight, his teeth clenched to prevent him venting the curses that bubbled up in his heart.

There was a corner—he ducked around it, leaned against the stone and stood there breathing slowly until his heart stopped pounding and the sweat on his temples cooled.

An old man with a slaver’s cord in his hand was sidling up to him. Relkin darted away, but not before the old man’s hand caught his arm.

“Well, my pretty, what are you doing here?” he cackled, and his noose was lifting towards Relkin’s head in the next moment. His breath stank and his eyes were merry, and Relkin punched him in the nose and evaded the leather noose with a lunging jerk.

The old man shrieked insults as he held his nose, but he retained a grip like iron on Relkin’s arm at the elbow. The pressure increased and Relkin twisted and struck out again, this time knocking the old man off his feet. Still the grip was retained; the slaver would not let go. In desperation Relkin kicked him and managed at last to pull his dirk. He set the steel to the old man’s throat.

“Release me or die,” he whispered harshly.

The grip on his arm relaxed and Relkin pulled away.

The man let out a yell and started calling for guards. Relkin moved backwards quickly, slipped out of the market and cut through an alley between buildings stuffed with pigs—the smell was very strong—and came out at a shallow ditch. He turned and walked along the ditch with an occasional glance behind him to see if there was any pursuit, but none appeared.

Less than two hundred yards from where Relkin paced, consumed in fear and rage, Captain Hollein Kesepton stood in a dugout inside the great arena and clenched his fists in anger.

In front of him was the flat sand floor of the amphitheater. Above and all around was the vast spread of the crowd, roaring as the combat before them reached its climax.

Only Trooper Jorse was left of the three men that had been thrust out to fight with the champion imps in black armor.

It was three imps to one man. The imps were armed with bullwhips and stabbing swords. Jorse had a clumsy axe, almost too heavy for him to use at all.

The imp whips snapped and cracked around him.

Jorse swung desperately and was pulled off his feet by the momentum of the blow. Bullwhips cracked and he lost control of the axe. The imps kicked and whipped him while the crowd roared in delight.