Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (43 page)

Brannis could not help noticing that they largely
dropped the gutter slang when addressing him.

“You stand relieved. Go get some sleep,” Brannis
ordered.

Neither man budged.

“Warlock Rashan’s orders, sir,” Tod told him.

“He does not want folks poking about at night until it
settles down a bit,” Jodoul said. “Come morning, I am sure you can get him to
let you have a look.”

Brannis felt himself growing exasperated. “Listen,
boys, I have no time to explain properly, but I need to get into that library.
I do not have time to wait until morning. Go have yourselves a good night’s
rest. I will make sure no one
else
gets in.”

Brannis tried to sound calm and reasonable, but his
sword hand was across his body, resting on the hilt of Avalanche. The point was
not missed by either of the two guards. For all their other shortcomings, Tod
and Jodoul were survivors. They had heard of the incident at army headquarters,
where Brannis had driven that same sword an arm’s length deep into the stone
floor.

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

Neither of them saluted as they stepped aside and let
Brannis pass. As Brannis opened the—thankfully not warded—door, they made their
retreat down the corridor. Brannis shut the door behind him. The room was well
lit, with light just sufficient for comfortable reading anywhere in the room,
and no more.

Brannis picked a row of shelves at random and started
browsing titles:
Aether Theory for Plants. A Decomposition of Fire Magics.
The Sorcerer’s Travel Companion. Ward Maintenance. Care and Nurturing of
Familiars for Increased Aether Generation. Maximizing Spell Effects with
Minimal Aether. Guide to Silent Casting: A Novel Approach. Magics of Stone and
Earth.

Brannis nodded to himself.
All right, that one
sounds promising. Kyrus is in a cell of stone blocks.

He pulled the volume off the shelf and examined it. It
did not look especially old, but he suspected that extraordinary measures were
likely used to keep old books intact over the course of centuries. He flipped
through it and found that it was written in rune language, which he was fully
capable of reading, and it was even illustrated with diagrams showing what
various forms of spell could do. Brannis took it over to one of the many small
tables scattered about the library and sat down to study it.

There was a spell to crush rock and another to form
rock dust into larger pieces. He found a spell that was a more effective way of
levitation that was suited specifically to rock and earth. He found one that
could burrow and one that could make solid stone turn to a runny sort of mud.

Brannis knew he was probably going to have to leave
Kyrus to his own devices to get the gag out of his mouth enough to speak, but
the problem he kept seeing was that all of the gestures for the spells involved
motions that could not be done while he was shackled. He kept reading, hoping
to find one that was a one-handed gesture, or something just done with the
fingers. He scanned quickly through the rest of the book to see if any were
simpler spells but found that it was not the case.

Leaving that book open on the table to the page with
the burrowing spell, Brannis went back to the shelves. He wanted to see if
there were any books that might help with getting Kyrus unshackled. He looked
for titles that dealt with metals, skipping over the rest for now.

Manipulating Metals
turned out to be about changing alloys to improve sword performance.
Cold
Steel
was actually a book describing how warlocks combined sword and spell
in battle.

Melting Metal
was actually a scholarly work describing the ways that metals were smelted, but
it was written for the hobbyist sorcerer who practiced metallurgy in his free
time. In between passages explaining the necessary temperatures to get various metals
to melt and the most advantageous mineral additives to strengthen them, there
were helpful variant spells that worked well for achieving those temperatures.
Unfortunately it was poorly organized and each section referenced other works
where further information could be found. If Brannis were to get any use out of
it, he would have to search through to find the basic spells the author kept
referencing, and then work out how they would need to be modified to heat a
particular metal most economically. The economy of aether was good to note,
since Brannis had no basis for comparison as to how well Kyrus drew aether.

Brannis was taking
Melting Metal
over to the
table to read when he heard the library door open. His hand immediately went
for his blade, but he did not draw it. Staying behind the shelves for cover, he
stood quietly and waited.

For what seemed like hours there was no sound at all,
and Brannis was getting ready to dismiss the sound of the door as paranoia.
Then, down the end of the row, he saw a head poke around the corner.

“Aha, there you are,” Rashan said, chuckling. “Your
two friends are better soldiers than you gave them credit for. They came
straight to me after you got rid of them.”

“So it would seem,” Brannis commented flatly, trying
to see where the warlock was going with this.

“So what brings you down to the libraries at this
hour? Have you been trying to study up to graduate the Academy? What was so
important that you had to threaten your way past the guards?”

Brannis struggled to find some excuse for being there.
His excuse for nearly anyone else would have been that he was working on orders
from Rashan, but that was unlikely to work in his current scenario.

“Oh, stop trying to think up a lie and just tell me.
Unless you are a spy for Megrenn or a goblin sympathizer, it is not as if I
would kill you for whatever reason you have,” Rashan said.

Brannis cursed silently in his head. The warlock was
too clever to be stalled.

“Well, I suppose that ought to reassure me. I do not
think it absolves me of being thought a madman, though. I admit this is all
quite suspicious,” Brannis admitted.

He could feel his heart starting to quicken in his
chest. He did not want to have Rashan think that he could not handle his new
position and take it away from him this soon.

“Brannis, I have been thought dead for a century, and
less than a day after returning, I find I have to kill a quarter of the Inner
Circle for treason. You shall hardly have a monopoly on being thought a madman,
regardless of your tale. Besides, now you have piqued my curiosity, and I shall
not be denied whatever story you have. Be warned: I have been lied to by many
of the best liars in Kadrin—the nobles—and can generally sniff out a false
tale.”

Brannis swallowed hard.
At this point, if I admit
it, maybe I can get him to help. I do not know if I will get a good enough plan
together in time at the rate things are going now.

“Well, this might take a bit of explaining,” Brannis
said. “We should sit.”

Brannis went over to the table where
Magics of
Stone and Earth
sat open, and settled into one of the chairs. Rashan
dropped lightly into one of the chairs opposite him, twisting his head around
to make out the title of the book Brannis had been reading.

“Studying fortifications and how to destroy them with
magic? Commendable, but not ‘emergency in the night’ fare, I think. Out with it
now; what sordid tale do you have for me?”

Brannis took a deep breath to steady his nerves.
“Well, this is about my dreams. I have … I do not know quite what to call
them—visions?—of another place. I see things through someone else’s eyes,”
Brannis began, wondering if he could get Rashan to jump in and offer insights.

“Fascinating,” Rashan commented, his tone light and
his eyes fixed on Brannis’s, as if he were hearing the opening to a fireside
storyteller’s yarn.

“Well, in this other place, this other person has
gotten himself into some trouble. I know he can learn things that I have seen,
so I was looking for a spell to get him out of his predicament.” Brannis phrased
that about as mildly as he could think of without straying from the truth.

“So what sort of predicament? Surrounded by goblins?
Backed against a cliff and facing doom at the hands of angry ogres? Just caught
in the bedchamber of a princess? Brannis, you are a lousy storyteller. Details,
please,” Rashan said.

“He has been locked up for being a ‘witch,’ and he is
likely trapped in a cell awaiting execution. He is shackled hand and foot, and
gagged. I am looking for a spell that could get him out of a stone dungeon
cell, or out of a set of iron shackles, preferably both,” Brannis said.

Rashan looked pensive for a moment. Then he did
something Brannis had yet to see from the warlock. He cast a spell.

“Denek iliaru estatta pogulu benna tetga fenex
refleragna,”
he said and pressed his
hands together, rubbing them quickly in tiny circles.

Rashan’s form became hazy and indistinct, then fully
transparent. Brannis watched the warlock pass his hand through the table. After
a moment, he solidified again.

“It allows one to pass through solid objects and
requires minimal hand movement,” Rashan explained.

“Any suggestions on how to get the gag out of his
mouth?” Brannis asked, hoping perhaps the warlock would give him all the
answers he would need. He had not honestly considered that Rashan would be
nonplussed by the whole affair and decide to help him.

“Well, if your alter ego can use aether at all, just
burn it through. If he is about to be executed otherwise, I would think a few
burns would be worth the cost. Oh, and if he fails to escape, at least have the
historical sense to go out with something noteworthy … like a plume of flame
engulfing everyone in sight. Sorcerers are not meant to be rounded up and
beheaded like thieves. Do not start a precedent.” Rashan winked and stood to
leave.

“Thank you, Rashan. Now I just need to get back to
sleep so he can use this information,” Brannis said. “Would anyone mind if I
slept here until morning?” It was certainly an unusual request, but Brannis
thought it by far the least insane thing he had done that night.

“By all means. Here, let me help,” and Rashan appeared
to concentrate on Brannis, and he started to feel just a bit dizzy. “Brannis,
you are far too resistant to magic for your own good. If that Source of yours
were shut any tighter, you would be a demon, like me. I might be able to tear
you in half with lightning or cremate you where you stand with a firestorm, but
I cannot affect you directly with a simple sleep enchantment,” Rashan said.
“Let me try from a bit closer.”

Rashan got right up next to Brannis and held his hands
out just to either side of his head. As soon as Brannis closed his eyes to try
and help out by relaxing, Rashan balled his right fist and slugged him, hard,
right in the temple. The warlock was quick to react, catching the much larger
knight as he slumped out of his chair and laying him sprawled out on the floor.

“Good luck,” Rashan wished him and retired from the
library.

Chapter 22 - Good Help Is Hard to Find

“I’d never before thought of a life at sea, but you
make your point, Cap’n,” Grosh replied when asked if he would join Denrik as
part of his crew. “I have no trade without acting outside my guild, and who has
heard of a rogue tailor? At least with you, sir, I know where I stand.”

Denrik nodded in acknowledgment.
That makes one of
the ones I wanted, at the least.
He stood with his men arranged about him
in a semicircle, and was going about finding out once and for all who was
staying on with him. It was to be their last night camped among the low cliffs
to Scar Harbor’s south. By morning, they would either be sailing as free men,
or be dead. None among them wished to be recaptured.

“And you, Jimony?” Denrik asked.

“Good coin, ya say? I got you on that one, right? We
get loot and get rich?” Jimony asked, his priorities transparent. The wiry
viper’s eyes gleamed as he imagined piles of treasure akin to the stories in
Neiron
the Kingthief
and pictured them for himself.

“Better than knifing old men coming home from the
tavern, certainly,” Denrik replied dryly. “Learn a trade aboard ship, and you
shall earn a full share of the loot. Same goes for all of you lads. Work as a
pirate, get paid as one.”

“Aye, Cap’n. Count me in,” Jimony replied
enthusiastically.

Denrik was chagrined but little surprised. It was the
easiest money a lowlife like Jimony could imagine, preying on merchants and
traders who quickly became much more interested in saving their own skins than
in protecting their investments, and far from the reach of any sort of law. On
the open waters, it was the Law of Guns: whoever possessed the most cannons was
in charge.

“Oh, me too!” exclaimed Andur. “Loot for everyone!”

Everyone laughed, and Denrik supposed he was stuck
with Andur for the foreseeable future.

Denrik did not ask again but simply turned to Tawmund
and looked questioningly at him. As a man of few words himself, Tawmund
understood the implied query.

“Yeah, sure,” was all Tawmund said, but from Denrik’s
perspective, that was all he needed to hear.

Whether they would change their minds later once they
found out that life aboard ship was not for everyone, and certainly was not day
after day of plunder interrupted only by port calls for drinking and whoring …
Well, he would just wait and see how they took to it.

*
* * * * * * *

Stalyart arrived for one final visit early in the
afternoon. He seemed in good spirits as well—and why not? For, his plan to take
to the seas with his old captain was about to come to fruition. He was dressed
more plainly than the other times he had come to them, in the plain drab-brown
coveralls and boots of a dock worker. He was lugging a large sack along with
him.

“Mr. Stalyart, good news I hope,” Denrik said as
Tawmund and Grosh moved to help him unburden his load.

“The best, as always, Captain,” the grinning Stalyart
replied. “I have brought everything we will need and perhaps a bit more. I like
games of chance, but this is no game, so I take no chances.” He chuckled at his
own joke. “Dark clothing for everyone. I guessed sizes, so make the best if
they do not fit as you would prefer. There are long knifes for each—better than
cutlasses, easy to hide. Two more pistols also. My men are ready as well. We
will meet at the docks an hour after sunset and wait for my brother’s signal.”

Denrik always admired his first mate’s efficiency.
With five more like him, it would little matter what dullards the rest of the
crew were. Fortune being what it was, there was only one of Stalyart. He was
still going to be woefully short on good men who knew their trades. His most
pressing reason for bringing his Rellis Island crew was simple manpower. Under
normal circumstances, he would have been able to afford the luxury of picking
an experienced crew, but he had need of every willing and able body he could
muster.

“What news from the city? Are the cannons aboard? What
of the captain?” Denrik peppered him with questions, his own eagerness showing
through.

“The captain, I am afraid, will likely be on board. No
great harm, though. We can take care of him. The new cannons are
so
beautiful; I see them for myself when they load them. The news from the city,
though? Ahh, this shames my other little newses. The sheriff has caught a
witch! He even admitted it in his trial this morning. In the witch’s house,
there is a light that does not come from anywhere. I went for myself to see
it.”

“So you believe them?” Denrik asked.

This was truly news worth hearing. Denrik’s own powers
were so limited.

A real sorcerer in Acardia? Now that might be useful.

“Yes. He was not sentenced today. They want to get permission
to execute him, but need to have to ask the lords in Golis. He is not dead yet,
but he borrows his days,” Stalyart replied.

“What do you think, Stalyart?” Denrik asked him.

Stalyart was among those on his crew who were aware of
Denrik’s mystical leanings, so Denrik knew that Stalyart had something more in
mind when he brought him this news, otherwise its inclusion with the day’s
plans would have been nothing more than a distraction.

“I think the winds are not so strong tonight. I think
we take less chance by bringing this witch with us than we do trying to outrun
pursuit on a calm night,” Stalyart replied.

“If this witch has real magic, how is it that he is
kept captive?” Denrik asked, drawing nods of agreement from Jimony and Grosh,
who otherwise had the sense to keep out of the conversation.

“He is kept shackled and gagged. They keep him so he
can work not magic,” Stalyart explained. “I hear that even to eat, they hold a
crossbow on him.”

So he is unskilled, or at least unschooled. I can work
with that. A fully trained sorcerer could easily escape such mundane
imprisonment, which is why no one with sense takes one prisoner. Jinzan could
have broken out the minute they left him alone.

“How did they capture him?” Denrik asked, trying to
get a feel for how much of a sorcerer he was dealing with.

“They broke in his door in the middle of the night and
took him by surprise.”

Denrik sat down and thought for several minutes. No
one interrupted him. The look on his face was of such an obvious calculating nature
that they just waited for him to speak and then decide.

*
* * * * * * *

Kyrus came back to the land of the conscious and found
he had been returned to his cell. It was a small comfort, knowing that he was
likely just awaiting the hangman’s noose, or possibly a post, some rope, and a
pile of firewood.

His headache had improved to the point where he was
thinking rationally. Importantly, he remembered everything he had dreamed,
including a rather clear recollection of Rashan’s spell. He just had to pick the
right time to use it.

He worked at the gag in his mouth, trying to dislodge
it. Were he to manage that trick, the correct time would be “now,” and he would
worry about other consequences as they came up. As it stood, the gag stubbornly
refused his efforts, and he could not get his shackled hands close enough to
hook his thumbs in and pull at it. He would have to settle for a blast of raw
aether and hope that he did not immolate himself as the gag caught fire.

That
little
trick was something he would save until all was quiet. Outside the cell, he
could still hear people on the streets, and the constables trying to keep them
away from his cell window. There were a lot of angry people out there, he knew,
and in this case at least, the constables were on his side; no escape plan
would be worth its weight in feathers if he got dragged out by that mob and
killed first.

He was roused from his musings by footsteps
approaching from down the cell block. Kyrus was no expert on the subject, but
it was more than one person, and fewer than a dozen. He got a cold feeling in
the pit of his stomach; nothing good had come down that corridor of late.

He was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the
jailor and two men armed with crossbows. Well, he was not pleased to see
them
so much as the lovely young lady they had brought to see him.

“Oh, Kyrus,” Abbiley gushed after she saw him,
disheveled, unshaven, and trussed up in his cell. She was carrying a bowl of
something steaming. He also noticed that she was still wearing the jade dragon
they had bought only yesterday.

“One word out of you and you will find two quarrels in
your throat,” the jailor threatened as he unlocked the cell door. Kyrus’s eyes
were drawn to the ring of keys he carried. “I do not care if it is Acardian or
witch gibberish, I shall take no chances. You will get fed, and that is it.”

One of the armed men loosened his gag, and then both
took up positions on either side of him, weapons leveled, as promised,
generally at his throat. Abbiley hurried over and knelt down next to him, then
started spooning stew into him. It felt wonderful in his mouth—too hot perhaps,
but the first food he had tasted in nearly a day—and knowing that Abbiley would
still come see him felt even better. The look in her eyes was haunted and
worried, but she was scared for him, not of him.

“Kyrus, are all those awful things they said about you
true,” she asked.

Kyrus shook his head between mouthfuls.

“You are a witch, though,” she stated rather than
asked.

Kyrus bobbed his head a bit from side to side, to try
to indicate that it was not so clear a distinction. Kyrus was quite mindful of
the “no talking” edict and fully intended to carry on a whole conversation via
head gestures if he had to.

“So you did magic, but you are not a witch?” she
asked, trying to piece together a story from the vague hints he could give.

Kyrus smiled and nodded. This seemed to be working.

He was hungry and devoured whatever she spooned to
him, but too late, he realized that his conversation was likely to last the
duration of the stew. As the final spoonful made its way into his mouth, the
jailor intervened: “That is enough, we are done here.”

Kyrus quickly concocted a new plan. Firehurling was
supposedly quite dangerous, and he had never tried it, but it was supposedly
about the simplest form of magic. He could take out the two armed guards first,
then the jailor. Then he could either use Rashan’s spell, or get Abbiley to
retrieve the keys from the jailor’s body. After that, he would blast a path out
of the jail and out of the city, and he and Abbiley could live as outlaws until
Brannis read up on enough magic for him to set them up in a comfortable
lifestyle out in the wilderness. After a time and a better understanding of
magic, maybe he could insinuate himself back into society, not in Scar Harbor,
but perhaps in Harvin or Udur—someplace where they were still under the rule of
Acardia but not so close to home. He could use magic to rise in the social
ranks and do well in business—whatever business he chose—and raise a family in
wealth and privilege. He could teach his children magic, and they could become
the secret ruling class in the kingdom, using magic to take over and institute
laws against punishing people for witchcraft.

Abruptly, Kyrus’s planning was cut short by the gag
being stuffed roughly back in his mouth and Abbiley being led from the cell. As
the door was locked behind him, Abbiley turned to look at him one last time.

“Do not worry, Kyrus. I am sure this will all work out
somehow. Oh, and do not worry about Ash. I took him home with me until this all
gets figured out.”

*
* * * * * * *

Kyrus bided his time the rest of the daylight hours.
The fervor of the crowd outside had waned when it became apparent after several
hours that the constables were not about to allow them to storm the cell and
drag Kyrus out. It was not the type of crowd that would storm a prison without
the tacit approval of the constables. They were the sort who liked to make a
lot of noise and hope that someone else would do the whole “taking the law into
their own hands” bit, lest they end up in a cell of their own.

As near as Kyrus could tell, by nightfall, all that
were left outside were a pair of fresh constables who had replaced the ones
from earlier. They carried on a bit of idle conversation but otherwise proved
to be uninteresting; no news of the rest of the trial or his sentence, no
dropped hints of lackadaisical jailors or loose bricks that Kyrus could use. He
was beginning to think all the storybooks he had read were going to prove
useless.

He steeled himself for what might prove to be the
riskiest thing he had tried in his life, and began to draw in aether. Then he
started to let it out right into the leather cord of the gag. Slowly at first,
then in increasing amounts, he warmed, then heated, then practically boiled the
leather.

Hot. Hot. Hot. It is not burning. I am!

Kyrus twisted and squirmed and could smell his own
singed hair, and quickly stopped the flow of aether, instead unloading it into
the door again. Tears streamed from his eyes as the burning hot cord pressed
into the back of his neck, where he had tried to focus the heat. Eventually the
heat died down and became tolerable, and Kyrus breathed a sigh of relief.