Magesong (20 page)

When Ephemeris, still wet, and icy with anger, reached the
end of the alley, he was not looking for an arcane symbol carved into the
warehouse wall facing the way he came, and he and his men reached the narrow
intersection before he saw it.  He threw up his arms.

"Everyone look down," he commanded.  "Cover
your eyes at once!"

He strode forward, taking out his ceremonial dagger, and
began cutting a line through the mystic rune.  It took much of his will to
finish, and he had to call upon the strong mental discipline taught in the
Sardonyx Tower in order to do it.  He turned around.

The men all stared at him, wide-eyed in the moonlight, like
they were idiots.

This amateur had become more than troublesome.  I should
have killed him in Libac's garden, thought Ephemeris.  Now he would have to
take the men back to the ship and perform a ceremony of mind-clearing before
they would be of any use to him.  He could go on alone.  Something about the
large, barrel-chested man bothered him though.  He had a deadly aura about him.

In any case, Ephemeris knew that he would have to break the
spell on his crew before they could sail, so he decided to do it now and use
his men to make sure the quarry did not slip away when he caught up with them
again.  It had been a long time, but he still knew every back street and hiding
hole in the city.  Let them spend themselves running, he thought.  Then when
they were resting unaware, he would take them.  And for the affront of the
dunking he had given Ephemeris, the amateur would suffer death by the Ashen
Hand, even if he surrendered and begged for mercy.

Beyond the rooftops, from out
of the highlands to the north, lightning flashed across the sky.  The wind
shifted and the breeze blew harder.

Reyin could smell a damp freshness to the air as he and
Farlo squeezed through the end of the narrow passage and stood at the top of
Bodoval's lift.  All lay quiet in The Barrel.  Bodoval and his donkey had gone
to wherever they made their nightly rest, and the peddlers' booths stood dark
and empty.  Open windows flickered with candlelight on all seven levels of The
Barrel, but a few folk still sat on the catwalks in front of their homes and
shops, the bright awnings rolled away in favor of the stars, now becoming
obscured by low clouds scudding in from the northeast.

"Wait a moment," Reyin told Farlo, turning back to
the opening between the warehouses.

He made wide passes with his arms while muttering in low
tones, as if he held conversation with an invisible being, then finished by
drawing a line across the alley with his finger.

"He will give me warning if our enemy comes this
way," Reyin said as he rejoined Farlo.

"Who will?"

"Never mind.  Let's go."

They followed a walkway to their right past some
mud-and-wattle huts, going a quarter turn along the rim of The Barrel before
finding the open door of the Topmast Inn.  A large platform stood there where
the rickety sidewalk cut sharply away.

The one-handed innkeeper sat at a large crate, dicing with a
thin and weathered old man beneath a wooden rack that held bottles of wine and
rum.  Two sailors ate sausages at the long board, using long knives as
utensils.  None of them looked twice at Reyin in his fine suit of half
burned-away clothes, as if they were too bored to care, or saw it every day.

Farlo plucked two silver buttons off the shards of doublet
hanging from Reyin's shoulders and slapped them down in front of the
ex-harpooner.

"Will this get us a room for a couple hours?"

The innkeeper scooped up the buttons and examined them front
and back.  "More than enough.  It'll cover the price of dinner as well, if
you want some."

"You bet we do," Reyin said.  "But first, can
you tell me which door is Mr. Bodoval's?"

The one-handed man told him and went to fetch their supper.

"What do you want with him?" Farlo asked.

Reyin tore the rest of the buttons from his ruined jacket
and threw the remains to the floor.  "Just need to do a little business. 
I'll be right back."

He placed the canvass bag into Farlo's hands and looked him
hard in the eye.

Five minutes later the deal was done and he went back to the
top in Bodoval's lift.  A bowl of mussel stew lay waiting for him on a large
crate where Farlo sat.  The only condiment was a bowl of sea salt.  Reyin took
a handful of the salt and poured it into his small leather purse.

"What's that for?" said Farlo.

Reyin shrugged.  "For luck."

As he took his first bite he looked at Farlo.  "You did
follow me.  I'd thought so."

"I was afraid that footpads would get you in that fancy
suit.  I waited around the back, then I saw that . . . that man sneak out with
a sack of swag and climb into a wagon.  The driver was the big pirate with the
blunderbuss."

"So you figured they had it and trailed them?"

"I didn't so much think about it.  I just sort of knew
they had what we came for."

Reyin blinked in surprise.  "Not bad, Farlo.  Not
bad."

As soon as the meal was over, they climbed the ladder to the
room where they had stayed before.  Reyin fell down onto the cot, immediately
pushing himself into a sitting position against the wall.  He was afraid to
sleep and too weary to trust himself.  He lighted the lamp.

They listened to the wind rise.  Thunder rolled across the
city like the echo of a great cannonade, and they heard the first splatter of
rain on the thin roof of their rooftop cabin.

"So soon," Reyin murmured.  "He must be very
powerful."

Staring at his hands he said,  "I — I didn't think it
would be this hard.  He effortlessly throws fire and calls for a storm, while I
spend myself with a few simple tricks."

He stood and went to the porthole window, searching the
rain-slashed night for any sign of pursuit.

"I'm so scared, Farlo.  I've studied these arts since I
was a boy, but up against this magician I'm still that boy.  I have no skill to
compare with his."

He turned back to his friend.  "He's going to kill me,
Farlo.  If he can call a storm then he can call down lightning as well.  He's
going to kill me and I don't know how to stop him."

"Shut your ugly mouth before you make me angry,"
Farlo snapped.  Reyin could see that he wasn't joking.

They sat in silence for a time, the rain drumming harder and
harder.  Then Farlo opened the canvass duffle and let it fall, seeing for the
first time the strangely-carved device they had voyaged a thousand leagues to
find.  He reached to touch it then stopped.

"This is the captured spirit?"

"That is only the device of imprisonment.  
E'alaisenne
is trapped within."

"Is that its name?"

"Yes.  It means something like
earth-rain-healing."

"Why does every third man seem to want it all of a
sudden?"

Reyin smiled grimly.  "Libac thought it was an old
relic.  A pretty box.  This magician is a member of a secret society that
believes it will give them powers that make throwing fire seem like child's
play.  And I think they are right."

He stared at the device for a moment before he spoke again. 
"I have to tell you something.  This is important.  If we can't stop him
from taking it back, we must destroy it."

"What?  Are you mad?"

"We're now involved in something that is bigger than
just one village.  We're now playing with the lives of whole nations.  With the
new power they seek, the Supplicants of the Final Grammarie could ruin the
world, and what they themselves don‘t realize is that they could destroy the
Essa itself."

"If I can't stop him from taking it back, I'll be dead
and the world and your magic go to blazes," Farlo said savagely.  “It
can't become more important than it already is to me!  And it should be the
same for you.  Think of Kestrin."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't even know why you're doing this, do you?  No
one does anything this dangerous, this miserable, for themselves or even for
the whole world.  I'm doing it for my wife.  And you‘re doing this for Kestrin,
whether you know it or not."

Reyin fell silent then and Farlo carefully retied the
canvass bag.  After three days of fasting, the mussel stew was dragging Reyin
into an unwanted sleep.  Lightning sparked behind the cloth-covered window,
thunder following closely, and the little room trembled.

"Farlo.  I need to lie down and rest.  If I fall
asleep, wake me when you think a half-hour has passed."

"No more than that?"

"It's all we can allow."

"And then what?"

"We keep moving.  If we can stay ahead of him and get
far enough away then I can do something to help mask us."

"Is that our only hope?"

"Yes," Reyin said.  "I'm afraid it is."

And with the storm crashing all
around him he lay down with his head on his arms.

Reyin's eyes flew open.  He sat up.

The lamp was out, but room stood awash in dim light coming
up through the open hatchway to the room below.  Farlo knelt there, the
reversed shadows on his face making him look unfamiliar.

"He's here."

"How?" Reyin wondered aloud.  "The watcher
should have — "

What a fool he had been.  After the first two surprises, the
other magician had been on guard, looking for more traps with his witch sight
at every turn.  He had seen the watcher and, apparently, had dismissed him with
ease.

Reyin threw himself down beside Farlo, finding an angle
where he could remain in the dark and still see most of the common room.  The
innkeeper stood face to face with the sorcerer, who now wore a broad hat and a
dripping cloak that glinted with an oily sheen.  The ruby ring still perched on
his left hand while his right was covered by a grey glove.  On the back side of
the glove, white pearls traced the bones of his hand.  Five grim sailors armed
with cutlasses and storm lanterns gathered behind him.

"Who," the innkeeper demanded, "are
you
to be giving orders in my place?"

One of the sailors opened his coat and drew a pistol.

The ex-harpooner laughed.  "You don't expect me to
believe you have a dry pan after being out in this rainstorm?"

"Let's find out," the sailor sneered.

In an instant, the innkeeper had the point of his prosthesis
up against the magician's throat.  "Now tell your boys to get out of here,
while you still have a voice to tell them."

"There's no need for threats," the man called Orez
said, pretending fear.  He cautiously reached under his cloak with the gloved
hand and took out a Jakavian gold sovereign.  The innkeeper probably didn't
make that much in a fortnight.

"Just take this for your trouble and allow us to leave
quietly."

The fellow opened his one good hand.  The sorcerer made to
place the coin there in his palm, but touched him with the glove instead.

The innkeeper froze, his mouth going wide.  He tried to
move, tried to speak, but his mouth only opened in silent agony.  His dark
skin, the color of tarnished bronze, shriveled and dried as he watched, turning
quickly to an ashen grey.  The doomed man trembled for a moment, his hair now
completely white, then his eyes dissolved into a fine powder as he fell dead to
the floor.  His empty sockets stared up at Reyin.

The old man with the dice sat paralyzed in disbelief, and
the two seamen at the board now sidled toward the doorway, their hands empty
and raised.

Orez ignored them.  "It is here," he said to his
men.  "Search all the rooms."

Reyin fought to keep his gorge from rising.  An eldritch
glove with the power to kill — he had not thought such a thing was possible.

He put his mouth close to Farlo's ear.  "Get ready to
run."

"Where?"

"Just be ready.  Here goes."

The sailor with the pistol still gripped it in his fist. 
The priming powder in the pan might be wet, but it was likely that the load had
stayed dry.  Reyin had seen his rival throw fire and knew something of how it
worked, though Ty'kojin had never let him try.  Voiding his mind of all reason,
indeed of the very foundations of logic, he opened his spirit to the primordial
elements.  All he needed was a spark, just a spark.  A candle on the long table
dimmed a little.

The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space as the
pistol discharged, spewing a cloud of thick black smoke.

Reyin didn't wait to see if anyone had been hit.  With
shouts of confusion echoing the shot in the room below, he leapt to his feet
and grabbed the canvass sack with one hand.  He passed the other hand across
one wall of the little room.

The nails holding the boards in place popped free, and Reyin
kicked the loose planks away, the tempest outside howling in the breech.  He
pushed Farlo through the gap and plunged after him.  As they picked their way
across the top of the mud-brick structure, barely able to see its boundaries,
Farlo pointed to the taller roof of a tavern that was built against the back of
the Topmast Inn.

“Give me a leg up to that rooftop, then I can reach down and
haul you up with me."

Reyin shook his head.  "No.  We must avoid the high
places or we will die by lightning.  We have to stay low."

"How low?"

"Once we get down in The Barrel we'll be safe.  No
magician alive is skilled enough to call lightning into so deep a place."

"Then let's go.  I assume you have an escape arranged
with Bodoval?"

"Yes
."  If the storm hasn't driven him indoors
.

The only safe place to dismount the roof lay right in front
of the entrance to the inn.  They hit the catwalk running, Reyin slipping on
the smooth, water-soaked platform.  Then they were sliding along the hand rail,
approaching the top of the lift.  Behind them, the door of the inn burst open,
a black silhouette framed there.  In front of them lightning crackled across
the sky, the blue-white flash revealing a massive man who stood blocking their
way, a fire ax in his huge hands.