The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (64 page)

“
A little bit,” Balan said as he entered the room from around the corner to a sitting area. He stopped with a spark from his hoof and crossed his arms. Uella grinned at him broadly, showing her fangs.

“
Hiya, boss.” She stretched out the last sibilant sound, with the tip of her forked tongue between her teeth. Balan sighed at her.

“
Did I or did I not tell you to just
watch
the Wizard? To make sure he didn’t get killed?”

Uella rolled her eyes and groaned, then flopped onto her back though the presence of her wings made her arch her spine sharply. She beat her fists and kicked her heels against the covers, tearing them a bit with the spiked heel of one thigh-high boot. The heel was long enough to stab somebody, which was probably the point.

“
But it was
soooo
boring! Everybody else gets to pile up bodies, and I’m supposed to just watch five idiot monkeys stumbling around? Really, Balan.”

Uella rolled up to her hands and knees, tossed some of her green-and-blonde mane over a trim shoulder, and set her red mouth in a pout.

“
You can’t think of anything more fun to make me do?”

“
Are those ears?” Balan asked, wide eyed.

Uella brought a pale hand with bright red nails to a string of severed ears that were strung around her neck.

“
These?”

“
Yes, those.”

“
Oh, I’ve had these for years.”

“
They’re still dripping blood!”

Uella shrugged and batted her eyes. The thoughtless ease with which demons were able to lie, even when there was no point to it, was a constant source of vexation for a proper devil. Sometimes it was a source of envy.

Balan sighed and turned to Poltus.

“
Just tell me already.”

“
Lady Uella slew the three soldiers earlier today, but she had the Circle Wizard brought here alive.“

“
And the pretty girl,” Uella chirped. “You should see her, Balan. She’s just like a little doll.”

“
What about the book?” Balan asked Poltus, doing his best to ignore the succubus for the time being.

“
We have that as well, and I have read as much of it as I can. Though that was not very much.”

Balan frowned at the hovering fiend.

“
You can read any language, Poltus. So can I. So can we all. What is the problem?”

“
That only holds true for languages as they are commonly spoken and written, my Lord. The book in question is inscribed in an incantation script, a magical language in which words and phrases may be imbued with spell power. The language of this book is that of Old Tull, for it is the work of Kanderamath himself.”

Balan knew the name even though it had belonged to a monkey. That was the old Witch King who had caused Vod‘Adia to Open in the first place, and so indirectly brought Balan and his kind, and Uella’s kind as well, here.

“
It is the spell book of an archmage?” Balan asked.

“
Not precisely, Lord. There are only three spells inscribed within it. Fairly standard teleportation forms with only slight variations among them, near as I can tell.”

“
And the rest of it?”

Poltus sighed. “It appears to be a sort of commentary on a far older scroll, fragments of which are preserved within Kanderamath’s text. This original is written in an ancient form of Kantan, which I can read, though understanding the fragments is a different matter. They are a chaotic hodge-podge of existential theorizing and tribal superstitions concerning
the Three Nodes
, including the one located here, and their relation to the magic of this world.”

Uella had curled up on the bed, shaking out her wings to cover her like blankets. She started snoring very loudly.

“
This stuff is important, dear,” Balan said at her.

“
Hmm. Old books. Fascinating.”

Balan turned away from her with a look of resignation.

“
The Node,” he said to Poltus. “That’s the big archway in the center tower that doesn’t do anything?”

“
Yes, Lord. Though I imagine it did do something at one time. Probably about the same period during which the Kantan scroll was written.”

Balan narrowed his red eyes, and his diabolic brain sifted through what he knew. The Great Dragon Danavod was afraid of what a Circle Wizard could do with this book, for if the Sable City of Vod’Adia was again severed from this world she stood to lose an enormous source of wealth. Wealth was the measure by which the Great Dragons kept score among themselves. Devils kept score in different ways. Vod’Adia was a convenient place for them to gather souls, but hardly a necessary one.

“
The Circle Wizard,” Balan said. “He can read the entire book, correct?”

Poltus did not look wholly confident. “Perhaps. We scrutinized the man’s mind while he was unconscious and without defense, and found him to be of only modest ability, at the most. He is certainly no Kanderamath.”

“
That does not mean that he could not undo what the Witch King wrought here.”

Uella rolled back over, propping herself up on wings and elbows.

“
You‘re going to cut this city off from its world?” she asked with a small frown. “Why? Don’t you and the Black Dragon have a deal?”

“
More than a deal, we have signed a contract with Danavod.” Balan grinned widely, revealing his own fangs. “And that always works out so well for the other party.”

Uella grinned back at him. “You’re so damned sexy when you’re evil. Just for the hell of it.”

Poltus cleared its little throat. “Pardon me, my Lord, but the contract does present certain obstacles to you, or to any of our kind, taking direct action.”

Balan looked sideways at the little devil.

“
You know, a good number two would have figured out a way around that by now.”

Poltus permitted itself to look lofty.

“
Yes indeed, Lord. So would an evil one.”

*

The party gathered on the third floor and watched the lights of the Shugak hobgoblins for an hour. There seemed to be about a hundred of the creatures and they built a cluster of campfires flush against the westernmost tower of the nine ringing the palace complex, reflecting dancing flames off the smooth black walls. They were clearly settling in for the night, if not longer.

Nesha-tari could see them better than the others with her Dragon-touched eyes, and after her earlier talk with the devil Lord Balan she also had a better idea of what their presence might mean. After a good deal of talk amongst the party Zebulon asked for her thoughts, and Nesha-tari told him.

“
Either the devils are going to allow the Shugak to wait here for Phinneas and the others, or they have already captured them and are going to turn them over.”

Zeb told the others, Heggenauer asked a question, and Zeb asked her.

“
The Shugak and the devils of Vod’Adia are cooperating?”

“
Yes. The devils have some sort of relationship with the Shugak’s mistress.”

“
How do you know that?” Zeb asked on his own.

“
Their leader told me. I spoke with the Devil Lord while the rest of you were up in the tower.”

Zeb stared at her in the flickering light.

“
Do you want me to tell everybody that?”

Nesha-tari growled. “I do not care, Zebulon. This matter is at an end, or close enough to it that these details are of no consequence. Come, we will speak with the hobgoblins.”

“
We will do what now?”

Nesha-tari turned away from the window and walked to where the unlit lantern had been left by the door, as the others were still concerned that no light should show from the house. She picked it up and reached inside to pinch the wick between a finger and thumb, and lit it with a sparking snap and a whiff of ozone.

The rest of the party made various noises of alarm, and Nesha-tari sighed and rolled her eyes. She’d had just about enough of humans, devils, bullywugs, hobgoblins, and at the moment, even Dragons. Danavod was running a slipshod operation in Vod’Adia, and Nesha-tari presently had no more interest in the whole sorry mess of it all. So long as the Duchess of Chengdea did not end up where Horayachus had wanted her to go, Akroya’s purpose in sending Nesha-tari here should certainly be fulfilled. To hell with the rest of it.

“
All of you shut up,” she snapped, and the party did so without Zeb having to translate. She glared around at each of them.

“
This is over. Coming into the city was pointless. We will see to the denouement, but our involvement here is through.”

Zeb started to say so to the others, and they of course started asking more questions before he had gotten very far. Nesha-tari growled again and turned to go, ready to leave the squabbling idiots in the dark, but she stopped as someone gave a sharp whistle.

It was Amatesu, standing with one hand raised for silence and her head tilted to the side. She said something, Nesha-tari did not know what, but then everyone heard a set of steady knocks, coming from outside. It sounded like someone rapping a hand on the front door downstairs.

The party rushed to the windows and Nesha-tari looked down from one next to Zebulon. They stared down into darkness until Nesha-tari extended the lantern outside, and the flickering light shined down on the gray, upturned face of the Devil Lord, Balan.

“
Hello again, itinerant adventurers,” the devil called up to them. “Anyone up for a parley? We‘ve an awful lot to talk about.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

After the little devils had snatched Claudja’s clothes and stranded her in the tub, the Duchess had fashioned a sort of poncho from bed sheets. She was sitting huddled in them on the bed an hour later when there was another knock on the door, but Claudja had decided she was through with crouching behind the tub and brandishing a silver butter knife.

“
What?” she called irritably, and the door opened. A little devil flew in and returned her clothes in a neatly folded pile, washed, mended, and still warm as though they had been dried before a fire. Claudja redressed and went on plotting her escape, though she had not gotten very far in that direction all day.

The room’s single window gave a view of packed dirt and the side of a long building made of black stone, standing five stories tall and with rows and rows of arched windows covered by shutters. Claudja could lean out her window far enough to see that her room was in the top story of an identical building, laid out at an angle to the first rather than in parallel. The two wings came together at a central tower to her right, while out at their far ends to the left both ended at towers extending another three or four stories up into the gray sky. A slice of Vod’Adia’s monochromatic streets was visible beyond the towers, past the surrounding area of bare dirt and sifting gray dust.

The window was wide enough to jump through, but the fall was certainly enough to kill her. Claudja had enough sheets and towels to knot together a rope that might get her halfway down. A fall from there would probably break both her legs, but might leave her alive. For a while. Claudja made that her backup plan.

She thought she could brain a little devil with a chair the next time one hovered in, but that would only be of use if a dozen of them did not enter together. She also knew from the glimpse of a voluminous white sleeve in the hallway the first time her door had been opened that there was a bigger devil out there, probably the same sort of bearded creature that had carried her to this place. Claudja tried to listen for it through the slight crack under her door, but heard nothing in the hall, not even breathing. The thought that devils might not have to breath gave her a chill.

Claudja still had no good ideas by the time the sky grew dark outside, the mist-dulled shadows from behind her building letting her know that she was facing east. Dinner was brought to her, the same as lunch, and Claudja ate again without drinking the wine this time.

Though she was exhausted Claudja stayed off the bed and sat in a chair in the corner, after deciding not to bother wedging it under the doorknob. She sat with her arms crossed, biting her lip, mind running down intricate scenarios that had yet to lead anywhere good. Her eyes grew progressively heavier, and each time she started to nod-off the light from the hanging glow stones started to fail. At one point when they had gone almost completely to darkness, the door banged open with a crash.

Claudja jerked in her chair as a tall figure breezed into the room. Claudja recognized her as the creature who had killed the legionnaires, though she had replaced her tight black leathers with a long gown flowing to the floor, colored a deep burgundy and moving like silk. Her green and blonde hair was pinned up and neatly arranged to frame her face which was pale as alabaster, or a corpse. Her red eyes, fangs, and folded bat wings topped with hooks made her rather hard to mistake for a human woman.

“
Hi there,” the creature grinned at Claudja. “We were not introduced. You may call me Uella.”

It was the first time all day a devil had spoken to Claudja. She got to her feet with her hands in fists at her sides, which Uella seemed to find funny.