The Sellsword (7 page)

Gredchen noticed his hand, following him inside. “If they see you getting ready to use that …”

“Relax!” he said. “It’s just a comfort tactic.”

“The woman is right,” said the Philosopher.

“As ugly as she is,” added the Balladeer.

“We should be prepared for an ambush,” said the Cavalier.

Vanderjack pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. He didn’t want to actually respond to the ghosts, not there in the middle of a tavern, not with Gredchen. The patrons wouldn’t notice his hand; they were probably all drunk or asleep. With any luck, the Hunter would come back and report on what was happening in the rooms he couldn’t see.

The common room itself was cramped and crowded with mercenaries, all of them recent hires. There was the usual mix of roughnecks and greenhorns, of fresh-faced youths just come into Pentar from some village along the coast and old-timers bearing the scars of former battles. Few of them even acknowledged Vanderjack and Gredchen’s arrival.

Directly across from the entrance was a long table blocked from view by four men, all dressed in the uniforms of the Seaguard. Vanderjack knew they’d turned
private, so it didn’t surprise him. Who he saw when the marines stepped aside, on the other hand, sent his mind spinning.

“Theo?” he said incredulously, his body tensing.

The gnome, standing on his chair in order to get some height, pointed a finger at the sellsword and responded, “You! I knew it!”

Gredchen looked from the gnome to Vanderjack and back again. “You know each other?”

“I’ll handle this,” Vanderjack said under his breath and stepped forward. The Hunter materialized from the sellsword’s left, stepping back into the room through the wall; Vanderjack looked at the ghost and did his best to silently impart the message,
Hold on a moment, I’m in the middle of something
. The Hunter, keen of eye and always an excellent judge of mood, simply waited.

“Theo! What a pleasant surprise. Imagine meeting you here, in a bar, surrounded by mercenaries.”

The gnome went from standing on the chair to standing on the table. That gave him an extra foot of height advantage. He placed his fists on his hips. “Vanderjack. This is no coincidence, I assure you. Months of careful planning and expert tracking have led me here, knowing you would show up sooner or later. And so you have—soon enough!”

Vanderjack squinted. “Are you serious?”

“You doubt me? See how I have attained not only your location and details of your recent employment history, from Ergoth to Nordmaar.” The gnome grabbed a handful of papers from a pile on the table and waved them furiously before him. “Also! I have secured the position of head of the only mercenary company in town, a town selected by forecasting algorithms you
could not in your wildest dreams comprehend.”

“You
are
serious.”

The gnome grew pink in the face. “I am! I am indeed! Quite serious!” He indicated the room full of armed men. “I have a room full of armed men! That’s how serious I am.”

“Yes, I can see that. Actually, that’s why we came, so if you have a moment—”

“Have you not been listening?
You
are why I am here, you imbecile!”

“Yes, I heard you loud and clear. And I’m very flattered, but I’m on a job right now and I’m fairly sure I have some disgruntled local occupying forces interested in my whereabouts too. So as long as you’re running things, perhaps we’d better talk terms.”

Some of the mercenaries in the room began to pay attention, since their diminutive new boss was engaged in a loud conversation with a tall bald black man with a sword. Several of them moved closer, making any exit from the room difficult. Gredchen decided to hover near the door just in case, but nobody was paying much attention to her. Being ugly meant more people looked away than not.

“Have you forgotten what you did to me? Where you left me? What happened to my … my”—the gnome was sputtering mad—“cat?”

“Right, the cat …”

“My precious Star, lost forever.”

“I didn’t really think gnomes had all that much affection for cats. And it was really a kitten, if you want to be precise.”

“A saber-toothed kitten! One of a kind! Irreplaceable!”

“Yes, all the way from the Island of Gargath, you said. I am sorry about that. But you know, I don’t think
we established that it was my fault.”

Theo grew livid. He was about to direct the entire room to grab Vanderjack and presumably tear him limb from limb when Gredchen screamed, “Stop!”

Everybody in the room looked at her.

The baron’s aide ignored the filthy look from the gnome and the amused grin from Vanderjack and said, “Dragonarmy’s here.”

Theodenes leaped off the table as the room emptied—soldiers and sellswords disappeared through doors, out of back windows, and some even tumbled down into the wine cellar.

Vanderjack looked at his ghosts. The Hunter shrugged, “You seemed busy.”

“I think I could have been disturbed for that,” Vanderjack said, barely heard over the din.

“We must to arms!” shouted the Cavalier.

“Save the girl!” shouted the Aristocrat.

“Save the gnome!” shouted the Balladeer.

The ghosts fell to arguing with each other, so Vanderjack crossed in two steps, passed Gredchen and opened the door wide enough to look out. “Ackal’s Teeth. There’s a whole squad of them.”

Theodenes joined them, staring out the door, then looked up at Vanderjack. “They’re here because of you, aren’t they? You’re a wanted man!”

Vanderjack shrugged. “As ever. You didn’t think you were the only one who was after me, did you? Can we hurry things up?”

Theo exploded. “Hurry things up? I have an operation here perfectly arranged for the purposes of hunting you down and bringing you and any of your associates to justice for the crimes you have committed to my person, my cat, and to all of the others you callously abandoned
on Ergoth, and you still think we have any business matters to discuss?”

Vanderjack closed the door and smiled grimly. “In ten seconds, Theo, I don’t think any of that’s going to matter.”

The wizard Cazuvel stood at the threshold of the ancient door and spoke a single word of magic.

The door opened silently, and a whorl of escaping air stirred his black robes. Cazuvel looked behind him, out across the waters of the bay. Satisfied he wasn’t being watched or followed, he passed through the door. It closed in his wake, sealing him off from the outside world.

The Lyceum was once a school of magic and a conservatory of learning for all three of the orders of High Sorcery. It had been built upon a promontory that extended out into Kalaman Bay but was little more than a sandspit covered in water when the tide was in. The building itself was a squat, featureless edifice that the locals ignored.

Cazuvel traveled the dark hallways of the Lyceum, gesturing and intoning more commands, opening doors and revealing passages hidden by sorcery. Finally, as a set of stone portals slid aside at a wave of his hand, the wizard arrived at his destination.

Cazuvel stood in the Grand Cloister, a circular chamber dedicated to conjuration and invocations. Hundreds of runes, sigils, and glyphs were carved or drawn upon the marble floor and walls. Encircling stone pillars divided the middle of the room from the curving walkway around it. Torch brackets mounted on each pillar shed light on the room’s center and the elaborate major
summoning circle boldly painted upon the floor at the room’s very center.

There, inside the wards both physical and ephemeral, a mirror crafted from a single sheet of hammered steel mounted in an ironwood frame hung suspended in the air, anchored by invisible threads of magic. Cazuvel’s reflection flickered within its lustrous polished surface—a white-blond albino, his violet eyes staring out from the mirror in the shadow of the black cowl of the robes.

“Here I stand again before you,” said Cazuvel to the mirror.
“Cermindaya, cermindaya, saya memanggil anda dan mengikat anda.”

The image in the mirror—Cazuvel’s image—writhed and grimaced. The mage watched as the Cazuvel in the mirror reached up his hands as if to grasp the frame surrounding him, and shook.

“Leave me alone, you bastard!” the image screamed. “You’ve taken enough! Let me out!”

Cazuvel smiled. His face was much whiter than his teeth.

“Not yet,” he said. “It is necessary that I draw more power from you. The highmaster has a new problem.”

The mirror Cazuvel seemed to press up against the glass. “By the Abyss, just let me out.”

“By the Abyss indeed,” said the first Cazuvel, extending his thin, white fingers in the mirror’s direction. Arcs of blue and orange sprang from Cazuvel’s hands, dancing upon the shocked image of the wizard; the lightning crackled for a heartbeat longer, then surged back to where it had come. Both Cazuvel and his image in the mirror jerked and shook with each sparking jolt, but while Cazuvel bore an expression of intense satisfaction, his image screamed.

When the lightning ceased, Cazuvel lowered his hands and smiled. The image in the mirror looked gaunt, haggard, the life drained from it. Cazuvel, on the other hand, seemed more vital and stronger than he had before he started. He turned and began walking to the doors.

“You’ll never …” said the image, hunched over within the frame of the mirror.

Cazuvel drew his robed cowl over his head, hiding his violet eyes from view. “I’ll never what? Get away with it? Why, of course I will.”

“You’ll be discovered. Found out. I’ll get free.”

Cazuvel laughed. “I think not. Remember how potent that spell you attempted was, my caged friend. Far beyond your own reach. You made a mistake, trying to cast it—incorrectly—and now here we are.”

The image looked up and out, its sunken features tightening in anger. “She’s no fool, you monster. She trained under Emperor Ariakas. She walks the Left Hand Path, as he did. Eventually she’ll catch on to who you really are.”

Cazuvel lifted his shoulders, shrugged. “Perhaps. But by then I will have already secured a permanent portal. I won’t have any more need of you or the highmaster or any of the others in this careless game of souls you’ve all been playing.”

The wizard spoke a single word, a word loaded with a violent finality. The image in the mirror flinched then vanished. The surface of the mirror grew dark, and Cazuvel left it there in the depths of the Lyceum.

As the wings of magic carried him across Kalaman Bay once more and to the east, toward Nordmaar, the wizard Cazuvel—or whoever he truly was—wondered whether the highmaster really would uncover all of his
secrets. Was the armored, fire-loving Rivven Cairn truly that skilled in the art?

He would have to find out for himself.

V
anderjack poured himself a drink.

The bottle was just sitting there, and its owner was one of several mercenary barflies who had, upon hearing of the imminent arrival of the dragonarmy soldiers, vacated the premises. Not being the kind of man to let any alcohol go to waste and in need of some fortification in this time of stress, Vanderjack poured some of the bottle’s contents into an empty tankard and looked around.

“Anybody else for a drink?” he asked cordially.

Gredchen and Theodenes were the only two left in the tavern, with even the cadaverous doorman having taken his leave. Neither of them responded positively.

“Are you insane?” asked Gredchen, shaking her head as Vanderjack held the bottle out toward her. “We need to be leaving, Vanderjack. I’m not the least bit interested in being thrown into a cell by the dragonarmy.”

Theodenes looked out the window rather than take the proffered bottle. “Neither am I, frankly. In fact, I can think of nothing more insulting. In addition, I never consume wines, spirits, lagers, ports, or any other fermented
beverage. Now is certainly not the time to start. Nor is it a good time for you to become inebriated.”

Vanderjack took a long swallow from his tankard and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Ordinarily I would agree, but under the circumstances I think it could be a good thing. Besides,” he looked at the bottle’s faded label. “I think this is dwarf spirits. There’s a bit of a kick.”