The Sorcerer's Abyss (The Sorcerer's Path) (11 page)

Ellyssa stood up and nervously cast her eyes between the two groups of men. She looked like a frightened rabbit, too terrified to run from the wolves closing in on her. However, the emotion coursing through her veins was not fear, but hatred and rage. The eyes of these men were indistinguishable from the ones who had taken her. Perhaps they were even the same men. They would know where Captain Jake was, and she would make them tell her where.

“Easy there, girl,” one of the slavers called out as if to coax a stray dog toward them. “We ain’t gonna hurt ya. We just want to take ya to a nice place out of the rain and maybe get some food in ya. Wouldn’t ya like that?”

When the men approached close enough for her to smell them, Ellyssa bolted between the only opening the two groups left her. The false kindness of the men vanished and they all began shouting orders to each other and hurling curses at the girl for making them chase her. Three stayed on her tail while two others split off to get ahead of her.

Ellyssa ran quickly down the alleys and narrow streets but made sure she did not lose her pursuers. The slavers probably thought she was running blind, but she was leading them exactly where she wanted.

Several exhausting minutes of running ended with the girl trapped in an alley dead-ending in a solid wall of stone. She stood huddling against the wall, shielding her face with her arms as she pleaded for mercy.

“Please, sirs, please leave me be!”

All five slavers shared a laugh at the girl’s helpless pleadings as they casually approached, one holding a large sack, another with a belaying pin ready and willing to knock her senseless at the first sign of a struggle.

“Keep your trap shut and there’ll be no problems. There’s no place left to run.”

All five men stopped as the girl started laughing, stood up straight, and faced them without the slightest hint of the fear filling her a moment ago. “Congratulations, you caught me, but I am afraid all you will find here tonight is your death. Whether your death is quick or painful is up to you.”

“Shouldn’a made this difficult, girl,” the man with belaying pin said.

He took two swift steps forward and hurled the small club. The pin passed right through the space between her eyebrows and struck the wall with a sharp crack. As disconcerting as that was, the true panic set in when the laughing girl simply vanished.

“She’s a ghost!” one man shouted. Several of them turned around to run only to find Ellyssa blocking the end of the alley.

“Oh, I’m far worse than that,” Ellyssa said, practically cackling with delight.

Two of the slavers looked at each other and rushed the girl, drawing blades as they ran. This earned them the opportunity to die first. Ellyssa’s laughter was lost in her fury as she pulled at the Source, commanding it to do her bidding. Errant energy caused her hair to stand on end and limned her in an ethereal light making her look positively terrifying, like some avenging spirit come to punish the men who had led such wicked lives and caused so much pain.

Twin bolts of azure energy lanced out from her hands, each catching one of the men rushing toward her. The force of the strikes crushed ribs, scorched flesh, and hurled them back even farther than they had run forward. The other three men looked about frantically, desperately searching for a way out. Their desperate searching was short-lived as ropes snaked down from the rooftops, wrapped around the men’s chests and necks, and hoisted them several feet up the wall. The slavers gagged and kicked wildly as the ropes threatened to cut off their airway. The men looked at Ellyssa with terrified eyes as she strode forward.

She looked up at the nearest dangling slaver. “Where is Captain Jake?” Ellyssa asked.

The man gasped loudly as the rope loosened enough for him to speak. “I don’t know, I swear! I don’t know Captain Jake!”

“Wrong answer,” Ellyssa informed him without emotion.

The rope retightened its grip, hoisted him several feet farther up the wall, and then dropped him. The rope snapped taut three feet short of the man’s feet touching the ground. The crack of his neck was audible in the dark alley and his struggles immediately ceased. Ellyssa looked at the next hanging man and repeated the question.

“H-he ships out of the Isles of Ash ever since he got himself a whole lot of gold. Bought himself a new ship and everything. I don’t sail with him. Never have! I don’t know where he is now, I swear!”

“Do you know how he got his gold?”

“N-no, I don’t,” the man croaked hoarsely.

“He got it by selling me,” Ellyssa informed the slaver. “But he hasn’t been paid in full, and I need to make sure he gets everything he has coming to him. What is the name of your ship, scum?”

The slaver whined pitifully. “
S-sea Phoenix
!”

“Is it at the dock now?”

“P-please, I can’t say nothin’!”

With a twitch of her finger, the rope hauled the man a couple feet higher up the wall.

“Dock three! Please I don’t wanna die!”

“How many of your captives begged for their lives, slaver? How many begged for their freedom? How many did you let go?”

The man dropped and ceased his struggles and pleading. Ellyssa stepped toward the last man still alive. The aroma of his soiling himself was almost overpowering, but Ellyssa refused to balk.

“Please, I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” the man said.

“I want to know where Captain Jake is,” Ellyssa said once again.

“T-the Isles of Ash! Black Harbor!”

“You know for certain he is there now?”

“Yes! Yes, he’s there now! You can get him!”

Ellyssa smiled a humorless smile. “You’re lying to me aren’t you? You don’t know Captain Jake or where he’s at.”

The slaver tried to think through his panic and grasped at any straw to save his pitiful life. “
Sea Phoenix
! Our ship is the
Sea Phoenix
!”

   “He already told me that. You have no useful information for me, do you?”

Ellyssa turned away and proceeded to walk out of the alley, the slavers pleas for mercy following her out until they abruptly cut off with the punctuating snap of the rope. “No remorse,” she whispered into the night.

It did not take Ellyssa long to reach the docks since slavers rarely travelled far from their ship. Carrying trussed and bundled captives through the city was a tricky endeavor, especially with the Watch actually enforcing the King’s law. It was not a great hindrance since most work in the city was found near the dock ward. Many of the desperate called it home even if that home was in an alley or wooden crate.

Given the small size of North Haven’s harbor, finding the slave ship was quite easy. It sat moored at the end of the long pier where several men stood guard, watching for the City Guard and the rival thieves’ guild. Ellyssa did not understand why the slavers and the thieves’ guild were unable or unwilling to work together, but she was thankful for it. Slavers were largely thugs and brutes with little skill beyond sailing and preying upon the helpless. The thieves were far better organized and employed a host of skills that would have made Ellyssa’s job much harder and much more dangerous.

Ellyssa was furious these scum operated right in the open with no shame and little fear. Whatever plan or tactic she had thought up vanished as she watched the men on the dock and crawling about the ship. All she saw was Captain Jake, Sonjay, and the rest of the slaver crew who had captured her, tormented her, and delivered her into the hands of those sadistic wizards in Bakhtaran.

The men on the dock guarding the ship went on alert as Ellyssa approached. When they saw it was a young woman, their tension turned to amusement. The men struck an easy pose, leaning against a coil of rope or a pier pillar but made ready to spring on the girl as she drew near. Their first thought was she was a prostitute looking to make some quick coin. If she was, she was stupid for she would find nothing here but a boat ride to hell.

“Hey, girl,” one of the men called out as Ellyssa drew near, “you out here looking for a good time?”

Ellyssa smiled, “I guess you could say I am.”

The man who spoke to her and one other were leaning against coils of stout rope used to tie off ships to the dock. The ends of those coils snaked up with a flick of Ellyssa’s wrist, wrapped around the men’s chest and throat, and flung them out over the harbor where the ropes dragged them to the bottom until the bubbles stopped. Two of the three remaining guards drew cutlasses and charged, only to be hurled back with a pair of magical strikes, crushing their chests and depositing one into the harbor and another twenty feet into the ship’s rigging. The last man looked around in terror and jumped into the water before Ellyssa could deal with him.

The brief but terrified shouts of the men and display of magic caused an immediate uproar aboard the ship. The crew began shouting orders, a bell clanged loudly in alarm, and they began forming a defense. Several men lowered crossbows and the twang of their strings accompanied the buzzing of deadly quarrels. The bolts flew by or dropped to the dock with a clatter as they met Ellyssa’s magical shield.

Ellyssa countered by raking lightning through their ranks, striking down those she hit and sending the others ducking behind masts, crates, and anything affording a measure of concealment. Her strike started several small fires, which only added to the mayhem as she stepped across the gangplank and boarded the ship.

Seeing their crossbows were useless, a dozen or more sailors rushed forward in hopes of overwhelming her by sheer numbers. Ellyssa struck out with bolts of energy then an entire wall of force as the men nearly trampled her underfoot. The wall blew most of them back but, forced to spread it out over such a large area, it did little except buy her a few moments of time. She used that time to open a gate to the far side of the ship where only a few men stood at the ready. One nearly succeeded on cleaving her skull with a hand axe before Ellyssa was able to shake off the disorientation of using her gate.

She spotted the man lunging for her out of the corner of her eye and struck out almost blindly. She clipped her attacker in the shoulder with a bolt of energy, spinning him around and over the nearby railing. Three others immediately converged upon her with cutlasses held high. Ellyssa sent tendrils of power into the ropes crisscrossing the rigging overhead and pulled them down to her. She directed them against the three men and hurled them far out into the inky black water of the harbor.