Turning Points (18 page)

She hadn’t felt this helpless since her parents split up. Her father had chosen to take her with him while her mother had stayed behind with her younger siblings—she’d had no choice and no control then, either.

Her father had been a minor member of Nadalya’s entourage, and she had grown up in the palace as basically his personal slave and housekeeper. But being in the palace gave her the chance to watch as Nadalya’s guards trained, and they had taught her much. She became a skilled fighter because her father took her to live among fighters, and she became untrusting and uncaring because he took her away from the people she loved and who loved her.

Her father had disowned her when at the age of sixteen she left his service to become a mercenary. However, everyone knew whose daughter she was and she knew her father was occasionally asked to pay restitution for damage she’d done either while drunk, in a fight or both. It didn’t bother her, if he chose to pay that was his problem not hers.

The mercenary life was a good one for someone like her, someone who had no ties and no commitments except to herself. Kadasah certainly never considered joining any war band. She might very well be good at giving orders—she certainly believed she was—but she sure as hell wasn’t any good at all at taking them.

That one event that happened when she was only nine, had shaped her whole life—changed it totally from its original course. And here she was again with no control, basically helpless. Except that now she had a lifetime of experience behind her, and she wasn’t a little kid that people could kick around. She made her own decisions now, and her destiny was in her own hands. All she had to do was use her head. This time her weapons skill wasn’t going to be enough, though. She couldn’t fight herself out of this one; she was going to have to think and think quickly.

Damn that creepy almost dead guy! He ruined my routine! Nothing is right! It’s all his fault. I swear, if I get out of this one, I’m going to get that creep!

Suddenly she heard voices, and she threw herself and Kaytin against the wall and blew out the candle.

“What the…” Kaytin started in a whisper, but quieted down when he also heard the sound of voices getting closer. He seemed to be trying to actually crawl into the tunnel wall behind them and wasn’t doing a half-bad job. Kaytin was of course a natural hider, just as she was a natural fighter.

There were at least two different voices. One most probably female, the other definitely male.

From the tone of their voices it was obvious that they were agi-tated and unhappy. She thought at first it must be because they had discovered that she and Kaytin were missing, but gradually it became clear that this wasn’t the case.

Kadasah spoke both Wrigglie as well as Irrune, but these two seemed to be speaking in a tongue which was as foreign to her as the prayers Kaytin had been mumbling earlier. It was only as they got closer that she realized that they were speaking Wrigglie, just a slower more deliberate version than she was used to. Some people told her she talked too fast, and sometimes when she did this, she knew she stuck Irrune words in, making it impossible for people to understand her. As she listened to these two obviously agitated people, she wondered what they must sound like when they weren’t excited.

“—cause she is an Irrune woman, a mercenary from her attire. Kopal swears he has seen her in the palace, that he recognizes her from Arizak’s court. He thinks that Arizak may realize that we have infiltrated his court. That he may have sent her here to spy on us—to find out who our spies are,” the woman was saying.

“Nonsense, how could they know? How would they? We have captured ourselves a couple of sacrifices. Nothing less and nothing more. I will talk to Kopal and calm him down. He worries too much…”

“But he wishes to question her before we sacrifice her.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard. We can use her little friend to get the information from her.”

As she listened to them she was a little amused, and a whole lot of ashamed. She had been sure that they had been carefully hunting her, having figured out that she was the one killing them. Instead she and Kaytin had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been picked up as sacrifices. It was more than a little embarrassing considering her profession, and she hoped that Kaytin couldn’t understand what they were saying, or at least wouldn’t come to the same conclusion that she just had.

They came into view then. They were covered in scars and tattoos, and all else was forgotten as the mercenary in Kadasah saw money— enough to buy new weapons.

She lay very still, barely breathing, and noticed that Kaytin did the same. When the pair were almost abreast of them she jumped out and plowed her table leg into the man’s nose hard enough to bury it in his brain. Then she caught the stunned woman on the backswing, effectively and permanently silencing her as well. She grabbed their candle before it could go out and handed it to Kaytin. He took the candle and held it for her so that she could see to search their bodies, taking a long dirk from a sheath on the man’s side, and collecting a trophy from each of the bodies. She then started walking in the direction the two cultists had been coming from, now carrying both the table leg and the dead man’s knife. Part of her really wanted to search around and see if she couldn’t find her own weapons, but she knew the chances of finding them were slim and staying in the tunnels one more second than they had to was just flat insane.

“But…” Kaytin scratched his head, as he followed her. “We were going that way.” He pointed behind them.

“Yes, and so were they. Since they were going to meet with more of their kind.”

“Back this way. But why didn’t they notice we were gone?”

It was a good question, and she thought about it for a minute. “There has to be another tunnel that we missed, and that one will get us out of this hole. Hopefully to the surface.”

Going back the side tunnel was visible. They had missed it before because of the angle, the bad lighting, and because they hadn’t known to look for it. They followed the new tunnel, feeling more than seeing that they were moving up. They could just make out a faint light when they heard screams and running footsteps behind them. They didn’t wait to find out what all the commotion was about. After all they were pretty sure that they knew. They just took off at a run, stumbling through the dark, and soon they were outside. Kadasah looked around for something they could knock back over the entrance, but there was nothing small enough for them to move, so they kept running and she started whistling loudly. In moments, Vagrant was at their side. They jumped on the horse and took off just as the first Dyareelans boiled up out of the hole.

It took them about an hour to find Kaytin’s mule, and another to catch him. They were about to mount up when Kaytin turned to look at Kadasah. “So, let’s see this enchanted talisman you use to confound men.”

Kadasah went to pull the cord up out of the front of her shirt and found it missing.

“Damn, it’s gone! Those bastards must have taken it as well.”

“And yet you look no different to me, and I feel the same way about you.” He kissed her cheek, got on his mule, and rode away.

“Frogs!” Kadasah cursed. “That wizard cheated me.”

It wound up being easier for her to gain an audience with Arizak than it was to get him to believe the truth of what she’d heard. It didn’t help that her father stood there the whole time insisting that she was an unworthy daughter who had gone away from the old ways, and was only there to tarnish his good name. In the end she consoled herself with the idea that they had been told now, and that maybe it would plant a seed of doubt and get them to open their eyes to the possibility at the very least.

She employed the skill of a whip of a man named Heliz to write a letter to accompany the trophies she left in their usual place, and against her normal habit she actually paid him his fee without question. In the letter she told her employer very briefly about the events of the night before. She also told him how many of the Dyareelans there actually were, and that many were deliberately remaining unmarked obviously so that they could infiltrate the population. She could only hope that he would listen better than Arizak. When she returned later to retrieve her reward there was four times as much money as normal, so she assumed that he believed her.

She used the money to buy new and better weapons, and spent a few days in quiet reflection just hanging out in the outbuilding of an abandoned red-brick estate in the hills beyond the walls. This also allowed Vagrant to have a few well-earned days of uninterrupted grazing time.

On Ilsday she rode to the Vulgar Unicorn and was halfway through her fourth beer and her third embellished telling of the events of a week ago when Kaytin finally showed up.

“I… I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to,” he shrugged. “But I couldn’t stay away.”

“Here,” she reached in her pocket and pulled out several coins. He held out his hand with trepidation, and she dropped the coins into his hand, each one falling a little more reluctantly than the one before it.

“You… Kadasah! You’re actually paying me.” He added with a laugh, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Actually,” she said with a smile, “I’m a little miffed. I wouldn’t have wasted my time stealing that talisman if I had known it was worthless. And by the way it stank whenever it got wet.”

“You are the most magnificent of women, Kadasah,” Kaytin said with a smile. “Why would you ever think that you would need any sort of spell to make you more appealing?”

“I was just trying to get an edge.”

“My love… Your eyes are like the bluest ocean, your lips are gentle like the curve of a bow…”

“Frogs, Kaytin!” Kadasah said in disgust. “You aren’t going to start all that crap again are you? I almost got you killed! You have to stay mad at me longer than this.”

“I cannot help it, Kadasah. Kaytin’s love for you leaps within his chest at the vision of your loveliness, and…”

The dead-looking guy walked into the bar, and everyone got quiet. He turned to fix Kadasah with an eyes-sewed-shut stare, and her blood ran cold. She looked at Kaytin, did a quick rundown of everything that had happened the last time the creep had looked at her, and said, “All right, Kaytin, I give. Let’s go make love.”

She left without paying her tab, and Kaytin eagerly followed.

Cunning and guile oft proves fatal: sometimes to the predator, sometimes to the prey.

“
Agsh nabb thak dro
…”

Arcane words wrenched out from the black hole of a cowl as the dark-robed man, the mantled creature, the cloaked thing on the pier, stood with his, its, the thing’s arms outstretched toward the sea. Overhead the shadow-swallowed moon had turned ruddy, now wholly engulfed by the creeping darkness. Out on the sea a luminous mist coiled up from the brine, chill in the cool spring air. And still the chant went on, under the eclipse of the moon, the glimmering vapor thickening and thickening in the ebon depths of the night.

And behind the chanter, the canter, the caster, an ugly little man stood trembling, his hands clutching at his misshapen torso, his white eyes wide in fear. Rogi hated it when his master did such things, for Rogi’s own mother had done likewise ere she had crumbled to dust… beneath a full moon as well, though not one in bloody eclipse. She had been chanting, too, but words different from these, just before she sprinkled the powder into the potion and drank it all, and then looked at him with an accusatory glare and croaked out “You little shite,” even as she fell to ashes.

Rogi wrenched his mind away from remembrance of his mothe— no, not mother, though he still thought of her that way… rather the witch who had raised him—”
She plucked you from the sea, after you bad been thrown in twice”
—or so the S’danzo Elemi had said as she read her seer’s cards. Even so, had he not substituted that other green potion for the one he “accidentally” drank, perhaps his mother the witch would still be—

“It is done,” whispered the ghastly, hollow voice of Rogi’s master, a voice like dead leaves rustling in icy wind. “Now we wait.”

With an awkward, stumping gait, Rogi hobbled around to face the enshadowed cowl; the malformed little man in an overlarge shirt peered up at the gaunt, six-foot-one necromancer, all the while hoping he wouldn’t see the oh-so-terrible, painted-on eyes. “Now the champion will come, eh, Mathter Halott?”

“Yes,” hissed the dead-leaves answer. “Now the champion will come.”

In a dark corner of the Vulgar Unicorn, two men sat drinking brandy: one a fairly handsome young man, the other rather nondescript. “But I want that gemstone, Soldt, and I will pay well for its winning.”

Toying with his glass, Soldt looked across at the fair-haired eldest son of Arizak. “You can enter the tournament yourself, Naimun. You have an adequate hand at swords.”

“Ah, but contestants have come from all over—have you not seen the docks? Hardly a slip left open. And the stables are full as well, the inns near to bursting.” Naimun gestured at the crowded common room. “And see these bravos, blades on their hips, surely the best of the Rankans and the Ilsigi as well as of the Irrunes. Aye, perhaps I could win a few, but I am not one to fool myself: I have no chance of reaching the final, much less of winning it. But you, Soldt, you are a master, a teacher of the dueling blade, and certain to win.”

Soldt shook his head, his ragged-cut brown hair ruffling. “But for the lessons I give, Sanctuary is the place I come to get away from swordplay. I do not like to let blood within the city walls.”

“But it’s just to first blood—a simple nick, Soldt—and the prize well worth the risk. Ha! For you, there is no risk.”

Again Soldt shook his head. “Naimun, whenever there’s an edge or point involved, there is always a risk. Have you not been listening during your—?”

The blond Irrune shoved out a hand of negation. “Pah! You are the best swordsman in the city, Soldt, and I wager in the land as well. None can match your skill. Besides, when you win and I gift the gemstone to my father, I’ll stand higher in his eyes, perhaps even on an equal footing with—” Of a sudden Naimun fell silent and stared into the dregs of his drink, and bitterness dwelled in his gaze, or so it seemed to Soldt.