The Politics of Wizards
[ Chapter One ]
“I need you to rescue my son,” the Wixit said.
Indrajit nodded. He sat drinking lang-lang berry tea, sweetened with lemon and honey and thickened with cream, with his partner Fix. The tea shop was owned by the Wixit, whose name was Hector Thoat. Outside, the late-morning sun spilled down on the traffic along the Crooked Mile, steadily building toward noon. Over the scent of his tea, Indrajit smelled camel and Drogger musk.
Indrajit and Fix sat on stools around an upended barrel serving as a table. On a third stool, Thoat stood. Like all Wixits, Thoat was two cubits tall and furry. Indrajit and Fix wore kilts alone, given the summer heat. Their weapons hung on their belts, other than Fix’s spear, which leaned against the wall. The Wixit was naked and unarmed.
“We sort of specialize in princesses,” Indrajit said.
“We do not specialize,” Fix said. “We don’t specialize in princesses, or in kidnappings, or in anything else. We’re broadly skilled generalists. And we’re happy to rescue your son.”
“We can certainly extend our activities to recover the stray prince.” Indrajit smiled.
“He wasn’t kidnapped,” Thoat said.
Fix frowned. “Then why does he need rescuing?”
“He won’t come home,” Thoat said.
“Ah.” Indrajit folded his arms across his chest. “This is a different matter.”
“A different kettle of fish, you might say?” Fix smiled mildly.
“Fish have nothing to do with it,” Indrajit said.
“Hmm.”
“I can pay.” Thoat unslung a small purse from around his shoulder and poured coins onto the barrel. Without counting, Indrajit estimated that the pile contained some thirty Imperials. Bright, yellow, gold coins. “Consider this a deposit,” Thoat said. “A retainer. Call it half, shall we?”
“A child who has run away is a lot like a child who has been kidnapped,” Fix said. “In some ways, the dangers are greater.”
“A child who has been kidnapped usually has a roof over his head,” Indrajit pointed out. “And food.”
Out of the corner of his wide peripheral vision, he saw Munahim’s back. The third member of the jobber company, and in theory the only one who wasn’t a partner, stood with his back to the tea shop’s window. Indrajit saw his long sword slung there, beside the bow that snapped into a taut copper bracket. He saw the black fur along the back of Munahim’s head, and his doglike ears as he looked from side to side, standing watch.
Munahim hadn’t been paid in weeks. None of them had eaten for two days.
“Do you ever take biscuits with your tea?” he asked Thoat. “Or a nice bit of cake?”
“Sometimes.” The Wixit wasn’t taking the hint. “When you say ‘child,’ though . . . you understand that my son is an adult.”
“Finding and reconnecting with a long-lost loved one can be a trial,” Fix said. “Sometimes it’s as fraught with challenges as rescuing a kidnap victim.”
“I know exactly where to find him,” Thoat said.
“Perhaps you’d better explain exactly where your son is,” Indrajit suggested.
“Also, help us understand why you can’t just get him yourself,” Fix added.
“He’s at the Collegium Arcanum,” Thoat said.
Indrajit fell silent.
Fix sipped his tea.
“Maybe you’d like a little cake,” Thoat said.
Indrajit frowned. The Collegium Arcanum was a secret organization of wizards. Did it train new wizards? Did it regulate magicians? Did it serve as a cartel of wizardry to keep the prices of magic high? No one could say for certain, because there was no building such as, for instance, the Hall of Charters occupied, where a person could make inquiries. The Collegium was completely secret.
If it existed at all.
The Wixit brought two little seed cakes on a silver tray.
“How do you know he’s at the Collegium?” Fix asked.
Indrajit ate a cake quickly, before Thoat could take it back. He had a terrible feeling that the job offer was going to evaporate and the coins on the barrelhead disappear, but at least if he had a nice little cake, he wouldn’t have come here completely in vain.
It wasn’t a nice little cake. It was heavy and oily and he gagged choking it down, but Indrajit was hungry. He ate the cake and tried not to stare at its mate, sitting innocently on the tray.
“He asked for his inheritance early.” Thoat scratched his belly and shifted from paw to paw. “We’d quarreled, you see.”
“Go on,” Fix said.
“Did he spend it on magical tools?” Indrajit asked. “A ceremonial dagger? An alembic?”
“Are those in the Epic?” Fix asked.
Indrajit shrugged. “Common knowledge.”
“No,” Thoat admitted. “Or maybe. I don’t know what he spent it on.”
“Perhaps the Collegium requires the payment of tuition,” Indrajit said. “Or a licensing fee.”
“The point is that he cut me off,” Thoat said, “so I wouldn’t know where he went. But he’d always dreamed of becoming a sorcerer.”
“Any particular kind of sorcery?” Indrajit asked.
“The magical kind,” Thoat said.
“So no preference for, say, necromancy? Or scrying?”
“Druvash spellcraft?” Fix piled on. “Temple thaumaturgy? Bonean stargazing? Yuchak spiritwalking? Alchemy?”
“He liked the idea of getting rich,” Thoat said. “He despised the tea business. He never could tell his mint from his marmalade, and perhaps I drove the boy too far.”
“So he took the money,” Indrajit said, “and he always dreamed of being a wizard, and can we help you find him now. Is that about the size of it?” He eyed the pile of coins, afraid it was still liable to slip away. “Is there nothing more to go on?”
“I received a note last night.” Thoat cleared his throat.
“Sounds fishy,” Fix said.
As an act of revenge, Indrajit ate the second cake. He instantly regretted it; his hunger had sufficiently sauced the first cake to make it palatable, but wasn’t enough to make the second go down. It lodged in his throat like a beam turned sideways. He sucked at his tea, trying to sluice it down his gullet.
“It wasn’t signed,” Thoat added.
Indrajit swallowed. The cake stayed where it was, an awkward lump, but he could breathe and talk around it. “That’s the problem with writing. If I say something to you face-to-face, you know who spoke the words. You can look at me and judge whether I’m trustworthy and whether I know what I’m talking about. But a written message—pfagh! You have no idea who made it, when it’s not signed.”
“Even when it is signed you might not know,” Fix admitted. “Signatures can be faked.”
“I don’t know why you hold with the practice.” Indrajit snorted.
“So I was saying,” Thoat continued, “I received an unsigned note. It was there, on the floor behind the door. Someone had pushed it under the door in the night.”
He held up a scrap of parchment, offering it to Indrajit. Fix reached over and took the note.
“What’s on the back, there?” Indrajit asked.
Fix examined both sides of the scrap. “There’s a note on one side. On the other, more writing, but it’s in a language I can’t identify. And it accompanies drawings.”
“Art?” Indrajit asked.
“It looks more like technical schematics,” Fix said.
“I couldn’t read that side, either,” Thoat admitted. “Maybe your Kyone could give it a look.”
“Munahim is an honest Kyone, unsullied by the greasy art of ciphering letters.” Indrajit sniffed.
Thoat looked dismayed.
“Don’t worry,” Fix said. “Someone is just reusing a scrap of parchment. Parchment and paper and all other writing materials are expensive, so a prudent writer never lets any go to waste.”
Indrajit snorted. “A prudent writer.”
“The note,” Thoat said.
Fix held up the scrap of parchment. “It’s written in ink.”
“What else would it be written in?” the Wixit asked.
“There are many possibilities,” Fix said. “Paint. Pencil lead.”
“Charcoal,” Indrajit suggested, embarrassed that the idea occurred to him.
“The fact that the note is written in ink suggests that the writer is preparing the note in a study or a library,” Fix reasoned. “No one carries a bottle of ink with him to, say, the wharf, or to the market.”
Thoat nodded, eyes gleaming. “Yes, I see.”
“‘I know your son, Adakles,’” Fix read. “‘He is a disciple of the third degree in the Collegium Arcanum.’”
“What’s a disciple of the third degree?” Thoat asked.
“I don’t know anything about the Collegium’s structure, as such,” Fix said.
“But a disciple is a student,” Indrajit added. “It probably just means a student. Since he just started, presumably the ‘third degree’ part means he’s just a beginner.”
Thoat nodded. “Adakles would be new there. It makes sense that he would be a lesser disciple.”
“Unless he used his inheritance to buy a greater station,” Indrajit pointed. “So . . . he didn’t do that.”
“Is that how it works among the Blaatshi?” Fix asked. “Would an aspiring apprentice Recital Thane, for instance, give the old Recital Thane a large cash gift to be advanced in her studies?”
“I’m not an old Recital Thane,” Indrajit said.
“But you know what I mean.”
“And no, a Recital Thane would do no such thing. In the first instance, an apprentice doesn’t buy his position, he is admitted to it by the Recital Thane after careful examination.” Indrajit shuddered at the thought of bribery. “Indeed, he’s adopted by the old . . . by the incumbent Recital Thane as a son.”
“The family of the apprentice never gives gifts?” Fix asked.
“The family might give gifts,” Indrajit acknowledged, “but only because these would ultimately be bestowed on the apprentice himself, in the form of food, lodging, tuition, and other kinds of support. But a Blaatshi could never buy rank as a Recital Thane with money or any other payment. A Recital Thane must above all be able to perform, so it’s imperative that apprentices and thanes alike have actual ability, that they meet all requisite standards.”
“Yes, yes,” Thoat said. “A disciple of the third degree. But the other part is more important.”
Fix looked back at the parchment. “‘Adakles has failed his examination to become a disciple of the second degree. He believes that he will be allowed to continue as a disciple, and retake his examination. He is mistaken. Tomorrow, he’ll be killed.’”
“Not technically kidnapped,” Indrajit said. “But now we see what the problem actually is.”
Thoast shifted from paw to paw and made a whimpering noise in his throat. “It’s not finished yet.”
“‘I cannot tell him,’” Fix read, “‘so I am telling you. I will meet you at sunset tonight at Headless Took. I will wear red so that you recognize me. I’ll tell you where to find your son tonight so you can bring him home. You will want to have prepared a fast way to get him out of the city.’”
“That wasn’t a note,” Indrajit said, “it was a novel.”
Fix frowned.
“I don’t even know where Headless Took is.” Thoat’s voice was strained and squeaky.
“Headless Took is a statue in the Crown,” Indrajit said. “Some people worship it as a god.”
Fix shook his head. “Some people believe that the Took represents the spirit that descended upon Imperial Kish’s emperors upon coronation. And that the statue’s headlessness represents . . . or relates to . . . the fact that Kish is no longer an empire. And that the reappearance of the statue’s head will be a prophetic sign of the imminent return of the empire.”
“Reapearance?” Indrajit asked. “Does that mean that the head used to be there and disappeared? As in, vanished? Not knocked off the statue, but just ceased to be visible?”
Fix shrugged. “I’m more troubled by the fact that this would-be helper is unable to notify Adakles himself. What does that mean?”
Indrajit shook his head. “They’re separated somehow. In a different order or dormitory. Surely the person will tell us tonight.”
“Does that mean you’ll help?” Thoat asked.
Indrajit scooped the coins off the barrelhead. “Yes.”
[ Chapter Two ]
“It isn’t fair that the Kyone has a better sense of smell and also a better sense of hearing than other men,” Indrajit said. “The gods should have been more evenhanded in distributing their gifts.”
“Well, a fish rots from the head,” Fix said.
“What does that mean?”
“Kish is rotten,” Fix explained. “Perhaps her gods are rotten, too.”
Indrajit and Fix crouched atop the ceiling of a tailor’s shop, two stories above a narrow, stone-cobbled lane. The lane ended in a square, in the center of which stood a statue of a headless man, dressed in a toga and wearing rings on all its fingers. Water bubbled up in a spring between the Headless Took’s feet, and the circular trough that caught the water was filled with flower petals.
Thoat stood beside the statue, a basket of flowers slung over one arm. He picked petals from the flowers and dropped them one by one into the water, murmuring what might have been prayers. Other pilgrims also threw flowers, or circumambulated about the statue, or did both.
Munahim sat on a stone bench in the corner of the square, slumped back against the wall and feigning sleep as he kept an eye on the Wixit. Indrajit had urged the Kyone to hold a wineskin and pretend to be drunk, but Munahim had protested that he wasn’t drunk. Wasn’t much of a drinker, in fact. Never had been.
“Now that I think of it,” Indrajit said, “the gods have notably deprived the Kyone of the ability to lie. Sight and hearing notwithstanding, I find it astonishing that the race still exists.”
“Not everyone is a liar,” Fix said.
“On the King of Thunder Steppes, perhaps not. In Kish . . . ?”
“In Kish, even the epic poets become liars.”
“We do not become liars,” Indrajit said. “We have always been the best liars.”
“I thought the purpose of the Blaatshi Epic was to tell important truths,” Fix said.
“Not just important truths. The important truths. All of them. The high and holy calling of a Blaatshi Recital Thane is to tell all the truths a young Blaatshi must know to understand his place in the universe and to pass successfully through life. Which he does, in a very important sense, by lying.”
“Look.” Fix pointed.
A Fanchee woman wearing a red toga cautiously entered the square from the far side. She was green-skinned, with the mass of noodle-like appendages hanging off the lower half of her face that gave all Fanchee, male and female alike, a vaguely bearded appearance.
“Fanchee shouldn’t wear red,” Indrajit said. “Their skin is such an uncompromising shade of green, it really doesn’t match.”
“The assault on the eye does make for an effective signal,” Fix pointed out.
Munahim was doing an admirable job of restraining himself. The guileless Kyone no doubt wanted to leap up and seize the Fanchee immediately, but he lay still with his mouth hanging slightly open, tongue lolling to one side. His role was just to observe, to hear what was said, and then, if necessary, to track.
Thoat dumped the flowers on the street and bounded to meet the Fanchee.
“He doesn’t look very pious,” Indrajit said.
“Let us hope the Took doesn’t punish him.”
The Wixit shook as he confronted the green woman. He leaped up and down, his arms waving. Indrajit could hear squeaking sounds, but couldn’t make out any words.
Then Thoat sprang up onto the Fanchee. His jaws were splayed wide, much wider than Indrajit would have guessed possible, and his teeth were large enough to be visible from here. He gripped the front of the Fanchee’s toga and sank his teeth into her neck.
Except then the Wixit fell to the ground. He shuddered violently, back arching, and foam boiled up from his throat.
Munahim leaped to his feet and drew his long sword in a single fluid motion. Cripplingly honest or not, the dog-headed man was an impressive, even a terrifying, sight. He bore down on the Fanchee, snarling and raising his weapon.
Then Munahim pitched forward and crashed to the cobblestones.
The other worshippers of the Headless Took scattered, melting into alleys and rushing away into the Crown. The Fanchee stripped off her toga, but when she did, she was no longer Fanchee. Or a woman. Her body took on a gelatinous, translucent appearance and an arachnoid shape. Six legs instead of eight, but she—it—resembled a see-through spider more than anything else.
Indrajit drew his famous sword Vacho, the Voice of Lightning.
Fix held him by the arm. “Wait.”
“While it kills Munahim?”
“I don’t think it will.”
The spider rolled Thoat toward itself with two limbs and then raised Thoat bodily, placing the Wixit on its back. Thoat remained there, arms and legs to his side, as if he had become sticky.
Then the translucent spider took up the toga again and skittered toward an exiting alley. As it reached the alley mouth, its steps became longer and taller and its body rose, and then it was bipedal and whitish and sprouted insectoid arms out its shoulders. It raised the red fabric of the toga and threw it over its own shoulders, concealing Thoat from sight, just as it disappeared from the square.
“Munahim!” Indrajit cried.
They had climbed to this rooftop by a lead pipe on the other side of the building, but Indrajit had no time for that now. Sheathing his sword again, he lowered himself over the side of the building. Stretched to his full height, his feet were only eight or nine cubits from the ground. He dropped, rolled, and then rushed to the Kyone.
Munahim lay facedown, not breathing. Indrajit flipped him over and found his face thick with a transparent slime that covered his eyes and filled his mouth. Indrajit was about to wipe the slime off with his hand, but stopped. Had the slime knocked Munahim unconscious? Had the same slime reduced Thoat to a shuddering wreck?
He pulled up the edge of Munahim’s tunic and wiped the Kyone’s face. Munahim still didn’t breathe.
Fix rushed to Indrajit’s side.
“He’s dead,” Indrajit said.
“Not yet, he isn’t.” Fix knelt and pounded the Kyone in the chest with his joined hands.
Munahim coughed, spat up translucent goo, and inhaled.
“What was that thing?” Fix asked.
“A Fanchee.” Munahim retched, fighting to get breath.
“It was no Fanchee.” Fix shook his head. “It was bigger. And it had too many arms.”
“It started as a Fanchee,” Indrajit said. “Then it became an invisible spider.”
“It was never invisible,” Fix said.
“Practically.” Indrajit stood, scanning the alleyways. “In dim light, we wouldn’t have seen it. Then it knocked out two men, transformed itself into a Gund, and walked away. Obviously, it was a sorcerer.”
“You can tell because of its sorcerous power of walking away,” Fix said.
“Unscathed!” Indrajit snapped. “It was attacked by two men, and walked away unscathed!”
Munahim dragged himself to his feet, leaning on Fix. “I never attacked it. Not for lack of trying, but I charged and then . . . that’s all I remember.” He stooped to pick up his long sword.
“We have to follow it,” Indrajit said, “sorcerer or no. On top of the threat to young Adakles, now Thoat is kidnapped. Still not a princess, but close enough.”
“Given that Thoat has the money, he is the princess.” Fix gripped Munahim by the elbow. “Can you track the creature?”
Munahim sniffed, making a thick, clotted, snorting sound. “One moment,” he said. “You might want to look away.”
Indrajit failed to take the warning. Munahim leaned forward, hands on his knees, and exhaled sharply through his nose. Streams of thick goo spattered on the cobblestones and then the Kyone staggered to the fountain, immersing his face in the water and scrubbing himself vigorously with both hands.
“Welcome to Kish,” Indrajit said. “Everyone here is disgusting.”
“Except the Recital Thane,” Fix countered. “He’s disgusted.”
“A man must have standards,” Indrajit said. “Or a poet must, in any case.”
Munahim shook himself, splashing water all over the two senior Protagonists. Then he leaned forward, sniffing at the cobblestones. “There’s no Fanchee smell here.”
“There was no Fanchee,” Fix said.
“There was,” Indrajit said. “But it changed shape.”
“I can smell the Wixit,” Munahim said. “He also smells strongly of lang-lang berry tea.”
“That will do,” Indrajit said. “Follow the spoor of Thoat.”
“And if there’s a consistent accompanying musk,” Fix suggested, “remember it. That’s the monster.”
“Sorcerer,” Indrajit said. “Who may also have the power of changing scents.”
Munahim loped quickly down one of the alleys. Indrajit held his head high as he followed, worried they’d round the corner and bump into the Gund-Fanchee-spider-sorcerer at a pace that wouldn’t permit Indrajit to arm himself. But as Munahim turned the corner and emerged from the alley, they entered the Avenue of Golden Chariots, and plunged into heavy traffic.
Chariots passed them. So did rickshaws and carts and carriages. A lord in lacquered wooden armor rode at the head of a train of ladies in silk, all mounted on horses. Three Zalaptings led a string of Droggers against the flow of traffic, cursing as the clumsy, six-legged beasts bumped their shoulders against wagons and knocked a pot-bellied man in green to the stones. Tea and coffee shops shouted prices to lure in customers—here in the Crown, Kish’s most expensive quarter, they sometimes shouted higher prices as lures. A princeling with a feather in his felt cap led a group of seven other children on some sort of hunt, ducking and dodging among the many vehicles and pointing their fingers like weapons. A choir of initiates of Salish-Bozar the White, god of useless knowledge, stood against one wall, reciting long series of facts. “Fresh shipment today!” a jeweler cried. “Pearls from Malik! Very rare, exclusive to Zump’s!”
Munahim slowed. He took more deliberate steps now, and at each step he sniffed several times.
“Focus,” Fix murmured. “Find the smell of Thoat.”
“We should have asked for more money up front,” Indrajit said. “We could have eaten, at least.”
“One of us ate two cakes,” Fix said mildly.
“They were terrible, though.”
“Was the whole thing about Adakles a trick?” Fix asked.
“You mean, was the letter faked? Did the sender really just want to kidnap Thoat?”
“Perhaps Adakles didn’t join the Collegium Arcanum at all.” Fix shrugged. “Maybe he signed on as a rower on a trading vessel and now he’s diving for pearls off Malik.”
“You see now?” Indrajit shook his head. “You can’t trust a written document.”
Munahim stopped in front of a door. “Thoat and the sour-smelling thing that has him went into this doorway.”
Indrajit examined the entrance. It didn’t look . . . right, somehow. The wall was the side of a large palace, one of the big palaces dotting the Crown. Often, they belonged to a single family, or to a guild, and they could comprise an entire city block, as this one seemed to. Generally, the palaces had no windows on the ground floor, and one or two entrances at most. The entrances were usually big enough to drive a wagon into, and gave access to an inner courtyard, and passed the office of a doorman or some similar official.
This was a simple wooden door, just big enough to accommodate a stooping Gund.
“Tradesman’s entrance?” Fix suggested.
“Wouldn’t it be on a side street, then?” Indrajit gestured at a passing carriage, and at a tea vendor across the street who carried his supply of piping-hot drink in a tank strapped to his back. “Rather than the avenue?”
“You’re saying magicians are strange.” Fix tried the handle of the door and it turned.
“Do we draw our weapons?” Munahim asked.
Indrajit looked at Fix and they both shrugged.
“Be prepared to draw,” Fix said. He opened the door and entered.
Munahim followed.
Indrajit scanned the street once, looking for any sign of pursuit or observation, and he saw none. Gripping the hilt of Vacho with one hand, he stepped through the doorway.
[ Chapter Three ]
“Do you smell the sea?” Munahim asked.
Indrajit sniffed; to his astonishment, he did.
He spun about, reaching to push open again the door through which he’d entered . . . but the door was gone. His hand on Vacho’s hilt became a white-knuckled claw.
“I still smell the Wixit,” Munahim said.
Indrajit breathed deeply through his nostrils, trying to slow his racing heart. Turning slowly, he examined the room. Its four walls were of white plaster and bare of any decoration. Heavy timbers served as roof-beams. One tall, wide window, with a sill at waist height, admitted warm yellow light and the cry of seabirds. In another was sunk a doorway with a green-painted wooden door.
A man in a red robe stood in the back of the room. His hands were behind his back, the top of his pate was bald, and white hair was tied in a queue at the base of his skull. Indrajit realized with a start that he wasn’t standing on the floor, but above it, floating a good cubit off the worn wooden planks. The floating man was short; so short that, even with the extra cubit provided by his levitation, he was shorter than any of the three Protagonists.
“The Gund sorcerer,” Indrajit muttered.
“No,” Munahim said.
“Where is the Gund?” Fix asked. “Or spider, or whatever?”
“I’ve lost the scent.” The Kyone bent his knees and flexed his hands open and shut.
“Everyone, stay calm.” Indrajit spoke for his benefit as much as for Munahim’s. “What about this fellow?”
“Hail,” the short man in red said.
“Hail?” Fix frowned.
“It’s an archaic greeting,” Indrajit said. “It means hello.”
“I know what it means,” Fix said. “Who says it anymore?”
“He’s not here,” Munahim said.
Indrajit felt a shiver run up his spine.
Munahim shook his head. “This little man in red. He’s not here.”
Indrajit growled and drew Vacho. He took one long step forward and swung his blade through the man in red. It passed through without slowing.
The little man smiled. “I said, ‘Hail.’”
“What game is this?” Fix asked.
“It’s sorcery, of course.” Indrajit shook his head.
“Hmm.”
“Are you ready to talk now?” the man in red asked. “Have you exorcised your preference for violence by your attack on me? Have you, as we say of children, got the wiggles out?”
“Condescending midget,” Indrajit said.
“Child,” the levitating man replied.
“Stop,” Fix said. “Everyone.”
Indrajit sniffed.
“You.” Fix pointed at the little man. “What’s your name?”
“Theophilus Bolt,” the little man said. “Recondite second class.”
“A magician,” Munahim said.
“You Kyones are delightful,” Bolt said. “Even your thinking lies on the surface of your skin.”
“Our client has been kidnapped,” Indrajit said. “A Wixit named Thoat. He came through here not moments ago.”
“He came through here.” Bolt shrugged.
“You can help us,” Indrajit said. “Or you can suffer the consequences.”
“Will you chop me in half again?” the magician asked.
“Let’s not focus on the consequences right now,” Fix suggested. “Maybe tell us what you want.”
Indrajit stepped to the window, turning his back on the magician and gritting his teeth. Below the window, an exterior wall dropped three stories to a slope covered with black stones the size of a man’s head. The slope groaned and shuddered its way down a blue sea.
Too blue. The wrong color entirely.
“We’re not in Kish anymore,” he said.
At the edge of the water stood a tower. A rectangular window faced Indrajit, and through the window he could make out a man in red.
“You’re not in Kish anymore,” the magician said.
“You magicians,” Fix said. “You wear your thinking on your skin.”
The magician harrumphed. “Do you want to learn how to get your friend back or not?”
“Not our friend,” Fix said. “Our client. But yes.”
“A client is much more important than a friend.” Indrajit gestured subtly to Munahim to join him at the window. “A client gives you money.”
The gesture was too subtle. Munahim stood where he was.
“The Collegium needs your help,” Bolt said.
“Really?” Indrajit folded his arms across his chest. “Our swords go right through you with no effect, and you need our help?”
“You might say that a duke has no need of paupers,” Bolt said.
“And yet the duke will hire paupers to dig ditches,” Fix said. “Yes, yes.”
“I was going to say, work in his garden.” Bolt sniffed.
Indrajit gestured to Munahim again. This time, the Kyone saw him. He nodded, and began slowly drifting across the room.
“Imagine that the ditches are in the garden,” Fix said. “We understand the metaphor.”
“We resent it a little,” Indrajit said, “but we know what you mean.”
“A tyrant has seized control of the Collegium,” Bolt said. “This is a grave threat to all of Kish.”
“A tyrant?” Fix said. “Does the tyrant have a name?”
“He is called Megistos,” Bolt said, “but that is only a title. He is Lord Dean of the Collegium Arcanum. None of us has ever seen him.”
“Is it a grave threat to this place?” Indrajit asked. “By the color of the sea, I’ll go ahead and guess that we’re in the south. Hith, maybe? Easha?”
A flash of surprise crossed the little magician’s face. Indrajit managed not to laugh in triumph.
“How do you know that?” Bolt asked.
Munahim had reached Indrajit and stood by the window, looking out.
“A race across the south lands, where warm breezes blow,” Indrajit recited. “The fair and sunny south lands, where the seas are green.”
“The seas are not green,” Bolt objected.
“But close,” Indrajit said. “Greenish.”
“It’s poetry,” Fix said. “It lacks precision.”
“But pleases the ladies,” Indrajit said. “You should try it.”
“The ladies like financial security,” Fix argued.
“You could be a financially secure poet.”
“I’m not sure such a thing exists.”
“Usurpation of control of the Collegium Arcanum is, as it happens, a threat to the entire world,” Bolt said. “Including . . . including whatever place we are in now. The Collegium Arcanum is the greatest single power on Earth, and should not be in the hands of a madman.”
While the little magician spoke, Indrajit murmured a few quick words and indicated what he was thinking to Munahim. The Kyone nodded.
“Well, that is a fine kettle of fish,” Fix said.
“You’re grasping at straws,” Indrajit said. “Really scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
“You’re the poet.” Fix shrugged. “I’m a fish out of water.”
“Your friend does look like a fish.” Bolt grinned. “You’re mocking him, right?”
Munahim removed his bow from its copper bracket and eased an arrow from his quiver. He stood at the far corner of the window. If Bolt had perceptive senses centered on the phantasm as he could from his physical body, then Munahim was in the extreme edge of his peripheral vision, or even beyond it.
“I can’t resist.” Fix shrugged. “I fish in troubled waters.”
“Be careful.” Bolt chortled. “He’ll give you the fish eye.”
“Thanks,” Indrajit said. “Maybe you could teach everyone we meet to mock me. Maybe you could teach the Lord Chamberlain to call me a fish.”
“He already does,” Fix said.
Bolt was laughing so hard that he clutched his belly and leaned back. Indrajit wished he felt that much mirth about anything.
“Now,” he said.
Munahim put the arrow to the string, raised his bow, pulled the string back, and released, in one motion that was so fast that it was almost invisible. The arrow leaped across the space between the two windows, passing inside the tower at the edge of the water.
The arrow reappeared within the room where they all stood, for just a moment, as it flashed past the magician. Bolt leaped and disappeared, and Indrajit heard a loud snap and a clatter.
Now Fix laughed.
“Oh my,” Indrajit said. “The gardeners have a longbow.”
“That was rude.” Bolt’s voice spoke, but he did not appear.
“We’re not going to shoot you,” Indrajit said. “But I think it’s good that you know that we can shoot you. Feels fairer, don’t you think?”
Bolt reappeared where he had been before. He arrived foot-first, as if stepping into the space.
“We have other spells,” Bolt said.
“We have other arrows,” Indrajit told him. “And swords, and an ax, and more.”
“So tell us how we get our client back,” Fix said. “If you’ve forgotten, that’s a Wixit named Thoat.”
“We’ll give him to you,” Bolt said. “Once you do a little job for us.”
“This is always how it goes for us,” Indrajit said. “Why is that? Is it because we’re a small jobber company? The whole world feels entitled to harass us?”
“Maybe you’re just sensitive,” Fix said.
“No, we’re constantly being forced into jobs.” Indrajit snorted. “We were set up the Holy-Pot to be killed in that risk-merchantry scheme. That scholar in the Hall of Guesses tried to murder us. The Lord Archer and the Lord Chamberlain, Orem Thrush himself, marched us around like pawns in the game between themselves over . . . what was it?”
“Kelp farming.”
“Kelp farming. And now this. Doesn’t it feel personal?”
“When you put it that way,” Fix said, “it starts to.”
“Maybe we should change our name to the Patsies. If that’s the work we’re going to get, we may as well advertise for it.”
“I like the Protagonists,” Munahim said.
“You could walk away,” Bolt said.
“We could,” Indrajit agreed. “We could start by shooting you. It would take Munahim all of two seconds to end your life.”
“I am impervious to your weapons,” Bolt said.
“If you were impervious to our weapons,” Fix said, “you’d be standing here with us, instead of projecting your image from that room to this.”
“You don’t know that,” Bolt said.
“It’s a pretty good guess, though,” Indrajit said. “Then we’d just march north for . . . I don’t know, a few weeks.”
“The Epic doesn’t spell out how many leagues Hith is distant?” Fix asked.
“The Epic is not a map.” Indrajit cleared his throat. “So, we need Thoat back, and his son. Before we do anything.”
“I can’t do that.” Bolt’s hands trembled. “What hold would we have on you?”
“Our word,” Munahim said.
“There you go,” Indrajit said. “Our word. The word of a Kyone, whose thoughts are all worn openly on his skin. But all three of us, we match our words to our deeds. It’s one of the great lessons of the Epic.”
“Thank you,” Fix said.
Bolt hesitated. “I can give you the boy now. The father later.”
Indrajit looked to Fix and shrugged. Fix nodded.
“Sounds good,” Indrajit said. “What’s the one little job? Something to do with the high lord mage tyrant of the Collegium Arcanum, I suppose?”
“You’re to kill him,” Bolt said.
Several long seconds of silence passed.
“You were telling us just moments ago,” Indrajit said slowly, “how this tyrant Megistos wields more power than anyone else in the world.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly what I said.” Bolt cleared his throat. “But, more or less, yes. He’s very powerful.”
“And you’re going to send us. And why won’t he just kill us out of hand?” Fix asked.
“He might,” Bolt admitted. “But he probably won’t.”
“Because we’re the gardeners,” Indrajit said. “Except that we’re not his gardeners. We’re a trio of jobbers he’s never heard of.”
“Hopefully,” Munahim said.
“Hopefully,” Indrajit agreed. “But you’ve got a plan.”
“You’re going to steal an artifact,” Bolt said. “From a Hithite summoner.”
“Oh, good, a summoner,” Fix said.
“You are doing so at our instruction,” Bolt continued. “You will return the artifact to Kish, where you will deliver it to the Collegium. There, you will kill the tyrant.”
“Easy,” Fix said.
“At least there’s a plan.” Munahim shrugged.
“What artifact are we going to steal?” Indrajit asked.
“A bottle imp,” Bolt said. “A devil bound into a flask.”
“The conjuror has hidden it in a secret room in his fortress, naturally,” Fix said.
“He wears it on a chain around his neck.” Bolt pointed. “Out the door, you will find a path. The path leads to the conjuror’s home. His name is Adunummu. Halfway up the path, you will find young Adakles, son of Thoat. He will have two things you will need on your quest. One is a Dagger of Slaying, which will kill a magician with the slightest scratch. The other is a Band of Distance. Pressed into a door, it turns an ordinary doorway into a portal that will bring you back to Kish, and the Collegium.”
“Anything else we need to know?” Fix asked.
“Young Adakles may be a bit disoriented,” Bolt said.
“I’m glad it’s not just me.” Indrajit opened the green door.
[ Chapter Four ]
A rocky path led from the door of the plaster-walled room along the top of a rocky cliff. Standing in the open air, the view greatly resembled what Indrajit had seen through the window—turquoise sea, black rocks, and clear sky—except that there was no second tower.
“Can we have a policy of not working for or against magicians?” Indrajit asked.
“We’d lose work,” Fix said. “Also, are we going to ask every potential client to warranty he or she is not a magician? Post a bond to cover damages resulting from breach?”
“I leave that end to you,” Indrajit grumbled.
“There are Yuchak tribes who kill magicians on sight,” Munahim said. “I had never understood why.”
“We don’t have to like this,” Fix said. “We just have to get Adakles, then keep him safe while we rob the conjuror and then assassinate Megistos.”
“Whose real name and location we don’t know,” Indrajit pointed out.
“They’ll obviously have to tell us something,” Fix said.
“Who is ‘they’?” Indrajit asked. “I don’t know a ‘they.’ I know a Bolt. Technically, I know the image of Bolt.”
“Bolt and his allies,” Fix said. “But we worry about that when we get to it. One thing at a time.”
Indrajit sighed. “One thing at a time. We kill the conjuror.”
“No. We find Adakles.”
“There he is.” Munahim pointed.
“Wait . . . ” Indrajit shook his head. “Are you saying your eyesight is better than mine, too?”
“Well, you do have eyes on the sides of your head,” Fix said.
“That’s an exaggeration. They’re a little farther apart than yours.”
“A lot farther.”
“I can smell Wixit,” Munahim said. “I’m pointing where I think the Wixit is.”
They lengthened their stride to reach that point. Indrajit took perverse pleasure in taking the longest possible steps; Munahim, who was his height, kept up without complaint, but Fix was forced to jog.
Which he also did, annoyingly, without complaint.
The Wixit stood right where the path veered away from the top of the cliff and turned inland. The soil here was dark and powdery, resembling charcoal that had been pounded into dust. The path was crowded on either side by ferns and by plants Indrajit didn’t know, with spiny branches and broad, shield-shaped leaves.
The Wixit shifted from one hind paw slowly to the other and back as the Protagonists approached. In his front paws, he held a black velvet sack streaked with gray dust. His jaw worked and his mouth opened and shut several times, but no words came out.
“Adakles?” Indrajit asked.
The Wixit stared.
“Son of Thoat?” Indrajit tried to clarify.
Still no answer.
“He’s under a spell,” Indrajit said.
“He might just be an idiot,” Munahim suggested.
“Or drugged,” Fix added.
Fix took the sack from Adakles and showed the contents. The first item was a flat bar of material that looked like brass but had the flexibility of leather. Spikes and clamps protruded from one side of it. The other thing in the bag was a long, narrow dagger in a sheath. Fix took it in his hands and slid the dagger from its sheath a finger’s width, revealing a blue steel blade.
“Don’t touch it,” Indrajit said.
“Do you really believe in a Dagger of Slaying?” Fix asked.
“It doesn’t have to actually be a Dagger of Slaying,” Indrajit said, “whatever that may be. It could just have venom on the blade.”
“Good point.” Fix strapped the weapon to his belt alongside his other knives, and hung the bag beside them.
“What do we do with the Wixit?” Munahim asked. “If he holds this still all the time, we could just hide him in the bushes and come back for him.”
“Except that he might start moving,” Fix pointed out. “Or get eaten by thylacodons.”
“Or we might not be able to return this way,” Indrajit said.
“I’ll carry him,” Munahim said.
Indrajit stepped between the Kyone and the Wixit. He scooped Adakles up and slung him over a shoulder. “No, I think I want you to have full use of your hands. We need your sword or bow in any fight we get into.”
“What about your sword?” Munahim asked.
“Indrajit’s preferred weapon is his mouth.”
“Yes,” Indrajit agreed. “Yes, it is.”
He led the way, Fix following and Munahim bringing up the rear. The trail climbed slowly up a rolling prairie of ash. As the sea fell behind them, the air dried out and the plants changed. Ferns and shield-leafed bushes gave way to brush-tipped grasses whose smell reminded Indrajit of roasted lamb. With jelly and mint. And hot, fresh-baked rolls.
“I’m hungry,” he announced.
“Don’t eat the Wixit,” Fix said.
“Wait here a moment.” Munahim waded out into the herb-smelling ground cover, bent to pluck something from the ground, and returned with a handful of gray grasses that curled into a hook at the tip.
“Horngrass.” Fix took one and popped it between his teeth, chewing to release the juice that took the edge off hunger and produced a very mild sense of well-being. “How did you see it?”
“He smelled it.” Indrajit took some too.
“Of course, I did.”
They chewed grass and marched in silence briefly.
“I do sort of want to eat the Wixit, though,” Indrajit said.
The vegetation ended abruptly, leaving a flat circle of ashy earth that was packed hard and surrounded with a thin border of white stones. More white stones curled across and through the circular space, producing patterns whose complexity grew as Indrajit looked at them. Spirals and loops of the same proportion repeated themselves again and again at smaller and smaller scale, and Indrajit slid his gaze along them. A curl descended into a curl and again into another curl and—
“Wake up!” Munahim punched Indrajit in the arm.
Indrajit staggered, almost dropped Adakles, and recovered his balance. He saw Fix, rubbing his own bicep and scowling.
“What happened?” Indrajit asked.
“You two both fell asleep, standing still,” Munahim said.
“Ensorcelled?” Indrajit asked.
“Maybe,” Munahim said. “I don’t know. You were staring at the white stones.”
Indrajit turned to look at the pattern again, but pulled himself away. “The stones? The pattern? But why should that put us to sleep? And if that is its sorcery, why didn’t it work on you, when you looked at the pattern?”
“I didn’t look at the pattern.” Munahim shrugged. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”
“Keep your eyes off the ground,” Fix warned. Then he pointed into the center of the pattern of white stones, where a black tower rose from the ash. “Look!”
At the tower’s base, ragged holes were bored into its structure. They opened instantly into darkness, and were crusted with greenish lichen around their edges. Indrajit followed Fix’s indication, and saw thylacodons emerging from the caves.
Their heads were long and triangular, their jaws heavy, their teeth ragged and yellow. Each was the size of a man, though they moved like a man hunched over and crawling. Their bodies were nearly spherical, with long limbs, all covered by brownish fur streaked gray by ash. Their noses and long, curling tails were all obscenely pink, and also looked wet.
“They think we’re ensorcelled,” Fix said. “This is the tower’s defense. It hypnotizes anyone who approaches, and then the thylacodons eat them.”
Indrajit pointed. “There is the gate. See how a path rises from the field of stones to that portcullis?”
“If we move, will we startle the thylacodons?” Fix asked. “Perhaps they’ll simply flee, once they realize that we don’t be passive, easily destroyed prey.”
“Perhaps we should kill them,” Indrajit suggested. “And see if we can enter the tower through their warren.”
“Agreed,” Fix said.
Munahim took his bow into hand and set to work. He shot the thylacodons in back first, most dropping dead with a single arrow in the neck or chest, though a couple of the beasts took a second arrow to dispatch them. Indrajit laid Adakles on the ground, and when the foremost thylacodons realized that their packmates had been killed and charged forward in a panicked frenzy, swords and axes made quick work of them.
“The bodies?” Indrajit asked.
“You two go to the cave openings,” Munahim suggested. “Take the Wixit with you. Don’t look at the stone patterns, and I will deal with the bodies.”
Indrajit looked up and toward the tower as he walked, to keep himself from being entrapped again, though the thylacodons had in their death throes often disturbed the stone pattern. Perhaps the charm had been broken now? But he had no wish to make the experiment.
They reached the cave mouths and sheltered at the edge of the light, swords in their hands. The caves stank of filth and beast and rot, and even within paces of the openings, Indrajit saw the skulls and rib cages of men, flesh long gnawed away.
Munahim recovered most of his arrows, and then dragged the dead thylacodons to the base of the tower. One twitched slightly, and he dispatched it definitively with a sword blow to the neck. He dragged their corpses one at a time into the darkness.
“The smell of this tunnel puts me off,” Indrajit said.
“Smell is our friend,” Munahim said. “Smell and hearing.”
“Are you saying there are no living beasts in the warren?” Fix asked.
Munahim nodded. “I’m saying that’s probably the case.”
Fix fashioned a torch from a dry thigh bone. He wrapped one end thoroughly in bleached fabric and then lit it with a flint and steel from the pocket of his kilt. Holding the torch raised over his head, he led the way into the caves.
The bones littering the tunnels’ floors didn’t all belong to men. Indrajit picked his path forward through the bones of animals as well, and even bones that were likely the bones of children—though skulls and rib cages of that size might belong to, say, a Wixit, or something of a similar size.
They found heaped garbage and nests made of grasses and branches. Fix fed more strips of clothing they found to his torch as they progressed, wrapping new flammable layers into the fire as the old ones were consumed.
“Someone is ahead of us,” Munahim murmured. “Not a thylacodon, but a man.”
“Keep your eyes open,” Fix said.
The tunnel floors were irregular at first, strewn with rocks and occasionally interrupted by stalagmites. As they moved forward, the floor become smooth, and the natural walls gave way to large stones and mortar. Finally, they entered a circular chamber with stairs wrapping their way around the walls and ascending up and out of sight; Indrajit couldn’t see the roof or an exit.
In the center of the chamber, a pillar rose from the floor. It was stone, and covered with obscured characters carved or scratched into its surface. Pairs of iron brackets were sunk into the stone encircling the column, and chains hung from the brackets, ending in iron manacles.
“Here,” Munahim whispered.
Indrajit looked around. “Where?”
“I’m right here!” a voice called, apparently from the column. Indrajit drew his sword and circled the pillar slowly. On its far side, both hands manacled, feet on the floor, knees slightly bent, hung a man. He had lavender-colored skin and thick fur clumped about his shoulders, and he wore only a loincloth.
He spoke, and as the mouth in his face opened and closed to form and express the words, a second mouth set into his chest opened and closed in exactly the same patterns. “Thank you for rescuing me,” he said in a soft voice. “I am Adunummu the Conjuror.”
[ Chapter Five ]
“Why have the thylacodons not eaten you?” Fix asked.
“Shhh,” Adunummu said. “Keep your voice down, please.”
“Munahim, watch the stairs,” Indrajit murmured. “It’s a good question, though, Conjuror.” He set Adakles on his feet. The Wixit stood and stared at the wall.
“You call me Conjuror and yet you wonder why the beasts have not eaten me?” Adunummu tsked. “You doubt my ability to conjure.”
“And yet you are chained to a post,” Fix said. “If you are so great a magician as to defend yourself against a pack of beasts that regularly kills men, how do you remain chained? Why not simply conjure yourself back to the upper floors of the tower?”
“Are you a conjuror yourself, then, to express such an opinion so confidently?” Adunummu asked.
Fix shrugged. “Every guild wants to obfuscate its own subject matter, to keep out the outsiders and protect revenues. Notaries, apothecaries, risk-merchants, all of them. Why should magicians be any different?”
Adunummu cocked his head to one side and curled his lip into a reckless smile. “Because it’s magic!”
Fix shrugged.
“Who will come down the stairs?” Indrajit asked. “If you don’t fear the thylacodons, what is it that gives you pause?”
“Perhaps you would care to unchain me, so that we may discuss these questions better.”
“As it happens,” Indrajit said, “I think we’ll leave you chained. At least for the minute.”
“You are cruel.”
“You are evading the question.”
“My apprentice has chained me here,” Adunummu said.
“You have an apprentice?” Fix asked. “Not a disciple-ordinary, third class?”
“I am trying to minimize my use of jargon,” Adunummu said. “As you seem to prefer.”
“You fear your apprentice,” Indrajit said. “That seems rather a perversion of the idea of apprenticeship.”
“Yes.” Adunummu nodded. “He is indeed a pervert.”
“Tell us more about this apprentice,” Indrajit said. “I am attempting to find a good apprentice myself. Perhaps your example of a bad apprenticeship will teach me valuable lessons.”
“Also,” Fix added, “tell us how you came to be chained. Which may have something to do with your apprentice.”
“It does, it does.” Adunummu nodded vigorously. “But perhaps you would care to give me some food first, to strengthen my storytelling capacities. Or perhaps you have water to spare.”
“We don’t have either,” Indrajit said. “We were walking on the streets of Kish only this morning, certainly not planning to come to Hith at all. We were not prepared with provisions.”
“Kish!” Adunummu’s eyes opened wide. “That’s a million leagues from here!”
“I gather that mathematics and geography are not part of the curriculum of the Collegium,” Fix said.
“What?”
“It isn’t a million leagues from Kish to Hith,” Fix explained. “I doubt it’s a thousand. A few hundred, yes.”
“Give a magician license for a little hyperbole,” Adunummu said.
“Hmm.”
“The apprenticeship,” Indrajit prompted the bound man. “Tell us how you came here.”
“You mean, how my apprentice came.”
“Ah, yes.” Indrajit nodded. “Also, tell us about the apprentice.”
“He’s fierce.” Adunummu writhed in his chains as if to communicate ferocity. “He came to me, starving and wastrel, in this desert place, seeking food.”
“This desert place, Hith,” Fix said.
“If you say it is.” Adunummu shrugged. “We magicians care little for the names and buildings and politics and fashion of the mortal world.”
“So you fed him?” Indrajit asked.
“I offered him food in exchange for his bound service as my apprentice,” Adunummu said, “which he accepted. But then he was a bad apprentice. He tried to learn magics beyond what I taught him, like a thief. And when he stole from me an item of great power, I confronted him.”
“What sort of magics?” Fix asked. “Conjuring? Druvash sorcery? Theurgy? Weather-witching?”
“Conjuring!” Adunummu snapped. “As you said.”
“But when you confronted him,” Indrajit continued the thought, “you were unable to defeat him. With his pilfered magics and his borrowed item of great power, he was able to put you here in this dungeon, chained to this post.”
“You see my tragedy.”
“I’m not sure tragedy is the genre,” Indrajit mused.
“Eh?”
“What was the item?” Indrajit asked. “A medallion?”
Adunummu hesitated. “A bracer. A jeweled bracer.”
“Tell us more about the apprentice,” Fix said. “Maybe we can go upstairs and defeat him for you. What sort of man is he?”
“I told you, he’s bad and a thief.”
Fix sighed. “I’m not asking about his moral character. Is he a Wixit? A Pelthite? A Zalapting? Is he of your same race? We need to recognize him, if we’re to defeat him.”
“For you,” Indrajit said. “Defeat him for you.”
“I have a question,” Munahim said.
“Is anyone coming down the stairs?” Indrajit asked.
“No,” Munahim said.
“Good,” Indrajit said. “Stay focused.”
“But my question—” the Kyone insisted.
“Later,” Indrajit said. “Shush now.”
“Does the Wixit not talk?” Adunummu asked.
“He’s a former enemy,” Indrajit said. “He dared go against us, and we used our formidable powers to defeat him.”
“Are you wizards also, then?” Adunummu asked.
“After our fashion.” Fix shrugged.
“You were about to describe your rebel apprentice,” Indrajit reminded the prisoner.
“He’s big,” Adunummu said. “He has a head something like a walrus, with tusks and whiskers and a thick, blubbery neck.”
“He sounds frightening,” Fix said. “I’m impressed you were brave enough to take him in.”
“I am a conjuror of renown,” Adunummu pointed out.
“Go on.”
“He has a big chest and shoulders. One arm ends in a hand like yours or mine. The other ends in a flipper.”
Fix looked to Indrajit with raised eyebrows. “What race of man is that? Any ideas?”
Indrajit cleared his throat. “Let me consult my magical lore. Perhaps it’s the one-handed Siskaloo, teeth like downward daggers?”
“Sounds right to me. And does the magical lore tell us anything else about the Siskaloo?”
Indrajit considered. The Siskaloo only had the one epithet. “In the Epic, the Siskaloo lives in a tower near the sea.”
“Epic?” Adunummu asked.
“Sounds right,” Fix said. “How is the Siskaloo defeated?”
“He isn’t,” Indrajit said. “He knows and sees many things, and he’s not defeated.”
“Who are you guys?” Adunummu asked.
“Good question. Who are you?” Indrajit asked.
“Adunummu the Conjuror,” Adunummu said.
“Liar,” Fix said.
“I have a question,” Munahim said.
“Okay,” Indrajit told him. “You can ask your question now.”
“Why don’t you have a flask on a chain around your neck?” the Kyone asked.
“There it is,” Fix said. “Because you see, Munahim, this is not the conjuror Adunummu.”
“Yes, I am,” the chained man said.
“You’re the bad apprentice, if you’re anyone in the story,” Indrajit said. “Which I suspect you are, because it’s easier to tell a true story and switch your role in it than to make up a new story entirely. So tell us your name.”
“Also, what did you come here to steal?” Fix asked. “Was it the bracer? Or was it the flask on the chain around the conjuror’s neck?”
“What are you going to do to me?” the prisoner asked.
“That’s a very good question,” Indrajit said. “We’re still thinking about it.”
“Personally,” Fix said, “I’m just as happy to kill you. But my partner here has a soft heart. So if you keep him happy, he’ll probably want to let you live.”
“Who are you guys?”
“No no, we’ll get to that,” Indrajit said. “Tell us your name, or we’ll have to name you ourselves. And then we’ll be calling you something embarrassing, like Hey, Stupid.”
“My name is Shafi,” the chained man said. “I’m a thief.”
“You heard of the wealth of the conjuror and you traveled here to rob him,” Fix said.
“No, I was shipwrecked, while on a voyage from the Free Cities to Boné. I’m not sure where we are. That part is true. As you said, it’s easier to keep a story straight in your head if it’s mostly true.”
“You were shipwrecked and saw the tower,” Indrajit said. “Did you offer yourself as an apprentice?”
“I even did that. I was hungry.”
“But once you had eaten,” Fix concluded, “you decided you’d like to try your luck stealing something and running.”
“I was a thief before I got here,” Shafi admitted. “It seemed like an easy snatch-and-run job.”
“What magic powers did Adunummu use to stop you?” Indrajit asked.
“Or what ancient technologies?” Fix suggested.
“None. I doctored his wine to make it stronger, so he’d sleep through anything I did. Then, while he was sleeping, I tried to remove the bracer. And he woke up.”
“No magical powers at all?” Indrajit felt disappointed.
“He hit me very hard.”
“Perhaps there are no magical powers,” Fix said.
“You have personally been healed by Druvash sorcery,” Indrajit said.
“By Druvash art,” Fix agreed. “Whether or not it was sorcery is an interesting question.”
“And here we are, hundreds of leagues from Kish, a distance we leaped instantaneously, walking through a door.” Indrajit shook his head. “And you’re going to tell me you don’t believe in magic?”
Fix spread his hands. “Some things that look like magic are just craft that we don’t understand.”
“But you rendered that Wixit an idiot,” Shafi said. “You’re magicians yourselves.”
“Ah, sad,” Fix said.
“What’s sad?”
“You’re not just a thief,” Indrajit explained, “you’re a stupid thief. We’re not magicians. The Wixit came like that.”
“But someone made him an idiot,” Shafi said.
“Good point.”
“I concede that it sounds much more romantic to do battle against Adunummu the Conjuror than against Adunummu Who Can Take His Liquor and Also Hits Pretty Hard,” Fix said.
“Good. In the Epic, I’ll definitely make him the Conjuror, regardless of how this works out.”
“In either case, we need the flask.” Fix glared sternly at Shafi. “Adunummu does wear a flask around his neck, doesn’t he?”
Shafi nodded. “He talks to it, caresses it like it’s a woman.”
“Perhaps in the Epic he can also be Adunummu the Insane,” Fix suggested.
“Perhaps he is talking to a demon in the bottle,” Indrajit suggested.
“Or he thinks he is.”
“But the real question,” Shafi said, “is, how are you going to get me out of these chains?”
“Easiest thing is to rip your arms off,” Fix suggested. “The Kyone can do it.”
“Hey,” Shafi said.
“So Adunummu put you down here to give you a horrible death,” Indrajit said. “Maybe you could scare away the thylacodons for a while by shaking your chains or yelling or something, but sooner or later you’d fall asleep or be weak from starvation, and then they’d eat you. Is that about the size of it?”
“Yes. I was thinking, if you had some grease, like some nice animal fat or butter, you could coat my wrists and that would probably be enough for me to slip out.”
“I told you,” Indrajit said. “No provisions. But there’s another question to ask, which is, what can you do to help us get Adunummu?”
“I can choose not to yell to alert him to your presence,” Shafi said.
“We can solve that problem by killing you,” Fix said. “You really don’t want to push us very far down that road.”
“Or just gag you,” Indrajit countered.
“See?” Fix said. “Softhearted.”
“I can help,” Shafi said.
“Now we’re talking.” Indrajit nodded to encourage the thief. “What would you suggest for a plan?”
Shafi considered. “I could scream like I was being eaten by thylacadons. Then when he came to collect my bones, we could jump him.”
“Only he might not collect your bones at all,” Fix said. “He might find your screams unpersuasive. He might be perfectly happy leaving your bones down here forever, unwitnessed.”
“I could tell you what I said to persuade him to take me in,” Shafi said. “Then you could make a similar appeal.”
“Surely, he would find a band of three armed men asking to be his apprentices suspicious.” Indrajit shook his head. “What else?”
“That’s all I can think of.”
“What if we wait until dark,” Fix suggested, “and then you lead us to where the conjuror sleeps?”
“I . . . would rather not,” Shafi said.
“Because you’re afraid he’d capture you and put you back in this pit,” Indrajit said. “With the bird of freedom in your hand, you don’t want to trade it for anything uncertain that might be in the bush. You want to run away while you can.”
“Yes. For that reason.”
“But remember that we might not let you go at all,” Indrajit pointed out. “And if you help us get what we need from Adunummu, we won’t stand in the way of your taking that bracer you wanted.”
Shafi slumped in his chains, then nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
[ Chapter Six ]
As a gesture of good faith, they smashed Shafi’s chains and freed him. Fix argued in favor of leaving the thief chained until the last possible moment, but eventually, and with much grumbling, gave in.
Shafi asked for a weapon. Again they debated, and eventually agreed that he would remain unarmed.
They climbed the stairs, Indrajit once again shouldering the Wixit. Fix’s torch finally consumed the last of the flammable material he’d gathered as they were several stories’ height above the floor. Fix laid down the charred thigh bone and they proceeded in single file, hugging the wall.
After another minute or so of climbing, Indrajit realized that he could see a yellow glow coming down from above. Eventually, they climbed into the light and saw that it poured through the barred window set in the door at the top of the stairs, on a narrow landing.
Indrajit crept ahead and peered through the window. Beyond, he saw a hall. He couldn’t find the source of light, but its tenor suggested that it was daylight, filtering in through some unseen window. He pushed at the door, a moment of truth, and found it unlocked.
So Adunummu didn’t fear that the thylacodons would creep through the doorway, and trusted the chains to hold his erring apprentice in place.
They settled on the landing and the first few steps to wait for sunset. In the meantime, Shafi quietly described the tower. “This floor has a refectory and a dining hall. The floor above that is a library.”
Indrajit spat.
“Above that,” Shafi continued, “is the floor where Adunummu sleeps.”
“Where did you sleep?” Indrajit asked.
“Beside the fire in the refectory,” Shafi said. “Using an old bolster for a pillow.”
“The upper floors are accessed by stairs?” Fix asked.
“It’s the continuation of the same staircase,” Shafi said. “Rising around the outside of each floor.”
“Is his bedroom the top floor?” Indrajit pressed.
“The stairs rise above that,” Shafi said, “but that’s as high as I ever went.”
“What other servants does he have?” Indrajit asked.
“None visible.”
Fix harrumphed. “Forget about invisible servants. What you need to think about is that our best chances of survival will result if we ambush the wizard, killing him before he can do anything to us.”
“Before he can cast any spells, you mean?”
“Or hit us hard. Or use strange Druvash weapons on us.”
“But if we’re in a position to just grab the bottle around his neck,” Indrajit said, “we should do that. And then run.”
Fix was silent.
“We should grab the flask and run,” Indrajit said again.
“Maybe,” Fix conceded. “If that seems within reach.”
Night fell outside the tower. Indrajit watched the light on the other side of the door fill with the pinks and golds and oranges of a lush sunset, and then dim into blue and gray. When he could barely see the outlines of the hall any longer, he pushed open the door and led the way.
Standing in the hall, he could see that he was between the dining hall and the kitchen. He peered into the dining hall, seeking to fix the layout of the place in his mind as well as to see Adunummu Who Can Take His Liquor and Also Hits Pretty Hard before Adunummu saw him. Starlight drifted down in gentle flakes from high, glassless windows. Statues stood around the half-moon-shaped hall at regular intervals; thirty or forty, he thought, without actually counting. Every third statue was enormous, a standing figure three times the height of a man, and all the colossi bore on their shoulders a stone ledge that ran around the entire room, beneath the windows on the curving side of the chamber, and bearing pots overflowing with vines and other green tendrils. Every statue was unique—he saw two men embracing, and a woman holding a sheaf of wheat, and strange beasts. The shorter statues were set in niches sunk into the wall. The whole arrangement tugged at the back of Indrajit’s memory, but he was unsure of its meaning or where he had seen it before. A massive slab of stone table sat centered in the room, surrounded by chairs with tall backs, thick legs, and upholstered cushions for seats.
The refectory had a similar slab of a table, shelves laden with food, running water sluicing endlessly through several stone basins, and a massive fireplace. A cylindrical bolster lay squashed and dirty with ash on the stones before the fireplace. Within the refectory, stairs climbed up the wall toward the next story.
Indrajit drew his sword and the other Protagonists did the same. Shafi drew a long, triangular knife from a wooden block sitting on a table, and then Indrajit again went first up the stairs. “Brace yourself,” he couldn’t resist whispering to Munahim, “next comes the library. Be prepared to catch Fix if he faints.”
Munahim responded with a puzzled whimper in the back of his throat.
Indrajit passed two rectangular windows just before crossing up through the floor into the next story. Moisture whipped in through the openings on a stiffening breeze, and a creeping shield of gray cloud was eating up the stars.
The library was a single enormous room. Light emanated from two silvery-green spheres standing atop pillars about Indrajit’s height, one near where they entered the room and the other on the far side. Two short walls near the center sheltered a desk on which lay two open codices.
“Load-bearing walls,” Fix murmured.
“Sure,” Indrajit said.
The outward-facing sides of the load-bearing walls were plated with shelves and burdened with writing. Indrajit cringed at the sight of all the scrolls, sheaves of paper, stacks of paper, charts, codices, and books. More shelves stood free about the room, and more were bolted into the outer walls.
Fix stood and stared.
Indrajit wanted to make a joke at his partner’s expense, but he was aware that Adunummu was likely sleeping just one floor above their heads. He settled for briefly pantomiming striking fire to the nearest shelf of papers with flint and steel, and then headed up.
Shafi’s hands shook as they climbed.
The library had no windows, but the room they climbed into now did. These were set into the wall regularly—large, open rectangles through which a wind blew that was now furious and wet. Lightning struck outside, a sheet of pure white, and then the gongs of thunder burst through the open windows and across the chamber.
In the lightning’s flash, Indrajit saw a bedchamber. An open firepit sat between two walls near the center of the room, low coals burning dull red, smoke lazily wafting up into a crack in the ceiling, against one wall. Beside the firepit, a marble tub was sunk into the floor; water sloshed from a spigot at one end and the tub somehow didn’t overflow; there must be a drain sluicing the water away as fast as it came in. Shelves contained stacked linen, scent bottles, and other toiletry articles. Stairs continued up into the ceiling and darkness. A bed big enough to support two Droggers in heat stood near the room’s center.
In the bed, a heap of furs.
He wanted to ask his companions what they had seen, but didn’t dare.
He wanted to sneak forward and pat down the bed, find the flask and run with it. He didn’t relish the idea of assassinating anyone in their sleep, wizard or no.
Although this magician had been happy to tie Shafi up and leave him to be eaten by wild beasts.
According to Shafi. Who was, by his own admission, a thief.
But having come this far, Indrajit didn’t see another choice. His client was kidnapped, the client’s son was still in a trance, this was the way forward. He hissed in disappointment at the evil of the world.
He crept forward, Vacho raised and ready. The size of the shadow to his left told him that Munahim was with him. Indrajit stopped and stood the Wixit in a corner, away from the tub and the fire, then swung his blade to feel its weight. A second shadow crept forward; it was too big to be Fix, and had a slight carrion smell to it, carried up from the thylacodon pit. Shafi.
Shafi, who was now armed with a big kitchen knife.
He crept forward and they came with him.
He had to risk a little noise if he wanted to coordinate. “On three,” he whispered. He raised Vacho above his head. “One . . . two . . . three.”
He sprang forward and stabbed down, sinking his knife into the mound of furs. He struck flesh and smelled the hot stink of gushing blood. Kneeling on the furs, he felt a huge body beneath his knees shake, lift its arms and legs, and then let them drop. Munahim leaped onto the body with him, slashing repeatedly at what must be the body’s head.
Lightning flashed again and brought with it simultaneous thunder. Indrajit saw Munahim slash at the bedding, and as Munahim’s sword came away, a head came with it. Indrajit saw the flash of lightning on two long tusks, and then a spherical head swung away into the darkness.
“The hand!” Shafi shrieked. “Where’s the hand?” He plunged his knife into the bed.
“Stop stabbing!” Indrajit hissed.
Shafi stabbed at the bed again, and this time Indrajit punched him, knocking him to the floor.
The body lay still.
“A light,” Indrajit said. “We need a light in here. Can anyone find a lantern?”
He heard the sharp rasp of steel on stone, and then saw a faint flicker of light in the darkness. It grew in brightness and size until Indrajit realized what it was; Fix had struck fire to one end of a rolled scroll, and now held it up like a torch.
“You’re coming around to my view of the written word.” Indrajit chuckled.
Fix shrugged. “I couldn’t read it, anyway. I don’t even know what language it was in.” He held the torch high and poked about the room until he found a lamp. That lit, a mellow golden glow filled the chamber.
“This isn’t him,” Shafi gasped.
Indrajit pulled away the furs and blankets. They were dark purple with blood; he tossed them all into a heap. Beneath lay a massive body, sexless like a Gund’s but without the insectoid arms. Instead of a right hand, the corpse had a flipper.
Munahim lifted the severed head. He gripped it by a tusk; the head answered to Shafi’s previous description.
“What do you mean, this isn’t him?” Indrajit asked. “Because there’s no bracer on the arm, and no flask on a chain around his neck? Maybe he sleeps naked.”
Shafi shook his head. “Adunummu’s right hand is a flipper. This . . . person’s got a flipper, too, but look at it.”
Indrajit looked. The flipper was the left hand.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Is this some other Siskaloo, then?” Munahim asked.
Shafi shook his head. “Look, I . . . Look how this thing is sexless.”
“Yes,” Indrajit said.
“It’s not Adunummu,” Shafi said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a Siskaloo at all, or any other kind of mortal man.”
“Adakles!” Fix yelled.
Indrajit wheeled about in time to see Adakles disappearing up the steps into the room above.
He rushed to the foot of the stairs and peered in vain up into the darkness.
“Adakles?” he called. He would be heard if anyone were on the floor above, but they’d already screamed and banged about enough to warn anyone up there that they were here.
“Come up,” a voice called back. “Let us talk.”
It didn’t sound like a Wixit.
[ Chapter Seven ]
“So much for surprise,” Fix said.
“So much for killing the conjuror before he could attack us,” Indrajit added. He felt relief like a cold wave through his body; he hadn’t, after all, killed a man in cold blood. On the other hand, he had certainly done everything that would have been necessary to kill that man, except that he had been tricked. Did that mean he bore the guilt of the murder, anyway?
To atone for the guilt, he sheathed his sword and started up the stairs.
“Indrajit, wait,” Fix said softly.
“Get my back,” Indrajit said. “Please.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Did he feel he owed this to the magician he’d tried to kill? Did he owe it to the Epic, somehow, or to his future apprentice?
“I’m coming up, Adunummu!”
He could see nothing in the dark opening above his head. Lightning crashed again outside the tower, so close it might have been inside the room, and still there was no flicker of light in the room above. Windowless, then. Unlit. And probably Adunummu could see in the dark. And Indrajit’s sword was in his sheath.
This was an excellent idea.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he walked up into the darkness. He smelled a burning, lightning-like odor. His knees trembled slightly.
Then he rose to the next story and stepped onto the floor, and suddenly he could see.
He stood on the top floor of a tower, on the battlements, and it was broad daylight. Below and around the tower stretched a carpet of fluffy white clouds. An apparatus stood on a pole at one end of the circular tower-top. Beside it stood an enormous man with a tusked and whiskered head, wrapped in a blue silk robe and resting one hand on the device. It was his right hand, and the hand wasn’t a hand at all, but a flipper. On his left wrist, Indrajit saw a gold bracer, and hanging from a chain around his neck, a glass flask.
Adakles stood at the apparatus, with his face pressed against it.
“You are the one they call Indrajit.” The Siskaloo’s voice was a deep rumble.
“Indrajit Twang,” Indrajit said.
“I don’t think your head resembles a fish’s head.”
“Right? Thank you.”
“Not very much, anyway.”
“So, ah, you know more about me than I know about you,” Indrajit said.
“Curious, isn’t it?” Adunummu chuckled. “And interesting that your ignorance correlates with a willingness to kill me, while my knowledge correlates with a preference for your survival. Mind you, our sample size is very small.”
Indrajit wasn’t entirely sure that he followed the magician’s meaning. “I think you’re saying you don’t plan to kill me.”
“I don’t plan to kill you. Or your companions.” The Siskaloo smiled. “Yet.”
Indrajit chuckled uneasily. “Can they come up, then?”
“Oh, they’ve come up,” Adunummu said. “Only they came up to the other place at the top of the same stairs. Would you like to see them?”
Indrajit reflected on all the stories of magicians in the Epic. Magicians could be devious, cunning, deceitful, sadistic, and many other things. Above all, they were always surprising. Was this a trick? Would agreement that he’d like to see his friends cause him to be catapulted into a shared hell with them?
“Given your, ah, goodwill toward us,” he said, shifting from foot to foot, “I’d be happy to see them.”
“Adakles,” Adunummu said. “Give this fellow Indrajit a turn, will you?”
Adakles stepped away from the device, stepping down in the process from a series of rungs attached to the pole on which the device was mounted. “He’s been watching us, you see,” Adakles said.
“Right.” Indrajit nodded. “Of course, he has.”
“You don’t have to shove your face into the visor,” Adunummu said. “But pressing your face close enough to be completely under the brass hood tends to shut out the light, and I find that gives me the best views.”
A pane of glass was framed with a skirt of brass, whose edges were blunted with a strip of white rubber. Indrajit pressed his face into the viewer, feeling a semicircle of rubber gripping his forehead, the embrace rendered a little awkward by Indrajit’s prominent bony nose ridge.
“What do I have to—oh.” He stopped talking as the visor filled with an image. He saw Fix, Munahim, and Shafi, in a dark chamber. He saw the three men as if they were painted in shades of red, while the shelves, tables, and glass and brass instruments in the room were all painted blue and gray.
“What is this sorcery?” Indrajit pulled his face from the device.
“It’s a simple viewer.” Adunummu shrugged. “If this astounds you, you must live a life of daily astonishment.”
“I do,” Indrajit said. “And . . . did this device restore Adakles?”
“I did that by other means,” the Siskaloo said. “Shall I put him back?”
“No,” Adakles said. “Please.”
“No,” Indrajit said. “No, he’s just . . . he’s fine.”
“You have been sent by magicians to kill me,” Adunummu said.
“Technically, just to rob you,” Indrajit clarified. “We’re to take that bottle you carry on your chest.”
“Interesting.” Adunummu made a sound like purring in his chest. “And do what with the bottle?”
“So I guess you couldn’t see us during our meeting with Theophilus Bolt?” Indrajit asked.
“And do what with the bottle?” Adunummu asked again.
Indrajit shrugged. “I guess it’s sort of our ticket. Or maybe it’s a distraction. Or both. It’s to get us in the door to see someone else.”
“Hmm.”
“Where are we?” Indrajit asked. “Are we at the . . . are we in the same tower here as . . . as is down below?”
“Well, the answer to that rather has to be yes, doesn’t it?”
“But I mean . . . ” Indrajit struggled. “I came up one tower, and it all seemed to be a certain way, a single structure. Am I now in the same structure I was in while I was ascending?”
Adunummu laughed, a rich sound that Indrajit found surprisingly fruity. “You’re above the clouds.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“Who hired you?” Adunummu asked. “What are the terms of your engagement? Do you intend to attack and rob me now?”
“I . . . killed your . . . the other you,” Indrajit said.
“And now you confess.” Adunummu laughed. “I saw you do it. The synthetic felt no pain.”
“I feel pain,” Indrajit said. “I feel guilt.”
“Good. Expunge your guilt by answering my questions.”
“I want to look again,” Adakles said.
Indrajit stepped aside. “Our client is Adakles’s father. We were engaged to rescue Adakles, which seems to be mostly accomplished. Although he’s here with me, and not at home. But then his father, Thoat, was kidnapped. So we aim to rescue Thoat. The people who kidnapped Thoat—”
“Theophilus Bolt.”
“And company, I believe,” Indrajit said. “They promised to return Bolt to us if we took your flask and took it to the Collegium Arcanum. We would say that we had recovered the flask from you, for the Collegium, and this would get us access to the Collegium’s tyrant. Whom we would then kill. That was the job: kill the man who has made himself leader of the Collegium Arcanum.”
“Interesting,” Adunummu said.
“Why do I feel so comfortable telling you everything?” Indrajit asked. “I feel like Munahim.”
“It’s my craft,” Adunummu said. “I’m doing things that encourage you to talk.”
“I have no desire to help Bolt,” Indrajit said. “And I don’t want to assassinate anyone, least of all a magician whose apprentices and familiars might come after me. I just want to rescue my client. And also, I suppose, protect myself from reprisals from Bolt and his friends.”
“I won’t reveal to you the inner political workings of the Collegium Arcanum,” Adunummu said.
“I don’t want to know them,” Indrajit said. “They don’t cross the history of my people, and I feel safer in ignorance.”
“And yet you are going to play a part,” Adunummu said. “Here is my proposal. I’ll give you my flask, and the bottle-imp inside it. It is indeed coveted by my rivals in the Collegium. I’ll also teach you a set of instructions by which you will deploy the imp in accordance with my will. I will also make you a gift of this bracer I wear. You will say that you stole it from me, and give it to Bolt. His greed will not allow him to do anything other than accept it, but the gift will then destroy him.”
“And the result of all of this?” Indrajit asked.
“I shall gain power. Why else would I do anything?”
“And my client?”
“I’ll free him. That’s what’s in it for you.”
Indrajit considered. “Shafi wants your bracer very much.”
“Shafi is a thief, and I intend to kill him.”
“I wouldn’t want that to happen,” Indrajit said.
“Interesting.” Adunummu stroked his thick neck with his flipper. “Why not?”
Indrajit sighed. “I’m the softhearted one, I suppose.”
“Even toward a thief?”
“Yes.”
“What if I told you that he wished you ill?”
“I would believe it.”
Adunummu chuckled. “Adakles, let Indrajit have another turn.”
The Wixit stepped aside, and Indrajit looked into the viewer. To his surprise, he saw himself, climbing the stairs from the kitchen. Behind him came Shafi, a knife in his hand. He saw himself arrive in the library, and Shafi creep forward, as if planning to stab Indrajit in the back.
But then Munahim loped up the steps, and at the last second, Shafi turned aside and examined books on a shelf.
“I could kill him,” Adunummu said. “No judge in the world would deny that I was doing justice.”
“Some might.” Indrajit sighed. “But that’s not the point. If you can show mercy, you should.”
“Did you show mercy to my synthetic?” Adunummu asked. “Whom you took to be me, sleeping in my bed?”
“I made a mistake,” Indrajit said. “I made a terrible mistake, but fortunately, you outwitted me then. You outwitted me, and there were no consequences to my error.”
“There were consequences. My synthetic bore them.”
“You outwitted me then,” Indrajit said. “Be wiser than me now. Let Shafi go.”
“Magicians are not famous for their wisdom.”
“You could be the first,” Indrajit said. “I would put you into the Blaatshi Epic. The tale of your wisdom and nobility might outlive you.”
“Might it?” Adunummu mused. “Some magicians live very long lives.”
“The Blaatshi Epic is millennia old,” Indrajit told him. “With a little luck, it will continue for millennia still.”
“Very well,” Adunummu said. “Go downstairs to your friends and summon them up to be instructed.”
“And Shafi?”
“I will deal with him.”
“You will deal with him . . . ”
“Mercifully.”
Indrajit climbed down the steps. As he descended, light came with him, spilling over the staircase and emanating from it, and when he reached the floor below, he found Munahim and Fix blinking at the illumination. The room around them was free of furniture, had no windows, and was enclosed within blank stone walls.
Shafi lay on the floor before them, snoring.
“You disappeared,” Munahim said. “No scent, even.”
“Come up with me.” Indrajit extended a hand of invitation. “You’ll understand . . . well, not everything. But more. Maybe sheathe your swords first.”
“Is it safe?” Munahim asked.
“Well, there are wizards in the mix,” Indrajit said. “So no, it isn’t safe. On the other hand, it’s interesting.”
[ Chapter Eight ]
The synthetic raged.
It looked just like Adunummu, though it roared a lot and spoke in simple sentences. “Robbers!” it howled. “Give back what you have stolen!”
The interior of Adunummu’s tower had a marked lack of doors, so Indrajit and his companions had returned to the door to the thylacodon pit. Indrajit had pulled the door shut and was now spreading the flexible brass bar across the bottom, pressing its tacks and clamps into the heavy wood. They sank in easily; magic?
The synthetic, wrapped in a blue robe that hid its sexlessness, roared. The real Adunummu stood crouched behind it, his non-flipper hand wrapped in a smooth white ceramic knuckleduster.
“Louder,” Adunummu said softly.
But was he, after all, the real Adunummu? How would Indrajit even know that this Adunummu was not also a simulacrum of some kind? Or a projection, as Bolt had turned out to be? Magicians seemed to have the knack for presenting false reality.
Which probably made this plan to capture a wizard, and apparently a powerful one, a terrible idea.
“Ready,” Indrajit murmured.
He wore the flask hanging around his own neck and carried the golden bracer in his kilt pocket.
“Thief!” the synthetic bellowed.
Indrajit pulled the door open. A crackling sheet of light hung in the doorway. Beyond, his memory told him, should lie a narrow landing and then a long fall into the thylacodon pit. His senses detected neither, but he planned to move cautiously, just in case.
Adunummu raised his ceramic-wrapped fist and pumped his elbow. A beam of red light shot past Indrajit, narrowly missing his head and striking the sheet of light. His cheek felt scorched by the heat of the passing ray. The light in the door briefly turned red and a wave radiated out from the point of impact.
“Run!” Fix yelled.
Indrajit stepped through the light curtain. His step was careful, because he half-expected to step into darkness and a potential fall, but Munahim, Adakles, and Fix crashed through immediately after him, piling onto him and knocking him down.
He braced himself for a fatal fall, but tumbled onto a stone floor in a well-lit room at the bottom of a pile of Protagonists. Another red beam passed overhead. He smelled burning wood and heard a sizzling sound.
“Shut the door!” The voice belonged to Theophilus Bolt. Booted feet thudded on stone, hands grabbed Indrajit and dragged him across the floor, scraping skin off his knees and elbows. A door banged against his ankle as it was slammed shut. Indrajit rolled away from the legs of manic men as they slammed a brass bar across the inside of the door, a bar much like the one Indrajit had put onto the door’s other side.
“Clear!” one of them shouted.
The men wore heavy boots and were covered from head to toe. They looked something like the powder priests of Thûl, except the Thûlians were wrapped in scarves, shawls, and cloaks, to protect themselves from profane gazes; these men wore single garments that covered them entirely. They lacked even holes for eyes, and Indrajit saw no buttons or clasps for closing the garments. For all he could tell, the clothing had been woven directly onto the men.
“Wait,” he said. “I pulled the door open from the other side, and then you pushed it shut from this side.”
Theophilus Bolt laughed. The magician stood beside Indrajit, hovering in the air—which probably meant that this Bolt was a mere projection. “Yes.”
“That makes no logical sense.” Fix disentangled himself from the pile of men, climbing to his feet and straightening his kilt.
Munahim grunted and rolled into a sitting position. His instruction from Adunummu had been to keep his mouth shut and do as he was told.
“It makes all the logical sense in the world,” Bolt said. “It’s just a logic with which you are not perfectly acquainted.”
“Yet,” Fix said.
Bolt bowed as if conceding a point; he looked amused. “Not yet acquainted.”
“What’s burning?” Munahim asked.
“The building.” Bolt shrugged. “The men will handle it.”
The men in featureless suits rushed the other way across the room. Indrajit now saw a heavy timber, one of several matching beams running across the roof, on fire. The men aimed a hose at the flames and gray powder sprayed all over the fire, quenching it instantly.
“Come,” Bolt said. “Breathing will be unpleasant in here for a time. Let’s go upstairs.”
Bolt pointed at a green-painted door, but he himself walked to a rectangular window and clasped his hands behind his back. He smiled at the Protagonists as they passed through the door into a stairwell. Munahim carried Adakles on his shoulder; the Wixit was lucid, if not especially conversational. At Adunummu’s suggestion, he was pretending to be dazed and dumb still.
“Make sure to close the door behind you,” Bolt called.
Indrajit wanted to comment on their surroundings, but his experience with Adunummu made him fear he was being observed. He shut the door behind his companions, then duly trudged up a flight of stairs behind them to a second green door.
On the other side of this door, they found another plaster-walled room with heavy rafters and a single window. Bolt stood beside this window as well, with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face. In the wall to their right was set a door that looked familiar.
Munahim made a low growling sound in his throat and shook his head.
“I know, noble Kyone,” Bolt said. “You are weary of the strangeness of magicians. But you are nearly at the road’s end.”
Indrajit didn’t like the way that sounded. “We just want our client back.”
“The Wixit Thoat,” Bolt said. “Yes, as soon as you’ve overthrown the tyrant Megistos.”
“‘Overthrown the tyrant’ sounds like a lot of work,” Indrajit said. “We’re going to assassinate one wizard and be finished. Whatever’s left of the overthrowing business is your problem.”
Bolt bowed and smiled again.
“And we want Thoat back now,” Fix said.
Indrajit hesitated. This was not the plan.
Bolt smiled. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”
“We’ll trade,” Fix said.
Bolt frowned. “You think you can just put your foot down and refuse to go forward? You’ve obtained the flask, why would I not simply take it from you?”
“Because you need someone to assassinate Megistos,” Indrajit said. “The flask is just the way in. But we’re men of honor, we’ll do what we agreed to do. We’re offering you something else.”
Bolt’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
“We’ve obtained a treasure from Adunummu’s tower,” Fix said. “Beyond just the flask, of course.”
“Interesting,” Bolt said. “And why would I not just take it from you?”
“Well,” Indrajit said, “for several reasons, I suppose. One, Munahim might shoot you. And this time, not choose to miss. Two, Fix might stab you with the Dagger of Slaying. We’d have to run down the slope to get to you, but unless you can fly, that won’t take long. And three, we might just opt out of this whole assassination thing. I don’t like it very much in any case, to be honest. We’re fighters, but we’re not killers.”
Bolt chewed his lower lip. “What’s the treasure?”
Indrajit removed the golden bracer from his kilt pocket.
“Why not keep it for yourself?” Bolt asked.
“And risk a wizard’s curse?” Indrajit shuddered, a genuine reaction.
“I will think about it,” Bolt said. “You make an interesting offer.”
“No,” Indrajit said. “We’ll go out your door, wherever it leads, and carry out our appointed task. But we take Thoat with us. You can produce him, just as easily as you produced Adakles.”
“I produced Adakles outside the tower,” Bolt pointed out.
“Fine,” Indrajit said. “So we go through that door, and if Thoat’s on the other side, great, we’ll give you the bracer. Hand it to you in person, deliver it to your instruction, whatever you like. If he’s not, then we take the bracer and sell it, before we go carry out your plan.”
“I’m sure the Lord Chamberlain would pay us for the artifact,” Fix said. “Or the Hall of Guesses.”
“Or the Vin Dalu,” Indrajit said. “Or one of the temples.”
“Stop,” Bolt said. “I agree. Go through the door and you’ll find yourselves in Kish.”
“I knew it looked familiar,” Indrajit muttered.
“I’ll see that Thoat is returned to the plaza of the Headless Took,” Bolt continued. “He will be in a stupor like his son’s. A messenger will be there to take delivery of what you offer. The messenger will also tell you where to meet and slay the tyrant. Once the slaying is accomplished, we will restore both Wixits to their full minds. Is that agreeable to you?”
Indrajit looked at Fix, and his partner nodded.
“Agreed,” Indrajit said.
“Will the messenger be wearing red?” Fix asked.
Bolt nodded.
Fix passed through the door first, followed by Munahim, and Indrajit came last. They emerged onto the Avenue of Golden Chariots, in the darkness of night. Light from windows in the upper stories of the Crown’s palaces and towers threw golden puddles here and there, and travelers in togas were preceded by servants with torches and followed by armed guards.
Indrajit looked over his shoulder. The door by which they had come had vanished.
“The Headless Took?” he suggested.
They walked for a minute before Fix spoke, and then in a low voice. “What possessed you to negotiate for Thoat? We hadn’t discussed that.”
“I hate the feeling of passivity,” Indrajit said. “I want to be the hero, not the hapless fool in the grip of fate. We couldn’t have discussed it in Adunummu’s presence without involving him in the planning. And I don’t want to be Adunummu’s puppet any more than I want to be Bolt’s.”
“It was a good move,” Fix said. “They might have withheld Thoat and tried to force us to do more, or to betray Adunummu.”
“And if Bolt’s party refuses to remove the stupor from Thoat, we know that Adunummu can do it just as easily.” Indrajit sighed. “Though we may find ourselves negotiating with the two parties to get one of them to do it.”
“You can set me down now,” Adakles said.
“I don’t think we can,” Fix said. “And you need to continue to play dumb, as long as anyone might be watching.”
Indrajit thought about Adunummu’s viewing device. “Which might be a long time.”
They were nearing the alley to the plaza of the Headless Took. “What do you think the odds are that any of this is real?” Fix asked.
“What? Kish?” Indrajit asked. “Kish is real. Kish has caused me far too much pain to be anything but real.”
“Hmm. In fact, I could be persuaded that Kish was an illusion, too.” Fix shook his head. “No, I mean everything else. The tower by the sea, the sunshine. The tower on the plain of ash, the thylacodons. I don’t believe in being instantaneously transported from one land to another, across hundreds of leagues.”
“And yet we were transported,” Indrajit said.
Munahim made a low growling sound in his throat.
“We perceived that we were,” Fix said. “That’s my point. What if instead we were lying in a room off the Avenue of Golden Chariots the entire time? Under the influence of some drug, say. Or the odd power of some unknown race of man. And we believed we were transported to faraway places, and instead Adakles was simply returned to us along with the dagger and the bracer and the bottle.”
“You resist the idea of magic.”
“Yes. Of course, I do.”
“Why could it not have been craft that moved us?” Indrajit suggested. “I mean a technique, a device. Druvash sorcery, or something similar.”
“It could have been, I suppose,” Fix said. “But what difference is there between saying, ‘oh, by magic I was transported to a faraway realm,’ and saying, ‘oh, by means of mysterious technology I was transported’?”
They turned down the alley.
“That’s exactly my point,” Indrajit said.
“Shh,” Fix said. “Look for a messenger dressed in red.”
“And Thoat,” Indrajit added.
[ Chapter Nine ]
No windows overlooked the plaza where the Headless Took stood. What light there was shone down directly from the moon overhead, filling the center of the square, painting the statue and the well beneath its feet with a ghostly nimbus.
Beside the fountain stood two figures. Indrajit approached, followed by the other Protagonists.
“Remember to play stupid,” he whispered to Adakles.
The Wixit slumped further, melting over Indrajit’s shoulder.
Thoat stood beside the fountain. Slightly in front of and blocking access to the little tea merchant was a Fanchee woman in a toga. Under the light of the moon, the toga could have been red, purple, or even blue.
It had to be the same Fanchee. Which was to say, not a Fanchee at all, but a sorcerer or a shape-changer of some unknown race.
“You are Indrajit and Fix,” the Fanchee said. Her voice was high-pitched and rasping, and didn’t sound like a Fanchee’s at all. “And the dog-man.”
“We’re here to make a trade,” Fix said. “And to get your directions.”
The Fanchee handed Indrajit a folded sheet of paper. Indrajit took it, resisting the urge to tear it into shreds.
“Frozen hells, you too?” he muttered.
“They are the magicians’ guild,” Fix pointed out.
“Yes, magicians,” Indrajit snapped. “So they could send little talking images to tell us what we need to know. Or plant the ideas in our minds directly. Or cause the Headless Took to speak and address us.”
“The Headless Took has no mouth,” Fix said.
“It was just an example,” Indrajit grumbled.
“And paper is cheaper.”
“Paper is cheap,” Indrajit said. “But that rationale will cause it to replace everything, everywhere—paper houses, paper clothes, paper food, paper shoes.”
“Those things might serve perfectly well,” Fix pointed out.
“Do you two fight all the time?” the Fanchee asked.
“Sometimes we fight other people,” Indrajit said. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“The bracer.” The Fanchee held out her hand.
Indrajit drew the jewel-encrusted gold from his pocket.
“Bolt told us to warn you,” Fix said.
The Fanchee and Indrajit both paused.
“About what?” the Fanchee asked.
“He said that you absolutely should not try to wear or use this armband,” Fix said.
“Right,” Indrajit added. “Under no circumstances.”
“It might be dangerous,” Fix said.
“Dangerous . . . how?” the Fanchee asked.
“He didn’t say.” Fix shrugged. “He just said it was dangerous.”
“He said to bring it straight to him,” Indrajit said. “No delay.”
“His very words.” Fix nodded. “No delay.”
“I run all my errands without delay,” the Fanchee said. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“Good,” Indrajit said. “So hand over the Wixit.”
The Fanchee stood still.
“The Wixit,” Fix said. “Thoat.”
“Did he say anything else about the bracer?” the Fanchee asked.
“No,” Indrajit said.
“Nothing.” Fix shrugged.
“Do you know where it came from?”
“We stole it,” Fix said. “From a very powerful wizard.”
“A wealthy wizard,” Indrajit said, “more to the point. A wizard with large piles of gold and jewels.”
“Rich,” Fix said. “Hand over the Wixit.”
With a single motion, the Fanchee reached back, grabbed Thoat by his furry shoulder, and tossed him stumbling toward Fix, snatching the armband from Indrajit at the same time. Fix picked up the stupefied tea merchant.
“Good luck.” The Fanchee spun about and marched into the dark alley at the back of the plaza. At the last moment, the red toga rose and the Fanchee seem to inflate into something large and misshapen. Then she disappeared.
“You hope she tries the bracer on and it punishes her,” Indrajit said.
“Yes. I took the initiative mostly because it seemed like a good thing to do.”
“Yeah, I agree. What does the paper say?”
Indrajit lowered Adakles to the ground. The young Wixit examined his father, pinching his cheek, shaking him by the elbows, and shouting into his face. Thoat didn’t respond.
Fix unfolded the paper and read out loud. “‘We have bound a portal using the front door of Thoat’s tea shop. The portal opens into the hidden palace of Megistos, Lord Dean of the Collegium Arcanum. He expects your delivery of the bottle-imp.’”
“Unspoken,” Indrajit said, “we expect your delivery of the Dagger of Slaying.”
“I don’t like it,” Fix said, “but I don’t see how else we rescue Thoat here.”
Indrajit nodded. “Ironic that they’d use Thoat’s door.”
“It makes sense, maybe,” Fix said, “if the magicians needed to use a door that wasn’t going to be inadvertently opened by someone else. You wouldn’t want random street traffic just walking into the Lord Dean’s palace, and Thoat’s tea shop is closed.”
“What do we do with the Wixits?” Munahim added. “It’s not safe to bring them with us.”
“It’s not safe to leave them anywhere else, either,” Indrajit said. “Especially with Thoat in a stupor. I think we have to carry them with us and protect them.”
“I can walk, at least,” Adakles said.
“Safest if you don’t,” Fix said. “In case we’re observed. But we’ll set you down out of the way before any fighting starts.”
“If I have a choice,” Adakles said, “I want the Kyone to carry me. It’s nice to snuggle against his fur.”
“That’s what they all say,” Indrajit said.
“Like a mama Wixit,” Fix suggested.
The three Protagonists hoisted the two Wixits and they began their trudge toward the Spill. “You have the dagger?” Indrajit asked.
“I do,” Fix said. “You have the bottle?”
“I do, and I remember how to use it.”
With brief whispered coordination, they chose an indirect route. It allowed them to take smaller streets and even alleys—though alleys in the Crown were as wide as streets in the other quarters and as wide as a boulevard in the Dregs—to double back on their trail and watch for anyone following them. They saw jobbers on patrol as constables, very elegant streetwalkers, and even a second-story man, creeping across the peak of a high rooftop, but no tails.
The jobbers at the gate waved them through into the Spill without comment, not even asking about the apparently unconscious Wixits.
“If none of this is real,” Indrajit said, “if none of the events of the past day actually happened, but instead we imagined them in a drugged state . . . why is our client unconscious?”
“Our client is drugged,” Fix said. “If anything, that’s evidence that we might also have been drugged.”
“But who did it?” Indrajit asked. “Why would someone drug poor Thoat?”
“Remember what brought us here,” Fix said. “We were warned that young Adakles was in danger from the Collegium Arcanum. Which certainly seems to have been true. He had been kidnapped and drugged.”
“By the Bolt faction.”
“If the Bolt faction exists,” Fix said. “Put into a stupor by someone. Were you in a stupor, Adakles?”
“I was.”
“What was it like?” Indrajit asked. “Were you conscious of things around you? Were you conscious of standing on a clifftop when we found you, for instance?”
“I don’t remember that,” Adakles said. “I remember coming out of the stupor on Adunummu’s tower. That felt like waking up.”
“You felt as if you had been asleep,” Indrajit pressed.
“Yes.”
“See, I never felt as if I were asleep,” Indrajit said. “So whatever happened to me, I don’t think it’s the same thing that happened to Adakles. I’ve been awake and conscious. And, I think, in Hith.”
“Hmm,” Fix said. “Perhaps different drugs were used on us.”
“Perhaps no drugs,” Indrajit suggested.
“Perhaps no drugs,” Fix agreed. “But still, the bizarrely flexible nature of reality we’ve seen today suggests that reality might be something different from what we imagined.”
“How so?”
“Reality seems to be something like a stage. Actors walk on and walk off and most of the time we stay in scene, but once in a while, a director or stage manager whisks away all the furniture and scenery and moves us to a different stage.”
“Someone is in charge of reality and can just move us around at a whim,” Indrajit said.
“Yes.”
“The gods.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Fix considered. “I mean, what if the world really is like a play, but it isn’t the gods who manipulate us. We’re manipulated by more powerful men. Men who can apparently move us from one place to another at whim.”
“All you’re saying is magicians,” Indrajit said. “But again, you’re going to tell me, magicians who don’t have magic, they have devices. Or skill.”
“Yes.”
“You see gods and wizards at work in your own life, and you insist that it must be men. Who are just more powerful than you are, and you can’t explain how they effect their deeds.”
“And you just call those same men gods, and give up trying to explain how they do it.”
“Sometimes, I feel we’re at an impasse because we’re saying the same idea, but you insist on using entirely different words.”
Fix laughed. “I would say precisely the same thing.”
“I don’t care whether it was magic or craft or the gods,” Indrajit said. “Something has moved us around multiple times today. And it seems it’s going to happen to us at least once more.”
“Twice,” Fix said. “We’re going to come back from seeing the Lord Dean.”
“Twice,” Indrajit agreed.
“Maybe it’s too much,” Fix said. “Maybe we should cut our losses now. Leave Thoat to his son. Walk away from the money.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing this for the money,” Indrajit said. “I don’t feel like I’m doing any of it for the money.”
“What for, then?” Fix asked. “Good client relations?”
“I don’t mind that at all,” Indrajit said. “I like that people find us reliable and competent. What bothers me is the part of our reputation according to which, apparently, we are patsies. I don’t want to be a patsy.”
“You aren’t a patsy,” Fix said. “You are a noble warrior and a poet, with the soul of a hero.”
“Well.” Indrajit felt suddenly embarrassed. “Well, yes. That is what I am trying to be. So I am going to save my client, but not because I need to get paid. Or not only because I need to get paid.”
“It’s nice to eat,” Fix said.
“I’m going to save him because that’s what a hero would do.”
“Have you guys not eaten?” Adakles asked.
“Ah . . . not recently,” Indrajit said. “We’ve been distracted.”
“I considered asking Adunummu for food,” Munahim said. “But I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to trust it.”
“Stop here,” Adakles said. They stood before a corner tavern. The smell of Pelthite spices on roasting lamb and fish wafted out. “Let’s eat.”
“But your father,” Indrajit said.
“He would want you to eat,” Adakles said, raising his head from Munahim’s shoulder. “You may need your strength tonight.”
Within the tavern, they sat Thoat upright between Fix and his son, on a dark wooden bench circling a booth in the back. Munahim and Indrajit sat on stools; with their larger frames, they shielded the Wixits from view, and between Munahim’s hearing and sense of smell and Indrajit’s peripheral vision, they could monitor the tavern pretty well. A droggerherd, a ship’s captain, and drovers from somewhere on the Endless Road dozed over their own meals, each leaving the others well enough alone.
Indrajit had never tasted more delicious roast lamb in his life. It came with crispy brown bread and root vegetables.
He was careful to restrain himself from overeating, knowing that he had a fight coming up, maybe within the hour.
Adakles paid for the food and bought a skin of wine to take with them.
“Okay.” Indrajit swallowed the last bit of bread, soaked in olive oil, lamb fat, and herbs. “Let’s go see the Lord Dean.”
[ Chapter Ten ]
Sure enough, a brass band had been tacked into the tea-shop door, at about the level of Indrajit’s knees.
“You see, it’s things like these.” Fix pointed at the band. “And the dagger and the lamp. Why always the physical things? The fist-guard Adunummu used to launch heat rays, that’s another. These things make me think we’re seeing an unknown craft, rather than magic.”
“Magic is an unknown craft.” Indrajit shrugged.
“We chase our tail again. Let’s go in.” Fix pushed the door and it opened inward. He entered and Indrajit followed.
Indrajit wanted to draw his sword, but that would have broken their disguise. They were jobbers, hired by Theophilus Bolt of the Collegium Arcanum to retrieve an artifact from a rogue magician. Now they brought their spoils to the head of the Collegium, a magician named Megistos.
Indrajit had the bottle and its imp. Fix had the Dagger of Slaying, but that was only the backup plan.
Behind the door was no tea shop, but a room with marble walls and a thick carpet. Light came from lamps sitting in niches in the walls; the marble seemed to sparkle and reflect back all the radiance that struck it. A Zalapting in a black robe stood facing them at the bottom of a flight of stairs. He held a silver tray in both hands, extending it toward the jobbers.
“Would my lords care to present themselves?”
Indrajit looked at the tray. “Is there an invisible drink here?” he whispered to Fix.
“He’s offering to carry a calling card to his master,” Fix whispered back. “This is how the lords and ladies do it. The merchants you and I work with mostly can’t be bothered with this stuff, except in extremely formal occasions. Occasions in which they aspire to be more than mere merchants.”
“Right.” Indrajit drew himself to his full height, barely noticing the weight of the catatonic Wixit on his shoulder. “I’m Indrajit Twang, four hundred twenty-seventh Recital Thane of the Blaatshi and a principal of the Protagonists.”
“I’m Fix,” Fix said, “also a principal of the Protagonists. We’re here to see the Lord Dean Megistos.”
“Just Fix, my lord?” the Zalapting asked.
“He used to go by Fiximon Nasoprominentus Fascicular,” Indrajit said, “but he calculated that a one-syllable name would save him three hours a day, so he abbreviated himself.”
“Just Fix,” Fix said.
The Zalapting stepped to one side and pulled a thin cord Indrajit hadn’t noticed. He whispered to a stone column, then returned to address the Protagonists. “Follow me.”
They followed the lavender-faced, long-snouted man up two flights of stairs. The third floor of the building was a pavilion, with open walls and columns in the shape of giant serpents, holding up a marble roof. A lacquered red handrail ran all around the floor. Beyond the handrail, city lights winked in the darkness. At the far end stood a throne between two ponderous braziers. Flames the height of a tall man rose from the braziers, licking at the stone of the ceiling. To one side of the throne stood a mechanism that resembled Adunummu’s viewing device.
A tall, thin man sat on the throne.
He waved them closer.
They set the Wixits down to one side and proceeded.
“Where do you think we are?” Indrajit took slow steps. No need to rush. “Bat? Xiba’alb?”
“Kish,” Fix whispered. “Look at the skyline.”
“Kish?”
“Disappointed?” Fix asked. “Or just surprised?”
Indrajit stepped to the rail and looked. “It’s Kish,” he reported, coming back. “We’re somewhere in the Crown, I think, though it might be a really tall building in the Lee. The walls aren’t always well lit, but I can see where the Spike is, and the five temples.”
“You can’t tell where we are in the Crown?” Fix continued to pace forward.
Indrajit shook his head. “There’s something slippery about the ground. As if it might move at any moment, or as if it were already moving.”
“Craft,” Fix said. “Strange devices. Magic.”
“Well,” Indrajit said, “I hope it’s not the gods. If this is a god we’re about to face, we’re in trouble.”
“Not necessarily,” Munahim said. “My people don’t fear the gods.”
“Because you never had any,” Indrajit said. “Brave-hearted Kyones, honest but godless.”
“No,” Munahim said. “We had them once.”
The bottle and its imp felt very heavy around Indrajit’s neck. He smiled, and walked toward the throne.
The man sitting on the throne looked like a blade of grass five cubits tall. His arms were blades sprouting from the same pith, and rather than legs, he had a lower end that was stained brown and split into tendrils like roots. At its middle, the magician’s body was not as thick as Indrajit’s thigh. Black-dot eyes and a black-slit mouth broke the monotony of the upper half of the stalk, and at its topmost tips, the green man frayed into multiple strands, like a head of bearded wheat.
“The longer I stay in this city,” Indrajit said, “the stranger the races of man get.”
“Don’t tell the wizard that,” Fix murmured. “You might hurt his feelings.”
They stopped a few paces from the grass-man.
“I am Megistos.” The grass-man’s voice sounded like the rustle of the wind in a bank of reeds. “Lord Dean of the Collegium Arcanum. You believe you are entering my realm, but the truth is that you have always been in my realm. Welcome, bold Fix. Welcome, Indrajit. Welcome, faithful Munahim.”
“Why didn’t I get an adjective?” Indrajit murmured.
“Welcome, mouthy Indrajit,” Megistos said.
“A palpable hit, O Megistos,” Indrajit said. “You honor us with your acknowledgment. We bring you the fruits of our labors in the vineyard of your competitors.”
“I have no competitors,” Megistos said. “I have no peers. I am the Lord Dean.”
“Allow me to clarify,” Indrajit said. “We stole a bottle, at the request of one of your subordinates. A Theophilus Bolt.”
“Recondite second class,” Megistos said.
“That sounds right,” Indrajit said. “As directed by Bolt, we’re bringing the bottle to you.”
“What a sycophant Bolt is,” Megistos said. “He hopes that I have no apprentice, and will favor him with the position.”
“I am unfamiliar with the politics of the Collegium,” Indrajit said.
“Present Bolt’s gift.”
Indrajit took two long steps forward, trying to appear ceremonious about it. He knelt and removed the flask from his neck. “For you, Lord Dean.” He pointed its mouth toward the grass-man, placed his fingers in the grip taught to him by Adunummu, and opened the bottle.
The thing that sprang from the flask’s wide mouth could not possibly fit inside the bottle. It began as a mist, but despite being a mist, it didn’t slip from the bottle, or ooze or sidle its way it, and once out, it didn’t dissipate. The mist sprang out, and when it touched down on the marble, it had a manlike shape. In size it rivalled a Gund or a Luzzazza, and bat-like wings spread out behind it.
“I was promised a magician’s blood!” the mist-demon howled.
Megistos the grass-man broke into hysterical giggling. The demon, mist solidifying quickly into sinew, bone, and warty, leatherlike hide, lunged toward the throne.
“I am Megistos!” the grass-man cried. “I am Lord Dean of the Collegium Arcanum! I am the King of Secrets! All Kish is mine!”
Then the demon landed on the throne, and Megistos was promptly shredded into a thousand tiny green strands.
Indrajit stood and backed away. He found Fix and Munahim by his side as the demon, still standing on the seat of the throne, pivoted slowly to face them.
“I was promised a magician’s blood!” the demon shrieked. “Such oaths as must be kept, if the universe is not to be ground to dust by the breaking of them!”
“Yes,” Indrajit said. “Now you may go.”
Just to be on the safe side, he drew his sword. Fix armed himself with falchion and ax, and Munahim took his bow in his hands and put an arrow to the string.
BOOM!
To the right of the throne, just beyond the brazier, a glittering streak of gold light appeared. It looked like lightning, but lightning that struck and then remained in place, shining and twisting, a vertical streak from the marble of the ceiling to the marble of the floor, and thunder rolled from it in a continuous, juddering wave.
Adunummu stepped out of the light, in his blue robe. With him came Shafi, also wearing a blue robe, and holding a large crossbow.
“I am the Lord Dean now!” Adunummu roared. “I defy all to challenge me.”
“No one here wants to defy you,” Indrajit said slowly. “You remember us. We just want you to restore our client to his wits. Like you did for his son Adakles, you remember. And then we’ll get right out of your way.”
Adunummu laughed.
“I don’t like this,” Fix muttered.
“I was promised the blood of a magician!” the demon shrieked. It leaped through the air toward Adunummu.
“Down!” Adunummu bellowed.
Munahim loosed an arrow at the demon, but it struck the creature’s shoulder and glanced off. Adunummu swung his enormous flipper. He struck the demon in the face and sent it bowling across the floor.
“You have fed, demon!” Adunummu cried. “Back into the bottle!”
“Liar!” The demon charged again, its maw gaping wide.
Was the demon getting bigger?
The monster put a claw on the throne, scattering green fiber in all directions. It leaped and spread its wings, hurtling through the air toward Adunummu. Shafi stepped to one side, raised his crossbow, and fired. The demon dissipated again into mist, still rocketing through the air.
The bolt passed through the demon.
The demon became flesh again and fell on Adunummu.
“Keep an eye on the Wixits!” Indrajit shouted to Munahim. Then he and Fix charged the demon, weapons raised.
Munahim dropped back two paces. Before the other Protagonists blocked his aim, he sent another arrow into the demon. The beast again vaporized, and Munahim’s arrow sank into the flesh of Adunummu’s thigh.
Adunummu grunted in pain, but when the demon reappeared, it had lost its grip on the walrus-faced wizard. Adunummu slapped the monster with his flipper again, hurling it against the railing at the edge of the throne room.
“I am here!”
In his wide peripheral vision, Indrajit saw a cloud of smoke burst from the brazier to the left of the throne. Theophilus Bolt dropped from the cloud, landing and flexing his knees to keep his feet. His right forearm was wrapped in the golden bracer; what had been a bracelet for Adunummu ran from Bolt’s wrist to his elbow.
“The throne is mine!” Bolt shrieked.
Indrajit struck the demon across the back of its wings, but it didn’t even turn its head. Instead, it leaped toward Bolt. He heard a shrill whining sound from the direction of Theophilus Bolt and saw a short white rod in the wizard’s hands. Was this Bolt a projection? But he wasn’t floating.
“Watch out!” Fix plowed into Indrajit. They tumbled over the legs of Adunummu as the wizard tried to stand. Adunummu went stumbling sideways, upright but off balance. Indrajit and Fix fell against the handrailing. The upright supports of the railing caught them, but Indrajit almost lost his grip on his sword, and had to catch his breath as a wave of vertigo swept over him. He struggled not to look down.
Fire burst across the throne. It came from Bolt, or from the space around him. Adunummu bellowed and his whiskers evaporated. The clumps of fur around Shafi’s shoulders flared into light, and the thief rolled away across the floor, dropping his crossbow and slapping at the flames.
But had he been a thief, after all?
If Adunummu had lied about that, what else had he lied about?
Indrajit took a deep breath and yanked himself to his feet, sword in hand.
[ Chapter Eleven ]
“Let’s get the Wixits out of here.” Indrajit grabbed Fix and pulled his partner to his feet.
“Agreed.” Fix scooped up his ax and his falchion. “We can negotiate with the winner here to get Thoat restored.”
Adunummu threw the demon bodily. Bolt yelped and ducked, and the Protagonists leaped across in the demon’s wake, trying to put space between themselves and the battling wizards. While Bolt struck the monster repeatedly with his wand, Adunummu pointed his white ceramic fist and fired.
The red beam of light and heat struck the demon and the little wizard alike. Indrajit smelled scorched flesh and something like sulphur. Bolt yelled high-pitched, hysterical gibberish, and Indrajit shot a glance over his shoulder to see what was happening.
Bolt patted around on the floor as if blinded and looking for something. His wand lay just out of reach. Adunummu stood and fired again with his weapon, striking the demon, who sprang into the air and away from Bolt.
But toward the Wixits.
“I was promised blood!” the demon shrieked.
“Adakles!” Fix yelled. “Duck! Get away from your father!”
Munahim stepped into the demon’s path, bow whizzing. Arrows struck the beast as it descended, sticking into its hide but not apparently wounding it at all. Indrajit accelerated, stretching his legs into a long, fast pace. He was grateful for the food in his belly, without which he thought he would be unconscious at this point.
The demon alighted, claws slashing downward. Munahim’s bow rattled across the stone and his blade flashed from its sheath. He parried the crushing attack, and then Indrajit dove. He grabbed the demon’s tail with his left hand and rolled to the right. His momentum spun the monster about, letting Munahim rain unopposed blows around its head and shoulders. Indrajit struck at the creature’s ankle. He yelled, not quite managing to form actual words. Then Fix with his shorter stride caught up, in time to hit the demon in the shoulder with his ax, and in the belly with his sword.
The demon squealed and leaped back.
A swarm of insects burst from where Adakles crouched over his father on the floor. They were wasps, but bloodred, and the size of Indrajit’s thumb. They weaved left and right to cut around Munahim on both sides and then around Fix’s shoulders, giving him a halo like a bloody cloud but not hitting him.
The wasps slammed into the demon’s chest and face. Each insect exploded as it hit, and blackish blood sprayed from the monster’s body. It leaped up and away, yanking itself free of Indrajit’s grip and flipping over backward, toward the dueling magicians.
“Blood!” it howled. “The blood of a magician!”
Bolt had recovered his wand and now crouched to take shelter behind the throne. He launched green lances of fire from his wand, but Adunummu held a shield, resembling a flat copper disk. He caught the stabbing green light, deflecting it right and left and laughing. Shaking his right arm, he unkinked a whiplike device consisting of white spheres linked by short white rods.
“Is your father okay?” Indrajit called to Adakles.
Adakles nodded.
“Are you okay?” Fix asked. “The demon keeps screaming that it wants the blood of a magician. It must have been coming after you.”
“I don’t know.” Adakles’s paws trembled.
Swinging the whip once over his head, Adunummu cracked it against the throne.
BOOM!
The throne went flying, split in two flaming halves. Bolt skidded back several steps but rose to his feet at the same time, holding his hands in front of himself in a mystic gesture of defense.
The demon sprang again, falling toward Adunummu.
“No!” Shafi leaped to interpose himself between the monster and the magician. He raised two short swords, and a look of stubborn hopelessness on his lavender face, and Indrajit knew he was doomed.
The demon landed on Shafi and crushed him, reducing him instantly to a lifeless doll that bounced once on the floor and then lay still. One sword rattled back and forth, steel whining on the marble, for several seconds after Shafi was gone.
“I was promised!” the demon wailed. But it didn’t linger over Shafi’s body. Instead, it hurled itself at Adunummu.
“The demon is a wizard-killer,” Fix said. “We should leave now with the Wixits. Urgently.”
“Yes.” Indrajit scooped up Thoat and tossed him onto his shoulder. “Munahim, can you cover our backs?”
“My arrows seem pointless,” Munahim said, but he switched to his bow anyway. “I’ll do what I can.”
Fix reached to pick up Adakles, but the younger Wixit shook off the offer. “I’ll walk.”
They shuffled together back toward the stairs that were the only exit from the room.
“What are the residents of the Crown seeing?” Fix asked. “Are we in a tower that appears to be burning? Or is all of this screened from their eyes by magic?”
“Or by mysterious devices we don’t otherwise understand?” Indrajit suggested.
He looked back in time to see Adunummu wrap his whip around the demon’s waist and then throw the monster at the ceiling. Marble cracked and stone dust fell around the battling magicians. The beast fell, uncoiling from the links of the whip, and Adunummu struck it with his flipper. The demon bowled through the air end over end and crashed into Bolt. They rolled together across the floor. Green flashes of light stuttered in the tight space between the combatants as Bolt stabbed the monster again and again and it bit and clawed at him.
“Shafi!” Adunummu dropped his whip and knelt to cradle the lavender corpse in his arms.
“The stairs!” Fix cried. “Where are they?”
Indrajit pulled his gaze away from the battle and looked. The stairway had disappeared. Were they in the wrong part of the room? He looked around: no, this was where they had emerged, and there was no visible staircase elsewhere.
The stairs had vanished.
He slipped to the edge of the throne room and looked over the railing. “It’s still Kish down there,” he said. “Can we climb?”
“Without rope?” Fix asked. “Certain death.”
“Do you have . . . I don’t know, a flying spell?” Indrajit asked Adakles.
Adakles shook. “I can . . . I can . . . translate some things.”
“Translate? You can translate some things? Frozen hells!” Indrajit roared. “You sound like Fix! You go to wizard school, boy! Can you do nothing useful?”
“Well, you have to be able to read the books first,” Adakles muttered.
A high-pitched squeal whipped Indrajit’s head back around to look at the fight again.
A cloud of smoke exploded above Adunummu’s head, and a Gund fell out of it. The Gund wore a red toga, and as it landed on Adunummu, it collapsed into an amorphous blob, a mass of translucent flesh that swallowed the walrusoid face and melted down over his chest and shoulders.
The demon slashed the blob, and a clear liquid sprayed out.
“Back!” Bolt shouted. “Back!” The short wizard advanced on the demon, stabbing it with green light.
Adunummu lurched to his feet, clawing at the mass on his face. He tore away handfuls of clear gelatinous flesh, but what remained reshaped itself and continued to suffocate him. As Adunummu pivoted, Indrajit saw his face clearly, as if through a window.
Bolt stabbed the demon again, but Adunummu lurched toward the monster and grabbed it.
“Maybe we can do something with the flask,” Fix suggested.
Indrajit scanned the room and found the bottle on a chain, lying next to the smoldering remains of the throne.
“Like what?” he asked. “Hit someone with it?”
“Get the demon back inside,” Fix suggested. “If it tries to attack us again.”
“Right.” Indrajit sighed, set Thoat on his feet, and charged back toward the fray.
Adunummu grabbed the demon and pressed it to his head. The beast roared in indignation and pain and slashed at the wizard, but claws and teeth sank into the flesh of the thing wrapped around Adunummu’s skull.
Clear blood sprayed. A Fanchee head appeared, momentarily green, and then the white insectoid shoulder-arms of a Gund, and then four arms like a Luzzazza’s rose from the translucent mass, darkening momentarily into a slate blue before subsiding again.
Bolt stabbed Adunummu in the side, causing the big magician to spin. He swung his flipper and sent Bolt sprawling with a blow to the head. He clawed at the blob on his head, soaking himself in clear ichor.
Indrajit ducked to grab the bottle and back away, but the demon wasn’t looking at him. Intent on the magician in its grasp, or perhaps the two magicians, it raised a crooked arm and plunged its talons into the translucent mass. It stabbed so fiercely and so deep, Indrajit saw the claws pierce all the way through the shape-changing creature and dig into Adunummu’s flesh. Red blood rose into and through the shape-changer, puddling in dark clouds within its body, and pumping thinly out around the demon’s claws.
Adunummu lurched toward Indrajit. Indrajit staggered backward and fell, dropping the bottle and Vacho alike. Adunummu stared at him, bug-eyed, through the transparent thing on his head, as he gripped it with both hands and tried to rip it free. Indrajit grabbed his sword, just in case.
Adunummu turned and ran. His pace was erratic, his steps wove from side to side. He charged over Bolt, knocking the little wizard down just as he was trying to stand again. He kicked aside a charred chunk of throne as if he hadn’t seen it. He hit the handrailing at the edge of the platform and snapped it like a twig, charging straight through it and over the side.
Adunummu fell out of sight, taking the shape-changer and the demon with him.
Indrajit’s ears rang from the racket for long seconds after the racket was gone. He took the bottle and stood, feeling weak in the knees and tired in every muscle he had. Fix was there, offering him a hand, and he took it to steady himself. Sheathe the sword, or hold it threateningly? Indrajit decided to put Vacho in its scabbard, and then he cleared his throat.
“Bolt,” he said. “Recondite, something, I don’t remember. Whatever you are. Magician. We did our part. Time for you to restore our client.”
Theophilus Bolt stood. His robe was slashed and charred, his face dusty and streaked with sweat. He held his white wand casually. “Did you do your part, then?”
Indrajit nodded.
“As I recall,” Bolt said, “your part was to get invited in here with the bottle-imp.”
“Which we did,” Indrajit said.
“And then your part was to stab Megistos,” Bolt said. “Instead, you opened the bottle on him. Didn’t you?”
“Why does it matter?” Fix asked. “Megistos is dead.”
“It matters,” Bolt said, his voice rising in pitch, “because you learned how to open the bottle from Adunummu. Didn’t you?”
“So what?” Indrajit shrugged. “You got what you wanted. Megistos is dead.”
“So is Adunummu,” Fix added, “who was clearly your rival. You win. Help our client.”
Bolt shrugged. “No. You didn’t do what I wanted. You get nothing more from me. Leave, and be grateful I don’t throw you off this tower.”
Fix drew the Dagger of Slaying. “Heal Thoat.”
Bolt chuckled, drily, once. Then he started to laugh, his laughter growing more and more maniacal until he nearly fell over. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“He doesn’t feel threatened,” Indrajit said.
There was a pregnant pause while the Protagonists thought through the implications of that fact.
“The Dagger of Slaying is nothing,” Fix said. “It’s an ordinary knife.”
“You expected us to get killed,” Indrajit said to the little wizard. “We’d come in here with the bottle we didn’t know how to use, then try to attack and kill the tyrant lord of the Collegium Arcanum with an ordinary little knife. We’d have been ripped to pieces.”
“But what a great distraction you would have been,” Bolt said. “Then we would have appeared and struck the Lord Dean from behind. Instead, you allied with that miscreant Adunummu, and now my apprentice is dead.”
“Your apprentice is dead, but you planned for us to die,” Indrajit pointed out. “Let’s call it even. You restore Thoat, and we’ll go away and leave you alone.”
Bolt’s lip curled into a sneer. He raised his white wand, pointing it at Indrajit.
An arrow struck the magician in the throat. He staggered backward, and before he hit the ground, two more arrows sank into his chest.
“Well,” Fix said, “some of our problems are solved.”
Indrajit heard the scrape of nails on stone, then the flap of wings, and then the demon dragged itself over the lip of the shelf.
“I was promised the blood of a magician,” the demon said.
[ Chapter Twelve ]
“The bottle,” Fix said.
He and Indrajit both backed slowly away from the demon.
“Yes,” Indrajit said. “I’m pointing the bottle at the monster right now. Sword in the right hand, bottle in the left. If you have any ideas about how to make the demon actually go into the bottle, now is the time to share.”
“Enter bottle!” Fix shouted.
Nothing happened.
“The blood of magicians is spilled.” Indrajit pointed with Vacho at Bolt’s corpse. “Right there. That’s a dead magician, still full of blood. Have at him, eat him up. Blood all over the floor, too, it’s all yours.”
“Do you take me for a carrion-eater, Fish Head?”
“I’m no magician,” Indrajit said. “The magicians are all gone. So . . . if you were promised a magician, I’m sorry, that person just broke his promise to you. Good luck to you, I hope you find a tasty sorcerer. This being Kish, it seems that there must be a few.”
“You promised me the magician,” the demon said, “when you freed me.”
The Protagonists continued to back away. Fix held the pointless Dagger of Slaying in one hand and his ax in the other. The demon continued to advance.
“There being no magicians to eat,” Indrajit said, “perhaps you’d like to go back into the bottle and wait until there is one.”
The demon leaped. It soared above Indrajit’s head, wings wide, front and back legs extended so that Indrajit could see its underbelly and its massive size. It emitted an enormous snarling bellow as it jumped.
Light struck the demon. Indrajit smelled sulfur. His visual perception distorted, and for a moment it seemed to him that the bottle was larger than he was, and he stood beside it, looking through the glass at a landscape of rugged mountains, scorched deserts, thundering waters, and virgin forests. Then he spun about the flask, arcing over its wide mouth even as he reached out, trying to fix his grip on the neck. The marble ceiling was distant, Fix was a bronze giant standing on a faraway horizon, the demon was a mass of muscle bigger than the night sky and orbiting faster.
Then the ceiling collapsed, Fix disappeared, and the demon fell into the bottle. He dropped the flask and it hit the marble floor standing, then spun slowly about as if considering whether it should topple. Yellowish smoke billowed from the wide mouth, and the stink of sulfur clogged Indrajit’s nostrils.
“Shut it!” Thoat cried. “Use the grip Adunummu taught you! Shut the bottle now!”
Indrajit was stunned to hear Thoat’s voice, and froze. Fix reacted more quickly; he scooped up the bottle in both hands, catching it before it tipped over, and presented it to Indrajit.
Indrajit gripped the bottle as instructed and corked it.
Through the glass, a face mouthed silent curses and shot him angry looks. Indrajit had a strong desire to heave the bottle right over the platform and let it disappear into the Kish night, but instead he carefully set the bottle down and stepped away.
“Thoat,” Indrajit said. “You can speak.”
“That’s not nearly the most interesting thing,” Fix pointed out. “How did you know how to bottle the imp?”
“Thoat is a wizard,” Indrajit said.
Both the senior Protagonists stood considering the import of that statement. Munahim put away his bow and sat down on the floor. Indrajit considered his options, then put Vacho up and folded his arms.
“Well,” Fix said. “I knew we were being lied to and manipulated by magicians. Now I see the lying and manipulation started much earlier than I realized.”
Thoat shrugged. The Wixit looked completely lucid and relaxed. Adakles slapped his father on the shoulder and grinned, looking for all the world like a coconspirator, someone who was on the inside of an excellent joke.
“Are you going to explain?” Indrajit asked.
“I don’t see why I should,” Thoat said. “But I will pay you.”
“For starters,” Fix said, “you’re Megistos. That grass-person was some sort of creation, not unlike Bolt’s projection or Adunummu’s synthetic.”
“The grass-person was in fact a blade of grass,” Adakles said. “Imbued with just enough mirroring capabilities to be able to fool men into believing it was a man, too.”
“And you’re not some hapless child entering the Collegium,” Indrajit said. “You’re your father’s apprentice.”
The Wixits nodded together.
“And all this had something to do with settling scores or ending a rivalry,” Indrajit said. “Do you care to tell us more about that?”
“The politics of wizards are too complex to recount to others,” Thoat said. “Our lives are long and our grudges are notorious. I may as well recite the Blaatshi Epic to you as try to explain all that has passed under the bridge between me and Adunummu and between me and Theophilus Bolt.”
“But they didn’t recognize you,” Fix said.
“I prefer to be discreet.” Thoat shrugged. “Perhaps because I’m a Wixit.”
“I’ve known a lot of Wixits,” Indrajit said. “I wouldn’t have identified discretion as a signal Wixit virtue. Ferocity, maybe. Business acumen. Persistence.”
“How do we know you two are even Wixits?” Fix asked. “We’ve seen all manner of fake-men and imitation-men. You might be more of the same. Maybe the real wizard and his apprentice are a couple of scab-eyed Gunds sitting on a boat on the Sea of Rains and laughing at us.”
“How picturesque your imagination is,” Adakles said. “Maybe you should be the poet.”
“Easy,” Indrajit said.
“You manipulated your competitors,” Fix said. “Feeding them false information, I suppose. And then you hired us—why?”
“You have a reputation,” Thoat said.
“For gullibility,” Indrajit said.
“For being men of honor,” Thoat said. “For being decent. I entered this contest with every expectation of winning, but I knew I needed men I could trust to be loyal. Men of principle.”
“We’re not priests,” Indrajit mumbled.
“You’re sort of a priest,” Fix said. “I was almost a priest.”
“Men of action who care for the weak and vulnerable,” Thoat said. “Men who would stick to a client, even when someone else came along and made a better offer.”
“Heroes,” Adakles said.
“In a town full of jobbers,” Thoat said, “that’s no small thing.”
“Flattery won’t get you a discount,” Indrajit said.
“I don’t want a discount,” Thoat told him. “On the contrary, when you get back to the nameless inn you live in, there on the Crooked Mile above the camel-yard and behind the bakery, you’ll find a hundred Imperials in a red purse, waiting on your table beside Fix’s inkpot.”
Indrajit felt convinced. He nodded his acquiescence and gratitude.
“Do you really own a tea shop?” Fix asked.
“Go to the shop tomorrow and find out,” Thoat suggested with a smile.
“Are you in fact the tyrant of the Collegium Arcanum?” Indrajit asked.
“I’m trying to change things,” Thoat said. “To those who want to resist, I’m sure I seem like a tyrant.”
“I hope one of the things you can change is to give us wings,” Indrajit said. “Because it’s a long way down, and my only other plan is to let the demon out of the bottle again, and try to ride it to the ground.”
“Who needs wings?” Thoat pointed. “The stairs are right over there.”
[ The End ]