Back | Next
Contents


Chapter Seven


“So much for surprise,” Fix said.

“So much for killing the conjurer 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.”


Back | Next
Framed