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 by 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 conjurer 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 conjurer’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.