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 conjurer 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 conjurer.”
“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 won’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 Conjurer.”