A Fray of Furies, page 30
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
The windows all around were shuttered and dark. No witnesses.
Of course, as a law abiding citizen, he should apprehend the miscreant. Or, at least, relieve her of her prize. Yes. He would keep the animal safe for as long as it took to find the lawful owner.
He started forward.
He would name the horse ‘Nomparal’, he decided.
She watched him slink in the shadows, a hand stuck to his side, his greedy gaze stuck to her steed. She’d not expected to meet a single soul on the street at this hour. The plan was to use the bridge under cover of darkness. She would not have risked it at all, save that a river crossing here would shave a day off her journey.
Assassin, turned shepherd, turned courier. Bah!
She did not let on she was aware of the figure. If he was happy to pass unnoticed, so was she. As she came within a dozen paces, he pushed himself from the wall and staggered stiffly toward her–
Magic!
Sibilant and ever so subtle, it slithered toward her, coiling about her common sense and questing towards her willpower.
“Evening, my nefarious–”
Her throwing star, embedding itself in his forehead, startled the both of them. He mirrored her dismay a moment later, when his eyes crossed to find it. The fledgling spell evaporated.
Head injuries, she ruefully remarked, could be tricky. You could douse awareness like a lantern, given sufficient force. Whereas, piercing attacks could go completely unnoticed. The brain might be where pain lived. But it had, itself, no sense of it.
Her accoster seemed to come to the conclusion that a certain amount of alarm was called for. Ignoring her, he gathered breath for what promised to be a bloodcurdling scream.
He was at the outer limit of her reach. She woke her web.
The stubborn strands preferred to be tethered rather than flung. She managed – just – to splatter their arcane ends across his chest. The cable contracted, pulling him and propelling her.
Surprise swallowed his screech.
Her blade licked out.
She’d intended to hole his voicebox and drag her edge across his jugular for good measure. She’d used her longknife-on-loan.
She felt the sharp slide of meat, the snarled twang of sinew and the jagged judder of bone transfer up her arm.
His head tumbled free.
“Shit.”
Well, she had a horse. And she was headed over the bridge. He could accompany her that far. She grasped a handful of wispy hair.
“I don’t know who you were, fellow. But don’t go pressing your advantage on lone women in the dark. Some of us press back.”
He received this advice in wall-eyed bafflement.
The blade the priest had given her was held up for inspection. She hadn’t put much store in the holy man’s high assessment. Faith was a fickle thing to take into a knife fight.
The darkly patterned shortsword seemed to reflect no moonlight. She sheathed it far more carefully than she’d drawn it.
The horse, true to its battlefield training, had stood motionless throughout the commotion. More of the priest’s coin at work.
“So much for the shortcut,” she sighed, gathering up the reins.
“Aagh!”
Snake soup spilled angrily across the floor. A significant portion of floor flinched… then slowly resumed slithering.
Blast the wretched man!
Nomparal was dead. She’d felt it.
She’d needed that power! The eastern force’s influence expanded by the day. If she’d scryed aright, it had swallowed a whole troop of Inquisitori with less than a hiccup.
What to do? What to do?
Snakes scattered as she paced.
She had no more agents to send. Away from her base of power, she’d be easy pickings. She’d be safe here, in her stronghold, a while longer. But if – when – that one came calling...
She found her speculative frown drawn, again and again, to the burrower hide. Stapled to the table, she’d been working the inside with a snake-fang needle and venomous ink. One of her familiars had sailed its way aboard and was tracing the patterns, long body a slave to the sinuous scrollwork.
A grin came to her face.
It was not the purpose she’d intended to put the hide to. But it would do the trick. Oh, yes, it would most assuredly do the trick.
* * *
“It is simply not possible,” Yoriana scowled.
Improbable tracks barred their parth. “The gospel says to follow the lion’s yoke. I swear, we are dead on course.”
“I’m no astronomer,” he ventured, winkling his amori’s face-covering free, “but I know the zodiac. That lion wears no yoke.”
“The yoke,” she lectured, “are the three stars that denote the shoulder, hip and tail. They form a straight line. One you can follow, if you have the expertise.”
“And do you? I only ask because we seem to be horribly lost.”
Her glare threatened to set him aflame.
“You’re sure, Master Jiminy?” Neever forestalled their fight.
“Five horses,” he nodded, pointing out the tracks. The sand softened them to divots, rather than actual prints, but the pattern was unmistakable. “Three of them carrying light, two burdened. One,” he’d nodded at Yoriana’s dainty mare, “with a shorter stride than the rest. We’ve crossed our own trail. We’re going in circles.”
“I’m telling you,” the priestess repeated, “it’s not possible.”
City-born though he was, up until this moment, he’d been sure he could see them all safely to Qarib Jidan. After the zealots had given up their foolish quest and come to their senses, of course.
“See?” Yoriana produced her compass. Neever reined in beside her and the two compared needles.
“Nothing wrong with it,” the monk declared, appealing to him.
“Then there’s nothing else for it,” he shrugged, “we press on.” Perhaps he was wrong, he reflected, staring at what might have been the tracks of a sixth horse.
Death – stalking their trail.
They made camp before mid-morning, rigging lean-tos to sit out the worst of the sun. They would grab a couple of turns’ worth of sweaty sleep and then press on. He could feel a migraine fomenting. It was much too early. He should have a week or more’s grace before his next scheduled dose. Despite this, he found himself the victim of a vengeful hangover, without having touched a drop. Raising his heavy head, he resumed their trek. It was an effort.
Nightfall reduced the horizon to humped shadows. They huddled around their fire, awaiting moonrise before continuing.
“Maybe there’s a mistranslation?” he speculated.
“Cyrus translated the text himself,” Neever disagreed.
“A misplaced word wouldn’t move the stars,” Yoriana scorned.
He met her glare, “I wasn’t suggesting that stars could move.”
“The stars have moved, you troglodyte,” she informed him. “I’ve already compensated for that. We should be there already…”
He started at this news.
What then? The gospel was in Heli and a closed book to him. Eris Bolk, on the other hand, had come to their rescue once before. Something about the sky turning black and the stars fleeing…?
He filled the silence with the nervous drumming of his heels.
“Are we supposed to pray for an eclipse or something?”
“Eclipses don’t just happen for the asking,” Yoriana informed him. “They are entirely predictable. The next solar eclipse for this region won’t be for another four hundred years, or so.”
“Who said solar eclipse? In Eris Bolk, this happened at night.”
Yoriana rubbed her tired eyes, bemoaning his lack of education, “A lunar eclipse doesn’t disappear the moon. Just turns it red.”
He probably should have known that.
“So, are you saying we’re four hundred years too early? I ask because we only have enough water to last a score more days.”
She shook her head, “We double checked the calculations. There was no eclipse, of any nature, for this part of the world around the time the gospel described.”
“So where does that leave us?”
She shrugged miserably.
He turned away in disgust. He’d left the caravan road on her say-so. He’d had faith that these two knew what they were about. And, he amended, he’d been unwilling to watch his dose disappear across the dunes. Conventional wisdom, it seemed, had failed.
But then, there was nothing conventional about this quest, was there? This was magic and monsters and ensorcelled–
Wait.
“Can I see the Eye?”
Surprised, Yoriana looked a question at Neever, who shrugged.
Scowling, the priestess stalked over to the packhorses and began the laborious process of unstrapping her box of powders.
“What do you expect to accomplish?” she demanded, extending the container towards him. Ever since the Eye had yanked her from sleep and into an open grave, she’d been wary of touching it.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”
A little powder escaped as he drew the fist forth. He polished it with the hem of his hip jacket until the golden flecks showed.
“Perhaps,” Yoriana griped, covering her nerves, “it is unwise to let it so close to the flames? All things considered?”
“Fair point,” he admitted, aware of his warming ring.
It was tough, going up the side of a dune. Sand swallowed his feet and pushed against him as a river might. He was soon out of breath. At last, he plopped himself down, overlooking their camp and its little fire. He held the Eye up to study.
Everything in the book pointed towards the artifact being some sort of torch or lantern. But that was stupid, since no light or fire long survived the Eye’s attention. So how had it ‘guided’ Bolk on starless nights? How had it ‘led’ him through the emptiness?
He shook his head. The last time he’d felt this lost had been inside Seven Deep. That magical mausoleum had also messed with his perception of direction, leading him in circles...
He let his gaze slide past the Eye to the misbehaving stars.
“Hey, Neever?”
Something in his voice brought the monk to his feet.
“Yes, Master Jiminy?”
“Do me a favor? Douse the fire.”
“Helia’s mercy, what for?” Yoriana glared blindly.
“Humor me?”
“We are certainly not going to sit, stranded in the dark– Neever!”
The fire guttered as the monk spilled another load of sand on it.
“You said it yourself. We should have been there by now.”
The flames fought, hissing angrily. The night closed the neck of its drawstring bag. Darkness constricted over their heads, tumbling them into unrelieved black. Only the stars discerned up from down.
“What now?” Yoriana moped, voice tight with discomfort.
“Give me a moment.”
“What is it you hope to achieve, Master Jiminy?”
“What if,” he tested the idea. “What if Bolk didn’t use the Eye because the stars vanished?” His thoughts fell into grudging alignment. “What if the stars vanished because he used the Eye?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I do,” Yoriana disapproved, voice thick with disbelief. “The stars are unimaginably distant, fool. The Eye took the better part of a night to consume a campfire that was no more than two paces away. If you’re expecting it to drink the stars, waiting for an eclipse would be quicker.”
“I don’t think they are,” he mused.
“Aren’t what? What are you talking about?”
“The stars. I don’t think they are unimaginably distant.”
“The best lenses the Empire can produce would disagree.”
“You maintain the stars wouldn’t lead us astray?” he demanded.
“I do!”
“I concur,” he nodded, ignoring her surprise. “Either we followed the stars correctly, or we crossed our own path. Both cannot be true. So. Either those weren’t our prints. Or,” he took in the heavens with an expansive gesture, “that isn’t the night sky.”
Shocked silence met this pronouncement.
Standing, he raised the Eye above his head.
“Anybody see anything?” he groused, a hundred heartbeats later, feeling like a fool. A fool with a tiring arm.
“I’m afraid n–”
“Yes!” Yoriana interrupted. The rustle of cloth said she was probably pointing at something. “The lion’s yoke is a star short. I can’t be sure, without my charts, but I think more are missing…”
“There!” Neever enthused. “A star just went out.”
It was like watching the koi in the Imperial Park ponds feed. Flecks of silver, floating on the face of the night sky, were being snathced beneath the surface one by one. Until none were left.
The sucking emptiness of the desert reared around them. Only the ground underfoot said the world still existed.
“Brilliant,” Yoriana’s scowl was audible in the silence. “What do we do now? Stumble around until we hear a splash?”
“I think,” he mused, watching a nameless blush bloom behind the nearest dune, “we are about to be shown the way…”
It wasn’t a firefly. Not unless some were born lightning blue. And it wasn’t alone. The luminescent swarm wended their lazily way down toward him. He shrank as they neared. They feathered, unfelt, across his crawling skin. He noted, in alarm, that some were passing completely through him. Whatever they were, the Eye did not seem to have the same dominion over these cold embers as it did real fire. It was having a tough time feeding off them, steadily becoming the center of an expanding, coruscating cloud.
A trail of them led off into the distance.
“Get the horses,” he swallowed.
Moving gingerly, never speaking above a whisper, they followed the procession of migrating motes. It was an unsettling journey. His cold sweat played counterpoint to his blazing ring. As more and more wisps gathered, they built toward a breath of sound. Not a hum, in truth. More a fractured, fluting note. It set his teeth on edge. He found himself breathing shallowly.
“I think we’re here,” Neever announced.
He blinked, trying to reconcile his jarred perspective. Wisp-light was being reflected by the dark surface of a pond. An oasis.
“Salt and silver,” he slumped, stuffing the Eye back in its jar.
The flecks milled uncertainly. Slowly, with nary a ripple, they retreated to sink beneath the surface of the black mirror.
Despite the lights, burning in its belly, no discernible sides or bottom became visible. Just depthless darkness. A second night sky, which could hide… anything.
“So,” he invited, “who’s up for that swim?”
* * *
It was a quiet village, for the most part. This part was, at least. He didn’t know its name or, come to that, his own.
Hmm. His name. An implement. Something useful…
Rake, sounded appropriately… rakish. A pirate captain’s name.
But no, that was not it.
Lost in thought, he let his feet have their head. They were easily offended and he found it best not to upset them. He’d once spent a fruitless afternoon in a cyclical argument (and a single clearing) with his left foot. He might not know the sound of one hand clapping but the sound of one foot walking went like this: Stomp. Nothing. Stomp. Nothing. Stomp. ‘Oh, budge you bastard!’
A name, a name…
Spade… sounded emasculating. A dig at his manhood.
Broom?
He bristled at the very thought.
Bucket?
Also not. But he was getting a handle on it. He could feel it.
Ah, he had it!
“Evening,” he greeted the first face to confront him, “I am Mop. Phelamy Mop. And it is my distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he extended his hand in courtesy.
His po-faced audience gave his fingers a cursory snuffle. Then laid back its long ears and brayed, loudly, right in his face.
“I say!” he exclaimed at this boorish behavior.
“Hey, you!”
A young man in workaday dress approached him. A hostler, his hair slicked back with (judging by the smell) saddle oil. The sickly sheen continued across an explosive case of acne.
“Yes, you,” the youth glared. “How did you get back here? These stables are for guests of the coaching inn only. Which you most definitely are not. You need to get lost, right now.”
“Done,” he declared happily. “Mop is already lost!”
“Look here, jokester, I’m serious,” the young stable hand spat to one side. “Unless you got friends at the inn, clear out, yeah?”
“But Mop does have a friend at the inn,” he argued.
“Is that right?” Burly arms were crossed. “What’s ’is name?”
“Mop’s new best friend and traveling companion,” he boasted, throwing an arm over the mule’s neck. “Nomparal!”
They confronted the stable hand side by side.
The young man gaped, a slow smile plucking at one mouth corner. Nomparal weathered the appraisal with mild disinterest.
“Your friend is an ass?” the hostler guffawed.
“Tut, tut,” he cautioned, placing protective hands over Nomparal’s ears. “Donkey, please. He’s touchy about it.”
“Look,” the stable hand relaxed, “you’re hilarious. But the ass who owns this donkey,” he pointed, “and that wagon, only went into default yesterday, right? Owner’s got two weeks’ grace before we auction the lot off. So, unless you’re here to square his debt, come back in a fortnight, yeah?”
“Ah,” he realized with a start. “It’s paying you want! Well, why didn’t you say? Here…” He began rummaging in his pockets. “I got lots. Made my fortune in haberdashery, don’t you know?”
“Oh, yeah?” the hostler drawled, plainly disbelieving. But he didn’t leave, looking on mutely as Mop pawed through his rags.
“Good money to be made in stuffing dead animals, is there?”
He blinked at the youth, who was obviously an idiot.
