PLATINUM 1.2: DAMN DRUIDS
“In matters of first contact with prospective champions, establishing trust is critical. Your band-commander will take the lead in all negotiations. If the subject is an arch-diviner or is protected by one of the few entities capable of bestowing immunity to scrying, your enchanter must take on the burden. If the subject is an arch-enchanter or outfitted with anti-enchantment, your diviner will do so instead. If the subject proves resistant to both avenues of unobtrusive interrogation, do not wait: glyphstone for advice or assistance immediately. Allow your superiors to be less unobtrusive in your stead.”
– from the ‘Magister’s Handbook’, ch. 55
My faerie queen eldritch imparted something of her perception to me, and I swivelled, face upturned to get a good look at this newcomer –
When a lightning bolt slammed down towards me from the sky.
The blinding-white line of energy bounced off my one remaining circle shield, fizzling out in the wine-drenched roadway – just before thunder rang out, the air shouting in response to the spell.
Luckily one shield didn’t ‘weigh’ much on me – in terms of focus, the concentration required to keep it active – and as usual I’d unconsciously pulled it along with me as I moved across the street.
“Hey!” I cried indignantly. “I’m the good guy here.”
“I voz called to fight a demon-summoner,” came the foreign-accented voice of a girl or young woman from above me. “And look vhat I have found.”
“You could have killed me!” I insisted. “I’ve just caught your darkmages.”
I stopped craning my neck – she was so high up, I couldn’t really get a glimpse of her; and it seemed she was upright, so I was basically going to be staring up her robe if I carried on anyway. She wore a bright colour, that much I could tell: the starlight in my eyes flashed off her garment. The heightened perception from Zel wasn’t really helping out in this situation.
Flood Boy started reaching to retrieve his goblet and pipes again, but I put out a hand to restrain him. The Mummifiers had nonchalantly lain down and started sipping up the excess wine straight out of the dirt, heedless of the wizard’s attack.
She must have decided I wasn’t a threat as she was now sinking down through the air. “Ze lightning vould have stunned you, nothing more,” she replied, unperturbed, her voice very firm, confident in her magery. She floated gently across towards the point where I’d emerged from the alleyway as she sank, until she was hovering thirty feet away from me, ten feet off the ground.
The wizard was ridiculously attractive – I could admit right at the off, I’d never seen anyone as immediately appealing as her. She was probably a year or two older than me at the most, and had only the kind of tiny imperfections that merely added to her beauty. Thin features with the nose just a little hawkish. Small mouth with lips fixed firmly in concentration. Dimples in her cheeks, a little cleft at her chin. Blue or grey eyes that moved quickly but productively over the scene, taking everything in. She had platinum-blonde hair, perfectly-straight except for the ends, where the winds she controlled stirred it, so that it hung like a pearly waterfall down the sides of her face. And she wore a light, white summer robe that clung to her slender body, cut to show her shoulder, and bulging enough in certain places to make me quickly avert my eyes for fear of starting to actually stare.
But I caught enough to see that the rune of the magisters, shaped like a wheel with ten spokes or a sun with ten rays, was emblazoned in a dark grey colour in the dead centre of her chest.
“The rest of her band is arriving behind us.”
I realised I could already hear the heavy footfalls and span about, peering into the smog. Trotting swiftly towards me from the other end of the street was a very strange creature.
It appeared to be a lizard or dragon from the front, its bestial head dark-scaled and huge, at least the size of a wagon. Its tooth-filled maw was agape, its long tongue lolling out as it loped closer. This critter was wingless, though, and there was none of the tell-tale glow of a breath-weapon down its throat. Not a dragon, then.
What is that thing?
“Yithandreng. Fourth rank. Assassin-class.”
I whistled, staring in its gleaming red eyes with their cat’s-eye pupils, each glittering orb the size of a dinner-plate yet radiant like the heart of a ruby.
I had to get me one of these. Probably rude to take this one.
“We can look into summoning one later, by ritual or by gate.”
I was joking!
The yithandreng was actually much longer than I’d assumed, pushing twenty feet when you included the tapering, ridged tail-section that took up over a third of its length. Most remarkably it had ten legs, five aside and equally spaced, each ending in a sturdy, three-clawed foot, all covered in the same unreflective scales as the rest of it.
Only belatedly had I thought to study the magister I could see sitting astride it, but as it slowed and turned I realised there were three people on it. By all accounts it was the youngest officers and newest recruits straight out of training who got the graveyard shifts, the emergency call-outs, the first response glyphstones… but it was still a couple of hours till midnight and I hadn’t expected so manyof the magisters to be so close to myself in age.
They dismounted. The passenger at the back got off first, a tall, slender mage with dark skin, his hair pulled back from his face. He bore a long, thick wooden staff, forked at the end into a blunt ‘v’ shape; he straightened his heavy bluish robe arrayed with specks like stars and glared at me. If the fork on the staff hadn’t given it away, blue with stars sealed the deal: he was a diviner. And from what I could tell, he was the oldest magister here yet he couldn’t be a day over twenty-one.
The passenger in the middle was a squashed-featured, muscular guy with neat brown hair and a thick, tawny goatee that looked out of place on his youthful face; he looked tired more than anything else. He wore an orangey, ochre colour, the only marking on his robe the Magisterium glyph they all wore, though the ten rays or spokes in the symbol on his garment were bending slightly, suggesting a spiral. Enchanter, perhaps? He looked back at the diviner once he was steady on his feet, as if seeking reassurance.
Last to dismount was the magister who was clearly the rider, the summoner himself – or herself, as I quickly corrected myself once she glanced my way and I got a good look at her full, painted lips and long eyelashes. In my defence, she was my build but short, skinny in an overlarge black robe, and she had shorn her hair right down to the scalp to expose the tattoos inked across the crown of her head and down her neck. Demonic shapes. I was pretty sure I spotted a stylised binta-thing behind her ear and a yithandreng at her throat, woven in amongst the arcane sigils and swords and circles. There was an unblinking third eye, blue and staring, in the very centre of her brow.
I looked back at the wizard; the floating, platinum-haired magister had turned her gaze to me and I suddenly felt unnerved. I knew what she was thinking, what they would all think. The parchment-wrapped blue-goo people with the creature of blades; the dirt-drinking, soon-to-be-inebriated goblins; the faun, and me. It didn’t really make for the prettiest picture.
I’d have to make sure they understood the truth, or I could end up under arrest myself. Lucky that the shield had prevented me from being ‘stunned,’ or I might not have gotten the chance.
Through portals of green sparks for the fey and red flames for the demon, I dismissed my eldritches. And as I did so, I surreptitiously drew out a triangle shield around the circle.
Just in case.
“Vell, vhat is all zis?” the wizard demanded, floating lower, closer.
“Smells like you had a party,” the sorcerer observed, not looking at the scene but leaning back against the neck of her demonic mount, so that she could reach up to stroke one of its scaly horns affectionately. Her voice was dry and deep, a bit croaky.
My heart thudded in my chest. Had to stay on-topic.
“The Cannibal Six.”
So close now.
The wizard floated across towards me, scrutinising the captives.
“Zis is zem?”
I recovered a bit of my confidence now things were turning in my favour. “Wrapped up in a bow for you, m’lady,” I announced, giving something of a flourish with my arm as if to present them for her perusal.
“Third time you’ve –”
Shut it, Zel.
“That’s the second time he’s quipped about wrapping them up since I got here,” came a new voice, a young man’s, challenging and haughty. “Little rat thinks he’s funny.”
Promise me you’ll explain one day what I did to you in a past life to warrant such torture.
“There are no past lives, and this isn’t my doing. This is the bird.”
I turned to see their druid casting off the last of his former form, standing near his comrades. He wore a tattered green robe with snarls of down and feathers still sticking to it. They were clearly a side-effect of the transformation because I could see them curling up and disappearing, sort of fading or folding down into the cloth to which they clung. The druid himself was a bit shorter than me but more than made up for it with his chiselled features, his reddish hair hanging in tangles that still somehow managed to look good despite the stray bits of bird still caught in them.
And he’s calling me a little rat?
“What can I say?” I retorted. “We poor make a little go a long way. I’m sorry to crack a joke about catching number – seven? eight? – on your most-wanted-sorcerers list. Serious face next time, I promise, officer.”
I saw the druid’s mouth drop open, surely incensed that I’d dared speak back to him in such a fashion, and he looked up at the wizard for guidance, an offended expression on his face.
“We’ve got a talker,” the diviner said in a textbook highborn accent, and sighed heavily in a way that didn’t seem feigned. He’d gone from being angered to curiosity, and he gazed intently at the Cannibal Six, pointing his staff at them and spinning it in his palm so that the forks rotated to describe a circle. My retort had evidently disrupted his focus.
“Don’t be rude, Haspophel,” rumbled the big, bearded enchanter. He had the accent of a Northman. “It looks like this chap –”
“Feychilde –” I tried to interject.
“– saved us a hell of a lot of trouble,” the enchanter finished.
“And probably saved a lot of lives, Belexor,” the sorcerer drawled, still looking distracted by her pet.
Haspophel was clearly the diviner, but it took me a moment to register that the druid was scowling at the sorcerer’s words, that her admonishment was designed for him. So he was Belexor, then. And yes, it’d make sense that the druid of the group would be the one with the life-preservation sore-spot. He was their healer, committed for all his days – committed magically – to the continuation of life everywhere.
Not surprising he’d be at loggerheads with the band’s sorcerer, either, in that case, or that he’d taken an instantaneous disliking to me. He wasn’t what I’d expected from a druid, to be honest.
“Enough,” the wizard pronounced, and I noticed them all straighten slightly, all eyes that weren’t already on her turning to her.
So she is their leader.
She was floating just twelve inches off the wine-dampened dirt now – she was probably unable to touch the ground without ending the spell she’d cast on herself. Unless she had one of those fancy wands, landing would force her to complete a whole new ritual in order to fly off again once our business was concluded.
“Champion. Arch-sorcerer, yes? You vill remove your hood or zis charade ends now.”
“Kastyr,” Zel blurted, “it’s like you said, I don’t –”
“My identity stays private?” I asked aloud, ignoring my faerie companion.
“– whether you should trust the rich ones, the magistry –“
The wizard nodded.
“Those watching –“ I began, gesturing vaguely towards the places people could be using to sneak a peek.
“Zey cannot see ze details from zose vindows. Your hood, champion.”
They aren’t just gonna hand this kind of money over to an unknown, Zel. Every champion has to share their identity with the Magisterium, or they aren’t a champion, they’re a darkmage. I have to do this.
“Here? This is just her!”
I did my best to smile without looking deranged when I revealed myself, flicking back the hood and pulling down the scarf.
“I’m just a simple lowborn lad, my good magisters,” I said, “seeking the reward of a lifetime. If you’ll excuse the savage appearance –” I gestured vaguely to indicate the wild hair, the broken nose, and the curved scar on my cheek “– I’ll take my thirty platinum pieces and be on my way.”
“Ve don’t carry such funds,” the wizard replied, more softly, seemingly mollified by my acquiescence to her demand, now turning away to the diviner and enchanter. “Haspophel, Ilitar. Is he telling ze truth? Zeze are ze Cannibal Six?”
Haspophel was opening his mouth to give his judgment, but Ilitar, the enchanter, cut in first with a broad smile on his face: “Not just that, Emrelet. He’s the one we were looking for.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t prevent that intrusion. He got what he needed just brushing the surfaces.”
Emrelet. The beautiful wizard. Got it.
“You aren’t listening, are you?”
It took me a second to actually parse his words.
“Um, excuse me,” I piped up, “but ‘one we were looking for’ has this really ominous tone, you know? Kicker of bad guys’ asses standing right here. I think we were discussing… money?”
Emrelet approached me, whisking closer through the air.
I backed up a few steps despite myself. Suddenly I felt very small and vulnerable, even with my shields. Perhaps she really had only directed a stunner bolt of lightning at me – maybe a real one would fry me, protections or no. Maybe she had something even worse up her sleeve – a well-prepared mage could beat a stupid archmage, and I was getting the distinct impression tonight that I could be clever and stupid in different ways all at the same time.
She halted, eight or nine feet from me, just beyond the line traced by my invisible rotating triangle.
“Zis is ze third time you’ve done zis.” She said it like an accusation.
I turned to regard the scene, the six captive sorcerers tied up covered in blue goo.
“Ah, no, m’lady,” I murmured, “I hate to disagree with you right now but I can honestly say I’ve never done anything quite like this before.”
“So it voz not you? Ve have heard of zis new face in Sticktown, zis Feychilde.”
I knew what she was getting at, of course. “Fine. Yes. This is the third group I’ve taken down.”
I could see the way this relaxed her. Was this her realising that we weren’t so different? Her small mouth slowly broke into a quizzical smile.
“So ze others were practice?”
“Let’s say, trial runs. I had to prove that I was for real.”
Emrelet’s eyes were grey, I could see now, as her gaze swept me up and down, appraisingly. The little smile didn’t leave her lips.
“But Lord Obbelekt –”
“The old man, with those kid apprentices? That old man was tough!” I suddenly felt like myself again. “I actually had trouble getting the allegiance of his demons… These guys were a piece of cake in comparison, trust me.” I neglected to mention I’d been close enough to defeat against the Cannibal Six to need my explosive dagger – I doubted any of the Six would’ve been in a position to see me use it, anyway, so there’d be no witnesses to my use of my final measure. “I don’t know why this Lord Obelisk guy didn’t have a reward.”
“We had to melt him out of that ice-block,” Belexor muttered. “He could’ve died.”
“You mean I had to melt him out, vhile you panicked,” Emrelet said to him. Looking back at me, she continued: “And, before zat, you fought ze Bone Ring?”
“Yeah. The ones with the… army.” I couldn’t help but think back to that night. That’d been a bit different – it had been scary then, at least until I got properly stuck into it. Really, they were responsible for me doing what I was doing now. “That one was simple. But it was my first time, and I didn’t really know what I was doing back then.”
I waved one arm in the air behind myself, briefly parting the weird purplish space I thought of as a curtain, showing the magisters the ranks of decaying, zombified guards standing behind me.
I noticed the sorcerer suddenly paying attention.
“So you kept ze army?” Emrelet’s eyes widened somewhat as she caught her glimpse of my undead warriors.
Had that put her back on edge slightly? Had her smile lessened somewhat? I wasn’t sure if I was being paranoid but something in my gut told me she hadn’t appreciated the casual black magic.
“Well, I didn’t have much else to do with them,” I protested in a plaintive tone. “I mean, do you want me to bury them? The ministers of Mortiforn won’t cleanse them – ‘once an undead, always an undead’… sounds daft to me, like, but they’d go berserk if I shoved them back in the ground.”
The sorceress was nodding sagely along as I spoke.
“I don’t use my bound demons,” I went on, “and I’m not going to command my fey friends to do menial work. The undead are better off with me than with the next random necromancer who happens along, right?”
The wizard looked across at the darkmages, then back at me.
“And ze man made from swords you had?”
“My kinkly-man,” I mangled the name with a tight smile, “is a very recent acquisition, let’s say.”
I looked from Emrelet to the sorceress again, but the shaven-headed girl was just staring at me with a cool, unconcerned gaze.
“I didn’t use the old man’s fiends,” I continued, “and I definitely could have done with them once or twice.”
Emrelet looked back at Haspophel. The diviner nodded at her, his eyes fixed on her, and Ilitar nodded too.
They’re talking mind-to-mind?
“Well spotted.”
“Your story adds up, Feychilde,” Emrelet decreed, and drifted closer to me. Within the triangle.
She bears me no ill-will.
“He’s telling the truth,” Belexor offered from out of nowhere. He looked sullen, but something had compelled him to speak up. Then I noticed the way he was looking at me. Like he was trying to stare at the wall of the building behind me, directly through my face. Like he wanted to completely disregard my lowborn existence. “About most of it.”
I took a deep breath.
“Most of it?” I couldn’t help but prod, not with my reputation amongst these mages at stake. If I was going to be a champion I was going to need that reputation, amongst all mages, from magister to darkmage. I needed to be trustworthy and daunting. I couldn’t get my name sullied as a liar right at the off.
“Your undead. You could give them up. But they add to your power, the forces you can marshal, so you won’t. I’ve seen it a hundred times. By the Five, all you sorcerers are the same.”
Zel was dismissive: “He decided to hate you when he saw you and now he’s found a way to get at you. Don’t rise to it.”
But I remembered the feeling I got when Emrelet saw my cadaverous minions.
The sorcerer snorted at the druid’s words. “You don’t mind the undead I raise,” she said to him.
“Yes I do,” Belexor snapped, “and that’s not the point, Ciraya. He said he would get rid of the undead. He said he would only use fey.”
Ciraya, sorcerer. Right.
Emrelet turned to face the druid, and spoke in a cold, chastising tone: “Belexor, I von’t allow you to do zis. You –”
She doesn’t like him.
“Sure.” I made it as nonchalant as I could.
Suddenly I had everyone’s attention.
“Great. Just great, Kas. You know he’s right, right? They do make you more powerful.”
“’Sure’? What do you mean?” Belexor’s voice had lowered an octave in shock, the words coming out just a little bit strangled.
“You tell me how to get rid of them, and I’ll do it.”
“A druid could easily have animals do the work…”
I’m getting sick of this guy’s ego.
“I wonder why that is…”
“Well – that’s brilliant, Belexor!” I cried, letting out some of my frustration. “Body Brigade, three paces, forward march!”
With a bit of a gesture and side-step, I allowed a column five wide and ten deep to materialise.
“Forty-nine and a half troops at your command, sir druid,” I said, sweeping out my arm. “New and improved! Guaranteed one or more eyes, one or more arms, and except for Sluggy over there” – I indicated the zombie who was just an upper body dragging itself along with its arms – “two legs.”
I’d called forth my creepy, creaky army so that it faced Belexor primarily, pointing away from me and Emrelet and towards the other magisters. Now the Brigade took a few unsteady steps (or crawls) forward as I’d ordered, then stopped there, staring with empty expressions, not quite perfectly still but stirring and twitching. They were dressed in a mix of clothes from funereal robes to peasant’s garb, highwayman’s leathers to shepherd’s smocks, but it was all half-eaten, rotten away; the weapons borne by more than a few of them were rusty and crude, swords and maces being the exception amongst the pitchforks and shovels.
The future-seeing diviner knew he had no need to worry, which let the mind-reading enchanter know he had no need to worry. I didn’t think I’d have worried the sorcerer if I’d summoned a thousand zombies.
But I had to restrain a bit of a snicker when I saw Belexor’s reaction. He really didn’t like undead.
“I, ah,” he stammered, a bit of a haunted look on his face. “Well, I can’t do anything right now – I’d need to prepare the spell –”
“Would you like me to bind them to your service? You can get your worms in to eat them all up or whatever, whenever you please.”
I could see it on his face. The prospect of walking around with a host of animated corpses stumbling after him? Taking flight in his bird-form and having them pouring through the intervening streets in an attempt to keep up with him?
He’d need some serious training in sorcery to nail the rituals to dismiss and re-summon them, as far as I was aware, and most mages tended to specialise. I was sure he knew much more of druidry than I did of sorcery, but he probably knew as much of sorcery as I did of druidry – that is, to say, almost nothing at all.
“Or I could put them away, and you could tell me to call them back out for you. As it suits.”
“That… that sounds best.” He licked his lips nervously.
“Then I’ll bring them by your headquarters tomorrow morning,” I said quietly. “Which magicrux?”
I flicked the curtain back over the undead host, letting them hide again, tucked away on their corner of the nethernal plane.
I could tell myself that I was just trying to make peace with the druid for the sake of peace itself, that I wanted to get off on the right foot with the bands assigned to the local area – but I’d be lying. There was more to it. I felt an underlying, overwhelming urge to impress Emrelet, and here was an opportunity to help her shut down her annoying underling whilst maintaining my image.
Belexor looked at me, really looked at me now instead of just through me, and I knew he was realising for the first time that I was being serious. Honouring the dead was one of the core roles of the druids. They would ensure that all of the remains of the deceased were either devoured by the birds and beasts and bugs, or consigned to the earth so that they might be consumed over the ages of the world by the grass, the trees. It was quite a nice idea, I thought, as far as those kind of ideas went. Hopefully he and I would end up seeing eye-to-eye.
“No,” Belexor said at last, but then went on, “not there. The Giltergrove, an hour past dawn? At the Autumn Door.”
The Giltergrove was one of the wonders of Mund, tended by the Shining Circle druids. His suggestion made sense.
I nodded, sealing the deal.
Emrelet floated a little closer to me. I’d moved away to summon the battalion of undead, and she closed the gap and then some.
“So, I don’t know if you thought I was joking when I mentioned the reward, but…”
“Vhat is your true name, champion?” Her gaze was penetrating, searching. What was she searching for?
“I, well,” I nodded at our captives, “I can’t say with the Six in earshot. They’re blind, not deaf, and I don’t get the same protections as you magisters.” I closed my hands and rubbed my palms with my fingertips. “I’ve got to defend my territory every now and again, but I can’t do it full-time. And I can’t do even that if I get killed off by someone who’s had my name or description, out in the street in the daytime, when I’m not on my guard.”
“Very vell.” Then she grinned. “I hope zis vill suffice.”
She turned slowly in the air, as if inviting me to watch, then aimed both of her hands at the ground just to one side of the Cannibal Six. Her fingers were cupped, as if holding a handful of grain.
At first I couldn’t tell what she was doing, but she was quick at what she did. Quicker than she should’ve been.
She balled both hands into fists then raised her arms, and the dirt elemental rose from the street. It emerged head-first, which wasn’t so bad, but when the titanic shoulders and torso exploded from the ground I almost lost my balance. It reared, higher and higher, until it stood taller than the ground storeys of the houses, the street emptying of mud and soil in a great ditch as the road’s contents were borrowed to add mass to the creation. The enormous arms and legs were like pillars of muck, and when it stomped closer to its floating mistress I did lose my balance, one foot sliding on the newly-contoured road –
Emrelet caught me without turning or even moving her gaze, waving one hand towards me. In so doing she directed a rivulet of wind to course down and prop me up, streaming with the force of a sudden gale-blast into my side to balance me – all while keeping her focus on crafting her earthen servitor with the other hand.
Drop on it all. She’s not a mage. She’s an archmage.
An arch-wizard.
I’d heard of arch-magisters before, but I knew they had to be rare.
“Envelop zem but let zem breathe,” she commanded, and the moment the words passed her lips the elemental was already in motion, reaching down for the bundled-up captives with a sweeping arm like a mudslide. “Remove zem to ze closest magicrux – Magicrux Omain – and surrender zem to ze captain of ze guard. Once your task is complete, return here and be undone.”
When the elemental began to slide over them, reforming itself about them, I noted Screamsong’s high-pitched wail in the general screams and cries that emanated from the darkmages. It felt fitting. She’d wanted to eat my heart – now she was being gobbled up by the very road she’d used to call forth her evil. Plus, if I understood what had happened in all that chaos correctly, I was pretty sure she had to have eaten at least one of her friend’s eyeballs? Raw? I knew she hadn’t had that on her to-do list when she got up this morning.
Then the Cannibal Six were gone, in the belly of the towering dirt-man. He took one mighty step, then another, heading off down the street past the near-motionless yithandreng. As he went I saw a tremendous mouth open up like a dark hole in his face, which presumably included a throat to let the darkmages trapped within him breathe, as his creator had ordered.
It was going to be a surreal night for the Six, or anyone who looked out their windows while the elemental passed by for that matter.
I looked across at Emrelet, white robes and pearly hair gleaming, hanging there in the air.
I suddenly felt at a loss for words.
Arch-wizard.
“And… now?” she asked, drawing it out with a roguish, expectant expression.
And now…?
“Your name, scab-brain!”
“Sca- Kas- Kastyr,” I gargled.
Damn you.
I could hear Zelurra’s laughter.
“Kastyr Mortenn.”
“Kastyr?”
She said it a little more like Kaztyr, but never mind that. “Yes m’lady.”
She looked down at the ground as she sank to the earth and held out her right hand to me.
Perhaps she meant for me to shake her hand. But for some reason as I reached out, I took her hand the way you’d see a nobleman take the hand of a gentlewoman to help her out of a carriage, aiding her to the ground. And she went with it.
It all happened without much by way of conscious control on my behalf, but for some reason I didn’t feel embarrassed. I felt drained. I’d done it. Without saying a word, I’d all but told her that I liked liked her. I looked up and stared into her steel-grey eyes, trying to judge the way she’d taken it.
Those eyes were unreadable, a mystery. She no longer smiled but her chest rose and fell almost in pace with my own. Was her heart galloping too?
“Not content with being the most powerful wizard in her generation, Emrelet decides to add enchantress to her resume,” Ilitar remarked.
“Shut up, Ilitar,” Belexor hissed, in an unmistakeable I-have-told-you-to-stop-being-funny-a-million-times tone.
“Okay, okay,” the enchanter continued smoothly, “second most powerful. I suppose Elkostor could take her. But the enchantress stuff? Definitely.”
“I said shut up!”
“I wonder what’s ruffling your feathers, bird-boy,” Ciraya stage-whispered at the druid so that everyone could hear, leaving it to no one’s imagination that he had a crush on the wizard.
Ilitar sighed a little, then chuckled.
Emrelet’s eyes closed, and suddenly she looked tired. It was strange, to see that startling change, that vulnerability come over her features.
She turned her head aside, and when she opened her eyes again she was looking at her band. All the vulnerability was gone. I guessed it was Belexor getting the brunt of the glacial stare.
The tension held for several long seconds. Then a smile creased her lips, and she spoke: “You are crazy. I vould take Elkostor in three minutes.”
I liked this girl.
“We are done, I believe,” Haspophel said, after a moment. He appeared relieved now, and he’d looked to be in a terrible mood when he’d first arrived. Maybe attending this arrest had pulled him away from something he’d been working on?
What did he mean by ‘done’? Did this have something to do with me? Was this meeting tonight something he’d foreseen?
Seers made my skin crawl.
“Oi.”
He’d already turned aside to climb into place near the tail of the demon-steed, using his staff to assist him.
“Em-” I stammered, tongue halting as the wizard turned to look my way again, “Emrelet, I don’t mean to come across the wrong way, but I really need to discuss the reward…?”
“Kastyr. Of course.” She sounded genuinely apologetic. Her eyes moved to Haspophel, who was busy trying to get comfy on the scaly demon’s back and adeptly avoiding her gaze. “Vell, you have successfully captured ze Cannibal Six, as attested and vitnessed by two or more magisters. Zeze six darkmages each have a reward of five platinum pieces.” She looked back to me. “I vill be happy to meet with you at noon tomorrow, at ze bank in Blackbranch Square…
“And yes, you may call me Em.” This last she said quietly, looking down and not meeting my eyes. Her smile was fragile, shy.
Em. I hadn’t meant to say Em… the others hadn’t called her Em, I didn’t think… but she was giving me permission?
There was a pretty significant part of me that was exulting right now.
I didn’t need the money until sunset tomorrow. Noon would be fine; I’d just have to make sure I finished the business with the undead-recycling at the Giltergrove nice and promptly. I had to keep my word; that was very important at this stage. Once they knew they could have faith in me, it’d open up whole new avenues of opportunity, and give my status as champion an air of legitimacy.
Give her another reason to see me as something more than just a gutter-rat.
I returned her smile. “Blackbranch Square in Hightown, at noon?”
I just guessed that Blackbranch Square was in Hightown, and was rewarded with the subtle indications that I was right. Phew. I didn’t want to look it, precisely, but I was very much the sort of Mundian who had never once needed a bank. I could find it tomorrow morning, though, no problem.
“And call me Kas,” I finished.
Another chance to see her again, tomorrow… Questions flooded my mind. Would she be looking forward to it as well? Was this part of the reason she was going to be handling this personally? Would it just be the two of us? I wondered how many other archmages our age she knew.
“Vell… Kas… ze work of ze night is concluded,” she said, wheeling into the air on a sudden breeze, facing her companions again. “Is zere further business at hand for any of you?”
That was it? It was over?
“It’s time to be getting home, you know. You’ve still got a while till midnight. I bet they’re still awake.”
You’re right. I left them with Orstrum.
“Of course you did.”
Belexor was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed and chanting. I watched the other magisters mounting up, Ilitar getting settled in front of Haspophel, then Ciraya.
“I so want a go on that thing,” I murmured to myself.
“Thing?” Ciraya repeated, speaking the single word so slowly and calmly that it could only mean she was furious somewhere inside. “This is –”
“A yithandreng,” I blurted, feeling knowledgeable.
“– Feast, or Fe if she likes you – no, you won’t be using her true name – and those who talk about her like that, she doesn’t tend to like.”
“Er – I’m sorry?” I offered.
She cocked her head to one side. “It wasn’t me you offended.”
Like the enchanter, the sorcerer didn’t seem to have much of a highborn accent. The pair of them could have been students from other lands who’d stayed on in the city after getting their qualifications, couldn’t they? She sounded a bit like a Westerman… Could it be that someone like her hailed from the rural provinces over the sea? They were all farmers out there, but she spoke to everyone the same way, her utterances slow and sarcastic, her tone drier than a desert; she was pale, and Westermen tended to be more tanned. But then any decent sorcerer was going to be pale no matter where they were from – the studying demands on all magicians were obviously going to be incredible, if they weren’t gifted with archmagery. Little time left for outdoor pursuits, I was sure.
Despite the pallor, or perhaps because of it, she was really rather pretty once you got over the shock of the tattoos everywhere, the distinctly-hairless head…
I moved my gaze and looked the yithandreng straight in the huge, shining cat’s eyes.
“My apologies, Feast,” I tried to say, using the nickname Ciraya had given the demon; “Zi khesend, Thrile,” came out.
The yithandreng blinked, once, slowly, and purred.
When I looked up at Ciraya I saw that the sorceress’s eyes were wide open in barely-restrained surprise.
For a moment she met my gaze, then shook her head and turned away; I noticed the irritated scowl curling her lips as she did so.
Did I make it look too easy? It hadn’t been my intention to annoy her. She was their sorcerer, and could well be the magister-sorcerer who most-often patrolled these areas near my home. I would probably be seeing her again. Perhaps I should’ve offered her my undead as a gesture of my regard instead of promising them to someone who would destroy them. Had that been thoughtless of me?
As Ciraya pivoted her body the yithandreng wheeled with her, so that they could head back the way they came, towards the Oldtown bridge. It was then that Belexor shimmered, his form amorphous and almost as transparent as air, letting starlight fall through him. The shape shrank, shrank, and then dark feathers seemed to coat the misty surface – wings shook free, a beak protruded, beady eyes stared.
A blackbird sat there on the dirt. It looked across from me to the arch-wizard, nodded once, then took to the air, spiralling around to follow the others.
Em slowly floated away from me, but flew backwards, facing me for a moment more.
“Until noon, champion,” she said to me softly.
Then she increased her speed to match that of Ciraya’s pet, hastening after her band.
“Goodnight, m’lady,” I said to no one, watching the starlit goddess darting through the cool night air until she sliced into the rolling smog and was gone, knowing that, no matter what ended up happening tomorrow, this would be an encounter – an evening I would never forget for the rest of my life.
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