City of Hawks (2 page)

“A dweomered container given to me by mine own sire, Wanno. It appears normal and empty when first opened, but when the magical false bottom is discovered… inside are likenesses of my parents, and my lady and I too, plus a little scroll telling of who and what we are-his heritage and more, it seems. Nine black sapphires are inside as well, beneath a second secret panel. They are said to have some greater significance, but in here they serve simply as a store of wealth in case of dire need.”

An odd smile played briefly over Wanno’s face. “Considering the amount of gold you have managed to get into my possession over the last few weeks, old friend, I somehow doubt your son will lack for resources.”

“As it should be,” said the man solemnly. “Yet material wealth is not as important as physical health… and both of these are insignificant compared to wellness of the spirit. So long as my son’s spirit is unbroken, I have a feeling that health and wealth will be his in due course. Keep his body safe from harm, Wanno-but beyond that, make his spirit strong so that he may conquer danger when he must face it.”

In this short speech, the infant’s father sounded very much as if he knew he would not be coming back. Wanno, grasping the man’s elbow to lead him back into the main chamber, said nothing to discourage this impression.

Gone at last! Wanno breathed a sigh and set about his work. He liked the prince as well as he liked anyone-indeed, more than most. And his lady was a fine woman, as females went. Why, then, had he been so ill at ease when they were here? And why was he now so relieved to have them away?

Could it be simply the responsibility of seeing to the young lordling, the prince’s infant son? No. That part was easy. Although he had never been a parent, Wanno had most of the skills and resources he would need for the job, and could easily afford to procure those he did not possess.

Perhaps it was the danger. Certainly there was much at hazard in this business. But Wanno had been involved in perilous undertakings before, and had never felt quite like this.

Finally, the mage decided that it was simply a matter of his not liking any company very much, not even that of other dweomercraefters. For a moment, he absently wondered if he was deluding himself by allowing himself to come to this conclusion. Then Wanno gathered up the sleeping bundle that was the little prince and headed for his private chamber. As he entered the room, a figure who had been seated on a stool near the door rose to greet him.

“All is done?” It was his apprentice, Halferd, who spoke.

Wanno only briefly turned toward the one who queried thus. To the mage, Halferd was a stripling whom he retained to perform services and instruct. This apprentice was held by many others to be a powerful spell-caster in his own right, but to Wanno he was a mere pupil. Had he gazed at Halferd’s face at this moment, looked into his eyes, perhaps the mage would have reconsidered his estimation; but after no more than a sideways glance at the other man, Wanno placed the child in a crib in a secluded corner of the little bedchamber and laid the magical box at the infant’s feet, covering it with part of a blanket. Only then did he bother to answer Halferd’s question.

“Yes. Both parents are gone away for a time, and there is much to be done if I am to fulfill my oath. First, I must arrange for the nurse who is to have care of the babe.”

“I’ll fetch her for you straight away, Master Wan-no,” Halferd murmured deferentially as he stepped toward the exit from the room.

“No.”

Halferd’s heart sank at that short utterance. Did the crusty old bastard suspect him of something?

“Yes, Master Wanno? Is there something I have neglected?”

“You don’t know who I have decided upon to be the infant’s maid,” the hollow-eyed mage said as he began to fuss over the circle of runic inscriptions chalked on the floor around the cradle where the princeling slept. In fact, Wanno had some time ago made his decision on a guardian for the child, and had made many preparations concerning that subject without Halferd’s knowledge. Unfortunately, he had also been forced to deceive the woman he had chosen to care for the child, but this was certainly a case where the end justified the means. “That is a matter I will see to myself. While I am gone, you will do a second and third ward around this one’s place.”

“Of course, master,” Halferd answered quickly. “May I ask who you have selected?”

“You may not,” Wanno said without rebuke. “The less you know, the easier it will be to mask all of this from those powers who seek to undo my protection. That would be a hot fire for us both now, wouldn’t it, boy?”

His lips pressed into a tight line, Halferd bobbed his head just as if he were an apprentice lad, not the able sorcerer he actually was. “I will complete a threefold warding, master, and stand alertly on guard until you return.”

Wanno looked briefly at him, then nodded. “Yes. Keep a sharp eye out for hawks…” the mage said. his words trailing off as he suddenly brought his arms up in a sweeping gesture and spoke a word that sounded impossible to speak, even for one so skilled at dweomers as Halferd was. At its utterance, Wanno was gone with a popping sound, followed by the whoosh of air rushing in to fill the space where he had been a split-second before.

Hawks? The man really is beginning to slip into dotage, Halferd thought. Demons or devils, yes; perhaps some horror from Tarterus or Gehenna; but… hawks? “Bah!” Halferd muttered aloud. “This is for you!” he added, making vicious strokes as he drew a precise set of sigils and strange marks on the stone floor. Instead of scribing the lines and shapes with tenderness and deliberation, Halferd worked as if he were wielding a sharp instrument upon exposed flesh.

When Wanno eventually returned, his apprentice had done all he had been charged with and was alertly seated near the infant, an old, gnarled staff held in his grasp. When his gaze fell upon this, Wanno spoke sharply. “What are you doing with my staff!” It was an accusation, not a question.

Halferd tightened his grip on the ebon-hued wood. “I carry out my duty to guard the babe,” he said, letting his eyes meet Wanno’s for only an instant before sliding away. The old one could work magic simply through his gaze meeting with another’s, and Halferd had no intention of allowing himself to be caught by some trick-not now!

Then something seemed to alert Wanno. A strange light shone in the old man’s deeply set eyes as he looked at his apprentice. The realization came to him at that moment that Halferd was near middle age, even for a dweomercraefter. And he was also a spell-worker of considerable ability-so why had he been content to remain an apprentice? There was only one answer…

Wanno stood with his spine straight. His staff was in the hands of an outsider, a man he didn’t really know after all, despite their years as apprentice and master. Halferd’s brief glance into Wanno’s eyes had betrayed something that the old mage liked not. There was a smell of duplicity in the still air, a sense of something malign that hovered in the shadows overhead.

“I see,” Wanno said, meaning something entirely different from the way Halferd took the remark “Exemplary, Halferd, exemplary!” he added with a bluff heartiness that he hoped didn’t seem as forced and insincere to his apprentice as it did to him. “However, I have other, more important things for you to see to now. Hand me my staff, and I’ll instruct you as to their nature.”

Halferd coughed and shuffled his feet. He didn’t hand the twisted length of ancient yew to Wanno. Instead the apprentice raised the silver-bound tip of it, so the staff pointed with veiled menace in the general direction of his master. “There is a matter to be cleared up ere I give this to you, Wanno.”

Coldness suddenly flowed through the mage’s veins. Here was vile treachery unmasked! Wanno had anticipated the possibility of some trouble; indeed, he had built in some protections around the infant that no one else knew about, just in case something beyond his control should occur. But he had not suspected that Halferd-loyal, quiet Halferd-would turn out to be one of his enemies!

Smiling slightly, Wanno set his steel-hard eyes upon the man before him. A word was locked just behind those iron orbs as he stared out upon Halferd, a terrible word of magical force ready In his forebrain. Before his foe could do aught with that fell instrument, the syllable would roll from throat to tongue and out into the room. Halferd would be blasted where he stood. Perhaps he was more than an apprentice, but he was no great binder of dweomers. It was madness indeed for one of his poor strength to challenge Wanno-especially in the old man’s own place of power!

“Place my staff most gently upon the floor, boy,” the mage commanded, “and then I will permit you to speak.” He saw Halferd break into a sweat and begin trembling slightly.

“No!” Halferd shouted, but at the same time he started lowering the staff. Then he began to shake more, and his body was wracked by a fit of coughing and gasping. He tried to talk, but explosive bursts of air and desperate indrawings of breath between the hacking coughs prevented meaningful speech.

This was very odd, Wanno thought, for he had used no spell upon the fellow. What was going on? Then a faint rustling from behind betrayed the presence of someone else in the room. It was an act! Halferd’s fit was a contrivance, intended to distract him while more danger came at him from the rear. Without another second’s hesitation, Wanno allowed the word to thunder forth. The syllable rolled up and was shot forth in an eyeblink-and Halferd was no more. Greenish bits of ash floated in the place where he had stood. Gone too was the staff. Too late to mourn that now, the mage thought, as he started to direct his attention toward the trespasser who had slipped in at his back.

Too late indeed… As Wanno turned his head to look over his shoulder, the last thing he saw was the face of his killer-and the last thing he felt was the blade of a dagger as it sheared through his spine.

“That’s done him!” The voice was jubilant, harsh.

“Shut up, you silly blaster, and do the same for the sprat!” the other man ordered. The bigger and meaner-looking of the pair held a long, wavy-bladed dirk whose metal glinted with an ugly purple sheen where it wasn’t smeared with bright red blood. The man he spoke to was slighter and uglier. Both were clad in deep gray and wore felt-soled boots. Any resident of the city could have identified them instantly-assassins of the guild. Denizens of either the lowest dives of Greyhawk or of its high places might have been able to do more than tell one what they were; these were two of the greatest assassins in the whole city. Alburt, known by some as Goodarm, was the dirk-wielding leader of the pair. He spoke to Slono Spotless, held in only slightly less awe than Alburt himself by those who knew of them.

“Futter yerself, Alby,” the small, ugly killer growled back. “What about Halferd?”

“He don’t have nothing to fret about now, Spotty. The geezer got him before I stuck the dagger in. Now cut that little brat’s throat while I check this place for valuables.”

The child in the strange crib was wailing, and Slono thought it would be a good idea to off it quickly. No sense in taking a chance on having its noise alert anyone to what was going on. “Here, my wee bunny,” he muttered with a horrid grin on his crooked face, “Uncle Spotty’s got a nice little s’prise fer ya…” With this, the assassin stepped toward a place where he could reach down and ply his own sharp blade-and suddenly his eyes stopped working!

“Godsdamnit!” Alburt cursed. “What in the Nine Hells are you doing?”

“I can’t see a thing…,” was all Slono managed to reply. The man’s voice, although panicky, was barely audible.

Alburt hurried to where his compatriot crouched, still a few steps away from the crib, with his hands clutching at his face. He had seen no flash, heard no sound, yet the chalked marks upon the floor burned with a smokeless, almost lightless flame. He felt weakness in his bones, sickness in the pit of his stomach, when his gaze went to those dancing lines of flame.

“Here, jerk,” Alburt said to his smaller associate as he roughly yanked the assassin out from amidst the magical markings burning on the stones. “You stay put until I finish the kid-I can manage everything.” With that, he picked up the lifeless body of Wanno, dropped it across the magical lines, and used it as if it were a bridge. He stepped gingerly, careful to put his feet only on the corpse or on the places where Wanno’s robe was splayed on the floor. Alburt made his way to a location from where he could peer over the side of the high-walled crib and view what was inside. His eyes grew wide instantly, and then he reached down and stabbed repeatedly, viciously.

“Crap!”

“Wazwrong, Alby?” Slono was still swiping at his eyes, but it was evident that some vision had returned to him already, for he was peering in the direction where the bigger thug stood.

“The li’l fart’s gone!” Alburt growled. “Jus’ plain vanished!”

The smaller man suddenly realized that the infant’s crying had stopped at the very moment his eyesight had been lost. “Some rotten magic trick,” he suggested.

“Naw,” replied Alburt. “I stuck the damn blade all over the whole crib and didn’t feel it sink into nothing but the mattress. Magic maybe, but it sure as shit ain’t invisibility. The flamin’ sprat just ain’t here anymore.”

“What’ll we do, Alby? This could be big trouble for us…”

“Not by a long shot. Spotty. Remember what that geezer did to our customer, so who’s to know the same thing didn’t get the brat too? I’ll check the place out, and check it good too, but I think the kid’s gone to wherever Halferd got blasted to.”

Eventually the smaller assassin managed to regain enough vision to assist his comrade in the search for loot. There was a fair haul that included gold orbs and several potentially valuable items of interest to those who dabbled in the arcane arts. Alburt claimed the lion’s share because he’d slain Wanno the mage and would have had to do the job on the child as well due to Slono’s temporary blindness. Because the smaller assassin valued living, he didn’t argue too loudly or too long. And neither did he enlighten his partner when he discovered a heavy ring of pure gold with a big, green cat’s-eye chrysoberyl set in the yellow metal. That he scooped up and slipped into his pocket without Alburt noticing. Whatever the cut he got, Slono would have a little something extra as his just compensation for this botched mess.