Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (52 page)

             
“I would know how you knew them, Sirrah,” Glynn pressed him. She had already reached behind her, to pull the laces in the back of her dress free. It didn’t take long for Jack to realize she meant to take it off and jump in the pond, and that she meant for him to follow her.

             
Turning his back on her, his cheeks warming beneath his beard, suddenly it wasn’t that big a deal to untack the horses.

* * *

              Raven sat on the corner of her wood-framed bed, in a shabby hotel that represented the best Kor had to offer. Jerod—actually Karl—sat to her left, Nina to her right, a crowd of Volkhydran Men Karl had come across in the port at their feet on the floor and, in the center of them, Slurn.

             
None of them spoke the language of the Slee, other than Xinto, and Xinto had vanished without a trace.

             
“There is no spell,” Nina explained to them, “that can turn one language into another. There is no element for language—language just is.”

             
Raven had at first believed magic was
anything
, meaning that if she had magic and she wanted a glass of soda, then magic provided her with a soda out of the air.

             
She’d learned otherwise. Like the chemistry she’d studied in college, magic obeyed rules, contained formulae and used resources. She didn’t summon fire from nothing—it came from an elemental plane of fire, and to have it from there, she had to will it.

             
She didn’t know how to will a language out of or into something and, if Nina knew, she certainly wasn’t going to explain it.

             
However she and Bill knew the Emperor had some magic that let him speak any language here, and that meant to her that it
had
to be possible.

             
Slurn didn’t hide his agitation—he practically danced for them, his tail whipping back and forth, he himself pacing the room as if in a cage. He’d seen something that scared the hell out of him, and he couldn’t communicate it.

             
“Uhl,” he told then. “Uhl sochahs.”

             
That sounded suspiciously familiar.

             
“A bad time for the bit to disappear,” Karl grumbled, meaning Xinto. “I never trusted their kind.”

             
Raven caught Nina’s eyes regarding Karl, a smile on her lips before she made her face more plain.

             
She’d seen the Empress create an image on a wall, and she’d seen the Emperor and Jack appear on it, as if on TV. If images could be caught out of the air, then why not thoughts? Thoughts were real things, after all—alpha waves, electronic signals.

             
She focused her mind on an interface, a two dimensional plane, which could trap thoughts that touched it. If she couldn’t understand Slurn, perhaps she could provide him with a canvas for his mental pictures.

             
“Think about what you saw, Slurn,” she told him. “Think about the things you want to show us.”

             
At first there was nothing, then wavy images. Raven concentrated harder, feeling as if there were a muscle in her mind she had never exercised. Slurn, realizing what she was doing, applied himself as well, reining in his imagination, forcing himself to relive the trip from Kor, through the mud, down small streams and then eventually, farther south, to what Raven expected he had seen.

             
She saw columns of Wolf Soldiers, marching north, a man in a white robe, on a roan charger, at their center.

             
“War’s beard,” one of the Volkhydrans swore. “Can you imagine the numbers?”

             
“It’s the Emperor’s whole southern guard,” said another. He turned his face to Karl.

             
“He’s moving on Kor,” he said, “and we’re right in his path.”

             
Raven let the image slip out of the air, popping like a soap bubble. She laid a hand on Karl’s shoulder without thinking of it, needing his support to keep her from falling off the side of the bed.

             
“Draining?” Nina asked her.

             
Raven met Nina’s gray eyes and saw no sympathy there, more predatory hunger instead. Nina may have given her the basic knowledge to do what she did, but that hadn’t made them friends.

             
“I’m alright,” she said.

             
“We need Xinto,” Karl said, and turned his attention to Slurn. “Can you find him by his scent?”

             
Slurn growled low in his throat, a frightening, saurian rumble. Clearly he could find them by their scent—he’d gotten himself here, after all. Raven knew he preferred to be at her side, guarding her, and he could in fact care less about the Scitai.

“It’s important, Slurn,” she said, softening her voice, forcing herself to stand, even though her legs wanted to fold underneath her.
She stroked the scaly jaw, looked into the slitted eyes.

             
“We need him,” she said. “Can you do it?”

             
He became still the moment she touched him, the agitated tail resting on the floor, the roar becoming almost a purr. Then like a flash he was out their third story window, into a tree that grew alongside the hotel.

             
“Gaah,” one of the Volkhydrans said, “that thing makes me skin—”

             
“That
thing
,” Raven said, turning on him, “is a friend of mine Volkhydran, and I owe my life to him. You’ll respect him, or you’ll get a taste of my power.”

             
The Man swallowed and nodded. Nina had informed her the common people had a certain fear of those with any magic talent, and she’d do well to cultivate it.

             
Another weapon to add to her arsenal.

* * *

             
And here you are
, Xinto thought to himself.
Back in a cage
.

             
In Galnesh Eldador they’d put him in a cell, eight strides from one end to the other, with a cot and a bucket. The lock to the cell had been magicked to prevent picking it. They’d taken his cloak away.

             
Typical of the race of Men to put a spell on the bars but not the stone they were set in. It hadn’t taken him more than a day to find a loose stone in the wall above the gate’s hinge, to remove it and then to jar the gate just enough for him to squeeze out. In the end he spent more time finding his cloak than escaping.

             
Here they knew better. They put him in a cage, bars all around him, and every one of them enchanted against him.

             
But they’d caged him with his cloak still on him. Getting right to it, the Eldadorians had been smarter.

             
Xinto extracted a bundle of thin metal strands from one of his inner pockets, and set about braiding them into a tiny metal rope. He had enough to do a rope three stories tall, but he only needed this one to go to a window on the far side of the room.

             
He was alone in a dark, dusty room, three Man-heights by four. He’d heard them lock the door behind them. He hadn’t heard a sentry in the hours that he’d been here. He didn’t hear anyone talking.

             
He knelt on all fours in the cage. Nimble fingers braided the metal quickly, the product of his effort curling into a pile beneath him. If anyone entered, he could simply lay down and pretend to sleep, covering the evidence.

             
That didn’t happen, and soon he had a coil that could reach to the base of the window.

             
The sun wouldn’t be back up for hours, but he had other work to do. He spent long minutes twining metal threads around the gate to the cage, in and out of the locking mechanism and around the hinges.

             
With less than three hours until sunrise, he allowed himself a catnap. Nothing he could do now if he were discovered—he had to have this ready for the morning, and he knew he needed sleep.

             
The first rosy shards of the false dawn roused him, stiff and groggy in his cage. He’d kinked his rope where he’d lain on it and had to straighten it, then began the arduous task of snaking it straight out toward the window. It had been shuttered, of course, but there were chinks in the shutters that would provide him with the sunlight he needed.

             
Xinto had not been born with the gift of spell casting, however he’d been given an analytical mind instead, and with that he worked his own magic, including the ability to see how things worked, and how things interacted.

             
This skill made him an excellent ambassador, and over time had enabled him to learn how certain spells could be discharged, especially those used for warding.

             
The sunlight from the new dawn touched the metal rope, braided to be stiff enough to run from the cage to the window without touching the floor.

             
The sun’s energy traveled up the rope and into the wire mesh around the gate and the lock. Its energy mixed directly with that of the spell that warded the cage and, with a blue flash, destroyed it.

             
Normal light wouldn’t have done it, of course. It would make no sense that magic should require darkness. However the pattern of the wires on the bars, made to resemble a spider’s web, got the spell energy flowing and drained it.

             
Xinto had seen this many years ago, when he’d watched a caster create such a spell. He’d spent long weeks figuring out the right method and the pattern, but it had saved him before and had just done so again.

             
Quick as a wink he had his rope tucked back inside of his robe and removed a steel hook from inside a pocket. The lock popped for him in just a few second, and then the gate swung open.

             
Free again!
Xinto applauded his own intelligence and resolve. He’d slip out of the city, find Slurn, and then send him in for the rest of them, much more careful next time of his former guild brothers.

             
“Well done,” a woman’s voice purred.

             
He hadn’t seen her enter, nor heard a door open. He knew she couldn’t have been there all night. He’d have heard her breath, felt the weight of her presence.

             
Xinto turned on his heel to see an old friend, whose acquaintance he had not made for over a decade. He might be, in fact, one of the few people who even guessed she was alive.

             
He bowed low, in the tradition of the dying swan, a private joke between them. She grinned, the green eyes hawk-like under a mop of untamed red and gray hair. She stepped to her left, taking an open stance, the bandolier of knives across her ample breasts showing one missing: the one in her hand.

             
Dressed in the usual tight-fitting black leather, she waited for him to make his move.

             
Xinto knew better than to pick a fight with Genna, the only Bounty Hunter alive ever to have crossed in and out of Conflu with a party of raiders, and to beat the Guard at their own game.

* * *

              Glynn Escaroth sat naked in the tepid pool, the sun warm on her face and bare breasts, the Man they called ‘Jack’ sitting next to her with his hands in his lap, looking more than anything like a child caught raiding the larder.

             
The Swamp Devil perched like a living gargoyle on the boulder at the far end of the pool, clawing the tangles from this long mane. Their horses nibbled at the grass along the pond’s end, the dog lay on her back, basking with the sun on her teats.

             
They’d sat here for over an hour, speaking very little. Glynn felt relatively confident Jack had peed in the pool beside her.

             
“How long will they make us wait?” Jack asked them.

             
“I stayed here for four days before they saw me,” Zarshar said, not looking up from his hair. “I brought a haunch with me, though. I don’t expect we should hunt here. If we’re still here past tomorrow, you’ll have to choose one of your horses or that dog.”

             
Jack seemed appalled. Typical of the race of Men to form such strong attachments to the beasts around them. Well, she needed her horse and had no fondness for the dog.

             
In fact, she felt sure the Swamp Devil had only made the statement to torment the Man.

             
Jack, of course, sidestepped the issue. “Well, I doubt they’ll just starve us,” he said. “Be just as happy if they let me put my pants back on before they talk to me, anyway.”