Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (21 page)

“Listen,” I said. “We’ve got nothing to do with this … this whatever-it-is. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll just be on our way—”

“Ah, but it’s not the same, is it?” said Aldair. “One does not come between the traditionalists and the Scions without making a choice. Even the Duskwardens know better. So now you need to choose.”

“What?” said Zora.

Aldair offered me his knife. I got the picture. His buddies dragged the blue monk over, pulling his head back to give me a good shot at his throat.

“No!” shouted the blue monk’s last pal. He’d kept the Scions from grabbing him, but he couldn’t reach his buddy.

Aldair watched me looking down at his knife. The tip might have been dull, but the edge did a neat job on the man he’d just killed.

“You can’t be serious,” said Zora. “It’s murder.”

“You don’t have to tell me, sweetheart. I grew up on Eel Street, where it took two murders to pay rent. If you were
real
lucky.” I drew the wings of Desna over my heart, hoping she’d get the message.

She recoiled from me, but her eyes flicked down. Maybe she got it. Maybe she didn’t. With or without her, I was going to need that luck.

Aldair smiled and shoved his knife at me. I waved it off, and his smile vanished. Before he could get riled, I tugged the big knife out of its sheath.

“This is what we call a knife back in Egorian,” I said.

Aldair smiled at that. I smiled back at him. Then I smiled bigger, and he yelped.

Zora pulled lose the strap holding her flag closed. She whipped out the staff and caught one of the Scions holding the blue monk. At the same time, I flipped a throwing blade at the other one. His head snapped back, blood spouting from his eye. Blue monk gave them both an elbow to the gut and broke free.

“Thank you!” he shouted. “My name is Balthus.”

“I’m Ordun,” shouted the other one. He took advantage of the surprise to kick out the knee of one of the Scions after him. “We will not—”

A Scion cracked him on the back of the skull with a roundhouse kick. He didn’t finish what he was saying. The way his head hit the stones, I didn’t figure he ever would.

I was ready for Aldair to move on me, but he slipped away instead. One of his mooks came for me. I caught his hand and bent his wrist. One kick to kneel him, one to take his breath, and one to knock him out. So far, so good.

Somebody I didn’t see coming kicked me in the breadbasket. Another one planted a knife in my thigh—nowhere near an artery. I kissed the air to thank Lady Luck.

Turning, I tried to kick the one who stabbed me, but Zora hit him first quicker. She whirled her flag around. The cloth snapped out like a living thing, wrapping around the Scion’s ankle. By herself she was too little to move him, but the momentum of the flagstaff was enough to pull his leg right out from under him.

In the same motion, Zora whipped the flag up and over to my other side between me and another Scion. The four eyes of Desna—sun, moon, and two stars—looked back at me.

The Scion’s fists punched into the banner but only made shallow dents, like he was punching into a curtain made of chainmail. There was some big magic going on there.

“Hit him, Radovan!” said Zora. “Through the flag!”

I didn’t think about whether to trust her. I just did it.

I punched through the fabric. Instead of a hard curtain, my fists pushed through like there was nothing but thin cotton between us. My first punch broke teeth. The second made a hollow
thunk
. Zora snapped up the flag. On the other side, the Scion lay unconscious on the courtyard.

“Look out!” she said, whirling away to defend herself from a couple more monks.

I turned, hopping to spare my injured leg. Another Scion cartwheeled toward me, which looks great but gives the target lots of time to move. Only I didn’t move. Catching his rhythm, I closed in just before he got into kicking range. One hard boot to the kidneys, and he went down.

“Hold it right there!”

Everybody stopped fighting as Janneke leveled her crossbow at one of the Scions. Beside her stood Kaid and three of her mercenaries. Six more were running up from the Warrens.

The Scions ran for it, except for two who couldn’t stand. Ordun finished off the fallen with two swift stamps to the neck. After the first one, Zora screamed, “No!” That didn’t stop him. Considering what the Scions had done to the his buddies, I wasn’t going to judge.

“I said hold it!” yelled Janneke. With her helmet on, her voice sounded scary enough that I’d have obeyed. On the other hand, I’d seen her shoot that crossbow with the helmet on, so I took a couple big steps away from Ordun.

“You have no authority here, Maiden,” he said. He put a fist against an open hand and bowed to me. “Thank you for your help, brother. Return to us when you are prepared to defend the Seal.”

He ran deeper into the ruins while Kaid’s girls grabbed Zora. They took away her flag, a couple of belt pouches, and six concealed blades.

“Gimme those.” I took the pouches from the mercenary called Stiletto and found my harrow deck in one. I kept my deck and showed it to Zora. “That’s all you had to do. There wouldn’t have been all this trouble if you’d just given them back in Korvosa.”

Arni woofed from down the street. Behind him came the boss and a man I didn’t know. They both looked like they’d been through the wringer, but the boss had it worse. His shirt was wet, and hung open under his coat. When they got closer, I saw that his eyes looked too dark, the irises too big and the whites bloodshot.

“How’d you find us?” I said.

“I followed the sound of riots.” His voice was weak, but it was definitely a joke.

At least he still had his sense of humor. But I couldn’t see so much as the shadow of a smile on his face, and his eyes stared through me, not at me.

“Eando Kline, this is my man Radovan.”

Eando gave me a nod. I gave him one back, wondering whether he’d been fighting the boss or fighting beside him. The boss introduced the mercenaries and then turned to Zora.

“I presume this is the notorious burglar of arcane artifacts.”

She kept her chin up, but the little Varisian looked tiny between a pair of Kaid’s big Maidens.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” said the boss.

“Your hellspawn has his cards back, and all of my money is in that purse. There’s nothing more to take.”

“What of the items you stole from Professor Ygresta’s laboratory?”

She opened her mouth to speak but shut it again. Her teeth clacked so loud I felt my own teeth hurt.

“For whom did you commit these thefts?”

Again with the mouth, open and shut.
Clack!
She winced.

The boss and Eando cast spells at the same time. Not different spells, I could tell by the words and gestures, but exactly the same spell. They squinted at Zora, looking so much alike it would have been comical another time.

The boss said, “She is bound by a geas.”

Eando turned to the rest of us and explained. “A geas is a magical compulsion. It prevents her from speaking on certain subjects, or forbids her from performing specific deeds.”

“I know what a geas is,” I said. It was true!

Eando turned to the boss. “I can’t break a geas. Can you?”

The boss shook his head. “Nor can Lady Illyria, I fear. Do you know someone in Kaer Maga who can?”

Eando cocked his head to the side. “As a matter of fact, I might, and it’s someone you already want to meet. But we’ll have to go without these mercenaries.”

“Fine by me,” said Kaid. She put a hand out to the boss. “My job is done.”

The boss fished a pair of heavy purses from his satchel and handed them to me. I passed them to Kaid. She passed them to Stiletto, who started counting right there in the ruined courtyard of the Brothers of the Seal, which I didn’t think was a very good idea. She was fast, anyway, and she nodded at Kaid.

“A pleasure to serve you, Excellency,” said Kaid. “If you need anything else, you can always find one of my women at the Meeting Post.”

Janneke slapped a pair of manacles on Zora’s wrists.

“Not so rough, you hill giant,” said Zora.

“Yeah, take it easy,” I said.

Janneke gave me the shut-up face and turned back to Zora. “So you can talk after all. Where are the things you stole?”

“I hid them. Let me go, and I’ll split the money with you.”

“Maybe we’ll do that later. Were you working for Ygresta or somebody else?”

She opened her mouth and snapped it shut again.

“There is no point questioning her before we can break the geas,” said the boss. “Dare I hope this oracle can break my curse as well?”

“He might. He’s very old.” Eando peered at the boss. “Not as old as you, of course.”

The boss didn’t react. A remark like that usually got at least a death stare.

“Was that a crack?” I asked. “That sounded like a crack.”

“You’re were right about him.” Eando patted me on the shoulder. “He’s smarter than he looks.”

“He’d have to be,” said Janneke. “Wouldn’t he?”

11

The Bottoms

Varian

My companions’ chatter ebbed at the shore of my perception. They did not distract me so much as serve as a reminder that I was not alone, despite my growing fear of solitude in a world I only now began to realize I never understood.

Combined with the
Kardosian Codex
, the
Bone Grimoire
offered me a surprising new perspective on the continuum of life and death. Though I pored over the combined texts, I had still only barely glimpsed the truth. What I had previously perceived in stark terms of darkness and light, I now saw as the nadir and acme of all energies in the universe, extremes between which all truths lay.

Compared with such pure ideas, the exotic sights, smells, and sounds of Kaer Maga were nuisances—even the voices of my companions.

“To the Shoanti, we’re all
tshamek
,” Kline was saying. As we walked through the noisy avenues of the Bottoms, he prepared the others for our meeting with the oracle. “That means ‘outsider,’ but not in a good way.”

“What’s the good way to be an outsider?” said Radovan.

“Shut up,” said Janneke. “I’m listening to this.”

He winked at her. “You take off your helmet, you hear all kinds of things.”

To ensure that none of the residents of the Bottoms would mistake Janneke for one of Kaid’s Band, who were known to raid the district for escaped slaves, I insisted she buy a change of clothing. A mercenary’s excuse would do little to calm the hatred the residents held for their former owners and those hired to recover their property.

The bounty hunter had left her crossbow and armor behind, carrying only a single club at her hip while wearing tough leathers. The reinforced shoulders of her jacket had been dyed blue, and the craftsman had sewn a tooled patch of a firepelt cougar on the back. The feline image combined with Janneke’s towering stature to give the impression of one of Taldor’s Ulfen Guard, famous across Avistan for their sole duty: protecting the Grand Prince from his own disgruntled subjects.

“I think she looks beautiful,” said Lady Illyria. Amaranthine perched on the shoulder of the lady’s own new jacket, which I noted had been reinforced for exactly that purpose. “It was quite a challenge to find becoming clothes for a woman of such … heroic proportions.”

“It was a nice change of pace,” said Janneke. “And you were generous to pay for me, my lady. Thank you.”

“Call me Illyria, won’t you?”

When I entrusted Illyria with helping Janneke, I had not anticipated the women would spend the better part of a day among the stalls of Downmarket and the shops of Tarheel Promenade. Perhaps the drake’s attention was not the only prize Lady Illyria intended to wrest from me. Now I would have to take care that I said nothing in Janneke’s presence that I did not wish Lady Illyria to know.

While the women perused the markets, Radovan and Kline acquired the gifts for our introduction to the oracle, leaving me and Arnisant to guard the prisoner. Arnisant’s mere presence so intimidated Zora that—apart from an ill-conceived experiment with a letter opener to confirm Kline’s warning that the curse I had usurped from him prevented magical healing (it did)—I spent the time engrossed in the theories of the
Bone Grimoire
.

“I think you both look real nice.”

“Why, thank you, Radovan.” Illyria favored him with a smile. Despite my faith in Radovan’s loyalty, I disliked her flirtatious attention to him. She did not realize how susceptible he was to feminine charms. Or so I hoped.

“Aren’t you also a tshamek, Eando?” said Radovan.

“I’m the
nalharest
of Tomast from the Sklar-Quah.”

“What’s a nalharest?” said Radovan. “What’s a Tomast? What’s a Sklar-Quah?”

“Nalharest is a word more or less equivalent to ‘blood brother.’ Tomast is a warrior of the Sun Clan, the Sklar-Quah. The oracle we’re going to see is an elder of the Skoan-Quah, or Skull Clan.”

“Skull Clan?” said Janneke. “That sounds ominous.”

“Not the way you might think. The Skoan-Quah are guardians of the Shoanti burial grounds. They commune with their ancestors through animal spirits. They’re fierce when defending their people, but they aren’t necromancers.”

Lady Illyria cleared her throat. It was a practiced sound. Musical. Rather fetching.

“Begging the lady’s pardon,” said Kline.

“Considering the circumstances, the lady pardons you.”

“The Skoan-Quah are destroyers of the undead, so it might be best if you don’t mention your specialty.”

“But of course,” said Illyria. “On first acquaintance, a lady never talks politics, religion, or the dark arts.”

The conversation waned as we passed a clamorous smithy. It seemed every second building in the Bottoms housed a cobbler, wainwright, cooper, or other artisan. It was no coincidence that many of the district’s residents were escaped slaves who sought refuge among those who called themselves Freemen, defenders of those who escaped the slavery permitted elsewhere in the city.

Kline had already explained the conflict between the slavers and Freemen, but I watched Radovan for a reaction. His mother had sold him into slavery as a child. One of the reasons he had agreed to work for me was that, unlike my peers, I had never owned a person and never would. In Egorian, Radovan tended to treat slaves with a certain wounded scorn. I often wondered whether that disdain was sincere or a cover for rebellious yearnings. His expression offered me no clue.