Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (36 page)

“I signed a contract for an escort to the Sleeper,” she said. “Not a full-scale invasion of the Hold of Belkzen.”

When she put it that way, I couldn’t hardly blame her.

Kaid invited Janneke to come with her. I was sure she was going to take her up on it, but Janneke said, “When I take a job, I finish it.”

“Have it your way.” Kaid put on her helmet.

“Wait a second,” said Janneke. She gave Zora a hard look. “You can go with them if you like.”

“What about your bounty?”

“The count’s a rich man. If we get to him in time, I expect a handsome bonus.”

“And if you don’t get to him in time?”

“I caught you once,” said Janneke. “I can find you again.”

Zora glanced at Kaid. “How do I know your friend won’t turn me in?”

“I’ll never go back to Korvosa,” said Kaid. “Besides, you said something about valuable magic to trade. I’ll take that instead of your bounty.”

Zora looked at me.

“Go on,” I said. “Get back to Korvosa. And give your Sczarni buddies a message from me.” I showed her the tines.

She hugged me around the neck and whispered, “Desna smile on you, hellspawn.”

“You too, sweetheart.”

Kaid’s Band put Zora on one of their spare horses, and they rode west. We took the Red Carriage east, right toward the heart of Orcland.

For the whole next day, we kept our eyes open. The boss kept the spyglass in his satchel, so I couldn’t get a good look at what was stirring up the dust. We didn’t risk stopping during the day in case they were orc marauders, figuring we might outrun them.

On the first night, Kazyah communed with her earth spirits and told us the land was lousy with creatures for a hundred miles around. She couldn’t tell us what was in any particular direction. Maybe it was orcs. It could just as soon have been some of those burrowers she’d sensed on the way from Kaer Maga.

I swung from the back ladder to the carriage running boards and let myself back inside.

Eando and Illyria sat on the front seat, comparing spellbooks or something. On the back seat, Kazyah snoozed beside Janneke. Arni put his head on the seat between them, hoping for scritches.

Rather than squeeze in, I lowered a side seat and put my back against the little wall between the front and back doors. I wished I’d had something to give Arni under the table. Since he’d seen me hurt the boss, he didn’t come when I called.

Something about the crowded carriage bugged me. It took a second for me to realize Illyria must have summoned another driver to give Janneke a break. It made me nervous to think that a spell was holding the reins.

“You know, maybe the boss was right. We ought to have someone up top in case something happens.”

“You were just out there,” said Eando. “What did you see?”

I told him about the dust plume.

“I’d feel better if we could see what’s causing that,” he said.

“Varian has too much of a head start,” said Illyria. “We can’t stop to investigate every disturbance on the horizon.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” he said. “The most urgent thing is to reach the Cenotaph before Jeggare gets in over his head.”

“If something’s following us,” I said, “we’ve got to be ready to put up a fight. Do we know a good place to stop tonight?”

“How about the stairs?” said Eando.

“What stairs?” I said.

“They’re called Seraph’s Ladder because they rise up toward Heaven. I’ve heard tales of spirits walking up or down the steps.”

“Are they dangerous?”

Kazyah opened one eye. I guess she wasn’t sleeping after all. “Only at midwinter,” she said. “Or so the elders say.”

“The orcs shun the site, don’t they?”

Kazyah spread her hands. “I cannot say. Beyond their raids in our territories, I know little of their ways. You know more than I.”

“My exploration of Belkzen occurred in less than ideal circumstances.”

“You knew it was safe to camp in that landshark drift,” I said.

When we found what looked like a crater in the grassy plain the day before, Eando looked around until he found some melon-sized dung pellets. He broke one open to see it was still wet inside. He said that meant the creature wasn’t coming back soon, and other predators avoided the nests, making it a safe place to camp. Even Kazyah seemed impressed.

“We aren’t likely to find another one tonight,” he said. “Unless Kazyah has heard of some reason we should avoid the site, I suggest we stop at Seraph’s Ladder.”

“Good,” said Illyria. “I’ve always wanted to see that monument.”

“What is it?” I said.

“You’ll see soon enough,” said Eando. “If you climb back up top, you might see it soon. Look northeast.”

I thought it ought to be somebody else’s turn as lookout, but I knew they were all as tired as me. I stepped out and swung up top.

Once we got away from the mountains, the badlands eased down into plains. Grass hissed against the carriage’s belly. The phony driver held the reins in the seat ahead of me, guiding the horses around rocks and gullies. Behind us, the sun was headed toward the red horizon. Ahead, the green sea of grass was turning blue with twilight.

Eando was right. I saw it right away.

From a distance, it looked a little like a giant tree stump. As we got closer, I could see its lines weren’t natural but man-made. Or elf-made. Or giant-made. Something made it.

Closer still, I saw pillars supporting a rising stone curve. Then I saw it was a staircase. At the bottom was nothing but the grassy plain. The top rose a couple hundred feet above the ground, but it wasn’t connected to anything. It just ended in open space.

I couldn’t see any ruins where the rest had fallen. Maybe somebody had scavenged the stone for buildings. Or maybe whatever had been there got disintegrated, like the boss. I didn’t know. It had to be something magic. If the boss were there, he’d have told us all about it.

He should have been with us.

As we drew close, Janneke swung up to the driver’s seat and took the reins from the phantom.

“Got it!” she called down to Illyria, who dispelled her guy with a snap of her fingers. He actually tipped his hat at Janneke before vanishing, which was kind of a nice touch, I thought.

Janneke drove us once around the base of the steps before stopping underneath the stairs. The others got out, took a look around, and we all kind of nodded at each other. Since the boss ran off, nobody had taken charge. Sometimes Eando spoke up, and sometimes Illyria did, but nobody jumped to obey. We all just sort of thought it over and nodded, or else we put in our two coppers, and everybody else thought it over before nodding or speaking up.

I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel right.

Janneke and Kazyah saw to the horses. Eando and I put together supper. Arni prowled the area before chasing some little critter that ran from him. Illyria conjured her magic cottage, making sure to keep it behind the wide base of the stairs, where it wouldn’t stand out against the moon or stars. We had shelter if it rained, and between the nearest column and the base of the stairs, we had plenty of cover.

Illyria said, “Shall we risk a campfire?”

The rest of us thought it over. Enough of us shook our heads that we ate a cold supper and sat in a circle between the carriage and the cottage. Arni sat near the rear of the carriage, out of arm’s reach. Amaranthine perched on the top of the wheel above him, her reptile eyes moving from each of us to the next as we made our camp.

Once we got settled, I asked Kazyah, “What’s so spooky about this place at midwinter?”

“I have never seen it,” she said, “but it is said that on that night ancient spirits appear upon the stairs above us. Some are human beings. Others are unnamable things.”

“Unnamable things?”

“Creatures from other worlds,” said Eando.

Illyria nodded like what he’d said jibed with something she’d read.

Kazyah shrugged. “Whatever they are, these things walk among the human beings on the stairs, flickering in and out of sight. By dawn they have all vanished.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

“One midwinter night, an old shaman and his granddaughter came to the stairs,” she said. “The shaman told the girl to watch as he climbed Seraph’s Ladder. He warned her not to follow him no matter what she saw.

“He began to climb the stairs. With each step, he grew younger. His white hair turned gray, and the pouches beneath his eyes vanished. His gray hair turned black, and his crooked back grew straight. He turned to look back at his granddaughter, smiling in his youth.

“As he looked down at the granddaughter, the young man saw the red stripe of a firepelt cougar stalking through the grass. He called out for the girl to run away. Frightened, she ran up the stairs toward him. He cried out for her to stop, but she was too afraid to hear his voice.

“With every step she climbed, she grew younger. The shaman ran down to stop her, but before they met she dwindled into a child, an infant, and then into nothing at all. He stood alone at the bottom of the stair, an old man once more.”

“Desna weeps,” I said.

“Is that a true story?” Illyria asked.

Kazyah didn’t answer. When Illyria looked at Janneke, the bounty hunter shrugged. Eando stared at Kazyah, probably trying to figure it out for himself by the look on her face.

None of them could see as well in the dark as I could. None of them knew that Kazyah was the oracle’s mother, not his daughter. But just by the way she told the story, they had to have heard the truth in it.

Illyria and Eando talked magic business for a little while. She’d used magic plenty on the journey, both in fights and in little ways like the conjured driver or fixing Janneke’s crumpled helmet, but we hadn’t seen much of her necromancer juju. Starting tomorrow, they decided, she could no longer hold back.

“It isn’t something I’ve often done outside the Acadamae,” she explained. “And after the way Varian reacted when I sowed those ghoul’s teeth…”

“Jeggare hasn’t exactly remained pure about renouncing necromancy,” said Eando.

“Hey, cut him some slack,” I said. “That was the book. He was under a curse. And don’t forget he took on your curse, too.”

“I know, I know,” said Eando. “I’m not criticizing. It’s just that sometimes, in the face of ruthless opponents, you can’t be picky about your methods.”

I caught Janneke glancing at me when he said that.

“What?”

“I think you know what,” she said. “You said you were raised on the streets of Egorian, right? You talked to those Sczarni like you’d rubbed shoulders with their kind before. Tell me you haven’t done a few bloody deeds.”

“You mean like Kaid’s Band making raids on the Bottoms?”

Janneke’s back stiffened.

“They weren’t liberating those slaves, were they? That much I figured out on my own. And when I mentioned Kaid’s name back in Kaer Maga, I heard her band collected Shoanti scalps for Korvosans with a grudge.”

Kazyah’s head snapped around to face the bounty hunter.

Janneke looked away. “There were a lot of reasons I quit.”

“Before or after a few bloody deeds of your own?”

Janneke scowled at me, but she got the point. I wasn’t the only one with blood on my hands.

“Listen,” said Eando. “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t done. We can’t change the past. What we can do is try to balance the scales. Stopping Ygresta from becoming a lich is a way to do that.”

“Even if it means calling the dead to rise from the earth?” Illyria hefted a little bag. Ghoul teeth rattled inside. She looked to Kazyah like she was asking permission.

“It is a foul thing,” said the shaman. “But if you summon these things to fight against another abomination…” She shrugged. “I guard my ancestors’ graves. I do not care if you despoil the crypt of an azghat.”

“Good,” said Eando, who turned and lay down on his bedroll. “Now everybody get some sleep. We’ve got a long day of stupidly dangerous deeds ahead of us tomorrow.”

*   *   *

By noon the next day we’d spotted two herds of aurochs.

The first was barely what you’d call a herd. A couple of bulls guarded five or six cows and three calves against something prowling the nearby grass. For a while we were too far away to see what it was, but we knew something was there by the way the aurochs moved all of a sudden. Then they’d stand still again while the bulls circled the others.

Just before we drove out of sight, I saw a giant wolf—a warg, easily twice as big as Arni—make a run for one of the calves. A bull charged it, and they fell together. The last thing I saw was the bull trotting back to his family and the wolf loping away with a big red wound in its flank.

Arni had his paws up on the open window. He whined, eager to chase down the warg.

“Settle down, pal,” I called down from the roof.

He whined and sat.

The second herd was big as a storm cloud and so far away that I couldn’t make out much detail. There had to be hundreds of the animals, maybe thousands. Lucky for us, they weren’t anywhere near our path.

A couple times Janneke pointed to vultures circling in the distance. The grass had grown tall enough that there was no telling what lay dead or dying beneath them. I kept my eyes peeled for anything that moved. The way the wind blew waves across the grass made that harder than it sounds. Every breeze caught my eye. I could never tell whether I’d seen something stalking the carriage or whether it was just a wind furrow.

We stopped just long enough to water and rest the horses. Everybody except me helped rub them down. While they did that, I stretched my legs. I called Arni over a couple of times. The first time he pretended not to hear me. The second time he came halfway before changing his mind.

That was something.

The afternoon sun got hot enough that Janneke started pulling off the heavier pieces of her armor. I could tell she hated doing that by the way she started unbuckling a strap, only to stop with a curse. Ten minutes later, she’d tear off a pauldron or vambrace and slam it down behind her with the baggage.

I saw something to the north, five or six big dark figures lumbering in our general direction. I pointed them out.