The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (40 page)

“
What?”

“
We are here,” Amatesu said. “This is where we part.”

“
But…I mean I can, I can still be of use to her…”

Amatesu reached up and grabbed Phin’s chin, turning his head to look down at her and locking his eyes on her own.

“
Phinneas, listen to me. You do not want to go with her. What you feel now is not yourself.”

“
I know what I want,” Phin said and tried to pull away from the shukenja, but she held onto him like a bear trap.

“
No, you do not.”

Phin glared at Amatesu and felt blood pounding through his temples. He slipped the fingers of his left hand into a trouser pocket in which he had a small pouch of his own, loosely bound with string and filled along the way with chalky dust from the surface of the Post Road. He slipped two fingers through the string into the dust.

“
Woman, release me,” he hissed.

“
Phinneas, you must concentrate. Think.”

Phin did not think. He slipped his fingers out from the pouch in his pocket and raised his hand toward his mouth, muttering an incantation in old Tullish. It was a poor move on a number of counts, the main one being that Sleep, as taught at Abverwar, was an ambush spell. It rarely worked when the target saw it coming.

Amatesu saw it coming, of course. As she already had a hand on Phin’s chin she shoved it up so that his jaw clacked hard into his skull and his head jerked back, then she kicked his feet out from under him. Phin hit the mud on his back with a splat. Amatesu stomped on his left wrist and the hand with the dusty fingers sank into the slop.

“
I forgive you for that,” Amatesu said. “But do not do it again.”

Phin wheezed in the mud for Amatesu’s blow, while not very forceful, would not have needed to be from that angle to snap his neck. He glared up at her as she backed away a step, kicking the coin pouch so that it landed on his chest while sending a spatter of mud up his face.

“
Fight it, Phinneas,” she said. “It should fade soon enough. Do not follow.”

She backed away further before turning and disappearing among the people on the southern street, none of whom had watched their exchange with more than a passing interest.

Phin scrambled to his feet when Amatesu was gone and had just enough presence of mind to hold onto the coins. He could not go straight after her for there was no telling if the shukenja woman would lurk in ambush for him so he stumbled to the right, thinking to cut over a block and race ahead to intercept Nesha-tari. There was not a handy street that way so he veered back to the left. A few people stopped to look at him, at his wild eyes and grimacing snarl.

Something about their expressions struck Phin, and it occurred to the Circle Wizard that he must look like a crazy person. He was acting like a crazy person. This was crazy.

Phin stopped, and blinked. His breathing was rapid but it started to slow, and the pounding in his ears lessened. He looked in the direction Nesha-tari had gone and took another step after her, but only one. He stopped himself. The desire ran out of his body, and was replaced by something far more sensible. Fear.

Phin shivered where he stood, and let out a long breath. When he thought of Nesha-tari now, with a growing distance between them, it was with a tremble of revulsion. Inherent or intentional, power like hers must be meant for a purpose, and a man driven to her would surely come to no good end. Neither did moths to flames, nor a fly to a pitcher plant.

“
Good luck, Zeb,” Phin said, and he shivered again, though this time it was only because of the mud running down his back.

*

As Nesha-tari walked down the middle of the muddy street men stopped talking all around her and stared until she had passed. She had three separate spells active and together they were enough that the effort required to maintain them blunted the weight of the men’s attention. But she knew they were there. She could smell the blood moving in their veins, the big ones through their necks, just under the thin skin that a scratch could open to a welter.

Just days, she thought. Only hours. She would Feed, and soon. She had to.

Nesha-tari crossed the full length of Camp Town from north to south. At the southern end the town ended sharply at a tall palisade wall that stretched the breadth of the valley, great logs sharpened on the top with plank walkways behind them, scaffold towers rising above. Wugs and hobgoblins warded the wall heavily for beyond it was nothing but an open field of thick, short grass stretching almost a mile to the mass of gray fog at the valley’s far end, hanging over everything.

A road of ancient black stones bisected the field and connected the fog to the single gate in the Camp Town palisade. The yard around the gate was further strengthened with earthworks, for two centuries ago it had been a fortress thrown up by Shugak and humans together, by the forces gathered here to do battle should the Third Opening of Vod’Adia have unleashed a new wave of undead horrors into the world. That had not of course happened, and now the Shugak operated the earthen fort as a gate complex through which parties of adventurers would be allowed to pass down the road to Vod’Adia, in accordance with the terms of the licenses they had bought. It was also where the Shugak would halt all adventurers who managed to return, and levy a final tax on everything brought out of the Sable City.

For now, three days before the Opening, the yard within the dirt-and-timber fort was still a marketplace with adventurers queued up on plank flooring before tables at which late licenses were being sold. Nesha-tari strode in and wound among them, close enough that men shivered as she brushed by. Nesha-tari clenched her hands into white-knuckled fists in her gloves. She passed through the lines and then by a slate board marked in chalk with indecipherable bullywug signs, where great numbers of the frogmen chirped excitedly and placed bets on groups of adventures. They wagered mostly on how many of them would die in Vod’Adia.

Beyond the bookmakers a quarter of the yard was enclosed by a second palisade, setting aside ground where a series of low stone buildings built more stoutly than anything else in Camp Town emerged halfway from the ground, stairs descending into each. These would be both Shugak barracks, and warehouses for goods. While none of the Magdetchoi Nesha-tari had seen thus far had made any move to interfere with her, a rank of massive hobgoblins in ornate bronze breast plates barred the entrance to the secondary compound. Two crossed their halberds as she approached, and she stopped before them.

“
Kerek,” she hissed, and the animals narrowed their watery pink eyes at her under the low brows of heavy iron helms. Magdetchoi were not effected by Nesha-tari’s peculiarities, no more than she wanted to eat one of them. The hobgoblins saw her as she was, and they were not too impressed.

“
Kerek!” she shouted as a demand. She knew the right name, at any rate.

The hobgoblins growled among themselves and one slouched off into the compound while the others continued to glare at her, and those who now joined her. Nesha-tari was aware of Shikashe and Zebulon behind her, and more dimly of Amatesu.

“
The three of you will wait here,” she said in Zantish over her shoulder without looking back. “I will not be long.”

There was no response, and Nesha-tari clenched her teeth.

“
Baj Nif, you slack-jawed moron. Tell the others.”

Baj Nif started speaking thickly in Codian, his voice just sounding stupid. Nesha-tari fought the urge to turn around and punch him in the face.

The hobgoblin returned and beckoned Nesha-tari forward with a heavy gauntlet, pointing her toward a sloping hut built in the nearest corner of the palisades. Nesha-tari strode for the hut where an emaciated jet-black bullywug with purple spots stood in the crooked doorway under twisting animal horns mounted to the beam. Acrid smoke wafted out of the hut around it, and beads, feathers, and trinkets hung from bands around its chest and arms.

Kerek was the sort of Magdetchoi mage most humans called a Witch Doctor. His importance to Nesha-tari was displayed in his cupola eyes, which were as solidly lightless as two massive black pearls.

The bullywug croaked, but Nesha-tari understood the words as if they had been spoken in Low Drak. Her raised spell of magic detection gave her a tickling twinge.

“
I greet my sister of the Blue,” Kerek said.

“
I greet my brother of the Black.”

Nesha-tari’s relationship to Kerek was far different than hers had been to Edgewise. The goblin had been the chosen servant of the Bronze Lady, a Great Dragon of the Land, who thus was due a grudging respect. Akroya and Danavod were both Great Dragons of the Sky, and the Azure One had been the greatest among those since the death of Ged-azi the Red. Black Danavod was least among the three Great Sky Dragons yet living, for the Winter Wyrm had perished in the years before men even numbered them.

“
How may I serve you?” Kerek asked with a humble bow.

“
There is a high priest of the Ayzantine faith of Ayon bound for this place, if he is not here already. You will search him out and inform me when he is discovered.”

Kerek swayed among the stinking smoke, the puffs breaking up in the air as the rain began to fall more strongly.

“
And then?”

“
Then I will kill him.”

Clear membranes passed over the bullywugs black eyes, and a webbed hand fingered some beads.

“
A high priest of the Burning Man’s faith would be a very formidable being.”

“
As am I.”

The little creature looked at her longer, rain pattering its hide. Drops fell from Nesha-tari’s hood as well, and while she loathed being wet she gave no sign. Finally, the wug shrugged.

“
As you wish, sister.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

There was no water route all the way to Vod’Adia. The bullywugs took their passengers as far as they could and put them ashore at a landing in heavy woods with tall barren hills stretching away to the west. The group followed a rough trace road for what should have been the final three or four days of their journey, but halfway along the clouds rumbled and it started to rain without let up for almost a week. The trek through the hills became a perilous slog, bad enough that Tilda, Dugan, Claudja and Towsan roped themselves together on the steep trails. It took them eight days all told to traverse the route and they did not step up to the edge of the valley of Vod’Adia until noon of the Thirtieth and last day of Ninth Month. It was less then twenty-four hours before the hidden city filling the valley’s southern end was due to Open for the fifth time in four centuries.

Tilda and Dugan stood side by side at the valley‘s edge, gazing at the lugubrious turning of the gray veil.

“
We better find the boys in a hurry,” Dugan said. “Unless you want to chase them into that.”

“
Not so much,” Tilda said.

The Duchess spotted the pyramidal temple of Jobe within Camp Town and shook off the days of soaking misery to almost start running north around the valley’s rim until Towsan finally shouted for her to slow, as there was no way for the others to match her pace while carrying full packs. Claudja did slow down but Tilda could see from the flush on her face and the shine in her steely eyes that the Duchess was more than anxious to hurry on, now that she was this close to her goal.

Tilda was far less enthused about her own arrival above Vod’Adia.

The group made their way along the valley and then down through seven switchback roads in a massive work of black granite, finally reaching the streets of Camp Town with evening settling over the place. Towsan now set the pace with Claudja right behind him, as the streets were full of people beginning to realize that tomorrow would likely begin the decisive days of their lives. Some were quiet and pensive, but many more were drunk and boisterous.

They made their way toward the temple visible above rooftops in the northwestern quadrant of the Camp Town, moving across logs and boards, shutters and doors, all thrown down in the streets for they were an utter disaster after all the rain. Some intersections were wholly impassable. The many people on the streets were adventuring types ranging from cloaked halflings to fully-armored knights. They should have been a wonder to Tilda but she could not summon much interest to see them. She only studied everyone she passed for a man with bright green eyes, or for anyone wearing a bit of Codian Legion gear or carrying a fat, stabbing short sword on his hip.

The temple of Jobe was on a square block of its own, surrounded by a tall plank fence. Looking through the slats as she walked Tilda could see a compound of outbuildings around the great central temple, grassy yards and whitewashed walls. There were benches scattered around where some people sat at rest, and clean-cut men and women in handsome, light blue tunics moved purposefully about. It looked far nicer than the world outside the fence.

Towsan led the way to a gate midway along the north side of the fence, where a small footbridge crossed a ditch overflowing with muddy water. Two heavily armored men guarded the end with heavy war hammers held at parade rest. Tilda thought she should say something to Claudja before they went any further, but at the sight of the men the Duchess ran forward and narrowly avoided spilling herself into the mud as she slid to a halt in front of them. She managed to turn her slide and near sprawl into something approximating a curtsy.