The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye (3 page)

“
I want to tell you a secret,” he said.

“
All right.”

“
Magic is fading. The most powerful mages today cannot do half of what mages even a century ago could. Two thousand years ago wars such as the one that destroyed Thagoth were commonplace. Entire empires were laid waste in a matter of days. Now, the Laws of Thaumaturgy are being superseded by the laws of the physical world. Who knows how long it will be before magic disappears completely?”

“
You sound almost cheerful about it.”

“
Do I? Perhaps I am. Since I am in the secret-telling mood, I’ll tell you another. I’ve never particularly liked being a mage.”

“
You’re kidding me.”

“
Truly. Once Yvoust was dead, I lost the interest I’d had in the Art. What else was I to do, though? I spent a decade trying to find some way out of the doom I’d created for myself. There were none—none I’d consider satisfactory, at any rate. By that time, it was the only profession I knew.”

“
Wait. You’re saying there are other solutions to your problem besides haring off to Thagoth?”

“
No, I’m not. Believe me, the cures I found were all worse than the disease.” He stopped and turned to face me directly. “I have a bit more research and preparation to do. You won’t see me for a few days. Will you prepare what we will need for two weeks in the field?”

“
How long do I have?”

“
Four days.”

“
All right. Will we need pack animals?”

“
No. I wouldn’t want to try to gate them as well as us.”

“
I’ll have it all ready.”

“
Thank you. Sincerely, Amra.”

“
You’re welcome.”

He walked away then, a tall, almost gangly man in funereal black, black hair swept into a ponytail secured with a black velvet ribbon. Holgren had never much been one for fashion.

I walked a while on the Promenade, staring at the houses, trying to imagine what sort of “cures” he might have found in the past, and how they could be worse than some demon keeping your soul as a plaything for eternity.

My imagination wasn’t up to the task.

Holgren appeared at dawn on the fourth day. We lugged the packs down my narrow wooden stairs to the carriage waiting below. It was a gray, foggy morning. The driver looked like a wraith perched on the front of the carriage; the horse, with tendrils of breath writhing from his nostrils, looked like a nightmare.

“
Where are we going?” I asked.

“
Just outside the city proper. There’s a sparse grove of alders a short distance off the Jacos Road. It’s a suitable place to open a gate—not too distant, and no dwellings within a mile.”

“
Afraid you might cause some destruction?”

“
No. I’ve already told you there is no possible danger to anyone but myself. I simply don’t want to attract attention.”

I grunted, and tried to find a comfortable position. I intended to sleep the carriage ride away if possible. I’ve never been much of a morning person.

Sleep was a vain hope. The best of Lucernis’s streets were far from smooth, and the carriage bounced and jostled us brutally. I don’t know if it was him or me or the fool’s errand we were about to embark on, but I was in a foul mood that morning. Later, I thought about every little detail of the ride—the smell of Holgren’s soap, the low mutters the driver occasionally made, the clop-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones, and then the muted thud of them on the dirt of Jacos Road—I thought about all the insignificant details and wondered if I would have done anything differently, had I known what was going to happen.

The hack dropped us off in the middle of farmland. The morning fog had burned off during the ride. It promised to be a warm, sunny day.

The grove Holgren had decided upon was more than a mile distant. The only way to reach it was through fields of waist-high plants. I have no idea what they were, but they smelled horrible and attracted insects in droves. I made Holgren carry two of the packs. By the time we got there most of the morning had fled. I was sweating profusely and had half a dozen uncomfortable insect bites. Holgren seemed unaffected. I dropped my pack and took a long swig of water, cursing all mages silently.

“
Why don’t you rest for a few minutes?” he said.

I glared at him. “Why don’t we get on with it?”

“
All right.” He reached into his pocket, drew out a short length of red yarn and lay it as straight as he could in the grass before him. “A concentration aid,” he explained. He shouldered one of the packs and turned to face the yarn. “Stand next to me,” he said.

I put the second pack on my back and held the bulky third under one arm, uncomfortably. I wanted to have one hand free, just in case. I moved over to his right side. Our shoulders brushed.

“
Not too close. Perhaps a few inches’ distance.”

He bowed his head then. He took deep, slow breaths. There was nothing gangly about him now—he was in his element, working with powers I had no ability to understand. His face took on something of the look of a bird of prey: fierce, wild, beautiful. The familiar chill that accompanied his use of power crept up the back of my neck. A breeze sprang up, and the grass swayed, then flattened as the breeze turned into a gale. I looked down at the length of yarn and it was pulled taut, as if by invisible hands. It thrummed as the wind ran across it—and then it was gone.

In its place stood a pearlescent, faintly glowing rectangle perhaps three feet wide by eight high.

“
You must go first, quickly. I will follow.” His voice was strained.

I took a deep breath, and plunged through.

It was not a pleasant sensation. I have no words to describe it—suffice to say a body was not meant to exist in whatever nether world or space between worlds that doorway was made up of. The feeling was mercifully brief.

The first thing I saw was jungle. I smelled death, the putrid stench of corpses. I took two gagging, stumbling steps forward, caught a glimpse of rust-red, stone columns just ahead of me. Then something small, brown and hideously fast whipped past my head.

Behind me, Holgren screamed.

If I hadn’t been burdened with two packs, I could have gotten a knife out in time, could have skewered the thing before it reached him. I told myself this, and sometimes I believed it. It might even have been true. As it happened, I did pin it to a tree with one forceful, desperate throw. It squirmed and hissed and made a high shrieking noise that drilled through my eardrums and reverberated painfully in my head.

It was just too late.

The creature had struck Holgren on the cheek—just a shallow little gash, but he screamed and screamed, as if he’d been run through. I dropped the pack I’d been holding, grabbed him by the shirt front, and dragged him stumbling toward the stone columns I’d glimpsed. Around us the bloated, waxy foliage writhed, as if in agony or expectation. I pulled Holgren after me, as fast as I could go through the dense vegetation. He was still screaming. The rumbling cough of some predator sounded not far behind us. I tried not to imagine what it looked like. Holgren fell to his knees. Walking backward, I dragged him by his pack straps the last few feet. His face had begun to swell. He looked at me with agony in his eyes. His lips were drawn back across his teeth and the only time he stopped screaming was to draw a lungful of air. I put all my concentration into pulling him forward to safety.

Abruptly my heel touched cobbles. With a desperate grunt I yanked Holgren fully out of the jungle and lay him on his side. I tried to get the pack off him, but his entire body had begun to bloat. I cut the pack free of his shoulders, loosened his collar, his belt, his boots. I could think of nothing further to do.

He screamed until the swelling closed his throat.

I held his hand until it was over. When he was gone I sat there next to him for a time and thought nothing at all, felt nothing at all.

I looked down at the swollen, blackened hand in mine and thought about how ugly it was. His hands had always been so thin and delicate, almost womanly, perfectly manicured, and no calluses. They had been gentle hands. Now his fingers looked like fat black sausages.

I closed my eyes, turned my head, and vomited. When I was done I sat, still and cold in my soul. Then I heard it.

There was movement in the jungle. I looked up and saw dozens of eyes looking back at me. Much rustling and shifting, but nothing ventured forth to finish the job. I could feel the hate pounding at me, silent, palpable. Perhaps those eyes could feel me returning it.

I dragged him a little distance away and took a brief look around. Crumbling buildings, some grand, some humble. I searched until I came upon an overgrown garden, walled in on three sides. I buried him there, under a towering yew tree.

There was no spade—it was in the pack that had been left in the death lands. Knife and bowl did the job. I don’t know how long it took—hours, certainly. The ground was relatively soft and the grave only about four feet deep. If I’d had the energy I would have dug a second grave for myself, since I was convinced I was going to die there in Thagoth. It just didn’t seem worth the effort.

He was hideously heavy. I had to roll him into the grave. He landed face down, and I couldn’t stand that, so I went in after him and eventually got him facing the sky. Using the bowl, I started filling in the grave, but couldn’t make myself throw dirt on his face. I dithered about that for a good while and finally decided to cut a section of canvas for covering. It went better after that.

I started to lose myself after the grave was filled in. I found myself smoothing the dirt with my hands, trying to make it perfectly level. I heard strange whimpering, realized it was coming from me. I made myself stop. I curled up there next to him, with my fists pressed hard to my stomach.

Without Holgren to reopen the gate I was trapped, the last sorry resident of Thagoth.

It rained that night, a slow, gentle rain that pattered on the leaves overhead and softened the bare earth of Holgren’s grave. The rain woke me, and I threw on a good wool cloak and sat under the tree, waiting for dawn.

Something nagged at me as I huddled there. It was quiet: There was no birdsong, no rustling of animals large or small. I wondered if, over the centuries, the death lands had somehow claimed all the city’s fauna.

By mid-morning the rain had passed. I’d begun to poke around the ruins a bit, mapping out the city in my mind, when I saw a hawk gliding and wheeling above the city. It was the first normal animal I’d seen anywhere near Thagoth. I stood there, watching it soar, envying it its freedom.

It turned slow circles, gliding slowly lower toward the walled compound of the Tabernacle in the center of the city. I assumed it must have seen some small movement and begun the hunt. I watched with interest, thinking there might be game behind those high stone walls.

The hawk descended, slowly, slower, to within a hundred feet or so of the tall golden domes of the Tabernacle.

I heard a piercing shriek, unlike anything I had ever heard before. Waves of pain shot through me, and yet I could tell somehow that I had caught only the merest ripple of—of whatever it was.

The hawk caught the full force of it. It was instantly dead. Its graceful flight turned to a boneless tumble, and it plummeted into the Tabernacle grounds. Then there was nothing but silence.

I decided to avoid exploring anywhere near the Tabernacle.

I was six months in Thagoth. I survived mainly on bark and grubs. Apparently the ancient Thagothians weren’t much for gardening because almost nothing edible grew in the city. There was a small date grove. I soon learned eating too many dates was rougher on my body than not eating any at all. I found and exhausted a stand of wild chok, and grazed on clover like any cow. Hunger dogged me like a debt collector.

Holgren was in my thoughts often, try as I might to push his memory away. We had met years before when he hired me to help him with a job he had been hired for. However good a mage Holgren had been, stealth wasn’t his strong suit. Our abilities complemented each other. In time we’d made our professional relationship a permanent one. We’d even become friends. I’d lost other friends, other partners in my life, and while I suspect most of them were bound for one of the nine hells, I didn’t know it for certain. Not like Holgren. I thought about all the little things he’d do to aggravate me: the arch looks, the condescending remarks, or even more condescending silences. It only made me miss him more.

I wandered over damn near every inch of Thagoth in the time I was there, except those buildings closest to the Tabernacle. I’ve holed up in vacant houses before, when I was too poor to afford a place to live or was avoiding one city watch or another. The feeling of emptiness was eerie, being surrounded by signs of life and habitation, being utterly alone. Thagoth wasn’t like that at all. It was much worse.

House after house, building after building, stone piled on stone, all of it empty, devoid of the smallest sign of human occupancy. The only thing I found in Thagoth to show people had ever inhabited it, besides the buildings themselves, were a few shards of crockery. No frescoes enlivened any wall, no glass in any window, no furniture, no doors, no workman’s tools, nothing. Not even a child’s toy. Just building after empty building, and leaf-littered floors. Thagoth wasn’t a city at all; it was a vast stone skeleton placed there by the gods for the wind to play with.