Tinkermage (Book 2) (3 page)

He swung upward, connecting with something. Wetness sprayed his face.

Keep your eyes centered, and let your blade sing.
The old master-at-arms, Sxessor Dane, had drilled the mantra into Dale’s head. He measured the enemy movements in his peripheral vision, slicing his two-handed blade in practiced motions, allowing himself plenty of room to duck if necessary. Still, training was nothing like the real thing. No, this was chaos, holding on to a gore-slick sword while controlled anger fueled each stroke.

Etty chanted prayers and spun shields of azure in front of the precisors on their immediate left, allowing the lads time to recover. Creatures broke against the barriers in flashes of blue light and gore and, with the cleric’s help, the left flank steadied.

Let go of the past and future, and lose yourself in this moment: the slice of your blade through skin and bone, the gutting of your opponents, the draining of life. Drink death’s elixir. Simply be.

And Dale
was
. With senses heightened, he cut down one of the fliers with an overhead stroke, and then was knocked aside by one of his own precisors as she struggled with a troll-like ultraworlder swinging a tree branch. Dale sidestepped to avoid a smashing blow. Splinters flew everywhere. He struck back, shoving his sword in a spot he thought might be a pair of ribs, feeling his steel bite deep.

Two precisors followed his with strikes of their own. The ultraworlder bellowed and dropped his weapon to clutch at the invading blades. Overcome with a certainty unlike anything he’d ever experienced, Dale charged, screaming “Hightower!” at the top of his lungs. He buried his steel helm into the thing’s middle, driving forward with his much smaller legs. To his surprise, the ultraworlder toppled backwards. They landed in a heap with Dale more or less on top.

He righted himself and adjusted his grip on his sword, preparing to finish the job. No need. The creature and its amorph were dead. A handful of gnomes stepped away from their toppled foes, some crawling from beneath heavy limbs, and formed back up.

The precisor general laughed and leaped from the beast. He turned toward the lake, prepared to rally his precisors to the wizards’ defense. He took two more steps and stopped cold, frozen with fear at the thing rising from the lake.

Etty came up, a skeptical expression on his face. “Well, that’s a right big bastard. Shall we sound a retreat? Rally the troops?”

Dale shook his head. “No, friend. The time is now. We’re going to burn that thing… if we can.”

#

The wizards scattered before the form surging from the foul, black waters. It seemed to pull the lake up around it like a turbid cloak, dripping grime and fraze and crud. For a moment, Dale thought the lake would remain stuck to it, but the murky waters slid away to reveal the monster beneath.

It crawled from the muck, placed two massive outgrowths on the shore, and wrenched itself from the lake bed. A skirt of tendrils around its middle swung free, each one covered with hundreds of clinging amorphs, like some mother beast to the lecherous enemy ranks. It swung its long, horse-shaped head left and right, clearing mud from its disgusting body.

Clack-clack-clack
came the thing’s calls, echoing across the flatland. Dale wished Nikselpik was here so he could dig into the beast’s mind and find out why the ultraworlders had come to Sullenor, and to Hightower specifically.

Alas, you may never know the answer. Just kill the damn thing!

The wizards fell back behind the precisor line forming some fifty yards from the lake. As Elwray rode past on his pony, Dale yelled at him, “Elwray, fire the beast while it’s covered!”

“I can’t!” The wizard reined his pony in a half circle. “I’m soaked with fraze myself. One spark from my hand, and I’ll fry.” The wizard’s hawkish face grimaced, teary exhaustion ringing his eyes.

Dale waved the wizard on and called for his archers. “Flaming arrows! Now!”

As the precisor line formed, careful to avoid spots of spilled chemicals, the mother amorph brushed aside the fraze barges like toys, its long, slug-like tail trailing in the lake. Roto rode up, tired-looking but surprisingly clean.

“They are beaten, Dale. The beasts only harass our lines now. They must’ve run out of things to assimilate. Nothing the pressure bowers and a few footmen can’t handle. Not sure about
that
thing though.”

A cry rang out from the precisors packed along the front. A gout of crud had burst from the beast’s gaping maw like a giant, vomiting slug. A dozen soldiers were caught in the mess and dragged away screaming.

Others tried to help, hacking at the rubbery stuff to no effect.

“Get back,” Dale called out. Others echoed his orders. The rescuers relented once they drew too close to the mother, although they cried out in grief and shook their swords at the thing.

Dale called the command. “Fire!”

Arrows tipped with flame soared in a gentle arc and slammed into the lurching giant. A deep whooshing noise devoured the air as a wash of flame consumed the mother amorph. This was no normal conflagration, but a fire beaded with crystal-blue snaps and pops and sizzles that grew more violent and agitated by the moment. Sound entered a vacuum, sucked up by the missing atmosphere. It was hard to breathe. The smell of burning fraze was like directly inhaling soot. “Back!” someone managed to shout, but who heard? Who could take their eyes off the strange, beautiful shape of the amorph conflagration?

The fire found the lake. A tiny sun blossomed. The force threw Dale to the ground and covered him with a blanket of heat so intense he thought he might cook in his armor. He gasped, but his lungs found nothing. He closed his eyes and turned away, but the hot coils were everywhere. He flipped on his stomach and crawled as debris whizzed by.

When he thought to finally lay still and die, the blaze broke
,
and a cool winter breeze rushed in.

Dale took a moment to appreciate still being alive, then got unsteadily to his feet. Harwood Lake would never be a lake again. The mother amorph lay slumped on the shore, still burning and very dead, its babies scattered as puddles of blazing ooze. The lake itself raged, pouring black smoke into the sky. The gnomes trapped in the gout of crud were gone, probably blown to bits. Dale felt nothing now, but he knew the weight of the dead would eventually hit him, just as it had after Swicki Hill.

Or does it get easier? Do I become numb?

He turned his attention to the remnants of his precisors. Two hundred warriors flattened to the ground. Some were dead, but more stood and shook their heads or helped their brethren rise. Dale picked his way through the meandering troops and found Etty. He helped the cleric to his feet. Aside from some burns to the face, Etty looked fine.

“Gather yourself and get to it, good cleric. I’ll need a full accounting by two turns of the hourglass.”

Etty nodded and stumbled off, and Dale continued his walk, offering a hand where he could, finding troop leaders and issuing commands to those who seemed capable of carrying them out. He came upon a strewn mess of gnomes and ponies devastated by the debris blast. Most were unrecognizable, but there was one sprawled on his back, his weighty mace held tight in his hand.

“Oh no.”

Officer Roto. He had been thrown from his mount and lay on the ground with a sliver of wood pushed through his neck. The gnome’s glassy eyes stared up at the start of a gentle snowfall.

Chapter Four

“Nika, wake up.”

A hand shook her. A familiar voice whispered her name. She lifted her heavy head from her folded arms and looked around with a dazed blink. The fog of sleep was thick, mixing dreams and reality into a stew. She sat, blinked again, and waited for the air to clear.

“Nika, wake up.”

“I
heard
you,” Niksabella whispered back, careful not to wake anyone. She shook her head, tossed off the thin coverlet, and let out a sigh. She’d always been a hot sleeper, and seldom needed any sort of quilt even in the cold confines of her workshop.

Jancy kneeled next to her soft woolen pallet, her straw-colored hair was wet with melted snow, her pale cheeks rosy from the cold. Apparently, she wasn’t staying long; she still had on her coat and scarf. Jancy’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”

“I had the dream again.”

“The same one you’ve had every night?”

“I think so.” The truth was Niksabella couldn’t be sure it was the same dream. It, or
they
, seemed more like a stream of continuous conversations, arguments, with frustrating and inconclusive results. They always took place on the beach near her childhood home, the expanse of sand littered with shells, seaweed, sometimes dead or dying sea life; their stretch of beach always seemed to get the worst of the sea wash. In the dream, the fiery-haired gnomestress stood with her back toward the sea, the cool wind whipping her tresses around in a semblance of real flames. She told Niksabella things, things Niksabella didn’t want to hear, things that mystified and frightened her. The gnomestress explained a situation. Niksabella asked questions and received answers she was not quite satisfied with. Niksabella became angry and thought about pushing the gnomestress into the sand and being done with her. Instead, she turned her head and watched the golden-haired gnomeling who always accompanied the mistress crawl around on the sand, playing with things best left to be washed out by high tide. And by the time Niksabella found the courage to face the gnomestress for a parting shot, everything vanished, leaving her perturbed and unsatisfied, yet stewing with curiosity. What did the lady want? Why couldn’t Niksabella remember what was said? Why the dreams now?

Niksabella yawned and stood. She gave Jancy an awkward hug before stumbling to the basin. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, splashing her face with water. She gasped at the cold of it. “What do you want?”

“Not what I want. It’s what someone else wants.”

“And that is?”

“To meet you.”

“Well, they can’t come in here. Everyone’s sleeping.”

“
Really?
” Jancy replied, rolling her eyes. “This individual wouldn’t fit in here anyway. So come with me.”

Niksabella patted her face dry, dropped the towel on the table, and stared at her friend. “Too big to fit?”

Jancy let her jaw drop and shook her head as if Niksabella’s hesitancy was the most dumbfounding thing she’d ever seen. The girl mouthed the words, “
Come. On.”

Niksabella started toward the door. “If it’s one of Evana’s servants come to get their cleric back, they’re getting a piece of my mind. My brother still needs her—”

“No, not out in the hall. Not downstairs. Outside.”

“Outside? In the cold?” Niksabella glanced at her brother. Since the
event
some days ago, Nikselpik had been resting peacefully and was starting to come around, sitting up and talking, eating on his own, even asking when was the soonest he could have a pint. He even demanded everyone leave the room when he needed to relieve himself, which of course he’d been unable to request before. He was becoming his foul-mouthed and demanding self again, and it all pointed to a quick recovery.

Fara was on duty. She sat in a high-backed chair with her legs crossed on the seat, watching Nikselpik while she read from a very large book resting in her entire lap. The cleric glanced up and gave Niksabella a crooked smile, a
cute
smile, and Niksabella responded in kind.

Her brother was in good hands.

“He’ll be fine,” Jancy said. Then she made a ridiculously strained face and hunched her shoulders in a fair impersonation of her brother. In a cracking, whispering voice, she said, “It’s just snow, Nika. Frozen water falling from the sky. Beautiful bastard, it is. Up to no good, I tell you. It’s out to get every one of us! Where’s my flagon?”

Niksabella found herself clutching her mouth with both hands so the giggles would remain trapped in her cheeks. It would certainly do her some good to get out of this stuffy room. She smiled. “Okay, okay. Let me get my coat.”

#

Niksabella stood on the Golden Cog Inn’s wide front porch, admiring the view of Seacog Harbor and the Sea of Wailing beyond. Winter was shaking its fists, and the sky hung low, leaving the surrounding lands locked in a perpetual gray haze. A light dusting of snow had blessed this first part of the winter quarter called Oktain, and Niksabella considered herself lucky to be spending her days in the comfort of a warm room rather than her chilly workshop.

Of course, she sometimes worried about her
stuff
, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d not been back to her place since being arrested by Raulnock, and she couldn’t imagine going back now. With her tin doll missing, it was hard to feel like tinkering ever again. No, she was quite happy with her current company and had come to think of them as a merry little band. Lili, Fara, and Jancy, and the Thrasperville fellows: the whimsical Uncle Brit, kind Terrence, hearty Flay, and of course Termund.

Speaking of him, Termund was out on errands—he always seemed to be—and she would be sure to give him an exceedingly long but not-too-desperate hug when he came back. Perhaps they could steal some alone time in his quarters.

Niksabella looked forward to exploring a new life with Termund away from the injustices of Hightower. Stuck in this city, though, and connected to her past, she felt anxious, and she wanted to be away, sever all ties. It would be hard leaving Fritzy behind, but Niksabella wasn’t part of the privileged class in Hightower, protected, with open opportunities. She needed to forge her own path in a place where greed grew in smaller patches.

And with her brother’s improved health, Niksabella would soon see if leaving Hightower was the remedy she needed. She was fairly sure it was.

And while many had contributed to Niksabella’s escape from Raulnock, Termund’s graciousness had kept them together and given them a way to recharge and remain connected while her brother recovered. At first, Termund’s kin had approached the situation in room eight with some trepidation, but Termund had explained the gravity in fine detail, and soon, Uncle Brit, Terrence, Flay, and the rest of the Thrasperville contingent not only understood their plight but had become quite protective of them.

She smiled and took in a healthy breath of fresh air.
A family, of sorts.

The Cog was a grand old establishment resting on the northernmost point of Hightower Hill, an outcrop of rock half a mile south of the River Wreck Dam, which turned the Manufacture River northward and downward to the sea some miles beyond. A T-shaped establishment with the short side comprising the great room and miscellaneous facilities and the long side stretching along the ridge to provide an amazing view of Seacog Harbor, the inn was reserved for only the highest ranking visitors and their respective retinues. The Cog was the perfect mix of gnomish ingenuity and personal refinements: auto-lifts carried gnomes between the bottom and fourth floors (although Niksabella never used them), mechanical arms fluffed pillows, laundry chutes stood ready to receive dirty clothing, and room temperatures could be adjusted with the turn of a knob. Endless supplies of hot snolt and glorious fruits, wines, and pastries were delivered by a mechanized track system to receiving ports in each room. All it took was the pull of a lever or a tug of the chain and there you are.

“This way, Nika.”

Jancy leaped from the porch and started north up a rise toward a frayed outcrop that looked like several giant stones cut into vertical slivers. Niksabella had no choice but to follow, pulling her coat tighter before dropping to the ground and running to catch up. She wanted to get this over with and back to her warm room!

A thought struck her as she approached Jancy, who waited halfway to the base of the rocky monolith. Niksabella didn’t know a thing about her. The girl always vanished without warning, gone for long stretches at a time, as if purposefully avoiding conversations longer than ten words. She was still playful, yes, but so removed at the same time.

Niksabella glanced at Jancy as she came up, allowing her eyes to linger longer than normal, checking Jancy’s expression for any hint of where they were going. Jancy’s slight features were windswept, pale with a hint of rose at the tips of her cheeks. Her green eyes looked everywhere
but
at Niksabella, and her springy gait seemed a bit contrived; the one thing about Jancy Niksabella had picked up on was the girl’s propensity to always be in motion, or at least to be
thinking
about being in motion, even when she was standing still.

They stopped at the base of the stone, gazing up its massive height. Niksabella wondered what was so important that it couldn’t wait until after a warm breakfast in the Cog’s great room or even the study. She glared at Jancy, playfully, offering a smile, hoping for an explanation.

“Thanks for coming,” Jancy said, biting her lip, turning to face the stone. She put her hands into the nooks and crannies and climbed. “In here.”

Niksabella stayed put, watching Jancy as she squeezed into one of the gaps. Jancy’s face popped back out. “What?”

“You’ve hardly spoken a word to me in days, and now you want me to follow you inside a rock?”

Jancy sighed. “I know it sounds strange, Nika, but you have to trust me. There’s a lot at stake, and he just wants you to listen.”

“Who?”

“You should probably just see for yourself.”

Niksabella crossed her arms, reaffirming her intention to remain at the base of the rock. “What have you been doing this entire time? You disappear for hours, sleeping Tock knows where. When you
are
around for more than a quarter of an hour, you barely pick at your food before running off again. Don’t get me wrong, Jancy, we wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you, but I must admit I find your behavior rather odd.”

Jancy frowned. “I… I’m not capable of sitting in one place for very long.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Plus, someone needed to keep an eye on the rest of the world while you hens mothered your little
chick
.”

She had a point. “Oh very well, but it doesn’t begin to explain where you’ve been.”

“This isn’t a good time to discuss
exactly
where I’ve been or what,
exactly
, I’ve been doing.”

“You’re the one who woke
me
up as I recall.”

Jancy sighed even longer this time and pulled herself far enough out of the crevice to sit. She put one foot against the opposite wall while her other leg swung above Niksabella’s head. “I’ve been vetting.”

“Vetting?” The wind was unimpressed with Niksabella’s threadbare coat, and her teeth chattered the word.

“Finding answers. For example, hanging outside Raulnock’s window, making sure he and his merry band of bastards aren’t plotting some heinous revenge. Aaand…” Jancy dragged the word out, “making sure no one on the High Council decided to take up the First Wizard’s cause. I’ve also been out to the Southland farms and beyond, keeping tabs on all the fun happening out that way. Running errands, calling in favors, gathering allies.
Protecting
you.”

Despite the cold, Niksabella felt warm blood rush to her face. While Jancy was a mystery, she was a
good
mystery, the
best.
Hard to imagine life without her right now.
“I’m sorry, Jancy. I didn’t mean to sound
unappreciative
. But you have to admit, this is all very strange, coming out here in the cold, standing by a rock. It’s not my usual…
thing
.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Nika. Just trust me.”

Niksabella let out a puffy breath, gave Jancy as sure a smile as she could, and reached up for some help. Jancy grasped her hands and pulled her into the crevice. It made Nika think of climbing into a big beef loaf where the ends had sort of collapsed but the middle pieces remained relatively upright. It wasn’t so bad inside, protected from the wind and standing on a flat stretch of rock. A warm glow emanated from deep inside the stone’s core. She followed Jancy, careful to step where the taller girl did, bypassing gaps and loose rock, until finally dropping down into a hollowed-out area.

Lantern light illuminated the space, and a heatstick
lay on the ground, keeping out the worst of the chill. Several large boulders lay strewn about, and Jancy leaped up to sit on one, eyes darting around, hands not far from the hilts of her daggers.

What so nervous?
Niksabella had just begun to relax again until seeing this.