Villains by Necessity (17 page)

For a moment, Arcie thought Sam had vanished again, but then saw him, a slightly different patch among the shadows, looking at what appeared to be a large, cracked, round-bottomed bowl on a tottering pile of sea crates.

Outside, Robin breathed a sigh of relief, chest and sides giving a deep heave, and twitched his beloved, beautiful tail thoughtfully. He was glad to be out of that cramped thieves' den and away from the staring eyes of the villains. Time to do some long-overdue reporting. He rolled up one white sleeve to show the delicate silver filigree bracelet set with two cloudy gemstones, the gift and token of Mizzamir. With thumb and forefinger he pressed the gemstones, tensing himself for the transition.

It was more unnerving than Mizzamir had said: a sensation of the ground wiggling under his hooves, a brief moment of speed, and a smell like cedar that faded into the familiar scent of lavender and ozone so characteristic of the Silver Tower, in the Castle of Diamond Magic. He opened his eyes and saw Mizzamir look up from his desk.

"Why, Robin of Avensdale! I was beginning to become concerned! How have you fared?"

"With some difficulty, your Greatness," stammered Robin, quickly doffing his hat in respect. He related the happenings thus far, including the party's secretive visits to the cavern of the Mad Godling and the thieves' den in Tailerand. Mizzamir listened thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on a pile of parchment on his desk. The sunlight made the dust motes in the room shine like tiny suns.

"Interesting," Mizzamir said when he had finished.

"Excellent reporting, your minstrel training has served you well. We have done well in choosing you as our agent." Robin blushed deeply and scuffed his forehooves on the floor, looking down bashfully. Mizzamir smiled at his discomfiture, then his face grew thoughtful again.

"Hmm ... it would almost seem ... but surely they cannot have that in mind. Stay here awhile, Robin, and rest yourself, until you can meet with the villains tomorrow.

One of the servants will show you to a spare room ... your aura indicates weariness." He smiled and rang a summoning bell. Robin allowed himself to be led off to a small room with a floor-comer bed, as the centaurs used, and curled himself up on it with a yawn, and was asleep before the last strands of his waterfall tail had finished settling.

Back in the thieves' den in Tailerand, Kimi and Arcie were poring over the parchment with the prophecy of the Mad Godling written upon it in Valerie's sharp liquid handwriting. They had partaken of a late meal and had a nap, while the young thief herself went out on her various rounds, dressed in her becoming clothes to lull the unwary while she harvested a living from picking their pockets. In the early afternoon, they made their plans.

Valerie stood looking over their shoulders, while her raven hopped about among the clutter, snapping up spiders and the occasional young mouse, croaking softly.

Sam had returned to inspecting the bowl. He thought he could almost make out words in the bird's noises; it sounded like a gruff old man muttering to himself. He watched it as it picked up a knitting needle to winkle a beetle out of a crack and wondered exactly how intelligent the creature was. It winked at him and snapped up the beetle with a tiny disgusting scrunchy noise, its throat feathers puffing. Kaylana wandered over, gave the bowl he was examining a brief glance, and muttered, "Wyvem eggshell."

Kimi chewed on the end of the inkstick she was using to make notes. "Town where they first met ... that's Tailerand, we're assuming,"They' being the Heroes.

Then ... "The center of the smuggler's net' ... net, net ... smuggler's net. Let me think ... smugglers. Heroes, Tailerand ... there's no place I know of called Smuggler's Net, but it would make sense that everything in these riddles would have something to do with the Heroes..."

"A net, used to catch smugglers?" suggested Arcie.

"Did the Heroes ..."

"Yes!" cried Kimi suddenly. "That has to be it! Mr.

Macrory, I'm with you and your friends. Let's bring the world back to the way it was, when we all were free. I admit I don't see any signs of the world being, uh, sublimated, but if there's any chance to return the world to the good old days, I'm all for it. And I know exactly where the net for smugglers must be."

A short while later, after Kimi had changed from her skirts into a sensible set of leggings and tunic and armed herself with a long rapier and several daggers, they gathered a few candle lanterns from the clutter and set off down into the dark back passages. Kimi led the way, Arcie following alongside, then Valerie, Sam, and Kaylana, with Blackmail bringing up the rear, trying to walk quietly and occasionally having to duck because of the low ceiling. Kimi explained as they travelled: "Back just before the War proper, supposedly, there was an evil trade of smugglers in Tailerand, and one of the first things the Heroes did, when they had all met here, was decide to rid the town of this menace. The smugglers, hundreds of them, operated in a series of catacombs under the sewers, and the Heroes won by trapping them in there and then rerouting the floodwater systems through those tunnels. A lot of the place gave way, sunk and settled. One of my gang's initiation rituals was to spend the night down in there; it's supposedly haunted."

"Did you see anything?" inquired Arcie. The idea of ghosts had always intrigued him; being able to walk through walls! That would be quite useful. Kimi shook her head.

"Ghosts would be unlikely, of course," Valerie added, as she walked along the dim flickering tunnel gracefully, her huge purple eyes dark with their pupils dilated. "The undead require negative energy to function, and these days there's not much of it about."

They wandered on through the tunnels. The air was cold and close, with a definite pong of sewage. Kimi led them in detours from the main sewer pipes and drains, but soon they had to extinguish their lanterns because, Kimi explained, of the danger of pockets of explosive gas that sometimes collected at these levels. The tunnels now, however, were lit with the faint iridescent glow of the mossy slime that covered walls and ceiling, while the floor was a dark siup of mud and slurry. The smell was less noticeable after awhile, and soon the only one bothered by it was Valerie, who fastidiously kept a fold other cloak over her nose and mouth.

"And about a flowing stair..." Kimi shook her head.

"That I've never heard of or seen. I guess we'll have to just get to the 'center of the smuggler's net' and look for it."

They were now already in what appeared to have been a more habitable part of the underground. Though piles of rubble and rotting supports jammed every corner, and the moss grew thickly, the tunnels looked more like corridors, and occasionally broken-in rooms, full of decay and rats, could be seen. Kimi stepped quickly and silently through the passages, counting corridors under her breath. Occasionally, she'd make a wrong guess, and they would backtrack, nevertheless it was impressive how well she found her way about. Kaylana noticed that she and Arcie both moved with the same kind of careful, light grace, especially surprising in the short and seemingly ungainly Barigan. Sam moved in a similar fashion, but his gait was ever so slightly smoother, less predictable, and more predatory. Kimi called back to the others from where she and Arcie were leading the way. "We should be getting close to the center about now ... keep an eye out."

They wandered through the small maze of broken rooms and passages that marked the center of the ancient smuggler's den, and wandered back through them again, but saw nothing. At last they stopped to rest.

"No sign of a stair, flowing or otherwise," Sam remarked, knocking dottle from his boots.

"You mean we've gone through all this filth for nothing?" snarled Valerie in disgust. Blackmail leaned back against the wall, and Kaylana sighed and stooped to pat a small rat that had wandered out of a crack to sniff at her sandals. Kimi looked around, and Arcie took off his cap and scratched his head in thought.

"Flowing stair ... wait a tic. Kimi, what time is high tide here?"

"Around four, this time of month ... why?" Kimi looked at him.

"What time are it now?"

"Close to it," said Sam from the shadows. "Half-past three or so, I'd say." He'd always had a good timesense.

"Then wait," said Arcie. "Just sit here and wait."

They waited. Kaylana fed the rat a few scraps of bread from the pockets of her robe, and Arcie lit up his pipe again, despite warnings from the others about the flammable gas pockets. Valerie, bored, carved sigils in the moss with her fingernail, and Blackmail just stood against a wall, unmoving. Sam decided to strike up a conversation with Kimi.

"Kaylana said that was a piece of wyvern eggshell you had back in your room," he began. "How did you happen to come by that? I've never seen such a thing before."

Kimi sighed, and took out a dagger (she drew it lefthanded, Sam noted, and the weapon was in fairly poor condition; it obviously had not seen much use) and began to pry up bits of moss from the floor with it absently.

"That's a long story ... but, seeing as we don't have much to do here anyway, I'll tell it. Back a couple years ago, after I was on my own, I was in a tavern and I heard a group of men talking about how they were going to go kill the wyvem. This wyvem, it used to live out on the sea-islands you can just see from the docks. The fishermen and traders had learned to avoid coming within about fifty ship-lengths of the island, or the wyvem would attack them. It was pretty simple, as they didn't need to go that close to get to the fishing waters or the trade routes. Sometimes it was even considered lucky to see it, if you were far away."

"I should think that would be one of the qualifications, certainly," Sam put in with a smile. Kimi nodded.

"But these men got the town very upset about it, accusing them of cowardice that they let the evil thing survive out there, and bully them away from better fishing waters and whatever treasure it had stolen from the sunken ships, that it must be keeping out on that island.

Finally one of the fishermen volunteered to take them out there on his boat, under cover of night, so that they could kill it, for a share of the treasure.

"Well, as I said, I just happened to be listening, and I thought,"Treasure, that would be a nice thing to have around the place.' I found the ship the fisherman spoke of, and when they set sail that night I was hidden in one of the cargo holds, which they really should put better locks on. By the way, I don't suppose you have any use for a couple pounds ofelgerite, do you?"

"Nope, sorry ... I'm not much of a cook. Ask the nasty with the raven."

"Didn't think so. You're an assassin, aren't you?"

Kimi inquired cautiously.

Sam nodded. "Don't worry though. We're... I'm, not quite as insane as people would have you think."

"I was going to say, you don't seem so, except for that you're running around on this weird quest of yours. Anyway, where was I?"

"In the cargo hold, with the elgerite."

"Right. So anyway, the boat pulls up into the shallows, and the men, all armored and all, slip off into the water, and I follow them. It's pre-dawn dark, no moon, IS and we climb ashore. They head off inland, talking about spoor and lairs, and I follow, mousey quiet, behind them.

It's getting paler up dawn when we get to a big cliffside, with a ledge and a sort of scraped-out hollow in it. I can't really see anything yet, but the men are all excited and there's this smell in the air ... we're working our way closer, sort of up and along the cliffside; it was really rough and easy to climb, but high; I guess the wyvem needed the drop in order to take off. Anyway, just as we're coming in closer, the sun comes over the horizon, and we see it. It's all curled up at the mouth of the hollow; that's what made it look so dark. It's a shiny, blueblack color, like a beetle, all tiny little round beady scales, about so big-" She indicated a size about twice that of a tellin, about the circumference of a circle formed by the thumb and forefinger. "The men all grab for weapons, I don't notice because I'm looking at the wyvern. I didn't even notice if it had any treasure visible. It looked so unreal ... but just then, the wind changed, in the wyvern's favor.

"It woke up with a noise like a huge snake. It looked huge ... later they said it was only twenty-three feet, twice with the tail... but it was like this mass of black scales and spines and wings that kept uncoiling and unfolding, making a noise more angry and evil than anything I had ever heard. I was terrified, but all I could think of was how deadly beautiful it was. The men were all expecting it to fly, but it didn't ... it just sat there, wings puffed out, coiled up like a snake to strike, with a crest of spines all around its head that it rattled, and its eyes were orange. I thought it didn't have legs at first, but then I saw them, tucked up in the coils; just rear legs, like a hawk's. I thought: It's scared, it wants us to go away, to go away and leave it alone. The men had all been expecting it to charge, I know, and they were all ready for it, but it just sat there, hissing and swaying. Once it spat at them, a spray of yellow mist, poison I guess, but it was too far away, while the men talked amongst themselves.

Then they all unslung bows and crossbows and started shooting.

"They were good shots, I'll admit that. That wyvern was spattered; some of the arrows bounced off the scales, but most of them, at medium range, went into the wings and neck. The wyvern hissed, almost more a scream than a hiss, backed up, and struck, spitting again. The men all dodged and fired again. The wyvern thrashed around, trying to defend its lair and attack at the same time ... and that was when it saw me. I was hiding a little behind the men, higher up the cliff, behind a rock, watching, and suddenly its eyes met mine." Kimi paused. "I never want to look into eyes like those again. That creature was so evil, so dark, and yet had a spirit and pride and will so many times greater than mine ..." She shivered. Sam nodded sympathetically, and Kimi continued.

"Then one of the crossbow bolts took it in the throat.