Dangerous Games (14 page)

Stomach twisting, Sunbright rolled over to eclipse the sight. He clung to rock with both hands. Something on the ceiling caught his attention.

“Oh!”

“What?” the boy asked, looking up.

Sunbright pointed to long, shallow scratches in the smooth stone above. “This was a bear cave when the mountain was upright. Those are claw marks.”

The boy peered, then looked back over the edge. “You live down there?”

Sunbright rolled, looked again. The idea of a bear cave, a familiar, homey image, helped anchor him, cheered him. “I did,” he said. “Though not here exactly, and not in this time. But yes.”

“You get eaten by bears down there, I heard.”

“No,” Sunbright chuckled. “At least, not many do. It’s a fine place. I’ll take you there someday.”

“You will?” The boy’s voice was a pipe of excitement.

Sunbright was surprised himself, but he meant it. “Yes,” he said. “Living in the air, under a poisoned city, is no life for a boy, or anyone. It’s too far from the natural order of things, the way the gods laid out our lives. I have no idea what, Rolon, but we must do something. Your lives here are too fragile. A good start would be to get down there.

“But to do that,” he muttered, “I’d need Candlemas….”

When the two returned, Knucklebones was waiting. With a nod of her head, she steered Sunbright back down the tunnel and Rolon away.

Out of Rolon’s earshot, she told the barbarian, “We need to talk.”

“Very well.”

Sunbright waited patiently, and for some reason, this irritated her. Her single dark eye flashed as she demanded, “Can you fight that well all the time?”

In answer, he extended both arms, showed her scars beyond counting. “I’ve gained these and lived to tell it.”

“Can you steal? Thieve? Find things without getting caught?”

Honest, he shook his head and told her, “I know naught about thieving. In my homeland, we gather the supplies we need. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes a struggle, but no, we’ve no need to steal anything. But I can learn.”

She puffed. “What are you trained in, besides brawling?”

Sunbright scratched a scar idly. Knucklebones had illuminated stripes along her wrists for light, but their ghostly glow did little to light their faces. “To tell the truth, I was training to be a shaman.”

“A what?”

“Oh,” Sunbright fumbled for words. “Um. A healer among my people, but more than that. A warrior, but more a prophet, a seer, a reader of portents. Dreams are very important, for they teach us—”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand and said, “Why was your training interrupted? Did you rebel against your teacher?”

“What? Oh, no,” he said. Now he fiddled with his hands, jamming his thumbs in his belt. “You learn on your own by embarking on a spirit quest. But I lost the ability to learn along the way.”

“How?”

“I was sucked dry by a—” He stopped and looked around uneasily. This tunnel could match the Underdark, and be just as haunted. “—by a thing that sucks spirits. I lived, but there’s, uh, a hole in my soul. It’s a wound that won’t close.”

Like the ache in his heart for the lost Greenwillow.

“Just what we need,” snipped the woman. “A big booby with holes in his guts and probably his head. Well, well let you stay until Ox feels better. After that, just remember I give the orders, and you better hop to.”

“Agreed,” said Sunbright solemnly. “May I ask you a question?”

Immediately suspicious, she snapped, “What?”

“How long have you lived in these tunnels?”

“Since before I can remember. I’m a foundling. Do you know what that is?”

The shaman-to-be ignored the sarcasm. “Where did you get that knife? It looks elven.”

“It is, I’m told. It came with me, inherited since forever.”

And without another word, she stalked off down the tunnel to the homestead.

Sunbright was left talking to himself in the dark. “Another thing I forgot to add. Shamans are teachers. But you need to have the student listen in order to explain something….”

Karsus was away. No one knew where. With all the inbred intrigue of the empire, Candlemas first suspected that everyone knew but wouldn’t tell, but even pestering folks couldn’t make them spill secrets, and he concluded that really, no one knew where Karsus had gone. This was both mysterious and frightening, considering how heavily the empire depended on the man.

Assigned no particular tasks—no one could even guess what Karsus wanted Candlemas to do—the friendless mage wandered the halls, laboratories, workshops, animal collections, and libraries. Everywhere were fascinating magical works, most of which he couldn’t understand, but idleness made him itchy. At least, slaving for Lady Polaris, he’d had too much work to be bored. Uselessness was a new sensation.

Finally, he sought out Lady Aquesita. He told himself he was merely being useful, seeking out Karsus’s only living relative for practical advice. But in fact, he had a nagging doubt something else pushed him. Another weird sensation he couldn’t finger.

By now he’d oriented himself somewhat. Karsus controlled the top of a low hill called Mystryl’s Mound by some. There had originally been two mansions atop it and a half dozen smaller ones encircling it. As his importance grew, Karsus had bought or been given all of them, and the city had erected an encircling wall and called the entire complex Castle Karsus. The eccentric magician had then, as if to put his own stamp on it, had the buildings linked and modified and added to, with some torn down or turned at a crazy angle, until the whole sprawl was brain wrenching to look at. The most disturbing aspects for Candlemas were the doors that opened from third floors into midair, or the winding staircases that just stopped.

But Lady Aquesita had been given a smaller mansion—Candlemas suspected she’d coveted the gardens—stripped all rococo from her sight, painted it a lovely rose, and concentrated on improving the grounds. So his sandals crunched on plain white gravel as he wended his way to her “simple cottage” of only sixty-odd rooms and its acres of gardens both symmetrical and wild.

A manservant conducted Candlemas to a stretch of garden behind a tall screen of blue-green spruces. There Lady Aquesita directed a dozen gardeners in the planting of a wagonful of cuttings and small bushes. She wore a gown of spring green that featured gold lace tucked and folded to hide her ample curves. She was issuing clear and polite orders for the plants’ placement when Candlemas rounded the corner. Oddly, she stopped in mid sentence to brush back her hair and smile brightly.

“Good day, milady.” Candlemas found his stomach fluttering as he spoke, as if he’d eaten rye bread and beer for breakfast. “I, uh, just came to see you. Or, how you were doing. Or, rather, uh, whether you knew where your c-cousin was. Karsus, I m-mean,” Damn it, why was he stuttering?

Aquesita licked her lips and fussed with her hair some more. “Good day, Master Candlemas,” she said brightly. “I trust you’re well.”

She glanced at the servants and gardeners, told them to carry on, then took his arm to lead him along another path. Candlemas supposed she had some secret to convey. He found the touch of her cool hand tingly, as if she were enchanted. Or enchanting him.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Candlemas. I wanted to show you some of my work. I like to show off my gardens, and I get so few visitors.”

The mage nodded vaguely. He’d come to ask about Karsus, though. Or had he already? He couldn’t recall. What was wrong with him?

She seemed to read his mind, saying, “Oh, Karry is away. That’s Karsus, my little cousin. No one knows where, least of all unimportant me. But he’ll return shortly and throw the whole castle into a tizzy. But I suspect you want something to do in the meantime. You seem the responsible, productive sort I so admire. I suggest you find an unused bench and work at whatever you like. Any of the apprentices will fetch whatever you need. Karry has nine hundred of them, I think he said once. I’m sure someone as clever as you can think of lots to do.”

Candlemas found himself grinning like an idiot. He hadn’t felt clever lately, actually the opposite, since he knew less magic than most of the apprentices. But her words made him feel clever, against all logic.

“That’s kind of you, Lady Aquesita. I was wondering—”

“Please, call me Sita,” she interrupted. Her smile seemed brighter than the sun. Her cheeks rounded nicely, he thought, and were dimpled at the corners enticingly. Funny he’d never noticed that on a woman before.

As they strolled along a blue slate path, Candlemas suddenly wasn’t concerned about Karsus at all, only walking and talking with Sita. Perhaps the outside air had infected his brain, sucking out the nourishment. His feet felt lighter too, and the grass and flowers smelled heavenly.

“Oh, I can keep busy,” he assured her. “But what did you want to show me? I’d love to see anything you find interesting. What were you directing so competently back there?”

Strangely, she blushed, and tightened her grip on his arm, tugging his elbow to brush her round bosom. When Candlemas jerked away, she deftly drew him back and said, “Speaking of work, that’s more of mine. As I mentioned before, my lifelong project has become the gathering of the cream of the empire. Inside, I’ve tried to collect the most beautiful artifacts our people can fabricate. Out here, I collect their natural works.”

She stopped at a long raised bed of small flowers, all the colors of the rainbow jumbled in soft petals.

“These, for instance,” she continued, “are every variety of pansy I’ve been able to locate. I correspond with a great many people, you see, and humbly ask that they send me cuttings. They do, of course, from all over the empire. When I started this bed, there were only the white and the purple. But see how many others the Netherese have bred? I try to cultivate every useful and beautiful plant for the betterment of our empire. Really, in my own small way, I emulate my famous cousin.”

“Admirable. Wonderful.” Candlemas fingered the pansy petals as he spoke. They had a fine fuzz that softened their brightness. “And this is no small effort. Anyone would admire your taste and good sense. You must be the talk of the empire.”

“Oh, no.” Aquesita rubbed her nose to hide a flush. “No, I spend more time alone that anything else. There are sometimes whole series of balls held and I’m not even invited, just forgotten …” Her voice trailed off, sounding infinitely sad to Candlemas. He wanted to do something to assuage her loneliness, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think what to do.

Aquesita sniffed and wiped her eyes while Candlemas looked elsewhere. Here, raised beds surrounded a croquet green with a babbling fountain in the center. Bushes with huge white flowers screened more gardens. The mage started when a pair of white-spotted deer no more than knee-high padded from under the bush to crop foliage.

The lady went on, “It’s good to have a cause and busywork. Between corresponding, managing the rest of Karry’s estates, and encouraging artists at the guild, I’m never very lonely. And of course, I see Karry when I can. He can be difficult—not ornery, you understand, just preoccupied—but I try to steer him toward creative, helpful magic projects, not frivolous and destructive ones. But he loves to pursue everything, and … well, you must know how it is.”

Candlemas nodded, not smiling now. He thought of the ragged prisoner suffocated in the testing of an imprisonment spell, the random conjuring of strange beasts from who-knew-where, and how one had killed three apprentices with its unearthly screech.

But Aquesita was talking. “… Karry will be hailed as the empire’s savior in time. With his abilities and the guidance of wise rulers, the Netherese Empire will stretch beyond the horizons, expanding ever outward to the far seas. We’ll bring peace and justice, and—but silly me, I’m rambling. Perhaps, when things settle down, there’ll be a need for all these plants, and new beds faraway where they can prosper.”

“Well, please then,” he said, “show me more.” Her bright smile rewarded him. Candlemas covered her cool hand with his own as they walked the gardens, she pointing out this and that plant, he murmuring appreciatively. But he felt a shiver as from a cloud. From hints and glimpses he’d seen of the empire, it was neither prospering nor bettering the world. Food riots, obsessions with gambling and assassination, the casual destruction of the poor, insensitivity to growing problems… if the empire were to grow to new heights, its “wise rulers” had better see to shoring up the foundation first.

And may the gods have pity if mad Karsus really did rule the empire.

“Push this up. But quietly.”

Shifting Harvester’s scabbard and bracing his feet, the barbarian put his back against the stone grate and heaved upward. Instantly one of the twins, Zykta by the scar on her cheek, stuck her head past him like a topknotted gopher. “Clear!”

“Slide it over,” said Knucklebones in her low, dulcet voice.

Sunbright obliged, grunting, and stood up in the hole. Zykta had already climbed through. She hunkered on her skinny hams in the dark cellar, peering at oblong shells on the floor. Sunbright sniffed and asked her, “What are those? Dead cockroaches?”

Knucklebones elbowed him aside, deftly slapped her hands on the rim and vaulted through the hole like a wildcat. The barbarian felt the caress of her warm leathers. Her lean muscled neatness reminded him of Greenwillow. She squatted in bare feet and inspected the round carapaces. “We catch them and kill them,” she explained, “then spread their shells on the floor near our exits. If they’re crushed, we know someone’s been sniffing around.”

“Hmm. Smart.”

Sunbright levered himself through the hole. Although lean for a big man, he had trouble wriggling through. That was why the giant Ox hadn’t come this time. Normally, Knucklebones had explained, he lifted the heavy grates that were the gang’s best protection against assault.

Sunbright shuffled aside while the rest of the gang hopped up. Aba, the other twin; Mother; Rolon toting Lothar’s thin, weighted chain; a sunken-chested man named Hute who coughed whenever he talked. And Sunbright, clubfooted and clumsy compared to these silent thieves. When he accidently trod on a cockroach, making the tiniest crunch, they all froze, then turned to stare. Their eyes were ghostly in the phosphorescent light cast by Knucklebones’s hands.