Twilight Falling (18 page)

“Next time those are teeth you’re spitting,” he said, and he shoved the man, stumbling, past Jak and toward the mage.

The easterner quickly recovered his balance, if not his dignity. He whirled around and started to advance on Cale, snarling. Vraggen reached out a hand and held him back. The man stared hate at Cale.

It was Riven’s turn to chuckle.

“Leave,” ordered Cale. “We’re operating on my terms now, and this little party is over.”

“For now,” Azriim said, and his smile disappeared.

With exaggerated care, Vraggen replaced the wand into the folds of his cloak.

“We shall do this your way for now, Erevis Cale,” the mage said, “but before we part, let me leave you with a reminder of the price the guard will pay if you do not turn the remainder of the globe over to me.”

He nodded to Azriim and the half-drow’s grin returned.

You will love this, said his voice in Cale’s head.

Slowly, so as not to give alarm, Azriim reached into an inner pocket of his cloak and withdrew something wrapped in a silken handkerchief. Cale’s stomach churned.

When Azriim unveiled the severed fingers that lay within, the half-drow’s grin widened. He cast them to the road, near Cale’s feet. The easterner smirked, though his gray eyes remained hard. Vraggen showed no emotion but his cloak pin, shaped like a jawless skull, seemed to leer.

“Those are three of his fingers, Cale,” the mage said. “Next time, it shall be his tongue. After that, only Savras can say. But you should know that I can maintain his life for some time even while removing substantial amounts of flesh, which I will do, if necessary. And after that, I will come for you.” Vraggen fixed his gaze on Cale. “Do not trifle with me, Cale. Is it clear to you that I am in earnest?”

It was, but Cale would not give the bastard the satisfaction of an acknowledgement.

“You were leaving, I believe,” said Cale.

Vraggen looked past Cale to Riven and said, “You could join me, Drasek. We were both Zhents once, allies even. I could use you now, and I can pay you well.”

Riven sneered, “You couldn’t pay me enough. Self-important dolts like you are the reason I left the Network in the first place.”

Vraggen’s eyes went hard. His lips twisted into a contemptuous smile.

“I frightened you the last time we met, did I not, Riven? Probably left you teary eyed in the street, bawling like a babe. Next time you won’t come back from that place.”

Riven started toward the wizard and said, “Frighten? Let me show you how frightened—”

Cale grabbed Riven’s cloak and stopped the assassin’s advance. Riven didn’t take his eye off the wizard.

“Take your hand off me, Cale.”

Cale could feel the tension in the assassin’s body.

“Not now, Riven.” He shook him once, hard. “Not now. But that time will come.”

Riven looked at him, let his body relax, then looked back to Vraggen.

“You’re already dead, mage,” the assassin said. “And you’ll never see me coming. After this little bit with the sphere is over, you’d better sleep with one eye open.”

Vraggen stared holes at them and said, “After this is over, I won’t sleep at all.”

Cale had no idea what that meant, but he’d had enough.

“Leave,” he ordered.

Vraggen looked to Cale, smiled, and nodded at Riven.

“It is well that you can control your dog, Cale,” he chuckled. “But, as you said, we were leaving. Azriim, gather up our dog and let us be on our way.”

Cale thought Vraggen wanted Azriim to retrieve Dolgan’s corpse, but to Cale’s utter amazement, Dolgan was still alive. The big man’s leg twitched. He gave a. wet groan. His armor and tunic were stained dark with enough blood to fill a well bucket but somehow he still breathed. Cale couldn’t believe it. His blow would have felled an ogre.

“Trickster’s hairy toes,” Jak breathed, and he shrank away from the big man.

Azriim sheathed his blade, stepped forward without a hint of wariness—Cale or Jak could have stabbed him through the chest—and helped Dolgan to his feet. Inexplicably, the wounds Cale had dealt the big man had already stopped bleeding.

“Hurt?” Azriim asked him.

“Yes.” Dolgan gave Cale a leer. Blood caked his teeth and mouth. “But it’s a good hurt.”

“Mind the clothes,” Azriim said, and he held the big man at arm’s length to keep Dolgan’s bloodstained tunic away from his finery.

In that moment, Cale thought with certainty that Dolgan must be insane, or a worshiper of Loviatar, or perhaps both.

Azriim and Dolgan backed off—Azriim eyeing Jak darkly—until they stood beside Vraggen and the little easterner near the mouth of the alley. Jak slid nearer to Riven and Cale.

“Two days, Cale,” Vraggen said. “For the guard’s take, do not be late and do not attempt any trickery.”

“You bring him to the Twisted Elm—intact—and you’ll have your sphere, intact.”

Vraggen nodded. Azriim gave a graceful bow.

“A pleasure, gentlemen,” said the half-drow, “and I use that term casually. I’ll look forward to our next meeting.”

“As will I,” said Cale, and promised violence with his gaze.

Riven pointed his swords at the easterner and added, “And if you step between me and your pet wizard again, maybe we’ll have our dance after all, eh?”

The easterner said nothing, merely spat, sheathed his blade, and glared.

“Until then,” Vraggen said, and he removed from his robes a teleportation rod similar to that used by the attackers in Stormweather Towers.

Each of the mage’s team removed a similar rod. A few turns of the bronze devices and all but Azriim were gone.

The half-drow delayed a fraction of a heartbeat, and in that moment, his laughing voice sounded in Cale’s head, What do you think of my new pants?

Then he too was gone. But for Dolgan’s blood on the ground of the alley, the combat might never have occurred.

Cale, Riven, and Jak stared at one another in silence for a long moment.

After a time, Jak summed up all of their thinking.

“Dark,” he cursed. “Dark and empty.”

Cale agreed. Who were these bastards?

“Your hand,” he said to Jak.

“Huh? Oh.”

Jak sheathed his punch dagger, took out his holy symbol, and intoned a prayer to Brandobaris. The skin of his hand closed completely. He flexed it, seemed satisfied.

“Now I need a smoke,” the halfling said. He took out his pipe and popped it in his mouth, though he didn’t light it.

“You?” Cale asked Riven, and indicated the slash the assassin had taken on his forearm.

“It’s shallow. Save the spell.”

Cale didn’t argue. The thought of using a healing spell on Riven made him uncomfortable anyway.

The assassin held the sleeve of his cloak against the wound and pressed hard to stop the bleeding.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cale said. “Nothing has changed. We still head for Jak’s contact.” He kneeled, repacked the half-sphere in his pack, and used a handkerchief—he habitually carried one; once a butler always a butler, he supposed—to pick up Ren’s fingers. They would serve as Cale’s talisman until he brought the young man back safely.

“Your sage is going to have two days,” Cale said to Jak. “I want to know what this sphere is before the meet at the Twisted Elm.” He looked at each of Riven and Jak in turn. “Whatever it is though, our priority remains getting Ren back safely. Agreed? He’s just a boy, caught up in this by Beshaba’s own ill luck.”

“Agreed,” said the halfling.

“Agreed,” said Riven, managing to sound only a little reluctant.

Cale sheathed his blade.

“That doesn’t mean we’re giving Vraggen the sphere,” he added. “That only means we’re getting Ren back alive. Either way, we hunt them down and kill them all afterward. Agreed?”

Riven sheathed his sabers, smiled hard, and said, “Agreed.”

Jak said in a softer tone, “Agreed. But…”

Cale looked at him and asked, “But?”

“Did you see how fast they healed, Cale?” Jak tapped the stem of his pipe on his chin the way he did when thinking hard. “Both the half-drow and the small one. And that big one with the axe? No one should have lived through that. Look at all the blood.”

Cale looked to the pool of blood congealing on the cobbles of the alley—Dolgan’s blood. He thought the same thing.

Riven spat. “So they’re hearty whoresons. I’ve seen men like that before. Takes more to put ‘em down, is all. But we saw that they bleed; they’ll die.”

“That’s more than hearty,” Jak said, shaking his head. He lowered his voice. “Those aren’t mental mages. In fact, I… I don’t think they’re human.”

“Dung,” cursed Riven. “You’re mad, Fleet. They’re as much men as us.”

Cale ignored Riven. He knew Riven lacked subtlety, in manners as well as thought, and he knew of the assassin’s distaste for things magical. Riven would not consider the possibility that Vraggen and his team might be other than they appeared because he didn’t want to consider it. Strange for a man who had gone so far in the Zhents, an organization rife with wizards.

To Cale though, Jak’s point seemed well taken. All of Vraggen’s crew had demonstrated a lack of concern with wounds. Nine Hells, Dolgan seemed to enjoy being wounded! And all had healed rapidly—too rapidly. Azriim and the woman had shown telepathic powers, and they had the ability to look like other men.

“Shapeshifters,” Cale breathed. “Dark.”

He’d heard of creatures who could take the form of men—doppelgangers and their ilk—but he’d never encountered any, though rumors to that effect had swirled around the Faceless One back in Westgate. No wonder then that their imitations of the house guards had been so perfect.

Jak nodded and popped his pipe in his mouth.

“That’s what I was thinking,” the halfling said.

He pulled out a tindertwig, struck it on the cobbles, and lit up.

“Dark,” Cale oathed again.

Riven scoffed, but Cale heard the doubt in it.

“That makes it all the more important that we learn what this sphere really is,” Cale said. “I want to know what in the Nine Hells is going on.”

Vraggen’s remark about not needing sleep seemed more ominous. What was the mage after?

Riven shifted from foot to foot, as though full of anxious energy. He still had not sheathed his blades.

“Then let’s stop standing around in this damned alley and get to where we’re going,” said the assassin.

“Take us to this loremaster, little man,” Cale agreed.

“All right, but …” Jak said, pausing to blow out a cloud of smoke. “There’s something else, Cale. Your sword. Did you see how it made some kind of connection with the sphere.”

“I did,” Cale said.

He could no longer deny that his blade’s contact with the sphere had changed it somehow.

“So?” asked Riven.

Cale put his hand on the blade’s hilt and said, “That’s a question for later, not now.”

For now, all he needed to know was that its edge could still draw blood.

Moving quickly through the broad avenues and daytime street traffic, Cale, Riven, and Jak made their way uptown. Before long, the two-story brick and wood buildings of the Foreign Quarter gave way to the more elegant and architecturally varied worked-stone residences near the Temple District.

While far from the manses of Selgaunt’s Old Chauncel, the homes near Temple Avenue, mostly those of academics, artists with wealthy patrons, and priests, nevertheless indicated the relative wealth of the owners. Cut stone facades, glass windows, covered gardens, lacquered carriages, and gated, well-tended patios and walkways were the rule. Sculptures of magical beasts loomed in every plaza and perched on the corners of most roofs, often carved from the black veined marble imported from the nearby Sunset Mountains. Even the sewer grates, into which the road channels drained, were of cast bronze, with stylized dragons as lift handles.

Selgaunt soared skyward on all sides of the neighborhood. Against the skyline to the north, Cale could see the octagonal bell tower of the House of Song towering over the cityscape. Near it stood Lliira’s Spire, the elegant, limestone-faced tower of the Temple of Festivals, festooned as always with long, streaming pennons of green and violet.

To the north, on a high rise overlooking Selgaunt Bay, stood the many-towered, sprawling palace of the Hulorn. The complex looked as twisted and warped as the late ruler’s mind. The palace was slowly being abandoned by the dead Hulorn’s staff, while agents of the Old Chauncel looted its secrets and argued over who would be its next tenant.

“Nearly there,” Jak said. “That’s it. At the end of the road.”

Ahead, alone in a cul-de-sac, stood a stone house of the Colskyran style, called such after the mage-architect who had pioneered the style two decades earlier. Characterized by elaborate, magically-shaped stonework around the doors and windows, stylized downspouts, and colorful tiled roofs, Colskyran buildings could look as grand as any manse. Not so that home, where there were gaps in the roofing—broken tiles that had never been replaced—unrepaired cracks in the stone scrollwork around the windows, and crumbling mortar between the river stones in the low wall that surrounded the property. Broken statuary lay untended in the courtyard. Shrubs, creepers, and ivy had overgrown the lot. Cale thought that the flora must have grown wild and untended for years.

“This is where you Harpers keep your sage, Fleet?” Riven sneered. “Small wonder your people never knew what was going on.”

Jak turned on the assassin and his green eyes flared. “You keep your mouth shut, Drasek Riven.” In a softer voice, he added, “And I’m not a Harper anymore.”

Surprised, Riven looked as though he wanted to say something further but held his tongue.

In truth, Cale too wondered what sort of sage lived in a house like that.

“Jak,” Cale asked, “who is this loremaster?”

Jak pursed his lips. His hands went to the pockets of his trousers and he said, “His name is Sephris. Sephris Dwendon. He assisted the Harpers sometimes …”

Riven chuckled at that.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” snapped the halfling.

Cale interposed before Riven could make a reply.