A Magic Broken Read online

  Upstairs, the whore with the bloody nose had said, and she was on the landing. That meant that the dwarves, assuming they were in fact dwarves, were after something on the floor above that. Or someone.

  Sure enough, as soon as Nicolas reached the first floor, he saw the figure of a man, presumably another guard, lying dead or unconscious on the floor at the far end of the hall. The hall extended in both directions and formed a square around the open space of the stairwell. There were three doors on each side and two on the far end. The guard lay in front of one of them. The other was ajar, and the flickering glow of a candle or hearth fire inside was casting shadows that danced about the walls of the hall.

  “There,” Nicolas whispered. He sent two men around the left of the stairwell, while he and the other two went right. If anyone emerged from the room, they’d find their exit blocked unless they were amenable to a leap over the railing and the resultant plunge.

  As he crept closer to the half-open door, sudden terror flared within him as the darkness triggered a memory of a previous night filled with steel and fire and blood. He took a deep breath and steeled himself, fighting the urge to risk releasing the power held within his sword. Too soon… It was too dangerous.

  With a conscious effort, he conquered his mindless fear with fey humor. How ludicrous it would be for him to perish here and now, in a whorehouse brawl! His poor shade would bid fair to perish itself from sheer mortification.

  Nicolas leaped through the door frame with his teeth bared, holding the torch out before him in his left hand as he kicked the wooden door to the side.

  But no sword rose to meet his entrance, no giant double-bladed axe descended to split him from sternum to crotch. The room was not empty, but there was no danger to be found in it now. Death had already come to this place, and he had come in a merciless form for the distinguished, dark-haired man slumped lifelessly against the blood-spattered wall opposite to the door.

  But Death had not come alone. Someone had brought him here, and unless Nicolas was very much mistaken, that intruder had also taken someone else away. He cursed in helpless anger. One failure was mere chance. Two began to stink of bad fortune.

  “Check the other rooms,” he ordered the guard with the other torch. “Take him with you. There should be a few girls hiding in their rooms. When you find one, bring her here.” He turned to the guard standing next to him. “Do you know who that is?”

  “I think that might be Lord Baern, Captain. The banker.”

  “A big man in the city, then?”

  “Yes, Captain. Very big. He’s on the Council of Seven… Was on the council, I should say.”

  Nicolas groaned. This was ugly. He wasn’t sure exactly how this might complicate things, but he knew it wasn’t going to make them easier. The man was not only dead, but emasculated too. The first stroke had missed and opened his left thigh. The second one had rendered him a eunuch of the most extreme degree. Though not for very long, as the dead man’s unstained hands told Nicolas that the third stroke, the one that had killed him, must have followed almost immediately. There were at least two killers, he observed, as the wound on the dead man’s thigh was not very deep, whereas the killing blow had caved in the entire right side of the banker’s head.

  “Yes, it would appear there is now an open seat. Go to the front steps and get Lord Aetias’s attention when his coach passes by. Bring him up here and tell him to wait for me. There should be no danger. Whoever did this is already gone.”

  “Wait for you, Captain?” the man asked.

  “Someone did this. And they’re not here. So the question is, how did they leave and where are they going?”

  • • •

  Quadras Aetias looked as if he had been sick when Nicolas and the guard who accompanied him on his search of the brothel reached the top of the stairs for the second time that night. Even in the shadows cast by the candles that had been relit in the hallway, his face was visibly pale, and his hands were shaking.

  “Murdered,” he whispered harshly to Nicolas. “A Counciller of the Seven, murdered in my establishment!”

  “Lord Aetias,” Nicholas said, “you were not here. I can testify to that. There were a dozen witnesses, two dozen, who can testify on your behalf.”

  “No, I was not here. Unfortunately, that will make no difference!” Aetias smiled thinly. “An influential man, a banker of extraordinary importance, is dead. Upon my property. There will be an inquisition at the behest of the Council, and who knows what crimes will be uncovered? Some real, some imaginary, who can say? Whose hands are truly clean? I have wealth, I have influence, but not enough of either when it is the head of the House of Baern who lies dead in my establishment!”

  Nicolas saw his opportunity. “There is only one way, my lord. If we find the killers, you can bring them to the Council before you are questioned yourself. They will be tortured, they will confess, and there will be no question that you were a victim of circumstance.”

  Aetias laughed wildly, desperately.

  “If I find the killers? They have already disappeared into the night!”

  “No, my lord.” Nicolas shook his head. “They are dwarves. They have disappeared into the ground. I already found how they entered and departed. Come to the cellar and see.”

  “Dwarves?”

  “Exactly. And two or three dwarves, on foot, burdened by a whore, can hardly think to outrun a man on a horse. Give me two horses, two weeks’ provisions, and I will leave the city tonight if you can get me past the walls. I can find them. I guarantee it.”

  “Yes, yes, by all means, anything you need. But you intend to leave tonight? They cannot get past the walls tonight, not unless they know which guards can be bought, and I can’t imagine dwarves would.”

  “I tend to suspect the dwarves have their own means of entering and exiting the city, my lord. They built these walls, after all. They dug the sewers, as well. I imagine they’ll have their own ways in and out.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. No doubt you are correct.” Then he stopped, and his eyes narrowed. “How do you know about the whore, Captain?”

  Nicolas laughed. “When one comes upon a man lying dead and naked in a whorehouse, one need not be a philosopher to surmise there was a whore involved. I assume the dwarves were hired to find her, but instead of trying to buy her, they decided to keep their client’s gold by digging a tunnel underneath the building and taking her. I doubt they intended to kill Lord Baern. He merely chose an unfortunate time to go a-catting.”

  “Unfortunate indeed. And poor Baern too, of course. What they did to him…hideous, simply hideous. But you cannot go alone! I will give you ten men, no, twenty! Even if I am not placed under house arrest, the city guard will be posted outside my house. No one will dare to attack me unless the Council itself decides to act.”

  Nicolas shook his head. “I’ll travel faster with one or two men at most, if you have any that ride well. But first there is one thing I would like to know. Who was the whore? What sort of woman bears a price so high that she merits a team of dwarf assassins to steal her?”

  “No woman, Captain, but an elfess. The most exquisite beauty Malkan has ever seen, and all but immortal to boot!”

  Although Nicolas had been anticipating the answer, he nevertheless gritted his teeth with frustration when Quadras Aetias confirmed his hopes and rendered unnecessary any need to quiz the women of the brothel.

  “Can you imagine, Captain? Alone, she was worth more than this building and every useless whore in it!”

  She is worth far more than that, you fool, Nicolas thought savagely. She is worth far more than you can possibly imagine. So close, so close I was, and I missed her again. But she cannot have gone far, not if she is still in the company of the stump-legged ones.

  • • •

  Lodi breathed in the sweet morning air with a sense of relief. He was well-accustomed to being overground now, after his years as a slave in Amorr, but he had never developed any liking for the ci
ties of Men. Even dwarven-built places like Malkan had been made disgusting and dirty, reeking of decay and Man filth. Having to endure the wide open spaces and the ominous red morning sky was a small price to pay for finally escaping the walls of the stinking mountain city.

  Few, if any, Men knew, but four of the five dwarf inns in Malkan were actually underground. Their imposing three-level stone edifices were mostly a sham to deceive the tall ones, as with the exception of the ground-floor taverns, the rooms overground were used for nothing more than storage. All five inns were connected via underground tunnels that permitted dwarves to move freely about under the city. And there were two tunnels that extended beneath the great walls, one under the north gate and the other pointing to the south.

  Lodi glanced over at the elf girl they’d rescued. She looked like a tall, half-starved child curled up underneath a woolen blanket. She was wearing the dead man’s blood-stained tunic over her green silk dress, and her slender feet, clad in his ill-fitting sandals, protruded from the too-short blanket. In preparing the provisions for their travel, he’d forgotten that a brothel slave would have no clothes suited for the purpose, and none of their dwarven clothing fit her.

  Nor had they had the time to arrange for anything better once they’d reached the Pick and Axe. The impatient guide who led them through the tunnels and beneath the walls had given them the choice of leaving immediately or waiting until the following evening. Seeing the way the elf shivered when she emerged from the blankets, Lodi wasn’t entirely sure he’d made the right decision, but listening to his instincts had kept him alive so far. And last night, his instincts had screamed at him that if he didn’t escape the city walls at once, he never would.

  The elfess was still silent, as she had been since the previous evening when they had interrupted the Man whose misfortune it had been to procur her involuntary services at the precisely wrong time. The four young dwarves, on the other hand, were anything but silent, as they grumbled about everything from the lack of fire to the brightness of the sun and the hard, uneven ground upon which they’d recently awoken.

  “Something is strange,” Gulfin said as he looked up at the sky. “Lodi, I think we’re on the south side of the city!”

  “Yes,” Lodi agreed. “That’s why I chose the Pick and Axe. It’s on the south side, and it is the closest to the tunnel beneath the wall.”

  “But we have to go north to reach Iron Mountain!”

  “We’re not going north. We’re going south.”

  “South?” All four of the young dwarves almost shouted in disbelief, and even the elf girl glanced at him with what looked like surprise in her green, cat-like eyes.

  Lodi merely laughed and continued rolling up his blankets. “Lads, if you wish to survive long enough to grow proper beards, you will need to learn to think less about what you wish to do and more about avoiding what your enemies wish to do to you.”

  “What does that have to do with going south?” Thorald asked.

  “We were seen last night. In the event we are pursued, and there is every chance there will be a serious pursuit of the dwarves who assassinated a man rich enough to patronize such an establishment, they will assume we’ve headed north into the Tessini deeps.”

  “As we should have done! We could have made it there by sundown tonight!”

  “Only if we’d travelled the mountain pass. And if we had run north, we’d have been ridden down before noon by the riders who probably rode out the northern gate as soon as the sun came up. Even if we hadn’t taken the pass, we’d have found them waiting for us at the gates of the deep road. Lads, not all Men are stupid, and the Malkanians know dwarves better than most. They may not know where all the deep roads are, but they know where all of our main trade thoroughfares are. So, they go north, we go south, and with any luck, we make it safely home before spring.”

  The young dwarves dropped into subdued silence. Lodi glared at them until they all had their blankets stowed and what remained of the bread and sausage with which they’d broken their fast had been returned to their packs. The elf, he noted, hadn’t eaten anything. He shrugged. If she wasn’t hungry now, she would be by the time the sun hit its height.

  But long before the sun had even begun to approach its zenith, they heard the steady beat of horse hooves on the hard Amorran road over which they’d been travelling.

  Lodi gesticulated, and the young dwaves fell silent. The beat of the hooves continued to grow louder, and it soon became clear they were coming from the north. Another gesture, and the rest of his small party followed him off the road and concealed themselves in the brush of the nearby tree line. They did not have to wait long before the horsemen came within sight.

  There were three of them. The apparent leader was a tall, dark-haired Man astride a black horse. He was armed with a longsword of the sort favored by the warriors to the north, and that, combined with his pale skin, marked him for a Savonder. His two companions looked like guards of some kind, as neither were wearing any weapon at their belts except for the usual dagger. They sported the same crest on their tunic as did the Man they followed.

  Lodi was sure the three Men would ride right past, as the flattened stone of the road betrayed no sign that five dwarves and an elf recently had left it. But the tall Man had no sooner ridden by than he pulled up his horse abruptly and began peering into the forest on either side of the road, looking for all the world like a fox that had just lost the scent of the prey it had been stalking. As his two companions halted their mounts, the leader withdrew a dagger from the folds of his cloak and moved it from side to side like a lodestone.

  To Lodi’s horror, the tip of the blade continued to move left, until it was pointing almost directly at him. Magic! The Man was a wizard! He glanced at Gulfin’s bandaged arm and guessed how the wizard had been tracking them. He desperately wished he had thought to buy a crossbow, but it was too late for that now.

  Panic gripped his bowels, but Lodi forced himself to remain motionless. If the Deep Dark was going to claim him now, then it would claim him, although the thought of it happening under the bright of the sky was bitter iron indeed.

  There was no point in trying to steal away. Even if the wizard didn’t hear them, he’d only follow, and they couldn’t hope to outrun his longer legs, much less the horses.

  Then it occurred to him that if the magicked dagger was like a lodestone, it gave away their direction only, not their distance. All he had to do was wait in silence, then surely the wizard would approach close enough for Lodi to bury an axe in his skull before he even realized Lodi was there. Once more, Lodi found himself lamenting the absence of his battleaxe. It would have given him another three fores of range.

  He drew the hand axe from his belt as quietly as he could. As the wizard dismounted and took a step toward the trees in which they were hidden, Lodi glanced left and right and made an old mining gesture with his free hand. The young dwarves didn’t so much as nod to acknowledge him. They were bright lads, and even if they hadn’t worked long in the mines, they understood. Danger. Don’t move.

  But the wizard confounded him by refusing to approach any closer. Instead, the Man slid his dagger back into its sheath and spread his hands.

  “Come forth, if you please, good dwarves. I mean you no harm.”

  Lodi didn’t answer. This was unexpected. He waited patiently to see what the Man would do next.

  “I am only here for the elf. And I swear by the mountain’s heart and the Deep Dark I will do her no harm either.”

  Lodi looked over at the elfess. She shook her head in bewilderment. It appeared she didn’t recognize the Man either.

  The wizard waited long enough that his two guards began to fidget and sigh. Finally, he surprised Lodi by laughing out loud.

  “Look, my dwarven friends, you must understand that I know you’re there. The blood on this blade tells me you’re hiding in these trees standing in front of me. And I would much prefer for you to come out and listen to what I have to say wi
thout forcing me to set you all on fire. I don’t wish to harm anyone, least of all your elven companion, but you will leave me with little choice if you will not speak.”

  Lodi came to a decision. The wizard clearly wasn’t going anywhere, so Lodi would have to go to him. But not the others. Stay, he gestured to them. Then, warily, he rose to his feet and trudged toward the Man.

  The wizard nodded to him, and to Lodi’s relief, showed no sign of intending to set anything on fire. Those who delved deep under the ground used fire as a matter of course, but few knew its risks better or feared it more.

  “What do a Man want with an elf?”

  “The Lady Everbright is of particular interest to me. I have been seeking her for months.

  “You’re a wizard. But you wear the whorelord’s badge.”

  “A necessary subterfuge. Savondese mages are unwelcome in Malkan. Rest assured, dwarf, no brothel owner can afford to keep a mage on staff.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” Lodi said. “Answer me. What you want with the elf?”

  The tall wizard smiled. “Knowledge, my friend. Only knowledge. She possesses it, and I require it. You need not fear for her. She will be received as honored guest of the King of Savondir and will be provided every comfort and courtesy due her status.”

  Her status? The mage called out something in Elvish that Lodi didn’t understand. But before the elfess even had a chance to respond, the sound of rapid hoofbeats coming from the north could be heard.

  “I don’t suppose that’s likely to be travelers passing by,” Lodi heard the wizard muse aloud. “Goram, Osgilder, stay on that side and take my horse. The dwarf and I shall take the other side.

  He winked at Lodi and stepped toward him. Lodi growled and had the momentary urge to bury his hand axe in the wizard’s chest, but he resisted it. If there were as many horses as it sounded, having what appeared to be a competent spellmaster on his side might prove extraordinarily useful. He could always kill him later.