A Discourse in Steel (2 page)

“We'll do it,” the priest said. “We'll get him out.”

Nix dropped his ale cup on the table. “What? I mean, what my friend means…”

Egil gave Nix a hard look. “I
meant
exactly as I said. We'll find it and get him out.”

“We will?” Nix asked.

“We will,” Egil said with a firm nod, Ebenor's eye on his bald head, like a wink.

“How much have you had to drink?”

“We can do it,” Egil said.

“Really? How?”

A long moment passed before Egil shrugged and said, “We'll figure something out.”

“This is Blackalley, Egil.”

The priest spoke slowly, meaningfully, his eyes on Enora. “We'll figure something out.”

Nix swallowed, licked his lips, shook his head, and called for another round of Gadd's ale. He sat back in his chair and looked across the table at Enora. “It appears we'll get him back.”

Relief softened her face. Her eyes welled with gratitude, making her look lovelier still. She leaned forward and reached across the table and touched Egil's hand.

“My gratitude to you, to both of you. I will owe you much.”

“Speaking of that,” Nix said. “I presume the payment for this—”

Egil held up his hand and shook his bucket-sized head. “No payment is necessary.”

Nix tried not to look appalled, probably failed. “It's not?”

“It's not,” Egil affirmed. He placed his huge hand over Enora's. She colored.

“You are drunk, aren't you?” Nix asked him.

Egil smiled. “No. You've spoken often about assaying Blackalley, Nix. Now we've got a good reason.”

“Gods, man, you said ‘assay.' ”

Egil just stared at him.

Nix knew from the priest's expression and tone of voice that an argument would be fruitless. He surrendered to the moment and raised his beer in a halfhearted toast.

“To good reasons, then.” He tapped his temple. “Though I fear we've lost our reason. I'll need something of Drugal's.”

“I can give you one of his journals,” Enora said.

“That'd be perfect,” Nix said unenthusiastically.

Egil thumped him on the shoulder, nearly dislodging him from his chair. “All will be well, Nix. You'll see.”

Nix put his face in his ale, his thoughts already turning to the problem. He'd been intrigued by Blackalley for years. It was legend in Dur Follin, a dark doorway to a netherworld that appeared at random around the city, but always around the same hour. On a dark night a person might not even see it before it was too late, and everyone said they knew someone who knew someone who had a distant relation who'd disappeared forever into Blackalley while making their way home after a night of revelry.

Some thought it the open mouth of some incomprehensible otherworldly being. But Nix had trained for a year at the Conclave, where he'd been taught that Blackalley was most likely a wandering portal, probably some sorcerous flotsam left behind by the civilization that had built the Archbridge.

“We think it's a portal,” Enora had said, as if reading his thoughts.

“Maybe,” Nix said, sipping his ale.

Many had sought it over the decades: explorers hired by a city desperate to be rid of it, wizards of the Conclave in search of fame ere the High Magister's ban, adventurers with an itch to solve the mystery and whatever treasure Blackalley might yield. Most gave up without ever seeing it. Some presumably did see it, but no one could be certain, for they disappeared and were not seen again.

“Why your interest in Blackalley?” Enora asked Nix.

“
Interest
overstates things,” Nix said. “I saw it once, as a boy.”

“It's terrible,” Enora said.

“Aye.” Nix looked up and smiled. “I have some thoughts on it, that's all. Besides, no one has ever gone in and come back out.”

“And that's the draw,” Egil said, nodding.

She looked from one to the other, a question in her delicately furrowed brow. “I'm afraid I don't understand, gentlemen.”

“Ha!” Egil said. “
Gentlemen
overstates things, too.”

She smiled at Egil and now it was the priest's turn to color.

Nix tried to explain what Egil meant. “Milady, some men were put on Ellerth to write poetry, or discover lost lands, or start new religions, or do whatever it is that their gift impels. Egil and me, we were made more simply than that. We were put here to get in and out of places and situations people say can't be gotten in and out of.”

Egil nodded again as the two friends tapped mugs, put back a slug.

“And that's your gift? Your purpose?” She smiled. “I admit I like that.”

“Gift, purpose, both seem a bit much, don't they? All I know is that we've managed to keeps things lively.”

“I should think,” she said. “May I have one of those ales, also?”

While Nix called for an ale, Egil cleared his throat nervously and eyed Enora. “May I ask after your relationship with Drugal? You said a dear friend and I wondered…?”

“And speaking of getting into interesting places,” Nix murmured, but the priest and professor ignored him.

Enora smiled at Egil without shyness. “Just a friend and a colleague. Nothing more.”

Egil exhaled and leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning under his bulk. His eyes never left Enora's face.

“In that case, I'd be pleased to have your company for the evening.”

“Listen to
you,
” Nix said. “So polite.”

“That sounds delightful, Egil,” Enora answered.

Nix had slammed back his ale, excused himself, and left them to it.

The rain
fell so hard it felt as if it would drive Nix into the mud. He crouched down, shielded his satchel with his body, and riffled through it. The sky rumbled, a hungry thunder.

“For souls once lost, ne'er come back,” he said.

“What's that, now?” Egil asked.

“Just saying I hope we don't get lost,” Nix answered.

“Aye.”

“Take a look around, would you? Just make sure things are clear. I don't want anyone else getting caught up in this by accident.”

“All know your spells never go awry,” Egil teased.

“Fak you,” Nix answered, smiling.

While Nix took the few things he needed from his satchel and ran through the steps of his plan, Egil stalked around the intersection, poking into alleys to ensure there were no drunks passed out nearby.

“No one about,” Egil said when he returned.

The rain, having spent itself, abated to a stubborn drizzle. The wind, too, died, and sudden calm felt ominous. A thin mist rose from the muddy earth. The stink, of course, remained. Minnear had risen.

Nix took six of the finger-length sticks of magically treated tallow and pitch from the satchel and handed three to Egil.

“Candles?” the priest asked.

“Not candles. And don't smell them.”

Of course the priest sniffed one and immediately recoiled. “Gods! What's in these?”

“Didn't I say not to sniff them? They're made from something awful. You don't want to know.”

“If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't have asked.”

“Fine, then. They're made from pitch, a binding agent, and the rendered fat from the corpse of a man who died in regret.”

Egil stared at Nix for a long moment, his eyes heavy, his expression unreadable. “Regret?”

Nix nodded and said nothing, knowing “regret” cut close to the bone for Egil.

The priest spit into the mud. “Fakkin' gewgaws.”

“Aye, and speaking of,” Nix said, and pulled from the satchel an ivory wand and a fist-sized egg of polished black volcanic glass etched with a single closed eye. The latent magic in both caused the hairs on his arms to tingle. He rummaged for the special matchsticks he'd need, and soon found them.

“Dying with regrets seems a bad way to go out of the world,” Egil said, his tone thoughtful.

“They're all bad,” Nix said. He closed his satchel, looped it over his shoulder as he stood. “So let's avoid it for a while yet, yeah?”

Egil's gaze fell on the items Nix had in hand: the shining eye, the matchsticks, the shafts of tallow, the wand, which had a bestial mouth meticulously carved into one end. A boom of thunder rattled the Warrens.

“No more rain,” Nix said to the sky.

“Let's get on with this,” Egil said.

“Aye.”

Egil followed Nix to the mouth of one of the intersection's alleys.

“Use those tallow sticks and scribe a line down the sides of the buildings on either side of the alley mouth,” Nix said. “Like this.”

He dragged the tallow stick vertically down the corner of the building, starting at about the height of a door. It left a thick black line caked on the wood.

“Just lines? They need to be straight or…?”

“Just lines. They don't need to be perfect, just continuous from about door height to the ground. And make them thick. We need them to burn for a while. We'll need sigils, too, but that's what the scribing wand's for.”

“Wait, we're going to burn the lines?”

“Aye.”

“You'll burn down the Warrens, Nix.”

“It's all right.” He held up the matchsticks. “They don't burn with normal flames. They'll consume only the lines. Couldn't burn wood if I wanted them to.”

Egil looked at the matchsticks, the lines, back to Nix. “And you think this will summon it? Blackalley?”

“We'll see,” Nix said.

They moved from alley to alley, lining the sides of the alley mouths with borders of corpse fat and pitch. Nix followed up with the scribing wand. He spoke a word in the Language of Creation to activate its power, and felt it grow warm in his hand. He stood in the center of the first alley, aimed it at the wet earth, and spoke another word of power.

A tongue of green flame formed in the wand's carved mouth. With it, Nix wrote glowing green sigils that hovered in the air, the magical script stretching across the alley mouth between the tallow lines he and Egil had drawn. He scribed one set of summoning sigils across the alley at the top of the lines, and one set at the bottom, just off the ground. When he was done, the lines and the sigils formed a rectangle, a doorway. He stepped back and regarded his handiwork.

“None too bad, I'd say.”

Egil grunted.

“You still stuck on regrets and death?” Nix asked his friend, trying to make light of it, but Egil made no answer.

Nix checked the sky. He could no longer see Kulven's light through the clouds, but Minnear put a faint, viridian blotch on the clouds. Had to be getting close to third hour.

“We fire the lines now?” Egil asked.

“Not yet,” Nix said, putting the wand and remaining shafts of tallow back into his satchel. “Now we wait.”

“For what?”

“For Ool's clock to ring three bells.
Then
we light them.”

“Three bells,” Egil said absently. “Walk not the streets but fear the Hells.”

“Aye,” Nix said. He held his blade in one hand, the matchsticks and smooth oval of the shining eye in the other. He handed a few of the matchsticks to Egil.

After a moment Egil cleared his throat and asked, “How do you know he died in regret?”

Nix was focused on the hour and at first didn't take Egil's meaning. “Who?”

Egil held up the stub of the tallow stick. “The man whose fat is in this. How do you know he died in regret?”

“Hells, Egil,” Nix said. “Who doesn't die in regret?”

“Truth,” Egil said softly. “Some more than others, I suppose.”

Nix could imagine the line of Egil's thoughts—his wife and daughter and their deaths—but he said nothing. Speaking of it only picked at the scab of his friend's pain, so he just stood beside him in silence.

The summoning sigils cast an eerie light on the intersection. Time seemed to slow. Nix pushed his wet hair off his brow and moved to the nearest of the alley mouths.

“When the clock sounds, we light them. The smoke should help draw it, as should the sigils.” He thought back on the night he'd seen Blackalley, thought of the sudden, inexplicable sorrow he'd felt, thought of the way the mournful teamster had wept. “I think it's attracted in some way to sorrow or hopelessness.”

“Ergo, the tallow sticks of regret,” Egil said.

“Aye. And that's why I think it shows up in the Warrens more than anywhere else.”

Egil glanced around. “Hopelessness and regret aplenty. Nasty bit of business, this Blackalley.”

“That it is.”

Egil tested the weight of his hammers in each hand. “Any idea what we'll find inside?”

“None. But when has that ever stopped us?”

Egil ran his hand over the tattoo of Ebenor. “Never.”

“Right. Besides, my concern isn't getting in or what we'll find inside, but getting out.”

“You said you had a theory about that, though.”

“I do.” Nix shrugged. “But it's just a theory.”

“A theory's more than we usually have.”

“Truth.” Nix looked askance at the sky. “The threat of rain bothers, though. The lines, once lit, are to show our way back. I don't want the rain putting them out.”

Egil looked up at the sky. “I think the worst of it's already fallen.”

“So you say,” Nix said. “We could wait a night, I suppose.”

“We could, but how long can the professor survive in there?”

Nix shrugged. “No one has ever come out. He could already be dead. We don't even know that there's a
there
there. We could just…die the moment we cross.”

“But you don't think so.”

“No, I don't think so. I think it's a portal.”

“Then so do I.”

Nix hoped his friend's faith was not misplaced. “You light those two alleys and I'll light those. Light the left line at its top, the right line at its bottom. Got it?”