Sourcethief (Book 3) (14 page)

Zellisan watched the doorway, seeing through the
walls and down the hall to the stairway at the end. Their would-be assailants
still acted as if they had the element of surprise on their side, creeping
soundlessly toward their room.

"Jadon, there are times for practicing with
coins, and there are times—"

"Gimme that," Zell said, judging that he
had a moment to spare. He snatched the coin from Jadon's fingers and tossed it
out the window. "Go get your coin back and you can practice some
more."

"What did you do that for?" Wendell said
in the whispering equivalent of a shout, more mindful of their stalkers than
Zell. As if in answer to Wendell's question, Jadon made a faint wailing sound
as he rushed to the window in distress to look for his coin. Zell shrugged.

"Go help him down." Zell matched Wendell's
harsh whisper. "I'll catch up when I can." He knew he took much for
granted. Wendell was no young man to be climbing out windows. At his age, a
slip could easily kill him. Jadon, on the other hand, was light with the supple
limbs all children have before they flesh out in muscle and their bones grow
sturdy. Clumsy though he might be, Zell knew Wendell could drop him a story to
the ground and only need worry about skinned knees and crying.

As the bounty hunters drew close, Zell spared a
quick peek once more, lifting the circlet from his head just long enough to
judge the distance to the door. He set himself a good pace back and settled
into aether-vision.

Four men stopped outside the door. To their credit,
Zell heard nothing from their approach and would have been oblivious if not for
the helm. He saw them clearly enough that he could count the fingers that one
of them was holding up ...
four ... three ... two ...

Zell lurched for the door, shoulder leading, just as
two of the men hunting for Jadon mirrored him. The bounty hunters hit the door
first, snapping the latch with a crack of wood. Zell struck an instant later,
slamming the door shut in their faces before they so much as glimpsed inside.
Zell tried to jam his blade through the door with his momentum but came closer to
disarming himself than penetrating the thick oak.
Dratted thing! Where's
Soria to fill it back up with aether?
He realized how accustomed he had
grown to the added sharpness that the runed blade had when properly maintained.
But Wendell's Source was too weak for filling even such paltry runes.

Zell realized he was not going to gain a quick
victory by sniffing out the ambush. He wrenched the stuck tip of his sword free
of the door and spun away. The two men who had been leaning against the door
after the mutual impact toppled into the room. The Sources all looked much the
same to Zell, washing out all hint of color and any physical clue that might
tell him where his attackers had come from.

One shouted in something that sounded like Feru and
pointed to the window where Wendell stood on a ledge just outside, attempting
to coax Jadon through.

Zell thrust with his sword, his blade's own weight
and edge meeting the call to battle as it punctured the midsection of one of
the fallen —the larger of the two by his quick guess. As the stricken attacker
screamed, the other scrambled away from Zell. The other two men barged in
before he could think to pursue.

Neither of the two men still standing paid the least
attention to their fallen comrade aside from stepping over him. Zell could not
make out the weapons they held, and decided to retreat a step to remove the
helm.

"Give boy, you live," said a man who
shifted from a blue-white Source to a Feru warrior in Zell's vision. The man
was lanky and shorter than Zell, armed with a long knife and a leather sap. It
seemed a poor bargaining position to Zell's thinking. The fellow was not even
armored.

The other assailant still on his feet was Takalish,
brawny, and wore a bushy beard. He hung behind his fellow, whatever weapon he wielded
carefully concealed from Zell's view.

Zell swatted away a knife thrust with the helm in
his hand. The Feru barely manage to deflect Zell's sword with his sap as he
ducked under it. As the Feru ducked, Zell noticed that the weapon the Takalish
attacker had been concealing was a pistol.
Gouge that whoreson tinker's eyes
out! Tanner and his kind can take their pistols and ...
Zell could think of
no clever use for pistols in the midst of battle with one trying to get a clear
shot at him. It was an old style weapon, nothing like the fancy one Tanner had
bought, but Zell blamed the Mad Tinker for their spread nonetheless. Zell
changed his plan of attack.

While the Feru fighter continued to try to bury a
hand's length of steel in his gut, Zell spent most of his time dodging to spoil
the pistolier's aim. It was like a children's tree-chase, except the tree was
trying to stab him and the other player to shoot him.

Zell heard rather than saw that the third man alive
was sneaking past him toward the window. All would be for naught if the boy was
caught anyway, but Zell could do neither Jadon nor Wendell any good as a target
dummy filled with pistol shot.

"Look out!" Zell shouted, hoping to both
alert Wendell and distract his attackers. He threw his magical helm as hard as
he could left-handed, missing the Feru and briefly spoiling the pistolier's
aim. He charged forward, reckless but in need of reckless haste. The knife
caught him full in the gut, but there was enough blubber behind his mail to
absorb the blow and keep the blade from piercing. His own sword slid through
the Feru's chest. Zell took the dying man by the collar as a shield and ram
both, plowing toward the Takalish with the pistol and forcing him back into the
hallway.

A panicked shot pierced through Zell's shield to
thump against his mail, its deadly force spent on a dead man. The wall across
from the room came too quickly for the Takalish assailant to dodge, reload, or
draw another weapon. Two men and a corpse crashed together, with Zell's sword
adding another bit of meat to its credentials as a skewer. One man and two
corpses tumbled in a heap to the floor.

Zell looked back into the room and saw that the last
remaining assailant, a burly Kheshi in armor much like Soria's, had caught
Jadon by the arm.

"No!" Zellisan heard the scream from
outside in Wendell's voice. His own was caught still in his throat.

* * * * * * *
*

Where did it go?
Jadon wondered. He looked out the window and there
were so many things to see.
Too many things. Where did it go? I don't see
it. I should be able to see it from here. It went through here, I saw it.

Jadon looked down, thinking to start a closer search
from the ground, but pulled back.
Too far. Not going down that way.
He
knew he could go down out the door and down the stairs to get outside as well,
but ... then he would not be able to see where it should be. Anything could
happen to it while he was looking elsewhere.

"Got you," a strange man said. Indeed the
stranger was correct, as well. Jadon saw that the man, who had blue eyes, blond
hair and a braided blond beard, two small scars on his left cheek, leather
armor set with 113 metal studs (probably 230 if the patterns matched in back
and the side he could not quite see), a belt with two small pouches (one that
jingled with coins but probably did not contain the coin he was looking for), a
dagger in a sheath, leather pants that did not have any studs at all, and shoes
that were made up of woven leather straps. He was very interesting, but Jadon
needed to find his coin. He pulled, trying to get back to the window. The man
was too strong.

Let me go!
Jadon meant to shout, but
neglected to put voice to it. It came out as a whining scream.
Let me go!
Let me go!

Jadon felt himself handled roughly, spun around and
pulled tight against the strange man. He heard the dagger slide free of its
sheath.

"Keep back. You let me go with boy," the
man said.
No, I'm not going with you. I have a coin to look for and magic to
learn. I am
very
busy.
Jadon was feeling increasingly trapped. The
man's hold on him was making it too hard to breathe.

"You only get paid if the boy lives. I know it
and you can't deny that," Zellisan said.
What a weird job he has ...

"Oh, maybe, maybe. But can you deny I need to
get away quick? No time. I run with boy now or I kill boy and run. Move
aside." Jadon felt the dagger press against his neck, the flat of the
blade forcing his chin up.

Too close! Too close! Dangerous!
Please stop!

Jadon's mind raced about, looking to escape his
dreadful helplessness.

Pull. Draw.
The voice was familiar, but not
his own.
Kill.
He knew the voice, it was his other mind, the one he
tucked away, the one with the eyes that opened in the magic world.

Wendell told me to push you away,
to leave you alone and stay here
.

Pull his Source. It will work.
You saw. You know.

Jadon had seen; he did know.

It was easy. The dagger at his throat fell away. The
arm crushing him against the stranger's body went limp. Jadon stumbled and fell
over the stranger as the dead weight of that arm overbalanced him. He looked
down and the stranger was dead. There was a ... hole ... where his life
belonged. Jadon had stolen it. It burned.

Take the burning inside you. Put
it somewhere else. Do it now before it hurts you.
The voice had shown quite
convincingly that it knew what it was talking about.

Thank you, Anzik
. Jadon remembered the voice's name as the
stranger's corpse, and much of the room around them, caught fire.

"You could have told me," Kyrus said. He
glared across his father's old desk, now claimed by his uncle Caladris. The
library was now his uncle's study. He remembered standing there as a boy—though
it was Brannis who had been there, not he—begging his father's permission to
enter the knighthood. The privilege of interrogation now lay on his side.

"I could tell you a great many things, many of
them inadvisable. I had to consider the very real possibility that you would
prefer Maruk dead a second time. How was I to know that he had information to
bribe you with?" Caladris asked, spreading his arms wide and leaning back
in his chair. He smiled, but Kyrus thought he could detect artifice in it; it
did not match his eyes, which were watching Kyrus too intently.

"What else do you know? I tire of piecing
things together only to find out that I could have been told beforehand and
saved the trouble."

"You tasked me with running a great many things
with which you did not want to be bothered. Are you having a change of heart?
Would you like to hear of every sordid scheme I have thwarted, of everything
planned against you? Do you want to hear all the clacksome gossip that gets
dumped across my desk like pig dung and whispered to me like prophecy from a
two-copper drunkard?" Caladris asked, voice rising as he went.

"You are a fine debater, Caladris. I wonder how
often such diversions took Brannis from his course. I shall not let it work on
me, though. You know the difference between what I wish to know and what you
tell me. Tell me about my father's dealings in this world and the other. Tell me
about the plots you hatch with Rashan. If you want me for an ally, I refuse to
continue stumbling blindly in the shadow you cast." Kyrus put both hands
on the desk and leaned across. His eyes were locked on Caladris's. Both men had
shielding spells active.

"I taught you a great deal, Kyrus,"
Caladris said slowly, placing careful emphasis on the Telluraki name. "You
should take that into consideration when laying accusations at my feet. We
shall be lucky to live through Rashan's reign. I need you alive and well to
dispose of him, not to mention a good deal more competent than you are
presently."

"Rashan reigns over nothing now. Emperor
Sommick does, and he delegated much of his power to me. That is something that
perhaps you—"

Caladris shot forward in his chair, a startling
maneuver for so large a man. He put his face close enough that Kyrus could
smell the brandy on his breath.

"That I what? You think you run anything here
that he cares about? Do you think you two whistling for the dog is what causes
the beast to follow? This is Rashan's empire now. You handle the business that
bores him while he goes out and plays amid the blood. Your time is best spent
preparing for the day he decides you are more a threat to him than an aid. Have
you managed to learn anything of use that I have not spoon fed to you?"

Kyus regarded him steadily, waited for him to settle
back into his chair.
The strain is weighing on him
, Kyrus realized.
I
shall gain nothing by antagonizing him.

"Yes, I have. That book that my father's twin gave
me had a few insights into a man named Agga, who he is convinced was Rashan's
twin. It sheds little light on him other than what we already know of the
warlock, except in the last entry. It tells of a stranger who came to Agga's
stronghold, met with the old spymaster, and destroyed the whole place as he
left. The writer had no explanation for it but it seems clear that it was magic
at work."

"Really ..." Caladris said, turning a
vacant look upon a far corner of the ceiling. "I wonder, is it possible he
managed the same trick as you, long ago?" All trace of anger in Caladris
had been washed away by the curious puzzle Kyrus had just laid before him.

"Why kill himself though?" Kyrus asked. It
seemed an odd degree of trouble to go to for a suicide. He had not considered
that the story showed a link between worlds, but a hint of who Agga might have
been, what Rashan might have been doing around that time. Could the death of
Rashan's twin have started him on the path to madness?

"Perhaps he did not want his life's work passed
on to another. Cleaned up his business before he moved along, so to speak. A
normal man might not care, but a twinborn just might. Unable to bear the
thought of his organization living on without him."

"Sounds like spite to me."

"All the more reason to believe it. Rashan
seems nothing if not spiteful," Caladris said. Kyrus frowned but said
nothing.
That was never the impression I got of him.

"It hints at Rashan's power, but I fail to see
how it helps find a weakness," Caladris continued.

"It gives a time period when he was in
Tellurak, if that really is what happened," Kyrus said.
Rashan seemed
shocked that I had made it between Tellurak and Veydrus. Was that just a ruse?

"Well, I have my suspicions about the accuracy
of history when measured to an individual day, unless it was a noteworthy
event," Caladris said. "From our side, there may have been nothing
worthy of note."

"Maybe Axterion ..." Kyrus mused aloud.

"The old cave-wit? My father would be lucky to
remember his morning feast most days. You want him to think back to a hundred
and more winters ago?"

"I ... I think I do," Kyrus said, turning
to walk away.
I can ask him about Xizix as well. I am beginning to think I
am not foremost in Caladris's worries.

"Ah, Kyrus, one last thing," Caladris
said. He had called after him just before Kyrus left the wards that ensured
their conversation was private. "You say you wished to know of more of my
little secrets; I have one for you that I had originally thought imprudent to
share."

"What is it?"

"Rashan confided in me that once he sees you
married off to Celia, he intends to seek his heirs from Juliana," Caladris
said. He fixed Kyrus with a lewd grin, delighting in the look of murder in his
eyes.

"What makes him think—"

"Just his plan, mind you. I might see clear to
getting you two sparrows in the same nest. I could take Celia for my next wife,
that way ... good healthy lass, you know."

"Aunt Faeranna is still alive, you
bastard," Kyrus said. His anger on behalf of Brannis's family no longer
came as a surprise to him.

"Just a matter of time, you know. She was never
the same after Danilaesis's cradlefire," Caladris said, citing the rare
condition that affected aether-strong infants. In Danilaesis's case, his had
happened just before birth. "I am an important man, too hale and healthy
to be without a wife. Good of the empire, you know."

"I hope Aunt Faera lives to see Celia turn
sagging and grey," Kyrus said.

He ripped apart the ward and slammed the door behind
him as he left.

* * * * * * *
*

Kyrus wanted to see Axterion straightaway, but he
had an appointment to keep with Dolvaen. The latest confrontation with his
uncle had left his stomach gurgling and a burning sensation in his gullet that
had nothing to do with harnessing aether. The bit about his aunt had nearly
goaded him to violence, right there in the same library where he had sat as a
boy listening to his nursemaid read from
Adventures of Boppy the Rabbit
.
The incongruity compounded itself when he remembered that it had been Brannis,
not himself, who had experienced those memories.

Am I truly so much Brannis now?
Soria may be right.
Kyrus's
access to their shared memories was growing so acute that he often could not
readily tell whose memories were whose, except by context.

Kyrus's transference spell from the front courtyard
of his familial home to Dolvaen's was scant exertion. The more he practiced the
spell the more comfortable it became. He floated to the ground amid the flowers
in Dolvaen's back garden. Fully in bloom, they displayed a panorama of color. A
gardener who saw him appear gave a curt nod and excused himself from the
vicinity.

At a small garden table set for two was the de facto
High Sorcerer of Kadrin. With the warmth of late springtime, the pitcher of
juiced lemons on the table seemed a pleasant offering, no matter how
contentious the meeting promised to be.

"Good morning, Sorcerer Dolvaen," Kyrus
called as he approached. Dolvaen looked up to the sun, which was playing
hide-from-his-lordship among the
clouds.

"I suppose it is still morning, though just.
Would you join me, Sir Brannis?" Dolvaen swept a hand to indicate the seat
beside him. Kyrus obliged him and sat looking out at the arrayed flora.
Everything smelled sweet, from the flower-filled air to the lemony tang wafting
from the pitcher.

"I presume you wish to discuss my standing with
the warlock?" Kyrus asked. He took the pitcher and poured a glass.

"Indeed. I can only consider that it is just a
matter of time before you two come to violence. It is still my hope that you
seek aid and take initiative to strike first."

"You are more practical than this. Surely you
brought me out here for more than to repeat your same arguments again."

"True enough. The demon and the emperor each
grow more intolerable by the day. We do not see it with Rashan since he is
away, but each time he returns he seems more rabid a wolf than when he last
left," Dolvaen said. He took a sip of lemon to give Kyrus time to speak.

"You say that, but he seems little different to
me," Kyrus replied.

"You were next to him at the pageant. Who sends
lightning after a Founding Day illusion? I ask you that." Dolvaen gave
Kyrus a challenging look, slipping once more into the role of an academic
debater.

"Fine. That I grant you. But he seemed worn a
bit thin right then and it was an excellent likeness of the dragon Jadefire. I
saw her at Raynesdark and had to remind myself that it was mere illusion. My
guts clenched at the sight."

"Aye, my point precisely. You had every right
to react just like him, but you, a neophyte, held your ground. Our proud and
mighty warlock smeared his trousers and took violence to a puppet."

"Very well, what say I stop playing the
murderer's counselor for a moment and agreed with you? What then? I am growing
weary of dire warnings with no help behind them," Kyrus complained.

"Truly? Or is this another gambit to win an
argument?" Dolvaen clearly still remembered Kyrus's ploy to retain Emperor
Sommick's authority before the Inner Circle.

Kyrus paused a moment, lips pursed. Dolvaen was
strong, stronger than Caladris or Fenris. That much was clear by their Sources.
Rashan was a mystery, his demonic Source invisible and his concealed power
immeasurable. Perhaps he was no stronger than Iridan had been, just more
skilled and focused. Illiardra had insinuated as much when she called Iridan a
copy of Rashan, more than a mingling of her blood with his."Truly."

"Very well then," Dolvaen said with a
smile. "We have a lot of planning to do before the emperor makes a
laughing stock of the empire." He lifted his mug and drained the remainder
of his drink in one go.

"Why? What has he done now?"

"Done? Still doing is more like it. He's taken
the simple task of picking out an empress and turned it into a jousting
tournament of noble lasses. He's taking them to his bed two at a time to see
which he likes best," Dolvaen practically shouted.

"That sounds ... sporting," Kyrus allowed,
unsure how else to approach the subject. "Does seem a bit crass."

"He has paired them up by their dislike of one
another. It has half the noble houses up in arms. They find it to be no
suitable way to treat a future empress."

"I wonder if he knows that," Kyrus said
with a hand to his chin. He narrowed his eyes. "He could be waiting for
the first to refuse his offer."

Dolvaen scoffed. "That blathering
buffoon?" He paused as if to consider his own objection. "No, too sly
a trick, I think."

"It would fit well with Rashan's thinking.
Emperor Sommick spent a lot of time with little company but the warlock's.
'Have at least two reasons for anything you do,' right?" Kyrus looked off
at the flowers ... anywhere to avoid looking at Dolvaen while discussing the
subject.

"Two? Picking an empress and what else?"
Dolvaen asked.

Kyrus squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge
of his nose. "The obvious."

"Oh," Dolvaen said. He cleared his throat.
"Yes, that."

"I have another matter to get us clear of this
sordid topic," Kyrus said. "I want you to make your peace with
Caladris."

"Fine sentiment, but that bovine uncle of yours
is as good as a food-taster for Rashan. I think Fenris a more likely ally, if
we were both to approach him."

"Caladris has been doing everything he can to
keep Rashan in check," Kyrus said, laying his uncle's duplicity at
Dolvaen's feet. "He knows you work against Rashan and has kept that knowledge
from him."

"The fact that Caladris plays a layered game
comes as little surprise. Have a care that he does not play it a layer deeper
than you expect. Why else would he bare his plans to you? Naïveté is one of the
last traits I would ascribe to that gluttonous feline. You however, may have
fallen prey to a logical story and a familiar voice."