Wizard (The Key to Magic) (10 page)

Mar studied the device with his magical sense. "It looks like what I need."

"With five day's lead time, I can let you have a gross for nine hundred each. If you want less than that, they'll be twelve hundred per."

"I just need one, but I couldn't give any more than six hundred."

The weaponsmith looked scandalized. "That wouldn't even cover my cost of doing business! But just because you remind me of my favorite nephew, I could possibly let you have a single unit for eleven fifty."

"I might be able to come up with eight hundred, but you'd have to throw in a hundred rounds."

The merchant took a tan-colored, heavy-paper box from under the counter and placed it alongside the
rifle
. "Twenty rounds and the rifle for ten seventy-five and that's the best deal that I can ---"

A broach on the man's tunic-like jacket flashed red and emitted a shrill, insistent buzz.

"It's the Faction!" The weaponsmith grabbed at his wrist bracelet, then looked panicked when nothing happened. "They've suppressed the ports!"

Amplified sound blared through the cavern.
"Submit now! Any who resist will be killed!"

Mar spun about and ran.

So did everyone else.

Men, women, and even a few children dragged along by their hands went in every direction as counters, awnings and merchandise were carelessly bowled over and scattered. There was very little shouting, however, and it was immediately clear that many of the Bazaar's denizens were not fleeing in mindless terror but were racing toward specific objectives -- the exits.

He fell in behind a loosely organized group as they dashed through into another cavern and then made a hard right.

One of the Faction's armored monstrosities appeared a dozen paces in front of the group, slewed about to smash an abandoned stall supporting an arbor that displayed blue and yellow parasols, and unleashed a wave of fire at the leading members of the group.

Slain instantly, the front line of the fleeing group fell.

As he dove flat, Mar enchanted the beast and sent it rocketing up into the barrel ceiling with a great crash, burying half of its height into the rocky material. Rubble rained down and a number of the big lamps went out, some with dramatic, explosive bursts. Mar's spell pinned the struggling monstrosity in place, but it managed to shoot again, spraying un-aimed projectiles down into the floor around it.

Mar delved the beast, found something inside that would burn, and set it alight. The monstrosity continued to struggle with increasing intensity until a suppressed explosion from within rattled its plates and made it become still.

With the survivors already jumping up to run back from the smoking hulk, most going the way they had come, he rose to a crouch and tried to think.

"
Sorcerer!
Here! This way!"

When he whipped his head around, he saw Nali hunkered down behind an overturned counter some distance away to his right. She made an insistent beckoning motion, then sprang to her feet and ran toward the far side of the cavern, not looking back to see if he followed.

Instead of taking to his heels, he bounced up and kicked a nearby table upright. The wooden top accepted lifting and driving enchantments without protest and he flung himself aboard and sailed after her. Closing the distance within no more than a couple of seconds, he threw out an arm to catch her around the waist and then dragged her aboard.

Her only reaction was to thrust out an arm. "There!"

Making the table gain altitude to clear the intervening stalls and running people, he turned to align his course with her arm.

A pair of monstrosities appeared only a dozen armlengths to the left of their path and with a single thought he enchanted them and drove them so far up into the ceiling that only their churning gargantuan feet showed.

As he neared the wall, he slowed and Nali twisted out of the crook of his encircling arm and dove off.

"Come on!" she yelled as she dashed along the curve of the wall.

Already committed, he slid off the table without bothering to dampen its spells and landed running. The table coasted on and caromed off a metal post holding up a sign and then spun all the way around before sliding into the path of a stream of flux-infused slugs from the opposite side of the cavern. The projectiles ripped the table apart and walked along the wall above his head, blasting free gravel and chunks of not-quite-stone. The falling debris forced him into an awkward dance as he dodged back and forth and one large piece struck his shoulder with the force of a hammer.

Staggered, he tripped as his left foot came down wrong and fell forward.

Feet braced, Nali caught him in a fierce hug to keep him upright, then immediately released him.
"Come on!"

She had doubled back, moving faster than he thought a person could.

Keeping low, he followed as she vaulted scattered merchandise and squeezed by awning poles and shelves, covering another twenty paces or so, and stopped in front of a thick floor grating formed of square bars. Set right up against the wall and rusted and stained, the grating looked fixed in place, but when Nali grabbed one of the bars, it pivoted open as if on greased hinges.

She was through in a flash and again he had no choice but to follow. The tunnel beneath -- dry but certainly a drain -- was just big enough to crawl through. He had expected Nali to have scuttled ahead, but she had moved along just far enough to allow him to get all the way in.

"Close it and throw the bolt!"

Twisting onto his back to reach up, he pulled the grating down without any problem but then could not find the bolt.

Twitching with impatience, she slithered in beside him, laid an unerring hand on the bolt, and shot it home.

"Don't make a light or cast any other spell," she ordered in a sharp tone, then disentangled herself and crawled rapidly in the direction that led under the wall and away from the cavern above.

With a gradually increasing slope, the drain went straight for forty or fifty armlengths, becoming totally dark. Not daring to consult his magical sense, he listened for her breathing to keep track of her, trailing close behind, and when she abruptly dropped away, he stopped and felt ahead to learn that the drain had opened out into a larger space.

"Let yourself straight down," she whispered from his left. "The ledge is dry, but the center channel is full."

His nose telling him right away that this new tunnel was an operating cloaca, he obeyed her instructions with great care and was soon alongside her. As before, she apparently had no trouble getting about in the absence of light.

She took his hand. "Stay right behind me."

They went upstream at a swift trot, made a number of twists and turns, changed elevations twice, crawled through a dry connecting tube into another large sewer, and finally crawled up through a ragged edged hole to enter a tunnel with a level floor. Here, Nali finally allowed him a lamp, but only a small one. The half-circular brick passage had no stains and only a musty smell, suggesting that it was not part of the sewage drains. His lamp did not reveal much of it, but it continued in a straight line into the gloom in front of them.

Studying the lower half of the left hand wall, Nali hurried along with a soft tread. After less than a dozen steps, she stopped at a spot that to him looked little different from any other.

A sharp blow of her fist on one particular brick made a section at the base of the wall pop out slightly. Not a veneer but whole bricks attached to a metal frame that rode on casters, the section slid out about half an armlength when she dug in her fingertips and tugged. His lamp revealed a small hollow behind this door.

"Get in. I only made it big enough for one, but we'll have to manage."

He balked. "I'd rather keep going."

She shook her head. "Don't be stupid. Faction standard procedure is to deploy a movement detection ward at five hundred paces. You go another thirty steps and they'll know exactly where you are. Get in."

He ground his teeth together, but complied.

After lodging his lamp against the curving back wall, he tucked arms and legs and wiggled inside the cramped cell. Nali crowded immediately behind him and for a moment a wrestling match ensued as they tried to find an accommodation that would allow the woman to pull the door shut. Quite abruptly the struggle ended and he found himself with a lap full of Nali, who, after she sealed the entrance, let out a long breath and relaxed.

"We will only have to wait a couple of hours," she told him in a low voice. "The Compliance Officers won't stay in the area any longer than that. Everyone will have gotten away except for the ones they snared."

It would have been impossible not to note the similarity between his current circumstance and the long ago incident in Khalar when he had hidden with Telriy in his own bolt hole. Memories of her stirred feelings that were not convenient to have while entangled with another woman -- especially one dressed -- or, more accurately,
undressed
-- as Nali was -- so he firmly steered his mind away from thoughts of soft skin and warm contact.

"They hit the Bazaar often?"

"Only a couple of times a year. This one was a couple of months early, but they don't exactly keep a schedule. They don't want to shut down the Bazaar completely. It concentrates the bootleggers and smugglers in one place and makes them easy to watch. These raids are just to remind everyone that the Faction is in charge. They'll kill a few people, make a few more disappear, arrest anyone they can, and fill in the entrances, but most of those caught will be released within a day and within three or four days new entrances will be cut. A month from now, it'll be business as usual."

"What about your friend Fynd?"

"She has resources that gave her a five minute warning. She sent me after you and then ported out before the damping ward came down. ."

"I appreciate the thought, but it wasn't necessary. I'd have gotten out, one way or the other."

"Maybe, but the Compliance Officers kill unlicensed sorcerers on sight. Fynd wanted to keep you alive in case she needed you again."

"How do you know that their magic won't find us here?"

Cocking her head, she indicated a medallion, made of bronze or something similar, which hung from a spike driven into the brick. Raised curlicue letters in a white lacquer circled the exposed face.

"None of their spells can detect this spot and anyone that walks by will tend not to notice it. That's Kendis work. Cost me a smooth five thousand Khyvhnhe riels, which cost me
twenty-five thousand
Bazaar tokens. I don't regret the price because it's saved my skin more than once, but it's still a lot of money."

"Maybe I can cover a part of your investment. I still have most of what Fynd paid me and I need something that I didn't find in the Bazaar. I'm willing to pay all of my tokens for your help."

She moved about a bit in a very distracting way. "It's a little cramped in here, but I can --"

"Not
that
. I need to find a wizard -- or, at least, someone that can teach me about wizardry."

"Wizardry! Do you have a death wish?"

"
No.
Do you know anyone that can help me?"

"I might. So you want to jump to a different time? Why?"

"Explanations are not part of the deal."

"Well, as far as I have heard, there isn't a single wizard left alive in the Commonwealth. The Faction considers wizardry a high crime against the public peace. I do know some people, though, who know some people that might be able to put you in contact with a foreign practitioner."

"How long would that take?"

"To connect with the people I know, no more than an hour after we leave here. For them to contact the people they know, I haven't the slightest idea. It could be as little as a few minutes or as long as several days before I get a response."

"It's a deal." He decided that it would be best not to try to wiggle his hands underneath her to reach his pockets. "I'll pay you just as soon as we get out."

"My pleasure. My usual fee is a good bit more, but you can owe me the rest."

He did not comment. After another moment, he rested his head on the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

"You're going to sleep?"

"Just a nap."

"You sure you don't want to --"

"No."

A while later -- he had no way to determine whether it was the full appointed two hours -- she used an elbow to wake him from his doze. As soon as she had closed her refuge up tight, he presented her with all of his Bazaar tokens, making himself once again penniless without regret, and they moved on. The lacquer chips had never actually
felt
like money to him and he did not give them a second thought.

Once again, she forbade him a light, taking his hand to guide him along. It may simply have been the dark enhancing his hearing, but presently he became acutely conscious of the whispering sounds that her clothing made as she walked.

To keep his focus firmly where it belonged, he thought of Telriy.

ELEVEN

At the end of the brick tunnel, Nali led him up a metal ladder mounted to the side of a narrow, vertical shaft. This brought them to a corridor just wide enough to walk in that had lamps mounted to the sidewall at ten armlength intervals. These lit as they drew near and extinguished when they passed, but generated hardly enough light to see where to put his feet.

"Can I make a light now?"

"No. We're just below ground level here and a spell in motion would be easily detected."

He frowned at her back. "Where is it that we're going?"

"A place that I know that the yellow jackets never bother to watch. We'll get there in about twenty minutes."

"Wouldn't it be quicker to use the transporting magic?"

"Port bracelets might be as common as teeth in Pyra -- or wherever you're
actually
from -- but here in the Commonwealth the Faction has a stranglehold on all technology, including the mines that produce the rare ethereal metals. It takes a permit which is nearly impossible to get for a civilian to buy a port bracelet legally, which makes the few that get smuggled in
really
expensive."