Phinneas Phoarty was not certain what he had expected to find upon entering Vod’Adia, but it was not what he got.
After winding through back alleys for a long while the group had reached the Shugak gate where a long line of adventurers was queued up in groups of up to ten, waiting their turns to enter Vod’Adia on ten minute intervals. The city had been Open by then for around two hours. The Sarge led the way to the front of the line holding his ruined hand in a mass of bloody bandages to his chest and waving the Shugak totem stick with its rows of beads and bones in the other. He was in tremendous pain and at best only semi-coherent, but the grim hobgoblins at the palisade gate examined the stick and waved the group through between two others with toothy leers and guttural chuckles. They cared very little if a suicidal band of half-dead humans wished to enter the Sable City, so long as they had paid in full for the privilege.
The other adventurers eyed the group and muttered as they were jumped into the line, but no one stepped forward to ask as to the condition of the limp young woman slung over the legionnaire Ty’s shoulder. The humans did not impress Phin as being any more gallant than the Magdetchoi.
The Sarge and Rickard led the way at a stagger down a straight road of black stones extending through a green field of short grass. The two leaned on each other as the Sarge was hunched over his hand while Rickard had a tourniquet above his knee, though the leg of his torn trousers and the thick sock in a marching sandal were already bright red. The big man Ty was the only one of the three legionnaires who was still hale, and so he carried the woman who had yet to make so much as a murmur. She was slung over Ty’s shoulder and her head and arms swung limply in time with his pace. Phin walked in the rear carrying the only tower shield the legionnaires had managed to take with them when Shugak reinforcements and armored Jobians wielding maces had driven everyone away from the inferno of the Dead Possum Inn.
Phin stared past the others as they moved along the road, now able to make out some details of peaked roofs and thick, square towers above the loom of the city wall. The edges of all were still smoothed by the lingering, gray-white mist. The whole city was all dreadfully more substantial than it had seemed yesterday, and though the legionnaires were hardly setting a brisk pace toward it Phin began to fall behind.
This was sheer madness, some sensible part of Phin’s brain assured him. He was entering Vod’Adia not with a strong party but with three battered legionnaires who were kept upright mainly by pain and fear. Horayachus and his minions were dead, as were two of the legionnaires, and in his mind's eye Phin could still see Gery’s blood jetting into the air after the Centurion called Deskata slashed open his neck. Phin had intended to cast a Sleep spell on the man but when the woman in a black half cloak had appeared and felled him with a club, Phin had released his spell at her rather than risk a wild discharge that might have caught the Sarge or another legionnaire with whom he was supposed to be allied. He was in no way confident that he had done the right thing, but did not feel as though he had.
These legionnaires, besides being renegades from the Empire, were kidnappers. They were taking their prisoner to Ayzantu City to turn her over to the Priests of Ayon, the fiery god known as the Burning Man, the Stormking, the Oathbreaker, and most simply as Destruction. That was what Horayachus had said when he turned her over to the Sarge. That and something about the book.
Despite his bad state the Sarge was still clinging to the leather satchel over his shoulder, containing the large folio he had made Phin read from before hiring him. Though he had perused no more than a few words Phin knew the work had something to do with magical movement of a transcendental kind, or more simply put, with teleportation magic of the kind that allowed people and objects to move instantly from place to place. The legionnaires plainly expected to use the book to take them from Vod’Adia to Ayzantu City, and Phin had a fair idea of just who they expected to work that magic.
He had a number of problems with that. The first was that whether the legionnaires understood it or not, there could be no teleportation out of Vod’Adia. The fog around the city, though thinned, was still a magical veil. One had only to look at it to see as much. No magic could cross such a veil, not the simplest communicative spell nor divination, not the most powerful teleport imaginable. Second, even in the best of circumstances teleportation was wildly dangerous. Within the Circle only specialized Wizards who did very little else ever worked with that sort of magic, and always under tightly controlled conditions. All students at Abverwar soon came to know the horror stories of what resulted when a teleporting mage was just slightly off, and reappeared in the physical world in a space already occupied by a wall, or a ceiling, or by another living thing. They were not the sort of stories that were conducive to one’s appetite.
Finally, even were it possible for Phin to successfully teleport this motley band out of Vod’Adia he had no desire to go to the capital city of Ayzantium, nor to take the unconscious prisoner there. That could not possibly end well for either of them.
Yet the reason Phin did not fall further behind on the road into Vod’Adia, nor cast aside the light-but-awkward tower shield to turn and run like hell, was ultimately because of the woman slung like a sack of feed over Ty’s shoulder. She was alive because that was how Horayachus had said she must be taken to Ayzantu City. The legionnaires’ pay was dependent on it. If Phin ran they would certainly come after him as they needed a mage, but in their present condition he did not doubt he could get away. The problem was that his escape would only leave the woman in their possession as a burden. Phin was sure his departure would condemn the woman to death, and that was something he could not quite bring himself to do. He trotted forward, wincing as he banged his knees on the bulky shield, and fell into line with the others.
The mist did not coalesce around them as they walked as natural fog would have. Instead it hovered in the air as a sharp demarcation, marked on the ground by a line of green grass on the one side and only bare dirt beyond. Somehow that straight edge between life and no life was even more unsettling to Phin than the black city rising beyond it. The Sarge and Rickard hobbled across the line, Ty paused but plunged in as well, and though he had not been of a particularly religious bent since the years he had spent at Abverwar, Phin regretted that he had no particular god to beseech before he took a deep breath and stepped across the line.
The mist was uncomfortably warm and cloying. The others ahead of Phin became indistinct shapes and he hurried to walk directly behind Ty while trying not to bump the woman draped over his shoulder with the tower shield. Phin’s muffled footfalls on the stone path abruptly changed to metallic thuds. He peered around in the mist that made it impossible to see more than a few feet, though he dimly perceived a taut chain as he passed it, made of enormous links and stretched tight at an angle. Phin realized he was crossing an iron-shod drawbridge though he could not make out what it spanned.
The already muted light of the sun faded as the party passed into a gatehouse and the ground was again stone beneath Phin’s feet. He could see nothing but grayer light both ahead and behind, and he shifted the shield to one side and fumbled along Ty’s back, getting a muffled complaint from the legionnaire before finding and grasping the woman’s limp hand. It was soft, and very small. Phin had a fear that all of Vod’Adia was going to be this stifled sort of world when he abruptly stepped out of the gatehouse and the veil with the same suddenness as he had entered. Sights and sounds assaulted his eyes and ears.
All Phin could compare it to was a busy market in Souterm. Most of the first hundred people to enter the city so far had apparently stopped right here in a wide, circular plaza of black flagstones surrounded by grand buildings of the same material, arched porticos covering walkways all along their facades. Between the arches merchants were setting up for business on tables with collapsible legs, unpacking bags and even wheelbarrows of the sorts of things any adventurer might need. There were coils of rope and bundles of torches, extra packs and durable pouches, rations, lamp oil, water-skins, flint and steel. Prices were marked on chalkboards, and they boggled the mind.
The entrepreneurs hurrahed at Phin’s band as they blundered into the plaza, but their cries faded as the hawkers got a good look at the newcomers. One fellow continued to pace in the center of the plaza, gesticulating wildly and barking in some High Northern tongue. Though his tone was that of any tout in any marketplace in the world the effect was strange as instead of flashy robes he wore heavy chain mail and a tall conical helm with a long nose guard, and bore two crossed axes on his back.
The legionnaires stared around in wonder, then tensed as a young gnome in studded leather bounded at them beaming a wide smile in the depths of his russet beard, shaking a bone scroll case in either hand.
“Welcome to Blackstone, gentle Codians!” he sang in that tongue, taking note of the legionnaires’ armor if not of the state they were in. “Might I interest you in a map? Each is replicated in the minutest detail from the works of Ganhadarik Strong Axe, dwarven adventurer, who at the Fourth Opening brought enough wealth out of the Sable City to live the rest of his long years as a Laird of his people! Find the way to the fabulous noble district! Learn which streets lead to opportunity, and which lead to ruin! Do not wander the streets of Blackstone, friends, but travel them forearmed with perfect knowledge. Save time, and even your lives!”
The Sarge glared at the capering figure. “Get out of the way,” he growled through clenched teeth, but the gnome only went on.
“Buy now, for as men return this way bearing riches the price of everything will only rise!”
“I told you to shove off,” the Sarge spat, taking a step forward and bringing his uninjured hand to the hilt of the sword on his hip.
The wide smile evaporated from the gnome’s face and he snapped his fingers. Phin heard the hiss of a burning match from a nearby portico, and he turned to see four men and two more gnomes training crossbows and muskets in his direction. The short musketeers held smoking fuses close to their flash pans.
“There is no call to be rude,” the first gnome sniffed, opening his coat to replace the scroll cases in already stuffed pockets. “Save your strength for the beasties.”
The gnome strolled back to his fellows, who slowly lowered their aim and blew out their fuses. Phin and the legionnaires only stared at them until Rickard mumbled thickly to the Sarge.
“What are we doing, boss?”
The Sarge looked around the plaza and Phin did the same. The great black structures were all reminiscent of the Tower on Again Island, the First Fort, and the other ancient Ettacean works that survived in Souterm. Looking at the tall buildings drew Phin’s eyes up to the sky, and gave him a shiver. The light on the streets was similar to evening rather than the mid-morning Phin had left outside the city, but it had nothing to do with the height of the sun. Rather, the gray mist formed a vast dome overreaching the city, yet not one so tall that it looked like a cloudy sky. Instead, the very tops of the tallest towers extended up into it and remained obscured. The sun high to the east was only a pale disk which Phin could look at directly without blinking.
“This way,” the Sarge growled as he led the way toward the nearest building with Rickard now deathly pale and leaning on him heavily. A man in full armor stood in the doorway with a drawn sword, and the Sarge veered into a narrow alley next to the place. He told Ty to put the woman down and Phin caught her shoulders so she was not dropped roughly to the stone ground.
“You two wait here with the Duchess,” the Sarge said to Ty and Phin. “There’s a fresh-painted shield sign above that door across the way. If it’s Shanatarians in there they’ll be running a hospital and giving free healing.”
The Sarge braced up Rickard, whose eyes were now fluttering, and started away. Rickard’s feet dragged as he could scarcely raise them.
“We should heal her as well,” Phin called after them, for the Duchess had now been unconscious for several hours and her color seemed bad as Phin looked at her slack face. Though given the quality of light filtering down to the streets, everyone in Vod’Adia had an unhealthy pallor.
Ty had another suggestion what they should do with the woman, and Phin met his eyes with a hard glare.
“There will not be any of that,” Phin said in a whisper, surprising himself as despite his state of mind his voice took on all the menace and contempt befitting a Circle Wizard. Ty blinked, drew back from Phin, and it was a moment before the legionnaire remembered to look fierce.
“Phoarty,” the Sarge said from where he had stopped to look back. The sergeant did not need to put on a fierce face as his carried that look at all times. When he smiled he only looked more dangerous. He was keeping Rickard on his feet by the belt with his one good hand.
“We won’t touch the woman, if it means that much to you. But make no mistake. She is going to the Priests of Ayon. Do not get attached.”
“Why take her there?” Phin decided to ask.
“Because that is how we salvage a payday out of this damned mess. Beyond that, I could give a rat’s ass.”
The Sarge turned and dragged Rickard across the plaza. Phin looked after them with a slight frown, for even with the strange light in this place the Sarge’s eyes had looked gray rather than bright green.
*
The Shanatarians across the plaza proved to be a band of Ostrananyans rather than from a Codian church. They healed the Sarge and Rickard without asking any questions as to why the pair were armored as Codian soldiers. The pair rejoined Phin, Ty, and the Duchess after the Sarge gave up all the coins the legionnaires had left to the nearby merchants for a few days of food and water.
Phin had used the time to dampen a handkerchief with a little of the water he already had in a skin. He wiped off the blood caked under the Duchess’s nose, which like her left cheek was badly bruised but not actually broken. She had a large swollen goose egg on the back of her head in her thick hair, but it had not bled.
“Hard-headed little Duchess,” Phin murmured. Ty glared at him.
The Sarge and Rickard returned healthy but with the Sarge’s left hand still short by two fingers. What had formerly been his middle finger now had a deep scar at its base that looked old, though it was fresh. A fraction of an inch more and the Sarge would have lost it as well to the Centurion’s blade.
Phin suspected that the fact the legionnaires had been driven away from the burning inn while Centurion Deskata was still alive was the reason they left the area of Vod’Adia’s entrance with all possible dispatch. The Sarge led the way with the tower shield, gripping the straps with what remained of his left hand. Ty carried the Duchess after binding her limp hands with a cord from a water-skin, and Rickard and Phin split the provisions. There were not enough of them to be much bother.
Phin asked where they were going and the Sarge told him to shut the hell up. The four men spent the next several hours moving in silence, walking down the middle of dark streets and heading generally south, though the irregular angles of many city blocks forced their course away from true. Initially everyone kept a wary eye on the vacant buildings to either side, the doors of which seemed all to have been bashed in at an earlier Opening. Only once did they see any movement and that was from a party of adventurers, spearmen and archers, moving in formation a couple of blocks over. Phin was beginning to believe the tales he’d heard of a city stuffed full of fearsome creatures had been greatly exaggerated, and the legionnaires eventually picked up their pace from a careful creep to something like a march.
Sometime after noon the Sarge called a halt for a short rest and to get his bearings. Ty lowered the Duchess across a stone step halfway up to the landing of a building and sat down heavily beside her. The Sarge stood in the next intersection gazing grimly down the five streets that met there, while Rickard rolled up his own tattered trouser leg and looked with interest at the mess of scar tissue where his wound had been that morning. Phin again knelt by the Duchess and looked with concern at her slack, yet still fine, features.
“She should be conscious by now,” Phin said.
“Wake her ass up then,” Ty growled. “She can carry herself the rest of the way.”
Phin reached around the side of the Duchess’s face and gently slid his fingers into her tousled brown hair, which in spite of everything felt rich and clean. He eased the tips of his pale fingers to the bump on the back of her head, wondering if it might be possible to actually feel a skull fracture. The moment one long finger brushed the goose egg, the Duchess’s steel-grey eyes flashed open.
What lovely eyes, Phin had time to think, just before the Duchess twisted on the stairs and brought her knees to her chest. She drove both feet hard into Phin’s sternum.
Black stone and gray sky spun through Phin’s vision as he toppled backwards with his arms spinning like two windmills. He crashed to the stone sidewalk on his back, landing more or less directly on his spine. The only reason the back of his head didn’t crack the ground was that it overhung the tall curb. Phin gasped for breath as Rickard bolted past him and pounded up the stairs, then the Sarge’s grim visage loomed over him.
“Are you all right?” the Sarge demanded, and Phin nodded though he couldn’t speak.
“Jackass,” the Sarge added before rushing off after Ty and Rickard, who had chased the Duchess into the building through the gaping doorway.
When he could breath Phin rolled to knees and elbows and tottered to his feet. Legionnaire profanity boomed out of the doorway and a breastplate banged as someone ran into a wall. More swearing. Phin’s back throbbed and his chest hurt in two roughly boot-shaped areas, but he mounted the stairs and hurried into the building before the escapee could get herself killed.
Three halls left the entryway but all the noise was coming from dead ahead. Phin moved that way and in the light from the open door he saw the Duchess bolt by through his own shadow, with Ty right behind her. They ran out of Phin’s sight and there was another crash, the sound of splintering wood, screaming and clattering.
Phin entered a long room with a free-standing staircase, just in time to see the Duchess disappear into the darkness above. The big armored man Ty had broken through the bottom steps, and Rickard was trying to extricate him from the jagged remains while both continued to swear. The Sarge loped in from another room and yelled at them to shut up.
“Find another way up,” he said to Phin, then shouted up the broken stairs.
“Miss, what you are doing is a bad idea. This place is not safe! I guarantee that anything you run into in here will be far worse than us.”
Phin ran into the darkness of an adjoining room and immediately barked his shin on something hard. He limped back to the broken base of the stairs.
“We need light,” he said, but Rickard had already freed Ty and the two were tearing open a bundle of torches and candles. The Sarge yanked on the first intact stair but only brought down three more with a crash. He growled darkly, but then shouted some more in what Phin supposed was meant to be a friendly voice.
“Your Grace? This is not what you think. We are Codians, ma‘am.”
He was fingering the hilt of his sword as he said it.
Ty struck steel to flint and Rickard got the first torch lit. Phin snatched it from his hand and ran back into the next room, maneuvering around piles of decrepit furniture and kicking up clouds of fine gray dust as he went.
He passed through two more rooms connected by low stone archways, ducking each time before reaching what must have been a kitchen judging by the sagging counters and a wide fireplace. The archway in the back wall gave into a round nook with stone block steps ascending a shaft. Phin opened his mouth to call back to the legionnaires who he could still hear knocking about back by the front door, then realized that was a terrible idea. He remained silent and slid along the wall up the stairs.
The Sarge’s clear voice from down a hall let Phin know that way led only back to the front of the building, so he moved to the right through another room. He walked across wooden doors lying flat on the floor, as the iron hinges had been scavenged. In the next hall he saw clear marks on the dusty floor and squatted to hold the torch close above them. They were prints of small boots, the Duchess’s size, and they led away in a zigzag fashion. Phin followed. Twice there were more and longer marks where the Duchess had probably stumbled against a wall in the dark and gone down, though she hadn’t stayed there.
The Sarge was now yelling for Phoarty as well as for the Duchess, but Phin made no response. The tracks led him into a long gallery at the rear of the building with the gray quasi-daylight coming in through tall slit windows. There were a lot of tracks in the thick dust here and as Phin looked at them he gasped, for most had not been made by boots. They were of small, naked feet with three splayed toes ending in claws, and a fourth digit extending backward from the heel.
“Sergeant, shut up!” Phin shouted, and the man did so though it took a moment for the echoes of his voice to fade in the stone rooms with their furnishings rotted away. Phin concentrated hard but all he could hear was his crackling torch and his own rapid breathing. He drew the dagger he had taken from the Dead Possum from his belt, though he did not hope to accomplish much with the thing. There had not been a lot of weapons training at Abverwar, mostly memorization of lists of dead kings.
There was a sound behind him and Phin spun. Light flickered from a doorway down the hall and Ty appeared, sword in one hand and torch in the other. Phin beckoned him forward, pointing at the tracks on the ground, and Ty crept into the gallery. The light of his torch shone on the ceiling above him, and Phin screamed.
Clinging to a beam above the legionnaire’s head was something out of a nightmare. It was about the size of a goblin and similar in the narrow torso, long spindly limbs, and bulbous head, but instead of rubbery skin it was covered with yellowed scales the color of old parchment. In place of hands and feet it had four sets of four-fingered claws. All Phin saw of its face was gleaming green eyes above a sort of bony white beak, out of which flicked a forked red tongue. It dropped off of the beam with the speed of a striking adder.
Phin’s shout and wide eyes had been enough warning for Ty to twist away and the thing’s claws only raked across his helmet, one foot snagging the dirty brown Legion plume and tearing it out of its mount. Ty hit the floor and rolled away while the thing remained suspended in the air, hanging upside-down by a narrow tail wrapped whip-like around the beam. It popped the Legion plume into its beak and swallowed with a sucking sound, then dropped off the beam and spun to land on all fours with a puff of dust. Its four claws scrabbled as it scuttled toward Phin.
Phin held his dagger and torch in front of him and backed away as fast as he could go. The thing made a squeaking cry as it followed, alternately rising to its hind legs or moving on all four. Its beak clacked open and shut with a sound like sharpening knives. Phin backed down another short hall, yelling for Ty to get the hell up and kill the thing. He passed into yet another room and heard a sharp intake of breath at his side.
It was the Duchess, who he had plain forgotten about, lurking beside the door with an old table leg raised above her head. Phin said “Don’t,” but she did.
She was not tall enough to swing for Phin’s head but did crack him in the left elbow. The soft old wood burst in a dirty cloud but Phin dropped his dagger, just as the creature sprang at him.
The thing seemed to lack even the rudimentary intelligence to avoid an open flame, and as Phin reeled from the woman’s assault he thrust the torch into the oncoming creature’s face. It squealed and raked two claws through Phin’s shirt without cutting him, but its impact spilled them both to the ground and this time Phin’s head did bang off the floor.
He lay stunned for a moment, torch rolling out of his numb hand to gutter in the dust. He could hear the thing rolling away and scrabbling upright, and see the Duchess staring at it wide-eyed with her mouth twisted in horror, still clutching what was left of her club. Then Ty was there, bounding over Phin and driving at the creature, hacking off one of its claws at the wrist even as another screeched across his breastplate. Phin met the Duchess’s eyes, then both scrambled for his dagger lying between them.
She got to it first but Phin grabbed her wrists by their cord bindings before she could use it, and they rolled together in a tangle, gagging on the dust their struggle raised. Ty and the creature were locked in combat and the Sarge and Rickard were both shouting in different parts of the building. Phin finally managed to get his longer legs under the melee and roll the woman to her back, forcing her arms over her head with a sharp cry.
“Stop it!” he hissed at her, eyes only inches from hers.
“Let go of me!” she yelled back in accented Codian.
“Woman, listen!” he said in a harsh whisper. “I am the only chance you have of getting away from these men and out of here. Do not fight me!”
She blinked at Phin in confusion, but did not wholly stop struggling. Across the room Ty barked an oath and the little creature hissed gleefully.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
“My name is Phinneas.” She made a final squirm, but Phin had her pretty well pinned. “Trust me,” he said. “I am on your side.”
She blinked up at him. “Do you even know what side that is?”
“Not really. But the other one has to be worse.”
“Phoarty, a little help!” Ty called. Phin looked over and saw that while the legionnaire was faring all right, he could not quite land a killing blow on the quick little beast. It scrabbled around him hissing and spitting, bleeding a slimy gel from several wounds but still darting in to swipe at Ty’s legs. Its severed claw lay in the dust, twitching.
“Do not do anything rash until we have a plan,” Phin whispered to the Duchess, then raised himself enough to wrench the dagger out of her bound hands. He rolled off of her with the faintest feeling of remorse not really appropriate to the situation, took up the dagger, and crept up on Ty’s opponent from behind.
Ty met Phin’s eyes and nodded him to the side. Both torches were now on the ground and Ty lunged forward for a stab that the creature avoided only by scampering sideways and putting a claw foot down on one of them. The creature screeched and hopped backwards directly at Phin, and before he had time to think about it Phin plunged the dagger in between its scaly shoulder blades. Hot gore splashed his hands and the creature fell to the ground, hissing and squeaking as all four limbs tried to reach the dagger jammed in to the hilt. Then Ty was on it, yelling and hacking at its head until it finally lay still.
Rickard burst into the room, eyes raking the place. He saw the Duchess by the wall and grabbed her by the bindings on her wrists, twisting them cruelly.
“Don’t ever run off in this place, you stupid wench!” Rickard shouted in her face. She fell forward to her knees and grimaced in pain, but made no sound. Her eyes remained locked on Phin’s.