Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (95 page)

“No, I really wouldn’t,” assured Pentandra, coolly.  

“
Fine!
 Here, let me see,” she said, opening a second crypt drawer, and then a third until she found what she sought. 

“Here, you lucky girl, a gift from a dead admirer - Lord Fismar of Prin’s Landing, killed in Vorone during a friendly joust about two decades before you were born.  And it’s
just
in your size,” she said, removing a steel short sword from inside the tomb and drawing it from its dusty scabbard.  “If you aren’t willing to slum it out with that piece of scrap on your husband’s hip, then perhaps this might be an acceptable alternative.”  She handed the small sword to Pentandra with a bit of ceremony.  

The blade was around twenty-five inches long, Pentandra saw, and slightly curved to a sharp point: a Sealord’s blade.  The edge was still sharp after all of these years, but the blade itself was heavy enough to hurt with its dull side at need on its own: the perfect tool for gutting a boarding party or hacking through rope and sailcloth.  The bronze bell guard was in the shape of a scallop shell and swept back to the pommel, gilded in silver.  Despite how heavily ornate it looked, the sword - scimitar, she corrected herself - was well-balanced and surprisingly light in her hand.  

Pentandra did a few cautious sweeps through the air of the crypt, then practiced her stance for a few moments while Arborn offered suggestions.  She was familiar with swordplay, though she hadn’t studied it, as such.  She wasn’t a warmage nor was she from a house of noble cavalrymen.  Her people preferred wands or daggers to settle their differences.  Swords were for the guards.

But Pentandra had been on her own for years, now, and throughout her adventures she had occasionally picked up important points of lore from other disciplines.  She’d fenced with Minalan or his apprentices more than once, and she and Arborn had even traded blows with practice weapons in Sevendor, after their wedding.  The principle seemed simple enough: stab them with the point, slash them with the edge.  Everything else seemed superfluous.

“And this will kill the Nemovort?” she asked, curious, as she studied the blade.

“If he doesn’t die of old age first, waiting on you to figure out which end the hilt is on,” chided Ishi.  “Are you ready or
not?
”

Pentandra gave one final sweep of the blade.  “Ready!”

“Let’s go,” Arborn said, as they watched the last of the Rats disappear through the Waypoint, headed toward an uncertain (but probably dire) future.  

A guttural warcry erupting violently from his throat, Arborn sprang on top of the sea of crypts between the stairs and the Waypoint, startling both undead and goblin.  Ishi stood and followed behind the ranger at a slower, more stately pace, a grim expression on her lips as she walked purposefully toward their foe.  

“They live!”
cried the goblin, grabbing a variety of sacks and packages stacked on a nearby crypt.  “You must get me away, quickly!”

“Bide,” Pentandra heard the undead monster breath, as he turned to face Arborn’s oncoming assault.  As the big man wound up to strike, instead of dodging the blow Ocajon calmly raised his hand . . . and took almost a foot of sharp, rusty steel in the center of his palm for his troubles.  

As soon as the point stopped its progress, Ocajon turned to the goblin.  “Go now!” he ordered.  “Summon my brothers to avenge me.”  Then he turned back around, just in time to see Arborn drop the spear, still embedded in his palm, and draw his sword.

The fight that resulted was impressive, but Pentandra had other duties.  As soon as she saw Ocajon turn away from his ally, she slunk quickly up the shadowed rows of stone crypts until she was near the fight.  Ishi was standing behind Arborn, she saw, muttering words of encouragement as the ranger dueled the Nemovort, spear impaling his left hand, sword on iron staff.

“You really don’t know when to give up, do you?” the undead creature remarked, impressed, as the Kasari warrior tried a furious combination of blows that clanged against his iron staff.  “Don’t you realize?  I cannot be killed,” it boasted.  “Slay me, and my master will merely call me forth again and see me in a better body.”

“Slay me,” Arborn said, through gritted teeth as he tried desperately to avoid the strikes the undead monster returned, “and my wife will gut you like a river fish!” he replied.

“Your wife?” chuckled Ocajon.  “How quaint.  Was that the girl upstairs?” he asked, spinning with his staff in an attempt to strike Arborn in the chest.  The ranger found his blade just barely stopping the powerful strike.  “Pity she had to die like that.  Pretty girl, I suppose . . . for a humani.”

Pentandra wasn’t quite ready to strike from her position, but she could not allow such an insult to stand.  Instead of attacking Prikiven as she’d planned, she contented herself with a wild, well-placed slash that separated his hand mid-way between elbow and wrist with a bright spray of blood.  The heavy-bladed scimitar sliced through sleeve, fur, meat and bone without effort.  The Annulment device fell to the floor with his hand, followed quickly by Prikiven, who screamed and clutched at his stub of a wrist.

Instead of picking up the sphere and deactivating it, as she’d intended, she overheard the snide way Ocajon addressed her husband about her death and vowed to respond.  She slipped up near to the undead’s back, took careful aim . . . and when Arborn brought the Nemovort around, without thinking about it, her mind saw an opening and she struck.

With one decisive thrust she quickly stabbed her new curved blade directly through Ocajon’s head, impaling his brain temple to temple with the sharp point of the scimitar.  She struck hard enough to bury the tip of the blade in the top wooden crypt door, pinning the monster to the tomb.  

Whatever dweomer Ishi had laid upon the ancient sword discharged into the creature, igniting a smoldering burn in response to the blade’s touch in its flesh.  An eruption of evil-smelling fluid - it was too thin and too blackish to be blood - erupted from the wound, making the bile rise in the wizard’s throat.

But Pentandra could not spare the effort to vomit.  She was being dramatic.

“No,” Pentandra answered, quietly, as she watched the life -- undeath? -- leech from Ocajon’s dead human body.  “I’m a pretty girl for
any
species,” she said, her chest heaving slightly from the exertion of her sudden blow.  “And you really,
really
shouldn’t . . .
piss me off
,” she sighed, and nearly collapsed, though she never let loose the hilt of her blade.  

The Nemovort quivered and jerked as the blade that transfixed its dead brain twisted what remained into a putrid pudding.  It even tried to get out a few words, but Pentandra was too tired to listen.  With a twist of her wrist she wrenched the long-unused sword to the right and left, doing as much damage as possible, before she pulled her blade free and watched the former human/Alkan hybrid fumble to the ground.  

“That was nicely done,” Arborn said, picking up the iron staff from the floor.  

“I thought you said . . . they were . . .
hard
to kill,” Pentandra panted, her head swimming.

“I guess you got the runt of the litter,” he ventured as he pulled his ancient spear from the corpse’s hand.

“What about the goblin?” Ishi asked, pointing to the wounded gurvan, who was clutching his wrist painfully and watching his powerful patron expire.

“Let’s find out what he knows,” Pentandra said, picking up the Annulment sphere and deactivating it.  She felt her arcane power return to her in an overwhelming wave, and Everkeen quivered as it “awakened” and flew obligingly to her hand.  “I’ll just cast a truthtell . . .”

“I regret I cannot allow that, my lady,” Prikiven gasped between clenched teeth.  

“I really don’t see how you can
stop
it,” Pentandra said, preparing the spell.

“I couldn’t have,” the goblin agreed, “until you turned off that sphere . . .”

Too late, Pentandra realized what she’d done.  While the sphere was active, neither she nor the gurvani shaman had access to their powers - Ocajon likely used his Death Force, perhaps channeled through the iron staff, to power the Waypoint spell, just as Ishi had used the Life Force to destroy him.  Once dead, his gurvani confederate was trapped without power . . . until she’d deactivated the sphere that bound them both.

The gurvan turned his face away from her, his eyes scrunched closed, and muttered something before Pentandra or Arborn could stop him.  Her husband tried valiantly -- Arborn threw his spear quickly and with great force . . . but Prikiven was already fading into the Waypoint spell he’d cast.  The weapon clattered harmlessly against the flags of the crypt’s floor, the gurvan nowhere to be seen.

“I think I can follow him!” Pentandra insisted.  “I can use Everkeen!”

“Penny, no!”
Arborn shouted at her.  She was about to ignore him and try to trace where the goblin had escaped to.  But a sharp wave of sudden force sent her baculus skittering back into dormancy.

“Enough
, Daughter!” snapped Ishi, irritated.  “You’ve slain your foe and driven the others off.  Your apprentice is safe from pursuit, for the moment.  And you are utterly exhausted, both physically and magically,” she pointed out.  “Go home and get some sleep before you fall over.”

“But . . . but Everkeen can
track
him!  I can see where he’s going!” she said as she hurriedly cast a magelight above them.

“We
know
where he’s going,” Ishi insisted.  “The lost citadel of Anthatiel, the cursed City of Rainbows.  Now the city of cruddy ice and dirty slush, enfiefed to Korbal by Sheruel,” she said, rolling her eyes, “and absolutely
crawling
with all manner of foul folk.  Not the sort of party one arrives to unprepared.  While you and your pretty stick might be able to trace him, should you even discover how to follow him, you would be dead within moments.”

“So what are we supposed to do
now?
” Pentandra asked, despairingly.

“Get some sleep!” ordered the goddess.  “Have you not had enough excitement for awhile?  You have done your part, and I mine, in slaying this abomination and protecting Vorone.  Sleep, mortals, and know the town is safe . . . for now.  In fact,” she said, listening for something Pentandra could not hear, “I believe I must prepare for today’s meeting, in just a few short hours.”

“Meeting?” Arborn asked, curiously.  “With the priestesses of Ishi?”

“
Those
boring old sluts?” dismissed the goddess.  “No, no, this will be much more exciting.  I’ve invited all of the other managers on the streets of Perfume, Glassblowers, and Jewelers to my hall to discuss a cooperative association,” she said, smugly.  “What they don’t know is that the House of Flowers has been doing so well that I’ve managed - with the help of a few stalwart admirers of more than modest means - to buy up the debt of each house.”

“Managers?” Arborn asked, confused.

“The other madams and whoremasters,” Pentandra explained to her naïve husband.  “You bought out their debt?  You plan on shutting them down?  That would give you a monopoly on . . . lust,” she said, choosing her words wisely.

Ishi looked horrified.  “Of course not!  Are you mad?  No, I merely want to better coordinate our efforts.  Ensure all of our employees are treated well, keep our pricing fair and reasonable, establish certain professional boundaries . . .”

“Ishi’s tits!” Pentandra said, automatically, as she realized what Lady Pleasure intended.  “You don’t want a monopoly . . . you want a
cartel!
”

“I like to think of it more as a guild,” Ishi said, demurely.  “Indeed, your work at the Arcane Orders was an inspiration.  After all, if the magi could manage to make a pretense at organization, why cannot whores do the same?”

“Won’t that . . . anger some of the managers?” Arborn asked, diplomatically.  While he was not nearly as familiar with Vorone’s nightlife as Pentandra, he’d seen enough of the worst of the violence and degradation of the slums around the nicer quarters in town, and knew that most pimps were not nearly as reasonable about their businesses as Lady Pleasure.