Krunzle the Quick (4 page)

The figure in the chair turned and looked up at him over one shoulder—a girl on the cusp of becoming a woman, startled in the act of reading poetry from the small book now visible in her grasp. Then surprise turned to excitement tinged with pleasure. “Did he send you,” she said, “to rescue me?”

Krunzle ignored the girl’s question. You will recognize it when you see it, Baalariot’s note had said. And now, as the thief looked at the slim, young figure, and especially at the chain around her neck, and most especially at the amulet that hung from it, he knew.

He stepped into the cell, reaching for the apprentice’s eye. It looked like nothing all that special. It was a palm-sized circle of some shiny metal, in the center of which was set a large green cabochon. Around the rim ran a legend carved in a script he could not read.

The young woman stood, her face showing alarm. “Wait!” she said.

“I can’t,” he said, and took hold of the gaudy thing, giving it a yank that expertly parted the chain. As he did so, two events occurred: the unfaceted green gem in the center turned red; and something cold and strong curled itself around one of his ankles and rapidly rose up his leg. The stench that had been so powerful in the corridor was overwhelming now.

Krunzle held tightly to the amulet—the geas made sure of that—at the same time as he tried to shake his leg free of whatever had seized it. He looked down and saw a broad, triangular head, clad in leprous white scales, its eyes filmed and blind but its forked tongue aflickering. The head connected to a thigh-thick, limbless body that continued to slither toward him along the floor of the corridor, even as it slid upward and addressed its huge strength to the task of squeezing air and life from his torso.

He toppled headlong onto the carpet as the great snake opened its fanged maw and hissed into his face.

“Oh dear,” said the girl in white.

His first awareness was of the ache in his ribs, that swelled every time he took a breath. He cursed the pain, then thought, No, wait, I’m still breathing. That has to go on the positive side of the ledger. He took a deeper breath and groaned, his emotions mixed.

“Get up,” said a voice from somewhere above him: female, but without the girlish tone of the amulet-wearer. This was a mature contralto, with strong overtones of I am used to being obeyed. Krunzle opened his eyes and discovered he was lying on a thick carpet. He recognized the hole in the ceiling.

A toe nudged his sore ribs—bruised, not broken, he deduced—and the voice said, “Up.”

From this vantage, she seemed extraordinarily tall, an impression that did not diminish when he struggled painfully to his feet and found that she still overtopped him so that he had to crane his neck to meet her eyes. In doing so he discovered that his neck was joining his ribs in registering a complaint of maltreatment. “Ow,” he said, rubbing it.

She looked to be of middle years, except for a face as smooth and ageless as magic could make it. She wore a complex headpiece of entwined snakes fashioned from some pale metal, inset with eyes of polished opal. Hair the same shade as that of the girl in the cell cascaded down onto a robe of pale silk, marked in red and black arcane symbols.

“I am Hortenza, and this is my house,” she said. “Name yourself.”

He did so, without resorting to sleights or subterfuges. She did not look the type to enjoy a frivolous puzzle.

She studied the thief. Krunzle had seen much the same expression on the faces of farmwives deciding which chicken would have its neck wrung for the stewpot. As if interested in the decor, he looked about him. The room was still windowless; there was one exit, besides the one he had made.

“Meddling in the affairs of spellcasters is rarely advisable.”

As if she could read his thoughts—and perhaps she could—she said, “The door is locked and the snake is on the roof. He likes to take sleeping birds. But he’d rather have you.”

Krunzle thought of several things he could say, but none of them seemed likely to profit him. He remained silent while she studied him some more. Meanwhile, the geas was urging him to escape, and to do so loudly. He focused mentally on the impossibility of doing so, and the urge quieted. Thanks to Cardimion for making it discriminating, he thought.

By now, his new captor seemed to have seen all there was to see. She said, “Baalariot sent you.”

Again, the thief saw nothing to be gained by speaking. After a moment, she said, “Answer.”

“I did not hear a question.”

Her hard face hardened further. She raised a finger whose nail tapered to a black lacquered point and pointed it at him. The air around him crackled and he smelled a whiff of sulfur, then he became aware that every bone in his body had suddenly become hot enough to scald the flesh that touched it. The pain lasted only moments, but the memory of it lingered after she lowered the digit.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “that question. Indeed, Baalariot sent me.”

“To steal Galathea.”

His eyebrows knitted themselves in confusion. “He called it something else.”

That brought him a quizzical look. She studied him again, then said, “What, exactly, did he call her?”

Krunzle blinked. Her? But he was in no position to offer a correction. “He called it an apprentice’s eye.”

As a young student, the thief had never risen to the top of any class in literature, history, or philosophy. His was a practical intelligence, best expressed through his hands, whose remarkable deftness at eye-bamboozling speed had won him his nickname. But his inability to recite even the best-known dates and precedents used to win him a certain look from the preceptors at the day school, a look that said, Can this oaf really be that much of a thimble-wit?

He was seeing that look again, on the face of the witch. Now she looked down at the carpet, where the amulet with the color-changing cabochon lay, the polished, uncut stone now green again. The snake’s coiled embrace must have pressed it to him. Indeed, he suspected the hard stone was responsible for one of the bruises on his ribs. The moment he noticed it, he involuntarily stooped and picked it up.

“That?” she said. “You want me to believe he sent you for that?”

The darkening expression on her face told Krunzle that he needed her to believe it, because it was the only explanation for his conduct that he was able to offer.

She was studying him even more closely now. “You’re not one of his coterie.”

“I have never been a joiner,” Krunzle said.

“A hireling?”

“Not as such.”

She picked up the amulet and held it to him. The green stone turned red. “Ah,” she said.

“Why does it do that?” he said.

“It is an apprentice wizard’s tool,” she said. “It perceives the energies involved in magic, and mostly serves to prevent the inexperienced from touching that which might do them harm. Right now, it tells me that you have been ensorcelled.”

She tilted her head in thought then added, “Which might make you dangerous. Don’t move.”

She went to a cupboard that stood against the wall, opened a door, and selected an object from several that were stored there. She brought it back and he saw that it was a tube carved from black crystal. She put it to her eye and inspected him through it.

“Ah, Baalariot,” she said. “Always the obvious. Of course it would be Cardimion’s Discriminating Geas.” She went back to the cupboard, chose other items from its contents and brought them to a table. Then she moved a brazier to the same part of the room and, with a mere motion of one hand, ignited its charcoal. She inspected the things she had arranged on the table—Krunzle saw scrimshawed ivory, an ebony rod, some old, time-worn knuckle bones, a scrap of pale hide tattooed with blue runes, a diminutive, oddly shaped skull—then she began to perform actions beyond his comprehension.

“If we were out in the street,” she said, touching this and elevating that, “I could scarcely make a dent. But I have an arrangement with Our Lady’s sanctuary next door, and that gives me access to a power that…” She broke off, concentrating while she tapped the black rod a precise three times on the top of the skull, then covered the bone with the tattooed skin. The air inside the room was suddenly charged with energy. Kunzle felt a crackling in his ears. Then she looked over at him and aimed the rod in his direction, saying, “This will probably hurt a little.”

“Hurt a little?” Krunzle began. “Then perhaps we could—” He was unable to continue because his senses were now reporting that his insides and outsides had apparently changed places, and that his entire carcass had subsequently been consumed by a raging firestorm wrapped in a freezing blizzard, then crushed to the size of an ant—and not a very big ant, at that.

He was next conscious of screaming hoarsely, and then vision returned, along with the rest of his sensorium, which advised him that all his systems were now running normally—except for his fear-measuring capacity, which was strained to its limit. He closed his mouth and took in a long, shaky breath through his nostrils. “Please,” he said, “don’t do that again.”

“Typical,” said the woman. “I free you from a serious enchantment—a service, I want to point out, that I perform at no charge. And do I see gratitude? Do I hear so much as a murmur of thanks?”

“Thank you,” Krunzle murmured.

“Too late now,” she said, picking up the knucklebones and rolling them expertly between her palms. “Now let’s see what you can do for me in return.”

“I thought you said there was no charge.”

“Typical,” she said again, shaking her blonde locks. She threw the bones onto the tabletop, regarded them for a long moment, then said, “Apparently, the answer is: nothing. You’re not part of my future at all.”

Krunzle heaved a sigh of relief, until the thought occurred that the bones might be saying he was not part of anybody’s future. The demon worshipers next door could likely use a spare body. And he knew that some of the uses to which the bodies were put rendered them useless for any future employment.

She had picked up the amulet again. “So he sends in a thief to steal this piece of gimcrack, which the idiot Didmus gave to the equal idiotic Galathea as some sort of mawkish love-token.”

Krunzle dared to interrupt. “Who,” he said, “are Didmus and Galathea?”

Again, that look that his teachers used to give him, then she shook her head as one does who accepts that some shortcomings must be borne with. She said, “Galathea is the girl from whom you took the apprentice’s eye. She is my daughter. And Baalariot’s, for that matter. Didmus is a half-grown half-wit of a sorcerer’s apprentice. They think they are in love.”

“You and Baalariot are married?” he said.

Again, the look of disbelief. “Men and women do not have to be married to produce children,” she said. “Baalariot wants to wed her to one of Hedvand’s courtiers. I have a better plan: she will train to become a priestess of Nocticula, cementing my relationship with the cult.”

“And Didmus,” the thief said, his mind beginning to form the picture into whose frame he had been pressed, “what does he want?”

She assumed an exasperated look. “What does any young man want?”

“He doesn’t happen,” Krunzle said, “to play the zither?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

For all its academic shortfalls, Krunzle’s intellect was adept at plans and schemes, his own and others’. The pieces now fell into place. He debated for a moment as to whether he should voice his conclusions—but only for a moment. If he was right, events would shortly reveal the facts for themselves, and he would gain nothing by too late a revelation.

“I believe,” he said, “that I am here as a diversion.”

Hortenza’s brows consulted each other, then her eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a heavy concussion sounded from downstairs. The building shook, and shards of plaster sifted down from the hole in the corner of the ceiling.

The priestess recovered quickly. “The bastard!” she said, reaching for the ebony rod and striding to the door. She slammed it behind her and he heard the click of the lock. He gave her a moment to clear the corridor outside then went to kneel at the keyhole, reaching for his picks.

But, even in her hurry, Hortenza had been thinking a step ahead of him. The pick would not engage the tumblers. He went to the table, where she had left the apprentice’s eye, and brought it to bear on the door. The lock made the stone glow bright red.

Krunzle said a short and pungent word, then turned to the hole in the ceiling. He pushed a small table underneath, then leapt atop it. When he stood upright, his head and shoulder poked through the opening, so that his eyes rose just above the level of the packed-earth roof.

The open space was in darkness and silence, except for the sound of a zither being inexpertly tuned. Then the thief heard a noise like sand rushing through a giant hourglass, as the great blind snake slithered across the roof toward him. He ducked down and, after a moment, the sound ceased.

The lock clicked. The door opened. In the moment between the two events, Krunzle put the table back where he had found it and himself where Hortenza had left him. The witch stepped through the doorway, panting from the stairs and presumably from the effort of dragging an unwilling young woman all the way up from the sub-basement.

“A good thief knows when to make himself scarce, and Krunzle is better than most.”

She flung Galathea into the room. “You stay here, or so help me…” She left the threat implied as she turned to the thief and said, with a meaningful glance at the hole in the ceiling, “Keep her here, and I will make it worth your while. Let her go, and…” She pointed a tapered fingernail at him and left the rest to Krunzle’s imagination.

Then she was gone, the door slammed. The girl tried the opener, found it locked, and stamped her foot, saying under her breath a word that was not supposed to be available to gently reared maidens. She looked at Krunzle, and the thief recognized the parents in the child.

“You’re thinking,” he told her, just to get the process rolling, “what it will cost you to secure my assistance.”