The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (13 page)

"It's the only explanation we can think of, sir," Goodwyn said. "One minute we were in Kest, the next we were here."

Corliss shook his head. "You didn't just climb down out of the Dragonspine Mountains, fly over two weeks of rough riding through the desert to Blackport, then sail four weeks from Blackport to the Gylder coast, then travel uphill through forests for two more weeks to get here—all in the blink of an eye. There's a reason only a handful of people in Waldron know Adosian, and that's because Ehmshahr is just too damn far away. Magic or no, what you're saying is impossible."

"How can you say magic is impossible when you and your soldiers fly like birds?" Urus said, unable to hold his tongue any longer. He hoped Corliss would understand, as even without his speech problem, his Adosian was terrible.

Corliss cocked his head and studied Urus, eyebrows furrowed. "Sorry, your accent is very different from your friend's and your Adosian is as bad as mine. We don't fly, we glide, and there's nothing magical about it. The cloaks have spines in them made from the bark of a tree that only grows at this altitude. When spread out, our cloaks let us float on the currents."

"How do you learn to do it?" Goodwyn asked.

Corliss winked and flashed a little smile. "Same way the birds do. We throw the cadets off a cliff."

Urus could not think of anything to say in response to that.

They walked a while longer in silence, the armored cadets taking up positions ahead of them. While the cadets might have been able to find updrafts to get back up to the city, part of their punishment for breaking protocol had been to walk the rest of the way up. In that heat, wearing that armor, the cadets must have been roasting.

"Cadets or not, there's no excuse for the way those boys fought," Goodwyn signed to Urus.

"It did feel too easy," Urus admitted. Even though the boys were younger and hadn't been trained by Kestians, it felt good to win for once. Urus rarely won his practice bouts, and those he did were usually by brute force alone.
 

Corliss glanced over at them out of the corner of his eye, watching their hands as they signed, but said nothing.

By the time they turned up onto the third switchback, Urus's thighs burned and knees ached, his lungs struggling to breathe in the thin, high-altitude air. Maybe this was why the cadets were so poorly trained; they didn't need to fight to defend the city, as most attackers probably gave up climbing the road before ever getting there. He paused, gazing up the road, amazed by what he saw. As the road ascended, the mist thickened until it finally smothered the road beneath a thick, puffy white cloud.

Corliss turned and faced the boys. "Surely the legend of the Sky Gate of Waldron has made it even as far as your homeland?"

Corliss was visibly disappointed when the boys shook their heads.

"The cloud above us is always there, except for a few hours a day in the middle of summer. The main gate to Waldron, the Sky Gate, sits above the cloud just the right way so if you approach the gate from the air, it looks as if Waldron itself rests upon the clouds."

The boys gaped up at the cloud.

"Clearly not enough bards or traders visit Ehmshahr if you haven't heard of the Sky Gate. It is considered one of the most beautiful sights in all the world."

"Can we see it?" asked Goodwyn.

Corliss's face grew grim. "All in due time."

He turned back to his cadets and gave an order in their native tongue. The cadets bowed, their arms out to their sides, the tips of their helmets and outspread cloak making them look like giant vultures. They headed up the road, the cloud dulling the shine on their armor, then rendering them dark silhouettes, and finally swallowing their forms entirely.

"All right, now that I've sent the cadets back to their barracks, you can stop this foolish game," Corliss said in Adosian, facing the boys with one hand on his hip, the other resting on his sword hilt.

Goodwyn frowned. "What game?"

"You can't possibly expect me to believe that you caught some magic transport that whisked you straight out of Ehmshahr and all the way here. Though I must admit, the fact that you're from such a distant land adds a certain flavor to this attempt that I wouldn't expect from Noah. He truly has outdone himself this time."

"What we told you is the truth, every bit of it," said Goodwyn. "We don't know how we got here and we're just trying to find our companion. And we don't know who this Noah person is."
 

Corliss waved his hands, shouting something in a foreign tongue. Urus didn't understand a word of it and just shared a confused shrug with Goodwyn.

"Very well done, pretending you don't speak Erubis. Noah really has picked a fine pair this time. But it won't work. I'm onto your game, and the moment I turn my back on you boys, you'll try to slit my throat and send my head back to Noah in a Solstice Day gift box."

"Master Corliss, I swear that we don't know this Noah," Urus said, struggling with the words, unsure if he was shouting. "All we know is that our city was under siege when something…something magical, brought us here. Our companion, a tall gray-skinned man with white eyebrows, is missing and might be waiting for us in your city."
 

"A gray man? That's rich. Just admit it; you are spies working for Noah, the leader of the thieves' guild, a man who has been trying to assassinate me for years."

Urus had no idea what Corliss was talking about, but the situation felt as though it was about to get very ugly if he couldn't prove that their story was true.
 

He held his hands out before him and concentrated. He thought back to Murin's interrogation, when the blue smoke had drifted up from his fingertips. He thought back to the time he had jumped from the palace roof and the blue glow had saved his life. He squinted and clenched his fists, then wiggled his fingers and shook his hands. Eventually he felt the strange yet familiar surge of heat in his fingertips and he smiled, awaiting the light and the smoke, sure that the proof of magic's existence was about to appear.

But no smoke came, and no blue light emerged.
 

There was no magic. It had worked when he didn't know it was there and it had worked when he didn't want anyone else to see it, but now that he needed it to manifest, nothing happened.

"And what was all that about?" Corliss asked.

"I was trying to show you the magic that brought us here. I—I think it comes from my fingers."

Corliss snorted. "How much of a fool do you take me for? Magic fingers indeed. I suppose you arrived on the Gylder coast on the back of a dragon, then?"

"I guess if I were you, I would think we were lying too," Goodwyn said, looking crestfallen. He glanced at Urus's fingers and then hung his head.

"Hand your weapons over," Corliss said, drawing his sword.

The boys relinquished their weapons and watched in silence as Corliss strapped the maces to his sword belt, carrying the coiled suzur in his right hand. He handled the weapon as if it were a snake that might bite him at any moment.

"Walk up the road. You boys take the lead. If you make any sudden moves, I will cut the two of you in half. Just because you beat my cadets doesn't mean you stand a chance against me."

He led the boys at sword-point up the remainder of the road, the cloud gradually smothering them in its warm, wet embrace. For a moment all they could see were their hands, both blindly tripping over their feet, only to be hauled back up again by Corliss's steely grip.

As they emerged from the mist, Urus gasped at the sight of the Sky Gate. A massive pair of arched black stone gates were set into the ivory-and-gray colored mountain, a peak hewn into smooth walls by decades of meticulous carving, with jagged ramparts, narrow window slits, and soaring towers. Blue vines and creeping yellow-leafed trees grew up and over the walls and sprouted from spots of rock and soil carefully left unmolested. It truly did look like a city floating on the clouds. Urus stood staring until Corliss urged him forward.

As Corliss approached the gates they swung outward. Even though he couldn't see them, Urus figured there were lookouts on the walls nearby who had marked their approach and ordered the gates open. A group of armed soldiers filed out of the gates and stood talking to Corliss in their unintelligible language. These men were older, stronger-looking, and carried themselves like seasoned veterans. Urus did not want to get into a fight with this group.

The men cast scowls and sideways glances between Corliss and the newcomers, occasionally chuckling as Corliss no doubt recanted their wild tale of magical travel.

When Corliss waved them forward, they complied, coming to stand before the group of soldiers. Urus felt very small and very weak beneath their penetrating stares.

"I haven't the slightest idea what to do with you two," Corliss began, clearly irritated by having to speak Adosian in front of his men. "If you were strangers who just arrived here, you would be homeless and without money, so we would be obligated to hand you over to the care of the church. But since I think you were sent by Noah to kill me, I should put you in the stocks by the courthouse and let you rot there."

"But—" Goodwyn tried to interject, but Corliss held up a hand.

"Since you haven't yet tried to kill me, I have no evidence that you are assassins. You see my dilemma? I know you're going to try to kill me, but I can't arrest you until you make a move."

"We weren't sent to kill you," Urus said. His words drew curious glances from Corliss's men.

"Yes, this one talks a little strange. I've never heard the like before," Corliss said to the soldiers.

One of his men spoke up. The soldier's eyes had that warm, wet look that so many parents had, like his uncle's always did.

Corliss raised an eyebrow and studied Urus as though seeing him for the first time. "Pallis here once had a deaf uncle he says talked funny like you. You aren't deaf, are you boy?" he asked in Adosian.

Urus wasn't sure whether to answer out loud, to nod his head, or to sign.
 

He wouldn't get a chance to decide.
 

Up the road beyond the gate and in the city, amid a crowd of vendors and customers packed into a street market, a man stood out among the crowd. While men and women in brilliantly colored clothes haggled and traded, this man wore drab gray cloth, heavy black boots, and was drawing back on his bow, aiming an arrow at Corliss's back. He made no effort at all to blend in with his surroundings. Even from this distance, Urus could see the menace and intent in his eyes.

"Archer!" Urus shouted, realizing only after that he had shouted it in Kestian. With no time to repeat the warning in another language, he leapt forward, sweeping Corliss's legs out from underneath him and pushing him to the ground.

Urus didn't have to tell his friend what to do. Goodwyn was already off and running, driven by the killer instinct of a true Kestian. He had grabbed his suzur from Corliss, dodged to the side, and was now charging through the market, chasing down the bowman, unraveling the suzur a little more with each stride.

Peddlers and customers alike screamed and shied away, giving both men a wide berth. Urus rolled off Corliss, only to be slammed back to the ground, a heavy knee planted on his neck as the rest of Corliss's men charged off into the market. He couldn't tell whether they were chasing Goodwyn or the archer.
 

Rope cinched around Urus's wrists and two soldiers hauled him to his feet.
 

"I saved you!
 
The bowman in the market was trying to kill you!" Urus shouted, again in terrible, slurred Adosian.
 

"You disappoint me. Up until now your lies have been so well crafted. I name you an assassin, then you knock me down so your friend can steal his weapon back and escape?"

The Knight Marshall stood up and his men dropped Urus on the ground before him, hands bound behind his back.

"I'm not lying! Look," Urus said, thrusting his head to the left, in the direction the arrow had flown as it sailed just inches from Corliss's head.

There, stuck feather-deep in a wooden hitching post, was the arrow.

"Well, I'll be dipped in pitch." Corliss spat. He issued an order with a gesture Urus hoped meant "release the prisoner."

The men didn't move. The faint vibrations he felt through their hands told him they were talking, and probably quite loudly.

Corliss repeated his order, sharply.

His men complied. As they untied Urus, Goodwyn emerged from the crowd, dragging a bloodied and beaten man behind him, three of Corliss's men following with their swords drawn.

Corliss shouted something at his men, clearly frustrated.

One of the soldiers responded, though again Urus was unable to make any sense of the language.

"In Adosian," Corliss said. He also seemed to make an extra effort to allow Urus a clear look at his face while speaking.
 

"I said, this man here," the soldier pointed to Goodwyn's prisoner, barely conscious and bleeding from both eyes, his nose, and mouth, "took a shot at you with one of those new bows the tinkers have been making."

"One of Noah's men?" Corliss asked.

"Without a doubt, sir. The scum even has the guild's tattoo on his arm."

"Noah wanted everyone to know who was behind this. That bastard is getting more brazen every day."

"There's more, sir," another soldier said. "Without the strangers here, you would surely have taken that arrow through the back, and this thief would have escaped."

"You're saying you weren't up to the task of running down one thief?"

"Not this one, sir. He was fast, like animal-fast. The boy caught him with his chain thing and had him beaten and begging for mercy before we even caught up to them."

Corliss looked from Goodwyn to Urus and back again, his face somber. He put his hands on his hips and paced back and forth, looking to his men for advice and getting only shrugs in response.

"It appears as though I owe you my life, and after accusing you of being assassins. I let my feud with Noah cloud my judgement and I apologize."