The Rage (20 page)

“Did the guards seem to have any notions about what happened?” Pavel asked.

“How would I know?”

“Did they search his room?” asked Will.

“Yes”

“Did they take anything away?”

“How could they? He liked to put on airs and pretend he was better than the rest of us, but the truth was, he didn’t have a rag to wipe his nose. It was pathetic”

Pavel said, “Thank you,” then motioned for Will to step away from the woman. He stooped down and spoke in a lower voice. “I’m afraid your coin didn’t buy much. We could try talking to the watch, I suppose, but—”

Will said, “We’re not done here, you dunce. She was afraid to talk, remember? What has she told us so far that would account for that?” He turned back toward Winking Murene and said, “Give us the rest of it”

“I’ve told you all I know. Go away and leave me alone.” “You heard her,” the burly man behind the makeshift bar warned.

His matted hair and beard were visibly astir with wriggling lice. He reached for the heavy club he kept leaning in the corner.

Pavel started to speak. Most likely he meant to neutralize the threat with a spell, but Will reacted at the same time, and his response was even faster. He spun the warsling and hurled a skiprock at the jugs on the top shelf. Even by his exacting standards, it was a good cast. The stone rebounded three times before running out of momentum, shattering four containers in all. Shards of pottery and torrents of spirit rained down on the tavernkeeper’s lousy head, filling the air with the pungent smell of the drink. Evidently deciding that, on further consideration, Winking Murene’s problems were none of his affair, he froze.

The landlady herself looked equally rattled.

“Don’t hurt me” She turned to Pavel and said, “You’re a priest. You can’t let him stone me”

“Nobody wants to hurt you,” Pavel said “We simply need to know what you can tell us. It’s important, and I already gave you my word we’ll never reveal where the information came from.”

“Swear by your god”

“I swear by Lathander, Lord of the Morning”

As I swear,” said Will, “to thrash you bloody and take back my gold if you don’t stop wasting our time.”

“All right,” she said. “I knew something had happened to Gorstag even before the watch came to the house.” “Because someone else came first,” Pavel said.

“Yes. They got inside somehow and broke into his room, just down the hall from mine. They were trying to be quiet,

but I heard them anyway. I sneaked to his door to see what was happening. I saw all right, more than I wanted.”

“Who were they?”

She shrugged and said, “A couple of men I’d never seen before and a walking corpse. I guess they brought it along for protection. I heard the live ones say their ‘brothers’ had taken care of Gorstag, but they had to find out if he’d made any notes or held onto any written orders from his master.”

“Since you’re still alive,” said Will, “you plainly had better sense than to let them know you were eavesdropping. You probably tiptoed back to your own room. But do you have any idea whether they found what they were looking for?”

“They didn’t. I overheard them say as much when they slunk back down the stairs”

“Then, once you were sure they were gone, you entered Gorstag’s room and ransacked his belongings yourself” She glowered in false indignation.

“It’s all right,” said Pavel. “We won’t tell anyone you saw what you weren’t meant to or that you tried to rob a lodger, either. We just need to know if you found something the intruders missed”

“No. I didn’t find any notes nor anything worth taking”

“I need to search the place myself,” said Will, “and to save time, yes, my dear, we’ll pay for the inconvenience” He fished out two more gold pieces, one for her and one to placate the barman for the breakage and the affront to his dignity, such as it was. “Drink up and we’ll go”

The boardinghouse was as squalid as Will had anticipated, and Gorstag’s room, with its crumbling plaster and damp-spotted ceiling, as depressing. It took the former burglar about half an hour to toss it. It was nice to find that, despite a lack of practice in recent years, he still remembered how to look for loose floorboards, caches concealed inside furniture, and the like.

Unfortunately, no matter how cleverly he searched, it was to no avail. Finally he turned to Pavel and Winking Murene.

“Nothing,” he sighed.

The obese woman sneered and said, “I told you.” “This place,” said Pavel, “is remarkably bare.”

“I told you that, too,” said Winking Murene. “He didn’t have anything.”

“He must have owned something,” the priest persisted. “You said he wanted to pass for a man of means. Well, he couldn’t play such a part without at least a couple changes of decent clothing. It isn’t here. You did pilfer after all.”

“No, I—”

“Enough!” Pavel snapped. Up until now, he’d taken a soothing, kindly tone with her, but apparently he’d finally run out of patience with her habit of obscuring the truth even when, by any sensible calculation, it was pointless. “What did you steal?”

“It wasn’t secret papers,” Winking Murene said sullenly. “It was just things.”

“I need to see them,” said Will.

“You can’t. I sold them already.”

“Then tell us what they were,” Pavel said.

She gave them the inventory, mostly a sad listing of tawdry finery passing for real silk and velvet, and paste rings and brooches masquerading as jewels. Will had just about decided it would reveal nothing useful when she reached the significant items:

“A couple of those blunt swords duelists use to practice, a set of the padded tunics and gloves they wear, and two little books full of woodcuts showing how to stick a man or whack his head off.”

Will and Pavel exchanged glances.

“He must have loved fencing,” said the halfling, poor

as he was, he invested in more than one foil and training manuals, too.”

“Obviously,” said the cleric, “and that means he took

instruction someplace. Perhaps it’s where we’ll find his friends and confidants.”

Winking Murene snorted and said, “Do you know how many maestros there are in Lyrabar?”

“We’re about to find out,” Pavel said with a smile.

In his vision, Taegan had returned to adolescence. Once again, he wore a deerskin tunic and leggings and carried an ancient cut-and-thrust sword with a broken cross guard sheathed on his hip. The latter was a treasure, because lacking fresh iron and forges to work it, a small, isolated community of hunters had no way of replacing such a weapon. Most of their tools were made of flint. Still, despite his youth, he’d earned the right to bear the heirloom by learning to wield it better than any of his fellows, then mastering bladesong as well.

He and his companions were slinking along the arboreal pathways of the Earthwood, moving from tree limb to tree limo. For an avariel, it was safe to travel at such a height. A beat or two of his wings sufficed to carry him across empty spaces or catch him if he fell. Yet the forest was so thick, the branches so dense and interwoven, that true, sustained flight was difficult. Taegan frequently wished his people lived in clearer terrain, where they could soar freely whenever the mood took them, but he knew the others didn’t share his yearnings_ The foliage was their shield against hostile eyes.

Taegan heard voices. He skulked forward, peered down into a glade, and beheld his first humans. He recognized them from the descriptions of his elders. A man in a brown robe was harvesting mistletoe with a sickle, mixing the cuts with ritual passes. Two maidens crowned with wreathes of oak leaves sang a hymn. The one with the freckled nose quavered a little off key on the high notes.

To Taegan’s eyes, everything about them was wonderful. Their bodies, bulkier than those of elves, but possessed of their own kind of grace. Their clothing, woven of fiber, not cut from hide. The abundance of metal they carried about their persons….

He desperately wanted to reveal himself to them. Perhaps sensing the tenor of his thoughts, his father touched him on the arm, then beckoned him away.

Taegan might have protested that the druid and his acolytes appeared entirely harmless. Unfortunately, he was certain such an argument wouldn’t sway the older elf in the slightest. Avariels kept themselves hidden whenever possible. Supposedly it was the only way a people so few in number could survive. Hating his sire at that moment, he took a, last long look at the humans, then turned and followed him back the way they’d come.

Meanwhile, the adult Taegan felt a pang of exasperation. One of the nice things about Reverie was that he could choose which of his memories to relive. Why, then, was he dwelling on the shame and frustration of his early years instead of the pleasures he’d won by forsaking the tribe to join the world of men? He could only assume the anxieties that had overtaken him since he’d rashly chosen to intervene in Gorstag’s troubles were interfering with his repose.

He groped for some happy experience to revisit, but for some reason, he could think only of flame and smoke. After a moment, he realized he actually did feel unpleasantly warm. His eyes stung, and a cough was building in his aching lungs.

He forced himself entirely awake to find the school was burning. No flames were licking at the walls of his own apartments, not yet, but he could hear them crackling elsewhere, even as he could already feel the heat rising through the floor.

The strange thing was that no one was crying the alarm. True, it was late. Even the most sociable students had either stumbled home or passed out in a drunken stupor, just as even the most industrious is of the bawds had suspended trade till the morrow. Still, somebody should have noticed.

But that was a mystery to ponder later on. First he had to make sure everyone evacuated the building, determine the location and size of the conflagration, and extinguish

it if possible. He threw off his blankets, sprang from his bed, pulled on breeches, boots, and one of his special shirts with holes for his wings, took a stride toward the door, then hesitated.

Much as he begrudged the moment it required, he grabbed a rapier, dagger, and pouch of spell foci, imbued the longer blade with magic, and only then exited his quarters.

His rooms weren’t the only ones occupying the top story, but no doorways or halls connected his private accommodations with the rest of the area. He resolved to work his way down to the ground floor then back up. Once he checked the entire building, he could fly out one of the casements if need be.

He ran down the stairs into denser smoke that really did set him coughing, into murk and flickering red-yellow light that somehow illuminated little but itself. He threw open the door to the room where one of his provosts made his home. Taegan had four assistant instructors, out as he was suddenly glad, only two who chose to reside on the premises.

Stedd lay snoring beneath tangled covers, oblivious to the leaping, rustling flames already gnawing at the foot of his bed. Taegan hauled the wiry young human with the premature bald spot clear, and still he didn’t wake. He was just flopping dead weight in his employer’s arms.

Evidently the Wearer of Purple’s minions had set the fire, for surely it was magic keeping Stedd insensible. Perhaps they’d cast a spell to sink everyone in the school into a slumber so deep that even the blaze wouldn’t wake them until it was too late to escape. Presumably the trap had failed to hold Taegan, because unlike his human associates, he never truly slept.

He shouted Stedd’s name, shook him, and finally backhanded him across the face. The human’s eyes fluttered open. Taegan had never felt more glad of anything in his life, for plainly, had it proved impossible to rouse any of the sleepers, a single would-be rescuer could never have carried each and every one of them out in time.

“What?” Stedd asked drowsily.

“The school is on fire, and everyone’s—” Taegan had to break off talking to cough. “Everyone’s asleep. We have to wake them, or if we can’t, hand them out. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the provost said.

“Then put on your shoes and get moving. Clear this area, and the ground level. I’ll handle the second floor then work my way up the other side of the house.”

Stedd nodded. He looked frightened, but not panicky, and not groggy anymore, either. Taegan clapped him on the shoulder, turned, and ran back to the stairs.

On the second floor, the smoke and heat were even worse. At every turn, the avariel found sheets of roaring flame devouring sections of wall. He was no expert, but to him, the scattered pockets of fire seemed additional proof that someone had set the blaze deliberately, for wouldn’t an accidental conflagration spread continuously outward from a single point of origin? Whereas in this case, it looked as if an arsonist had broken into the building and run about setting multiple blazes.

Taegan felt fast, heavy footsteps bouncing the floorboards. He turned, and a bizarre figure, a huge man with pieces of astonishingly bulky iron plate armor affixed only to the left side of his body, emerged from the swirling gray smoke. Ripples of firelight ran along the metal. He wore a scarf tied around the lower half of his face, a simple means of delaying death by smoke inhalation that Taegan wished he’d thought of for himself. Possibly it was also intended to mask the cultist’s identity.

A cramped hallway inside a burning building was about as undesirable a dueling ground as Taegan could imagine, but he assumed he had no choice. If the arsonist had remained on the premises after completing his task, it was likely to kill anyone who somehow woke and tried to flee. Fortunately, the intruder nonetheless seemed startled to see the avariel. It gave Taegan the second he needed to draw his rapier.

A split second later, the cultist rushed him. It was a reckless action, and for that very reason it took Taegan by surprise. He extended his arm, and the stop thrust bit into the cultist’s torso. Reflex saw to that much. But he wasn’t, sure he’d made the kill, and didn’t quite manage to sidestep out of the arsonist’s path afterward.

The big man plowed into him, threw an arm around him, and bulled him through a doorway. Together, they reeled off balance and fell. The cultist landed on top, half-crushing the avariel. Taegan scrambled clear, and since his sword was still underneath his enemy, drew his dagger to finish off the arsonist if he wasn’t dead already.