Turning Points (16 page)

“To an alternate dimension?” asked Latilla. He looked at her in surprise. “My husband was a mage,” she explained with a bitter smile.

“Exactly. Magecraft can create a container that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. If that’s what we have here, then opening it will set Elisandra, if that’s who it is, free.”

“But if it’s not, you’ll kill her!” Taran cried.

“If the jewel holds no more than her soul,” Latilla said gently, “then her body died thirty years ago. Would you keep her imprisoned here?”

Taran gaped back, gaze shifting between them. “Will you just… shatter it?”

“No! That would be destruction!” exclaimed Shamesh.

“You are a mage…” said Latilla, understanding what it was in him that had attracted her.

He shrugged. “I have learned a little about… jewels. It is heat, not force, that will relax the bonds that hold this spell together. A gentle heat that slowly grows, until the barriers dissolve and the prisoner is set free.”

There are some sorceries that are best performed during the hours of darkness. But for this one, Shamesh deemed it best to make use of the radiant heat of noon. Within the circle he had drawn upon the ground in the garden, mirrors focused the pale spring sunshine around and beneath the jewel.

“Aren’t there words you should say? Some kind of
a
spell?” asked Taran doubtfully.

“I will… that what should be, shall be…” murmured Latilla. “That each soul be free to find its own truth… that by my acts I may aid the forces of order in the world…”

“That’s a Mageguild oath—” Shamesh looked at her with new respect.

Latilla nodded. This man and Darios had both poured out their souls in her arms, but with her husband, she had poured out hers in turn.

“Look!” exclaimed Taran, pointing at the jewel. It glowed like a purple egg in the sunshine. But now the flicker of refracted light was disappearing in a violet radiance that gradually grew.

“
Illin tan’s’agarionte
—” Shamesh intoned, fingers rigid and quivering, arms extended towards the Jewel. “
Kariste! Kariste
!”

Violet light flared suddenly, then paled—no, the white blur was something that was taking shape within it, writhing in the churning light, then collapsing in a swirl of draperies as the glow, and the jewel, disappeared.

There was a moment of shocked silence. Then the huddled figure moaned.

“She’s alive!” whispered Taran.

He started to move, but Shamesh was before him, reaching the woman in one swift step and gathering her into his arms. They were strong arms, as Latilla had reason to know. She watched in silence as Shamesh lifted her, noting the smooth skin, the cornsilk hair. Thirty years had passed, but they had not touched her.

“Elisandra…” he said in a shaking voice. “Elisandra Donada-kos… You are free, Elisandra. Your sister is Empress now. I will take you back to her. Can you hear me, my lady? We’re going home!” He gazed down at her, his face radiant with triumph, with ambition, with joy.

For a moment Taran watched them, jaw clenched. Then his thin frame seemed to sag. Head down, he turned and slowly walked away. Latilla opened her mouth to call him back, but let the words die unvoiced. Let him keep the illusion that he could run from his pain. She blinked back her own tears and folded her arms. Elisandra opened her eyes and smiled, a prisoner no more.

Kadasah was doing what she normally did towards the end of the early watch on an Ilsday night. She was holding up her end of the bar at the Vulgar Unicorn, her hand wrapped around her fourth glass of Talulas Thunder Ale, and trying desperately to ignore Kay-tin who was as usual bugging the living shite out of her.

“Kadasah,” he started in a sultry, silky voice. Kaytin was tall for a S’danzo man but still several inches shorter than Kadasah, and she had to look down at him when he talked to her. When she bothered to pretend to be listening to him at all that is. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was about to feed her a line. “Your eyes are as dark as the blackest night, your lips like the reddest cherries, your hair like golden, liquid moonlight…”

Kadasah interrupted him with an uncharitable laugh. “You’re so full of crap your back teeth are brown. And my eyes are blue. Gods!

If you’re going to sling such total horse crap about, at least have the good taste to get my coloring right. And just what the hell is ‘liquid moonlight’ supposed to mean?”

Kaytin smiled up at her undaunted. “Ah, my beautiful love, my tongue is as clumsy as my heart is true. I meant that your eyes were so darkly blue that they looked almost black. That your hair, the color of moonlight, flows around your shoulders like water…”

“Horse shite! My hair is braided like it always is.” Kadasah laughed, genuinely amused. When he wasn’t driving her completely crazy with his unbridled lust, she occasionally found his attempts to bed her entertaining. Besides, in a strange way, except for Vagrant, who was a red stallion and therefore an even worse conversationalist than Kaytin, he was really her only friend.

“Maybe so, but sincere horse shite at the very worst,” Kaytin said with a smile. And then he started the touching.

Kadasah was a little surprised. By her reckoning they hadn’t gotten that far into the evening’s festivities. Normally he would have waited for her to drink at least three more ales before he felt safe enough to start manhandling her. He had wrapped his arms around her waist and was nuzzling at her neck. She was about to smack him hard enough to send him careening across the room when she realized that this wasn’t his usual horny, loverboy move, but his, “I’m showing that I’m attached to the big blond mercenary with all the weapons so don’t even think about kicking my ass move.” She also realized that a strange silence had fallen across the bar. Apparently Kaytin had heard it before she had, which meant that he was expecting trouble. She wondered what the philandering little thug had done this time.

Kadasah turned slowly to see who had walked in and made a face of disgust in spite of her best efforts.

“All right, get off me before I knock you across the bar. Frogs! It isn’t some angry husband, just that horrid, slimy, dead-looking guy. No doubt he’s coming after his equally horrid toady.” She shoved Kaytin roughly back, and he managed to catch and straighten himself without looking clumsy in a way that only Kaytin could do. No doubt because he’d had so much practice.

He smiled at her appealingly. “My own sweet love. What is this talk of a jealous husband? Kaytin has nothing to fear from any irate man who has an unfaithful wife, for I only have eyes for you, and I am saving myself only for the day when you will make me the happiest man on earth by agreeing to be mi—”

“I don’t think your eyes are the problem. However, perhaps you’re telling the truth. After all, I find it hard to believe that any woman could be stupid enough to believe the utter crap that springs forth from your mouth,” she said, cutting a look at him from the corner of her eyes. He started to speak again, and she held up her hand. “Oh, enough already. Just shut up.” She wasn’t in the mood for any more of his flowery tributes, or his lies.

Kaytin had a tendency to lie when it would have been easier to tell the truth.

She watched the horrible abortion that had entered the bar warily as it walked over to the twisted hunk of flesh that sat at a corner table drooling into a mug of ale and touching any woman who came into his reach. He didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the number of times he got slapped. In fact, Kadasah got the impression that he rather liked being slapped.

Kaytin followed her eyes and shuddered, obviously as disgusted by the creep as she was. “I wonder what it wants here?”

Kadasah shrugged. “Who knows what goes through the mind of something like that—or if it even has a mind. What motivates it? His ugly little friend is bad enough. One night I’m here slinging a few ales down, telling a story about one of my jobs, and that twisted little bugger comes right up, pulls his pants down and shows me his privates. I thought at first that the creepy little toad had a third leg, but no, and he’s got a dragon tattooed on it. Damndest thing you ever saw.”

“How dare he! Why, if that awful thing wasn’t with him, Kaytin would march right over there and kick his twisted little butt and…”

“Like I need anyone to kick anyone’s butt for me. I handled it,” she said with only the hint of a brag in her voice.

“I bet you did,” Kaytin chuckled. “So, what did you do?”

“What do you think I did? I laughed, said that had to hurt, and then when I saw he wasn’t going away I kicked his dragon.”

“Ouch!” Kaytin laughed.

The thing with no eyes turned its face toward her. Sightless or not, Kadasah knew—the way prey knows it’s being hunted—that it could see her. Suddenly Kadasah was in no mood to finish out her usual routine, so she downed her drink and started to sneak out of the bar without paying—which was part of her ritual.

The bartender, Pegrin the Ugly, who’d earned his name the hard way, laughed, obviously more amused than he was angry. “You Irrune rogue! Get back in here and pay your tab.”

Kadasah mumbled as she went back to the bar and grudgingly paid for not only her tab but Kaytin’s as well.

“You’re leaving early.”

“You shouldn’t oughta serve things like that,” Kadasah said in a whisper nodding over her shoulder. “You know it’s up to no good.”

Pegrin laughed. “If I kicked everyone out of the Vulgar Unicorn that was up to no good, I wouldn’t have a single customer… Why, some people tell me I shouldn’t serve the Irrune,” he leaned over the bar to whisper confidentially, “because they steal.”

Kadasah smiled innocently. “Have I ever stolen from you?”

“More than probably,” he said with a smile.

Kadasah feigned injury, then with one backwards glance at the creature that looked like death warmed up and his freaky-looking lackey, she left.

Kaytin followed Kadasah out. “He usually just comes in, gets his twisted idiot boy and leaves,” Kaytin said, curiosity obvious in his voice. “I wonder what he was up to tonight?”

Kadasah shrugged. “Something horrible you can bet. He’s obviously waiting for someone. I’d like to kill that horrid thing.” A momentary look of confusion crossed her face. “But I’m not really sure whether it’s still alive or not, and if it’s dead… well how would you go about killing something that’s already dead?”

“Besides… no sense in killing someone unless you’re getting paid. Isn’t that what you always say, my love?” Kaytin asked with a smile.

“For that thing, I’d make an exception. Besides, I’m sure I could find someone who’d pay me to do it.”

Kadasah was perturbed. Her usual ritual had been interrupted by that hunk of decaying flesh pretending to be a man, therefore it was now time to move on to her alternate routine. “So, Kaytin… I was thinking that since I didn’t get to drink myself into a coma like I usually do on Ilsday night, that I might as well get some work done.” Now she looked at him and turned on the charm, making it hard to believe that she was the same woman who had spurned him so harshly just a few minutes ago in the bar. “You want to help me? I’ll let you in for a cut…”

Kaytin shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no, no, no! Every time you ask me to help you I wind up with the most dangerous part. Then when it comes time to pay me… well there is never any money, and there is certainly none of that which I want much more than money—which you have also on occasion promised me.”

“Kaytin! Why, I’m cut to the very quick! When have I ever put your life in danger?” She hoped he didn’t notice that she wasn’t saying anything about stiffing him. There were deceptions and there were outright lies, and she froggin’ well knew the difference.

He laughed and flung his hands around in front of him. “Too many times to count. You think I don’t know what you’re doing, but Kaytin isn’t stupid. You are using me for bait. We go to the darkest, most horrid part of the ruined temple of Savankala or the Street of Red Lanterns, and you say ‘Kaytin stand here,’ or ‘Kaytin stand there, and I’ll tell you what to do next.’ And I wait and I

wait, but you never tell me anything else, and then when some Dy-areelan spook is about to kill me you show up and kill them. You always cut off a scar or a tattoo—I have no idea why, and then it’s always… ‘Kaytin be a good fellow and cart off this body and bury it and I’ll go get my reward and meet you back at the Vulgar Unicorn and we’ll split the money.’ So I go bury the body and go back to the Vulgar Unicorn where I wait and wait, but you don’t come back to the bar for days and when you do, there is no money!”

“Hey, I pay your bar tab…”

“When you don’t manage to sneak out without paying at all,” Kaytin reminded.

“Come on, Kaytin, quit being such a big baby. It isn’t that dangerous. Who’s the best bastard sword fighter in all of Sanctuary, maybe even the world?”

“Why you are, my love, but…”

“And who but me has killed three men with one swing of an axe?”

“No one but you, my love, but…”

“With me to protect you, you are as safe in the darkest, dankest part of Savankala as you were in your mother’s womb, and I swear that if you help me this time, I’ll deal with you fairly. Maybe this will even be the night that I find your advances irresistible.”

“In which case…” He walked up close to her and took her hand. “Why waste any part of the night on death and killing? Let us spend the whole night making mad and passionate love to one another, and wake up in each other’s arms to find our passion renewed.”

“Kaytin—how many times do I have to tell you? I can really only get seriously aroused after I’ve killed someone,” Kadasah said with an irritated sigh. “I suppose if you’d rather I go off into the night by myself, alone, into the very heart of the Dyareelan lair… To do not only my job, but to bring about the death of yet another worshiper of the Lady of Blood, to spare countless poor souls from a lingering, painful death…”

“Now who is full of horse shite!” Kaytin hissed. “My mother has seen with the True Sight that you are no good for me. That you only mean to use me. That you care not even a small amount for Kaytin. You use me only as a means to an end. I know this, and yet I continue to allow you to use and misuse me. But this time I say no! This very morning my own dear mother did warn me about you yet again, saying, Don’t go to that horrid bar to see that
suvesh
woman, for she will only bring you pain. That is what she said, and being a good son I am listening… Well to part of it anyway.”