The Thief who Spat in Luck's Good Eye ebook

THE THIEF WHO SPAT IN LUCK’S GOOD EYE

Amra Thetys: Book 2

MICHAEL McCLUNG

The Thief Who Spat in Luck’s Good Eye Copyright © 2012 by Michael McClung. All Rights Reserved.

A previous version of this novel was published by Del Rey Books under the title THAGOTH in 2003.

DEDICATION

For my crazy chickens.

CONTENTS

Kerf & Isin, Part the First

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Kerf & Isin, Part the Second

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Kerf & Isin, Part the Third

Chapter Eleven

…And Everything After

KERF & ISIN, Part the First

nother age was almost upon the world. Ancient Kerf and ever-youthful Isin had been appointed to see the present one to its close, to blow out the lamps, dust the corners, and hand over the keys to the new tenants, as it were. They toured the vast, empty plane of deities, both feeling in their eternal bones the unnatural silence, the melancholy of things ending, the excitement of things about to begin.

“Almost done,” wheezed Kerf.

“Indeed, it would seem so,” replied Isin, patting a few stray wisps of hair back into place.“You’ve pulled the plug on magic?”

“Centuries ago. It drains away as we speak. What of the Twins?”

Isin snapped her fingers.“I knew I’d forgotten something! I always do.”

“I had high hopes for them, alas.”

“Well, it wasn’t your fault, Kerf. The path to godhood may be narrow, but it is plainly marked. Though I’m afraid it was an excess of the qualities I cherish that led to their troubles.”

Kerf grunted, stopped, leaned on his crooked staff.“Or a paucity of the ones I espouse,” he replied.“Can’t leave them in the way of the next lot, in any case.”

“You rest,” said Isin.“I’ll deal with the Twins, and then we’ll clear out.”

Kerf had a sudden thought. Beneath bushy, snow-white brows, his eyes gleamed.

“No,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

Isin arched a perfect brow.

“There’s a thief down in Lucernis, likes to swear by my testicles, of all things. Annoyed me for years, that one.” Kerf rubbed his gnarled hands together in anticipation.

“Now Kerf, what are you planning?”

“It’s been ages since we’ve meddled with mortals. Frankly, I miss it. Might not get another chance, my dear. Who knows where we’re off to?”

Isin’s smile was radiant, the only kind she owned.“Oh, all right,” she said.“But are you sure this thief can handle the Twins?”

“She’s got what it takes to settle the matter, she and her partner, though I daresay she won’t have much fun doing it.”

He chuckled.“‘Kerf's shriveled balls’ indeed. Cheeky wench…”

CHAPTER 1

t was to have been a relaxing afternoon in the Artists’ Quarter—a cup of wine, a walk along the Promenade, a show later in the evening—the final performance of The Yellow King. I’d wanted to see it for weeks, and I’d finally been able to filch a ticket. All in all, I was looking forward to an enjoyable few hours.

It didn’t turn out that way. Instead, Holgren wanted to talk about money. Ten thousand gold marks to be exact.

I was sitting at one of the scarred wooden tables outside Tambor’s wine shop, enjoying the first fine day of spring. Winter had held on with a tenacity almost unheard of in Lucernis, southernmost of the great cities on the western shore of the Dragonsea. It seemed everyone else in the city had the same idea as me. All Tambor’s outside tables were full while the interior of his grubby little shop was deserted. Hoof, foot, and carriage traffic along the street was heavy and more boisterous than usual. There was even a warm, easterly breeze that kept the steaming miasma rising from the gutters at an endurable level. For a wonder, I was enjoying the rare feeling of contentment.

Holgren found me and slapped down a creased, dirty notice under my nose. It was the Duke’s offer.

“This just came in with a coastal trader, Amra. The Duke of Viborg is posting it in every port on the Dragonsea apparently.” He stood there with a strange grin on his face. I gave him my best annoyed look, which failed to have any effect on him.

“Well, go on. Read it.”

I sighed, picked up the notice, and read. The Duke was offering ten thousand marks for proof of the existence of the legendary city of Thagoth. I pushed the sheet of parchment back at him.

“Kerf’s balls, Holgren. The old buzzard is insane,” I said. “That’s why they call him the Mad Duke, you know. Besides, Thagoth is a myth. If it ever existed, it’s dust and rubble now.”

“But—” Holgren started.

“No buts. Look, even if we found it, you’d never get a bent halfpenny out of the old goat, much less ten thousand marks. Now sit down, shut up, and drink. Or leave. I’m busy enjoying my ill-gotten gains.”

My partner leaned back on his heels and opened his slim-fingered hands in a gesture that he thought conciliatory and I found annoying. “Granted, the Duke will probably never pay, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth looking into.” He signaled the barmaid and sat down at my table.

“I won’t talk business today, Holgren. I won’t. I have plans that run contrary to the topic.”

He snorted, accepted the shallow earthenware cup the barmaid handed to him, and paid her. Tambor only served one vintage: cheap.

“You never stop thinking about business, woman. You’ve no idea how to relax. You’ve trained yourself out of it.” He took a drink, made a face, and exiled his cup to the edge of the table.

“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Holgren, I don’t know what is.”

“Perhaps. Finding Thagoth won’t be business for me, however. It will be personal.” He stared at me with those hawk-like brown eyes of his. It was a look I knew. He was about to get me to do something I didn’t want to do.

“We need to find that city,” he said, “and we need to find it before anyone else.”

“What’s this really about? It’s not the money; that’s obvious.”

Holgren shook his head. “Let’s speak elsewhere.”

I put down a few coppers and followed him out to the street. So much for my relaxing afternoon.

~ ~ ~

He took a long, rambling route to the river Ose, dodging hacks, carriages, and the reeking contents of chamber pots slung out of windows despite a rather strict ordinance to the contrary. I walked beside him, hurrying my pace just a bit to match his long strides. I wondered what could get him interested in such a fool’s errand. I had to admit to more than a little curiosity. While I’d known Holgren for a handful of years, I knew almost nothing about his personal life. He was a solitary, even secretive man. Mages are like that.

He turned off narrow, twisting Gravedigger’s Row into an even narrower alley between a pair of whitewashed houses that leaned toward each other like drunken sailors on leave. At the end of the alley, we took a set of mossy, cracked steps down to the river.

The Ose ran through the city in great loops. Some sections were beautiful, ornamented with stone walkways and ancient trees whose branches fanned down to the water. Other parts abutted the back walls of tanneries, charnel houses, and squalid tenements. The stretch behind Gravedigger’s Row was hardly park-like, and I pretended not to see the vague, sodden lumps that floated by, which might have been garbage, but were likely something worse.

“You take me to the nicest places, Holgren.” I picked up a stone and pitched it into the water. “Want to tell me what this is about now?”

“This is difficult for me to speak of, Amra. I’ve never told anyone else.”

“I’m honored.”

“You never make things easy, do you?”

I bit down an easy retort. He was right. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“When I was a boy, I was apprenticed to a master of the Art named Yvoust. Ten years I slaved under him as an apprentice. By rights, I should have been a journeyman after seven. I had the skill and control. But I failed an impossible task he set me to, and was sent away in disgrace. He was a cruel master, prone to beat and starve his apprentices, but that does not excuse what I did in revenge.

“In my youthful pride and rage, I made a compact with dark powers and killed Yvoust using the Art. It was long ago, and I am not the boy that committed that act. Still, the lad is father to the man, and for that sin and for the bargain I made, my soul is forfeit upon my death.”

I just stood there for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to do or say. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off.

I suppose I should have been shocked. I’d never imagined him capable of such an immoral act, or such a stupid one. Except there were times growing up when I would have sold my soul to be rid of my father permanently. Times spent hiding in the muck under the house to avoid a drunken beating, or worse, times spent listening to it happen to my mother instead.

The only difference between Holgren and me was the fact that he’d had the magical power to make good on such wishes. I’d settled for a scaling knife. There were things Holgren didn’t know about me, either.

“Say something,” he said.

“What does this have to do with Thagoth?”

“What do you know about the legend surrounding it?”

“What everybody knows, I suppose. It was an ancient city, ruled by twin gods, a brother and sister with the power of eternal life and the power to devour souls. It and they were destroyed by a rival power, a wizard-king whose name has been lost to history.”

“Close enough.” He stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it into the water. “The power to grant eternal life…”

“Come on. Holgren the Immortal? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“I do. Better than Holgren the Eternally Suffering.”

“That’s what you think the Duke is after? Immortality?”

He nodded. “You've heard the stories. Bathing in the blood of the unborn. Putting a bounty on the two harbingers of death in Viborg, crows and owls. Banning funeral processions within a mile of his palace. Removing portraits and statues of dead ancestors from the palace. A dozen others, all pointing to a very particular condition when you consider them as a whole: The Duke of Viborg is scared to death of dying.”

“I see your point, but what makes you think this search for Thagoth is any different from those other mad, vain attempts to fend off the inevitable?”

“This offer of his is too noteworthy, too public to simply be a whim.”

“Holgren, there must be another way to settle your debt—some surer way.” Some way that might actually work, I meant.

“Don’t you think I would have tried by now if there were another way? Something has set him on the trail to Thagoth. While I might wish I knew what it was, it is enough for me to know that he wants to find it.” Holgren clasped my hands in his. “I want and need your help, Amra. I’ve seen you slip into and out of places so heavily guarded a mouse wouldn’t pass unnoticed. I’ve watched you find valuables so cleverly hidden I couldn’t have located them using the Art. Dead gods, woman, I've seen you face down demons, mad sorcerers, and the living weapon of a goddess of hate. I would be a fool not to ask you for your help. Should you choose not to assist me, however, I will go on my own.”

“Flattery, Holgren? You must be desperate.” I pulled my hands from his and walked.

“It isn’t flattery if it’s true. Remember when you broke into Lord Morno’s wine cellar and stole an entire crate of Gol-Shen thirty-seven? He certainly does.”

“That was a lark. It’s not like there were armed guards at the door. Now, be quiet, and let me think.” I had to smile. I sent Morno an empty bottle every Midsummer’s Eve. The bounty for the person or persons responsible had risen to five hundred marks over the years.

I contemplated the murky, filthy Ose as it slid its way to the sea. It was idiocy, but how could I refuse Holgren? He was my friend and partner; how could I not at least try to help?

“I never said I wouldn’t go,” I finally said. “I just said it was pointless. Where do we start?”

~ ~ ~

Holgren started at the beginning. He identified certain texts we would need, and I acquired them; the Bosk texts, notes from Mumtaz El Rathi’s expedition to the west, a copy of General Velkaar’s campaign memoirs, many more. Maps, histories, legends, travelers’ accounts of the west, tomes of magic theory, ancient military texts—there was no rhyme or reason in what he wanted. It was all rare, hideously expensive, and generally difficult to lay hands on. I spent nearly a month tracking down, buying, or stealing what he said he needed. One particular scroll, done up in a sort of picture language I’d never encountered before, explored the lives of the Twin Gods in graphic detail. Apparently, they’d been quite a bit more than siblings if the scroll was to be believed. And the sister at least had some unwholesome appetites. I suppose gods see most things differently. Who’s going to tell them they’re wrong?

Holgren spent the time holed up in his sanctum, a moldering hovel hard by the charnel grounds. What he did there, he did not discuss, nor did I pry. He would prepare the odd amulet or fetish to aid me in whatever task I undertook. While I had little understanding of how they worked, I took it on faith that they did.

Holgren, on the other hand, always seemed fascinated by the most mundane aspects of my craft. Once I’d left a set of lock picks out, and some hours later, I found him squatting in front of an old sea chest I used for a table, methodically trying each pick in various positions while making notes in the margins of a book he’d been reading. When I’d told him the tumblers of the lock were rusted solid, he’d looked crushed.

It was a wet, miserable day when I returned from my latest foray for research materials. Spring had not fully sprung after all. Almost no one was stirring in the Foreigners’ Quarter as I returned the spavined excuse for a horse I’d rented from Alain the wainwright. I trudged my weary way home, keeping dry the fragile map I’d acquired. As I climbed the narrow stairs to my den, I wanted nothing more than hot food, a hot bath, and a warm bed.

Holgren was pacing the rooms I rented above Burrisses’ Tailors. The Burrisses were a family of immigrants from the Nine Cities who didn’t care if I was a woman living on my own so long as I paid my rent. It wasn’t as nice as the place I’d rented above the Korani Social Club, but too many not-nice people had somehow gotten hold of that address. I’d decided to move. I don’t really get attached to places in any case. Having feelings for rented rooms was like having feelings for someone else’s spouse—inadvisable at best.

“Amra!” He grabbed me by the waist. “Pfaugh! You’re ripe.”

“That’s what three days in the saddle will do.”

“Never mind. I’ve found it!”

“You found the city?” I pushed him away from me and sat down on the hall bench. Every bone ached from the ride. Wearily, I started unlacing my boots. “So you don’t need this map I just stole from a nice widow in Coroune?”

“No. Oh, it will help prove I’m right, no doubt. I’m dead certain I have the location of the city itself.”

“That’s nice,” I said with mock brightness. “Now get out so I can boil water for a bath, bolt some food, and go to sleep.”

He looked at me quizzically for a second, then had the grace to blush a little. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been killing yourself gathering all these odds and ends. I truly appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve finally located it—”

“I know, I know. Tomorrow, I’ll be suitably excited. Right now, I’m just too tired.”

“Why don’t you relax? I’ll find you something to eat.”

“Thanks.” I made my way into the main room and stretched out on the floor, on the silk Elamner pillows I used for furniture. I just closed my eyes for a second, honest.

~ ~ ~

I woke the next morning. Holgren had left a tray of nuts and a bowl of blood oranges next to me along with a note in spidery silver letters in the air above my head:

See you here, midday

The letters faded as I read them. I dug up fresh clothing and headed for the baths.

The morning was hot and bright, and the streets steamed as they dried under the indecisive spring sun. Time was passing too quickly. I knew of at least three expeditions that had already set out for the lost city. There was no telling if they were headed in the right direction, but our delays had begun to worry me. If it did exist, I didn’t want to get there only to find it plundered.

At the baths, I paid my penny and soaked for an hour, ignoring the comments muttered behind milk-white hands about my scarred hide. It was a little knitting circle of five women. Whenever I looked at them directly, their eyes would slide away, and the whispering would die down for a time. Then it would slowly pick back up again.

“—figure like a boy.”

“Such short hair, and all those scars. Perhaps she’s just come from prison?”

I kept my calm. What did they know of the world beyond their familial villas or their fathers’ shops, beyond spinning, weaving, and making babies? I knew as little of their life as they knew of mine—I understood that. It’s just that I didn’t think their difference gave me a right to talk about them, whereas they obviously did. But of course it’s always that way when you have the numbers. Men don’t hold exclusive rights to bullying.

The idea of being physically ejected from the public baths for brawling wasn’t appealing, so I decided to settle for flattening their purses when I left.

I put a washcloth over my eyes and turned my thoughts to Thagoth, and whether Holgren had actually located it.

~ ~ ~

Holgren arrived a few minutes late, a bundle of parchments and scrolls under one arm and a look of grim determination on his face. He cleared off the delicate Helstrum-made table I used for dining and spread out a map he had sketched and inked himself.

“Here we are,” he said, stabbing the east coast of Lucernia with a forefinger. “Thagoth is almost certainly here.” He moved his finger a huge distance west—about two feet on the map, which worked out to roughly two thousand miles.

“Well, that’s it,” I said. “We can’t go after it, not if it truly is that far. If you’re wrong about the location or if there’s nothing left of it, we’ll have wasted almost a year, maybe more, getting there and back. Be reasonable, Holgren.”

“I am. I agree, the distance is daunting. Which is why I am going to attempt to gate us there.”

“What?”

“According to the Bosk texts you acquired for me, Thagoth was built at the nexus of several powerful ley lines. I will transport us to that nexus. The process should be instantaneous.”

“Whenever you say things like ‘attempt’ and ‘should be,’ my blood runs cold.”

“Your worries are baseless. If I fail, the magics will dissipate, and the gate will not open. I’ll make certain there is no possibility of you suffering any ill effects.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Spoken like a true liar. Tell me.”

“Honestly? I don’t know. There’s a chance nothing will happen. There’s also a chance for a whole range of effects, from the merely uncomfortable to the wholly unpleasant.”

“The worst of which would be?”

“The worst of which would be my being blasted to cinders. It’s a very outside chance.”

“Wouldn’t that sort of be missing the point of trying to find immortality?”

“Amra, if I spent my entire life avoiding danger, I would have no life at all. If I risk nothing, death and retribution will still come. Given the choice, I would rather die trying to alter my situation. I assure you, I have taken and will take every precaution I can think of to ensure my safety and your own.”

I sighed and shook my head. “When do we go?”

“We could leave tomorrow, but I think I might better do a bit more research. There are indications from what I’ve read so far that the city is…contained, I suppose, is the best word.”

“Eh?”

He leaned back, spread his hands. “When Thagoth fell, it was to a powerful sorcerer-king, perhaps the most powerful mortal the world has ever seen. He laid death magic on the environs around the city. According to the accounts of Mumtaz El Rathi, that magic was still potent a century ago when he lead an expedition there.”

I began to pace. “Describe these death lands. Place-names with the word ‘death’ in them tend to make me very wary.”

“In practical application, everything of the death lands will attempt to destroy anything not of the death lands that enter them. Grasses will reach out to bind you while more mobile creatures finish you off. Everything has some ability to kill, be it quick or slow. Or so wrote El Rathi.”

“Lovely.” I'd had brushes with death magic in the past, though nothing on so large a scale. I'd almost broken into a room infused with a death spell that would have killed me instantly upon entering. Now we were talking about acres of the stuff. “You’re sure we won’t have to deal with this? Why hasn’t the city been swallowed up?”

“I can only assume the residual power of the Twin Gods keep it at bay. The city had not been overtaken at the time of El Rathi’s expedition a century ago. He records seeing the golden domes of what he calls ‘the Tabernacle’ and other structures from the ridge above the valley itself. The death lands seem to border the remains of the city in a precise circle with the Tabernacle at the center of that circle. Could you stop pacing? It makes me nervous.”

“No. This nexus you’re going to magic us to, tell me about it.”

“It should be well within the city and completely safe if I manage to raise the gate.”

“I hope you’re right, Holgren.”

He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulder slightly. “I’ve made my calculations with the best data available. We should be fine.”

“Let’s leave that for the moment. What do we do once we’re in the city?”

“Well, that’s really more your end of things, isn’t it?”

I stopped pacing, tilted my head. “I spent a month getting you research material. There was nothing in all of that to indicate what you’re looking for?”

He sighed. “Amra, how often are you handed maps that say, ‘valuable object located here?’”

“I know a sailor down on the docks that could sell you one for every day of the month.”

“My point precisely. I imagine the best place to search would be in the Tabernacle that El Rathi mentions since there appears to be some power there holding the death lands at bay. But I will know it when I find it, not before. I am quite certain it will be a difficult, possibly deadly task to locate and retrieve it. I need your skills. I know no one better at what you do.”

“Not who’s willing to help you with this, at any rate. No. I’m sorry. That was mean-spirited and uncalled for. I apologize.”

He shook his head. “No apology necessary. You’re right. No one else would be willing to attempt this. I need to keep that in mind and show my appreciation more.”

“You can start by feeding me.”

~ ~ ~

After an elaborate midday meal at Fraud’s, we took a walk down the Promenade: the wide, straight avenue of brick that ran from the Ministry buildings to Harad’s Square. It was lined on both sides by the marble-fronted, slim-columned manses owned by minor nobility and powerful merchants. I had promised myself the first day I’d arrived in Lucernis that I’d own one of them someday. I’d stumbled down the Promenade—penniless, starving and sick, and bitterly envying those who lived in such luxury. I must have stared at those great houses with real glass in their windows for an hour before the watch had moved me along. Then, I went and stole a half a loaf of bread. That had been a long time ago. I didn’t have to steal bread anymore. I didn’t own one of those manses, either.

The Promenade was wide enough to accommodate four carriages abreast, although no hoof traffic was allowed on it. Wealthy merchants and their wives, government functionaries, and minor nobility took to it to socialize and be seen. Much subtle business was also conducted on the Promenade—important decisions were made here, between principals, and finalized elsewhere. I’d done a fair amount of business in this fashion myself. Daruvner, my fixer, had done much more.

The Promenade was also well-policed. Lord Morno, governor of Lucernis, liked to drill his troops here. A small contingent of arquebusiers in fine new crimson uniforms was being marched around by a grizzled sergeant as Holgren and I strolled. The old campaigner kept trying to rest his hand on a nonexistent sword pommel as he barked commands.

“You see those weapons?” asked Holgren. “They are the future of warfare.”

I laughed. “Those are toys. The only way to kill someone with an arquebus is to beat them with it. A good bowman could kill five times over in the time it takes just to load one.” The only time I'd seen an arquebus be even remotely useful was during the assault on the Elamner's villa months before, and that was mostly as a noise maker. A trumpet would have been just as handy, and a lot more reliable.

“Ah, but how long does it take to become that good with a bow?” Holgren replied. “Five years? Ten? One can become proficient with firearms in a matter of weeks. Someday, they will be perfected; their rate of fire, range, and accuracy will be improved. People will die by the thousands without ever seeing their foe.” He put a friendly arm around my shoulder. “Inventions such as these will be what drives the world, Amra, not magic.” He stopped and looked at me with those piercing eyes of his.

“I want to tell you a secret,” he said.

“All right.”

“Magic is fading. The most powerful mages today cannot do half of what mages even a century ago could. Two thousand years ago, wars such as the one that destroyed Thagoth were commonplace. Entire empires were laid waste in a matter of days. Now, the Laws of Thaumaturgy are being superseded by the laws of the physical world. Who knows how long it will be before magic disappears completely?”

“You sound almost cheerful about it.”

“Do I? Perhaps I am. Since I am in the secret-telling mood, I’ll tell you another. I’ve never particularly liked being a mage.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Truly. Once Yvoust was dead, I lost the interest I’d had in the Art. What else was I to do though? I spent a decade trying to find some way out of the doom I’d created for myself. There were none—none I’d consider satisfactory, at any rate. By that time, it was the only profession I knew.”

“Wait. You’re saying there are other solutions to your problem besides haring off to Thagoth?”

“No, I’m not. Believe me, the cures I found were all worse than the disease.” He stopped and turned to face me directly. “I have a bit more research and preparation to do. You won’t see me for a few days. Will you prepare what we will need for two weeks in the field?”

“How long do I have?”

“Four days.”

“All right. Will we need pack animals?”

“No. I wouldn’t want to try to gate them as well as us.”

“I’ll have it all ready.”

“Thank you. Sincerely, Amra.”

“You’re welcome.”

He walked away then, a tall, almost gangly man in funereal black, black hair swept into a ponytail secured with a black velvet ribbon. Holgren had never much been one for fashion.

I walked a while on the Promenade, staring at the houses, trying to imagine what sort of “cures” he might have found in the past and how they could be worse than some demon keeping your soul as a plaything for eternity.

My imagination wasn’t up to the task.

CHAPTER 2

olgren appeared at dawn on the fourth day. We lugged the packs down my narrow, wooden stairs to the carriage waiting below. It was a gray, foggy morning. The driver looked like a wraith perched on the front of the carriage; the horse, with tendrils of breath writhing from his nostrils, looked like a nightmare.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Just outside the city proper. There’s a sparse grove of alders a short distance off the Jacos Road. It’s a suitable place to open a gate—not too distant, and no dwellings within a mile.”

“Afraid you might cause some destruction?”

“No. I’ve already told you there is no possible danger to anyone but myself. I simply don’t want to attract attention.”

I grunted and tried to find a comfortable position. I intended to sleep the carriage ride away if possible. I’ve never been much of a morning person.

Sleep was a vain hope. The best of Lucernis’ streets were far from smooth, and the carriage bounced and jostled us brutally. I don’t know if it was him or me or the fool’s errand we were about to embark on, but I was in a foul mood that morning. Later, I thought about every little detail of the ride—the smell of Holgren’s soap, the low mutters the driver occasionally made, the clop-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones, and then the muted thud of them on the dirt of the Jacos Road. I thought about all the insignificant details and wondered if I would have done anything differently had I known what was going to happen.

The hack dropped us off in the middle of farmland. The morning fog had burned off during the ride. It promised to be a warm, sunny day.

The grove Holgren had decided upon was more than a mile distant. The only way to reach it was through fields of waist-high plants. I have no idea what they were, but they smelled horrible and attracted insects in droves. I made Holgren carry two of the packs. By the time we got there, most of the morning had fled. I was sweating profusely and had half a dozen uncomfortable insect bites. Holgren seemed unaffected. I dropped my pack and took a long swig of water, cursing all mages silently.

“Why don’t you rest for a few minutes?” he said.

I glared at him. “Why don’t we get on with it?”

“All right.” He reached into his pocket, drew out a short length of red yarn, and lay it as straight as he could in the grass before him. “A concentration aid,” he explained. He shouldered one of the packs and turned to face the yarn. “Stand next to me,” he said.

I put the second pack on my back and held the bulky third under one arm uncomfortably. I wanted to have one hand free, just in case. I moved over to his right side. Our shoulders brushed.

“Not too close. Perhaps a few inches’ distance.”

He bowed his head then. He took deep, slow breaths. There was nothing gangly about him now—he was in his element, working with powers I had no ability to understand. His face took on something of the look of a bird of prey: fierce, wild, beautiful. The familiar chill that accompanied his use of power crept up the back of my neck. A breeze sprang up, and the grass swayed, then flattened as the breeze turned into a gale. I looked down at the length of yarn, and it was pulled taut as if by invisible hands. It thrummed as the wind ran across it—and then it was gone.

In its place stood a pearlescent, faintly glowing rectangle perhaps three feet wide by eight high.

“You must go first, quickly. I will follow.” His voice was strained.

I took a deep breath and plunged through.

It was not a pleasant sensation. I have no words to describe it—suffice to say a body was not meant to exist in whatever nether world or space between worlds that doorway was made up of. The feeling was mercifully brief.

The first thing I saw was jungle. I smelled death, the putrid stench of corpses. I took a few gagging, stumbling steps forward, and heard Holgren follow me close behind. The wind from the gate abruptly died as Holgren let it collapse back into wherever it came from. I caught a glimpse of rust-red, stone columns just ahead of me. Then, something small, brown, and hideously fast whipped past my head.

Behind me, Holgren screamed.

If I hadn’t been burdened with two packs, I could have gotten a knife out in time, could have skewered the thing before it reached him. I told myself this, and sometimes, I believed it. It might even have been true. As it happened, I did pin it to a tree with one forceful, desperate throw. It squirmed and hissed and made a high shrieking noise that drilled through my eardrums and reverberated painfully in my head.

It was just too late.

The creature had struck Holgren on the cheek—just a shallow little gash, but he screamed and screamed as if he’d been run through. I dropped the pack I’d been holding, grabbed him by the shirt front, and dragged him stumbling toward the stone columns I’d glimpsed. Around us, the bloated, waxy foliage writhed as if in agony, or expectation. I pulled Holgren after me as fast as I could go through the dense vegetation. He was still screaming. The rumbling cough of some predator sounded not far behind us. I tried not to imagine what it looked like. Holgren fell to his knees. Walking backward, I dragged him by his pack straps the last few feet. His face had begun to swell. He looked at me with agony in his eyes. His lips were drawn back across his teeth, and the only time he stopped screaming was to draw a lungful of air. I put all my concentration into pulling him forward to safety.

Abruptly, my heel touched cobbles. With a desperate grunt, I yanked Holgren fully out of the jungle and lay him on his side. I tried to get the pack off him, but his entire body had begun to bloat. I cut the pack free of his shoulders, loosened his collar, his belt, his boots. I could think of nothing further to do.

He screamed until the swelling closed his throat.

I held his hand until it was over. When he was gone, I sat there next to him for a time and thought nothing at all, felt nothing at all.

I looked down at the swollen, blackened hand in mine and thought about how ugly it was. His hands had always been so thin and delicate, almost womanly, perfectly manicured, and no calluses. They had been gentle hands. Now his fingers looked like fat, black sausages.

I closed my eyes, turned my head, and vomited. When I was done, I sat, still and cold in my soul. Then I heard it.

There was movement in the jungle. I looked up and saw dozens of eyes looking back at me. Much rustling and shifting, but nothing ventured forth to finish the job. I could feel the hate pounding at me, silent, palpable. Perhaps those eyes could feel me returning it.

I dragged Holgren a little distance away and took a brief look around. Crumbling buildings, some grand, some humble. I searched until I came upon an overgrown garden, walled in on three sides. I buried him there under a towering yew tree.

There was no spade; it was in the pack that had been left in the death lands. Knife and bowl did the job. I don’t know how long it took—hours, certainly. The ground was relatively soft and the grave only about four feet deep. If I’d had the energy, I would have dug a second grave for myself since I was convinced I was going to die there in Thagoth. It just didn’t seem worth the effort.

He was hideously heavy. I had to roll him into the grave. He landed face down, and I couldn’t stand that, so I went in after him and eventually got him facing the sky. Using the bowl, I started filling in the grave but couldn’t make myself throw dirt on his face. I dithered about that for a good while and finally decided to cut a section of canvas for covering. It went better after that.

I started to lose myself after the grave was filled in. I found myself smoothing the dirt with my hands, trying to make it perfectly level. I heard strange whimpering, realized it was coming from me. I made myself stop. I curled up there next to him with my fists pressed hard to my stomach.

Without Holgren to reopen the gate I was trapped, the last sorry resident of Thagoth.

~ ~ ~

It rained that night, a slow, gentle rain that pattered on the leaves overhead and softened the bare earth of Holgren’s grave. The rain woke me, and I threw on a good wool cloak and sat under the tree, waiting for dawn.

Something nagged at me as I huddled there. There was no birdsong, no rustling of animals large or small. I wondered if, over the centuries, the death lands had somehow claimed all the city’s fauna.

By mid-morning, the rain had passed. I’d begun to poke around the ruins a bit, mapping out the city in my mind, when I saw a hawk gliding and wheeling above the city. It was the first normal animal I’d seen anywhere near Thagoth. I stood there, watching it soar, envying it its freedom.

It turned slow circles, gliding slowly lower toward the walled compound of the Tabernacle in the center of the city. I assumed it must have seen some small movement and begun the hunt. I watched with interest, thinking there might be game behind those high stone walls.

The hawk descended, slowly, slower, to within a hundred feet or so of the tall, golden domes of the Tabernacle.

I heard a piercing shriek unlike anything I had ever heard before. Waves of pain shot through me, yet I could tell somehow that I had caught only the merest ripple of—of whatever it was.

The hawk caught the full force of it. It was instantly dead. Its graceful flight turned to a boneless tumble, and it plummeted into the Tabernacle grounds. Then, there was nothing but silence.

I decided to avoid exploring anywhere near the Tabernacle.

~ ~ ~

I was six months in Thagoth. I survived mainly on bark and grubs. Apparently the ancient Thagothians weren’t much for gardening because almost nothing edible grew in the city. There was a small date grove. I soon learned eating too many dates was rougher on my body than not eating any at all. I found and exhausted a stand of wild chok and grazed on clover like any cow. Hunger dogged me like a debt collector.

Holgren was in my thoughts often, try as I might to push his memory away. We had met years before when he hired me to help him with a job he had been hired for. However good a mage Holgren had been, stealth wasn’t his strong suit. Our abilities complemented each other. In time, we’d made our professional relationship a permanent one. We’d even become friends. I’d lost other friends, other partners in my life, and while I suspect most of them were bound for one of the nine hells, I didn’t know it for certain. Not like Holgren. I thought about all the little things he’d do to aggravate me: the arch looks, the condescending remarks, or even more condescending silences. It only made me miss him more.

I wandered over damn near every inch of Thagoth in the time I was there except those buildings closest to the Tabernacle. I’ve holed up in vacant houses before when I was too poor to afford a place to live or was avoiding one city watch or another. The feeling of emptiness was eerie, being surrounded by signs of life and habitation, being utterly alone. Thagoth wasn’t like that at all. It was much worse.

House after house, building after building, stone piled on stone, all of it empty, devoid of the smallest sign of human occupancy. The only thing I found in Thagoth to show people had ever inhabited it, besides the buildings themselves, were a few shards of crockery. No frescoes enlivened any wall, no glass in any window, no furniture, no doors, no workman’s tools, nothing. Not even a child’s toy. Just building after empty building, and leaf-littered floors. Thagoth wasn’t a city at all; it was a vast stone skeleton placed there by the gods for the wind to play with.

I slept. Sleep was freedom, sleep passed the time, and sleep conserved energy. That was the pattern of my months—sleep, forage, explore. In that order. Until sleep began to present its own difficulties in the form of dreams.

At first, they were innocent enough. I would dream of silly things: a birthday with honeyed oatcakes, an inn I once stayed at in Elam that served barley-stuffed mushrooms in wine sauce. I dreamed of food: leg of lamb, roast hare, boiled cloudroot smothered in butter and garlic, fried bankfish… I feasted in my dreams and starved all day.

Slowly, my dreams turned to something different.

Murmuring, muttering, whispering, sharp cries, and long silences intruded on my dreams. I knew even in the midst of them that these things did not originate in any part of my mind or spirit. I woke sweating and cold despite the sweltering summer heat. Something was moving through my mind as I slept. I could feel its enormous power and its agony.

Was it Holgren, somehow reaching out to me? Did it have something to do with this place, the Tabernacle, or the death lands? I didn’t know. I just wanted it to stop. After these dreams started, I began to stave off sleep for as long as I could.

I suppose that contributed to my going a little mad. I’d been rambling round the edges of the city, never too close to the Tabernacle of course, exploring. Poking around out of boredom, finding mostly stone. People of any age think alike; they tend to hide their valuables in much the same spots—under loose hearth stones and tiles, behind thin plaster, buried in gardens. Eventually, I gathered enough to buy a fine manse just off the Promenade in Lucernis three or four times over. Unfortunately, you can’t eat gold or jewels. You can’t bribe magic-mad monsters. No amount of wealth was going to buy me out of this trap.