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  TO ALL PERSONS OF THE EMPIRE OF IZMER

  Marina of Pretensa, Student Mage, is sought for the brutal murder of Vildan Vildir, Master of Dracology. Her magic powers are low to moderate. Her accomplices are bloodthirsty, depraved criminals of the vilest order, and they should be slain on sight. A generous reward will be paid for their remains.

  “It is not the Council of Mages that’s behind this,” Marina said. “I will not believe that. They’ve been deluded by Profion. Most of them are really very nice.”

  Roast fowl exploded from Elwood’s mouth at that. Marina gave him a frosty look and turned her fury on Ridley.

  “If none of you believe in this cause, why don’t you simply go and leave me alone? I’ll find the rod myself.”

  “Hey, right.” Ridley slapped his mug on the table. “Smartest thing you’ve said all day. Snails, friend Elwood? You want to look for magic rods or take a nap somewhere?”

  Neither Elwood nor Snails looked his way. Both looked around for something else to do.

  At once, Ridley was sorry he’d shot off his mouth. He thought she was out of her mind, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong and likely getting everyone around her hung up by their heels. Still, he couldn’t help the fact that he was fascinated by her, couldn’t take his eyes off her for a moment, even if she couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  “Ah, listen, what I said… We’re all under a strain, all right? Stuff comes out that you wish you hadn’t said.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t what?”

  “Say stuff, as you put it, that I wish I hadn’t said.”

  It was Ridley’s turn to feel the color rise to his face. “Can’t anyone be nice to you? Anyone says a kind word you’ve got to slap ’em in the face. Uh, what’s that, what’re you doing now?”

  Marina turned half away and unrolled the scroll she’d retrieved from Vildan’s dying hand. Holding down the edges with empty mugs, she hummed to herself as if no one else was there.

  “What I’m doing,” she said finally, “is getting to work. I have a lot to do, and it seems I have to do it by myself.” She looked up then, as if she were surprised to find him there. “Oh, you still with us? I thought you’d gone to take a nap.”

  “I am. Quite soon. Do you mind if I get something in my belly first?”

  Marina shrugged and turned back to the scroll. Ridley leaned over her shoulder and watched. This close, he could smell the flowery essence in her hair.

  “Those little red marks there? They look a bit like the locks my father used to put on the plans he drew for carriages when he wanted to keep ’em secret. You know, so no one else could steal his ideas.”

  “Please,” Marina sighed, “this is an ancient, very precious scroll. It is not a blueprint for buggies.”

  “Oh, well excuse me.” Ridley backed away in mock horror. “See, I thought you didn’t know what you were doing, so it wouldn’t matter if I put my two coppers in.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Like this, see?” Ridley put down his drumstick and grabbed the scroll. “My pa used to put his finger like this—”

  “Get your greasy hands off this right—Oh, oh dear.”

  Marina went suddenly quiet, as the runes on the parchment began to move, slowly circling about one another and arranging themselves in a totally different design.

  Ridley let out a breath. “Then he’d say something like, uh, Alinor salla… bebara… No, no… bedara, that’s it. Alinor salla bedara.”

  Marina stared at the scroll then peered up at Ridley. “So? Now what?”

  Ridley shrugged. “Hey, you can’t blame me for trying. You weren’t getting anywhere, you know. At least I—Holy dogs and cats!”

  For an instant, Ridley’s finger glowed. His eyes went wide, his whole body trembled, and then he was gone. All that was left was the sound of distant thunder and a whisper of steam where he’d been.

  “Oh, no, no…!” Marina bit her lip, then quickly planted her finger on the fading red marks. “Alinor salla bedara!”

  At just that moment, Snails turned and saw the girl vanish before his eyes.

  “Absolutely amazing!” he said. “Can you imagine that?” He peered under the table to see if Ridley was there. “I suppose he’s gone as well. He’s taken with the lady, even if he doesn’t yet know it himself.”

  “I can imagine another mug of this lovely ale.” Elwood yawned. “How about you, friend?”

  Snails didn’t answer. He stared at the runic lines on the scroll, watched in wonder as they seemed to dissolve into a small, flat drawing of the very room where Vildan had died. Now, within this room, two tiny figures moved about.

  “Flat amazing,” Snails said. “A marvel’s what it is!”

  “You said that,” Elwood frowned. “Why are you sayin’ it again?”

  “Well, they’re in there, that’s why,” Snails said, pointing a finger at the scroll. “Both of ’em, the girl and Ridley!”

  “Humans,” Elwood grumbled. “They’ll get themselves stuck somewhere and never get out. I seen it happen a thousand times.”

  “Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear that.”

  “Don’t matter if you don’t or you do. It’s true, is what it is. You’d never see a dwarf fall in a damned scroll, I’ll tell you that for sure.”

  * * *

  Down below, somewhere between the here and over there, Ridley became aware of a somber darkness above him, like a storm cloud blocking all the light from the sun. Peering up, he saw two enormous faces staring down from a blurry sky, watching him and Marina intently, like bugs in a box.

  Marina rubbed her eyes. “I can’t believe you did that. What Id like to know is how. You’re not a mage. You’re a common, ordinary thief!”

  “Neither common nor ordinary, and sure enough, it’s a mage talking now. No one can do something right if you haven’t been to school, if you haven’t got your official mage robe.”

  “Anyone can… stumble into something, I suppose. I strongly doubt you could do it again.”

  Ridley looked past her and studied the room. It looked just like the great library, only nothing seemed real. Nothing seemed right.

  “See, that’s what they told my father after he invented a carriage that could fly. He figured it out for himself, but the mages, of course, they couldn’t have that—a plain old commoner, who’d never been to magic school. He did something they couldn’t, so they—So they took it out of him. They erased it right out of his mind.”

  Marina looked away. “I’m sorry, Ridley. I really am.”

  “Forget it. It’s ancient history now.”

  “No. No, it’s not. It’s very real, and it’s something that shouldn’t have ever happened.”

  “It shouldn’t, but it did. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’re a lot of things in this world like that. I guess that’s the way it’ll always be. I don’t see it getting any better.”

  “Maybe it will, though,” Marina said. “Things do get better sometimes.”

  “For your kind, maybe. Not mine.”

  Ridley looked at her a moment, then quickly glanced away. It was difficult to look at her for very long. Too long, and he began to think of things that might happen, days in the future where the two of them might be together, might have a life that was nothing like the life they had now, a life where they were two different people than Ridley the thief, and Marina the mage….

  Shaking the thought aside, he toyed with a small wooden box on the table, absently turning it this way and that.

  “People in Oldtown don’t change a lot,” he said. “If you’re born into something, that’s where you’ll likely stay. Like me. What am I going to be but what I am? My father tried, and look where it got him.”

  Ridley ran his fingers over the ivy and thorns carved into the top of the box. A very pretty design. He wondered if he could do something like that. Work with his hands, make something nice… He lifted the lid and looked insi—
<
br />   “Whoooooa!”

  The tiny box exploded, swelling into a dense, vaporous mist, a dazzling white cloud that quickly consumed the room.

  Ridley grabbed Marina and stumbled back. The mist whirled about them, twisting and curling into a trembling wraith.

  “Who calls upon the Rod of Savrille?”

  “Uh, I’m Marina. Marina of Pretensa, daughter of Farnoff and Nalrid, student mage of the—”

  “You are not the seeker of the rod. Only the person who first enters the scroll is the seeker of the rod.”

  Ridley stared at the thing. It made him dizzy to watch. It was there, and then it wasn’t. It winked in and out like it truly didn’t know just where it ought to be.

  “See, I don’t want it. She does. Let her be the seeker, not me—”

  “NO!” The wraith’s breath was like the chill of polar ice. “The one who enters the scroll must seek the rod. Why do you seek the rod?”

  “We seek it because our land is threatened,” Marina said, gripping Ridley’s hand, something she’d certainly never done before. “We need it to stop some men who are… who are determined to destroy everything.”

  The wraith seemed to inhale itself, drawing its misty form into a hole somewhere then blowing it out again. An impossible act, Ridley knew, but the phantom did it anyway.

  “The rod is a force of evil. Famines, plagues, death… It was the cause of the great war of ancient times, a war no longer remembered, a war in which much was lost…”

  “That doesn’t sound like anything we want, does it, Marina?”

  “It’s not what we want, it’s what we have to have,” Marina said, looking straight at the wraith. “We don’t have any choice, it’s what we have to do!”

  The wraith seemed to sigh.

  “If you choose to seek it, know that you must complete the quest, or you will be eternally cursed.”

  “What kind of eternal curse?” Ridley asked, “Is this a really long eternal curse or a—”

  “SILENCE! What is your choice, boy?”

  “No,” said Ridley as he began to back away. “No, I don’t think so. Can we go now?”

  “We’ll do it,” Marina said, giving Ridley a scathing look.

  “What?” Ridley turned back to the wraith. “No we won’t! Don’t listen to her!”

  The wraith swirled, turning itself inside out again.

  “The box you so foolishly opened contains a map that will lead you to the Rod of Savrille.”

  “Fine,” Ridley said as he reached in to find the map. “We’ll give it a look, that’s as far as I’ll go right now.”

  “WAIT!”

  Ridley dropped the box and stepped back.

  “It is not that easy, boy. First, you must go to Antius City and obtain the Eye of the Dragon. Only through the Dragons Eye can one see where the rod does lie.”

  “That figures,” Ridley said. “A riddle. I hate riddles. What does this eye look like?”

  “It is a ruby as big as your hand.”

  “Really? I find this thing, I can keep it, right?”

  “Ridley—” Marina began.

  “No!” the wraith thundered. “Do not be lured by the dragon’s treasure, for in it lies great sorrow, not pleasure.”

  With that, the wraith vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I hate a curse that rhymes,” Ridley said. “Things that rhyme get you into trouble all the time.”

  “But you’ll do it?” Marina’s eyes were so deep, so soft and shadow-dark, Ridley wanted to fall in and drown.

  “No. You think I’m an idiot that I’ll listen to a cloud?”

  Marina’s warm and pleasant eyes turned to ice.

  “Oh, all right,” Ridley said, wishing, for an instant that he’d never been a thief, never opened boxes that didn’t belong to him, wished he hadn’t done a lot of things and done a lot of things he never had. “It won’t hurt to think it over. I can live with that.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  “Anyway,” said Elwood, “there I was, minding my business, when this orc comes stompin’ up—he’s drunker than I am, see?”

  “Hard to believe,” said Snails.

  “Don’t interrupt me. Someone stops me in the middle of a story I tend to lose my place. Uh, where was I?” The dwarf raised his tankard of ale, emptied it in two noisy slurps, half of it running down his tangled red beard. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, wiping the foam from his mouth. “I’m recalling the whole thing now. This giant fella, who is uglier than sin by the way, which is what every giant thrives to be, he’s pullin out this sticker which is maybe twenty, thirty feet long, and terrible sharp it was, too…”

  Snails, though, didn’t hear a word the dwarf said. He was awed, shaken by the vision that had just walked through the tavern door. She was tall, slender as a reed, dressed in rose-colored leather, and armor the color of a winter sky. He was totally enchanted, stricken by her charms. The woman didn’t walk, not like an ordinary woman, she just sort of flowed in an unearthly manner, as if her leather boots never even touched the ground.

  “Idol of idols,” Snails said, when he was able to breathe again. “I never believed that a dream could come true, yet there you stand, just as real as you can be.”

  “Like I was saying,” Elwood went on, “this giant, who had to be eighty, no, I take that back—ninety feet tall if he was in inch, he—Now where you going, Snails? Get back and sit down! I’m not half done with this.”

  Elwood snorted in disgust. Snails was out of his chair and halfway down the gallery before the dwarf could draw a breath. The dwarf watched him go, and when he saw where the thief was headed, he scowled.

  “Smitten by an elf. You’ve got to be daft, friend. There isn’t any meat on their bones—nowhere to get a grip. Now, you take a fine, two-hundred pound dwarf lassie with a little sprig of hair on her chin you can hold on to…”

  * * *

  Snails reached up and straightened the collar of his coat, wishing, for the moment, he’d worn his other jacket, the dun-colored one where the patches seemed to match, the one that nearly fit.

  The woman seemed to sense he was near, for as he approached she turned and granted him a smile that nearly brought him to his knees.

  “Why, hello,” Snails said, as if he’d suddenly come upon her there. “I hope you won’t think I’m out of line, but what’s a beautiful lady like you doing in a terrible place like this? Looking for someone in particular, or are you just looking for… somebody?”

  “Actually,” the woman said, in a voice that sent a shiver up Snails’ bony spine, “I was looking for someone just like you.”

  “You—you were?” Snails felt his mouth go dry. “What kind of coincidence is that? I’ve always been looking for someone like you. I’m Snails. That’s what everyone calls me, anyway.”

  “Norda,” she said, reaching out to take his hand.

  “This calls for a bottle of the very best wine,” Snails said. “You’re not going to find any here, so why don’t you and I go looking somewhere else?”

  “Snails…” Norda paused, and he saw her eyes sweep warily about the room, a practiced gesture that told him she missed very little, even in a crowded, noisome tavern like the Rusty Sword. “I would really like to spend some time with you, Snails, but I think we’d best meet your friends as well.”

  Snails hesitated, wondering if he shouldn’t have been more cautious approaching someone he didn’t know. Even if she was the answer to his dreams, what else might she be?

  “My, uh, friends? How did you—? May I ask just how you know I’m with friends? I mean, in case I am.”

  “You may, and you have every right to, Snails.” She paused, darting a look past his shoulder again. “But I have to ask you to trust me for now. Please. I don’t feel right about being here, and I don’t think your friends should be here either.”

  Norda paused and moved closer to him, so close he could see his reflection in her eyes. What he saw there was honesty, coura
ge, and something he couldn’t name, something so alien, so different from anything he’d ever seen before. She was an elf, of course, and that accounted for much of her ways, but there was more, a great deal more than that.

  “You don’t have to ask for my trust,” he told her. “You have it for sure. Come with me and meet my friends, if we can find them, that is. I think they’ll be glad to talk with you.”

  * * *

  Elwood Gutworthy had consumed an enormous quantity of ale, but not that much for a dwarf. His senses, as ever, were intact. His mind was perfectly keen and ever alert. Thus, when he turned to squint down at the entry to the tavern, he already knew what was there. He saw, with the clarity of an eagle who sights a fat salmon far below, that something was greatly amiss, something was terribly wrong.

  He saw, in that instant, the brigand in the shadows by the door, saw the gold pieces vanish in his hand and disappear. Half a second later, the shadow man was gone. The other, though, the man who’d given away the gold, was still there, and when he turned to face the room and Elwood saw his face, the dwarf squeezed the heavy clay mug so hard in shattered in his hand.

  “Damodar! By the gods, it’s him! But what foul monster ate his face?”

  Elwood didn’t pause to look for an answer. Grabbing his helmet, his axe, and the precious scroll, he was up and darting quickly through the twisting tiers, even as Damodar dispatched his corps of uglies through the door.

  The dwarf offended everyone he passed, elbowing humans, halflings, and anyone else not swift enough to move out of his way. He left them all with a dwarvish curse, the same one he always used, which began with “Shrivel up and die, whoever you are….”

  A table of orcs, four big brutes with scarred purple hides, stood directly in his way.

  “Move,” Elwood said. “I mean to get by.”

  The orcs looked up and stared. Orcs can be dense, but it was clear to these four that it would take a good dozen dwarves to make a single worthy foe. One began to laugh, and the others joined in. Orcs at other tables howled, pointing at the bearded little man.