Chapter

7

Daretor awoke with Thull’s cold hand clamped over his mouth. ‘It’s time.’

Daretor brushed the hand away. He swung his legs over the bed and shook his head as though to clear it. He didn’t come fully awake until a thought seized him and he quickly looked to his little finger.

Thull grinned wolfishly. ‘The link is yours. I could have taken it, but I’m happy with my lot.’

Daretor said nothing as they descended the stairwell. A serving wench was kissing one of the drinkers and the others were all cheering. It was a good cover, and they slipped out into the cold night.

Daretor still had his doubts about what they were doing.

‘And what of this merchant who employs mercenaries and owns the mailshirt? I’ll wager it is well guarded!’

‘Then you would lose your coin,’ Thull replied. He pulled his cloak closer to his body. ‘My informant tells me that Fa’red guards it himself; he distrusts even his closest allies.’ Thull’s lips curled back in a smile to reveal sharp teeth by the light of a smoky street lantern. ‘It will be his undoing.’

‘And what if he is wearing the mailshirt?’ Daretor said as he strode along beside Thull.

‘Then he is a bigger fool than I suspect,’ Thull said easily. ‘Would you sleep in a mailshirt?’

Daretor still suspected treachery, and almost of their own accord his fingers loosened the leather strap of the axe at his belt. He lifted his sword a handspan in its scabbard, then let it drop. He was as ready as he could be for whatever lay ahead.

At length Thull paused beneath an archway guarded by massive but open gates that fronted a cobbled courtyard. Wan light from distant street lanterns cast murky shadows as the pair slipped inside. Thull drew a slender wire and worked it into the lock of a heavily embossed door.

‘Damn, this is some new type of lock,’ he muttered as he worked. ‘A mere century ago there were no locks at all.’

The offhand remark gave Daretor a chill.

‘There are bodies lying in the shadows,’ he said, his eyes scanning the darkened cobblestones.

‘Of course, bodies don’t stand up very well,’ Thull replied blandly.

‘This feels like a trap. There must be other guards.’

‘There are guards aplenty. They are just having an eternal rest.’ Thull cursed, then withdrew his wire and selected another from his robes.

‘I see a guard pacing over there.’

‘He’s in my pay. See here, my cautious warrior, if it makes you any happier the guards beyond this door are not in my pay and are as likely to kill us as fart in the latrine.’

‘Why don’t you use magic to open the door?’

‘Because the lock’s iron, idiot! Iron bleeds the vitality out of magic. Besides, there is a sieve aura over this place, ready to alert Fa’red to any intruder resorting to sorcery.’

‘The guards seemed easily bribed.’

‘Some guards take no small delight in seeing robbery from the house of a rich man.’

The lock gave a dull clunk.

‘There, got it!’ whispered Thull. ‘Wait! Not so eager.’

He swung the door open a little and jammed a wad of cloth into the catch before slipping inside with Daretor. As he pulled it shut behind them they were plunged into total blackness.

‘Come now, Daretor,’ Thull said scornfully. ‘Show some resolve.’

‘Black Quell himself must be afoot tonight!’ Daretor complained. ‘This place –’

‘This place is also protected by a foreboding spell, a little trick to strike baseless terror into intruders such as us. I am his equal in magic. Remember that and ignore what you feel.’

Daretor’s teeth still chattered in spite of the reassurance, but he walked on before Thull without hesitation. They passed several doors before pausing at one that seemed no different to any of the others.

‘It’s in here.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Your link is glowing brightly. I can see the glow through the stitching of your gloves. Quickly now, already the mailshirt will be glowing to warn whoever is awake to watch.’

Daretor felt an icy fear run its course down his spine.

‘Thull –’

But the man had already taken his wire to the door’s lock. This time the door clacked open easily, and he entered. Daretor followed.

It seemed as stygian black inside the room as in the corridor – but not quite. From within a room that lay beyond emanated a reddish-orange glow.

Something grunted from a four-post bed. Daretor barely managed to stifle an exclamation.

‘Take him!’ Thull hissed.

‘I’m a warrior, not a cutthroat!’

‘Do as I –’

A thief-bell began to ring outside, jangling Daretor’s brain after the long minutes of velvety silence and whispered words.

The bed’s bracings squealed alarmingly and a huge, menacing shape rose as the covers were flung back.

‘Hold!’ a man’s voice boomed like a thunderclap.

Daretor heard, rather than saw the sword as it sliced towards him. He dodged backwards, caught his foot on something, sprawled and twisted as a blade chopped down into the floorboards. Blue fire blazed around the huge merchant-mage, but Thull was blazing with the blue light as well.

Blue coils writhed between the two like living tentacles. Daretor got to his feet and stood watching for a moment as the blue fire lashed between the two mages.

In spite of the coils of writhing blue, neither mage seemed touched. Both stood within protective globes enmeshed with the glowing coils. Daretor tried to slash at the brilliant blue cords between them, but the fire blazed down his sword, burning his gloves and singeing his tunic and cloak. His sword fell to the floor, as hot as a stove-top, and he had to wrap his hand in the hem of his cloak before he could pick up the blackened weapon again. The leather binding of the handle was all crumbling char, and the blade was scorched.

He looked up to see Thull still enmeshed by Fa’red’s glowing, writhing coils of blue. Fa’red was free, and was walking purposefully towards him with his sword in his hand.

‘You chose to walk with a loser, boy,’ rumbled the huge man.

Daretor seized a chair and swung it into the path of Fa’red’s blade. The sword stuck fast in the wood of the seat. Daretor released the chair and aimed a punch-snap at Fa’red’s head, but the mage raised the sword with the chair still attached to parry, then kicked the chair free, snapping the tip from his blade.

By the light of the coils that enmeshed Thull they traded a score of blows. Fa’red was very fast and enormously strong, but not as skilled in his technique as Daretor. Every block jarred Daretor’s burned hand, but the young warrior used the huge mage’s strength against him, sending him spinning with forced pommel blocks and dodging back from sweeps.

Their swords clanged and rang like a tuneless peal of handbells, missing flesh but cutting chips of wood from the furniture.

Fa’red backed Daretor into a corner, then closed with him. The younger man twisted from his grip but lost his sword and charred cloak. He rolled free past bare, hairy legs, then more by instinct than skill he grabbed the rug and hauled it from under Fa’red’s feet.

Fa’red bellowed as he fell. Daretor snatched up his sword – then the blue light vanished. Again Daretor rolled and saw lingering blue light play about Fa’red’s mouth. There was a heavy crash and the thump of a body falling.

‘He’s down,’ panted Thull in the darkness. He snapped his fingers and an olive oil lamp kindled on a lipshelf on the wall. Daretor saw the mage draw his knife and reach down to seize Fa’red’s hair.

‘No!’ Daretor cried. ‘I’ll not be part of cold-blooded murder!’

Thull considered this for moment as he bent over Fa’red. He released his hair. Fa’red’s head thudded against the floorboards.

‘Would you have that alive to pursue you once he revives?’ he said, gesturing to Fa’red.

Daretor did not reply. He was listening to the commotion outside. The damnable bell had ceased ringing, but the courtyard was in an uproar. Any moment now some guard would blunder into the bedchamber and he was in no condition for another fight.

‘The mailshirt,’ said Daretor as he got up and stumbled into the next room. He seized the glowing pile of interlinked rings. ‘With the mailshirt I’ll be in no danger.’

The corners of Thull’s mouth widened into a smile and his teeth gleamed in the orange light from the enchanted mailshirt.

‘So … you’re fool enough to show mercy. Very well.’

He sheathed his knife and flung a leather bag to Daretor, who hefted the mailshirt with a shivery jingle. With the drawstrings pulled tight no light leaked out, although Daretor’s link still glowed. He smothered it within the folds of the bag.

Thull went to the outer door.

‘A word of caution, young Daretor. We’re not safe until the mailshirt is complete. Now earn your keep with that blade.’

Thull was flung to one side as the oak door was thrown open. A guard came bursting through, holding a sputtering torch high. The mage grunted with surprise but recovered quickly enough. He spat a thin blue coil that snared the guard’s legs and the man went down. Thull snatched up the torch.

‘Out, Daretor, move!’ he shouted.

Daretor stepped over the fallen guard and into the corridor. He turned to see Thull smash the torch into the pottery oil lamp on the wall, splattering the room with burning oil.

‘You torched the place!’ shouted Daretor.

‘Pah. The darkness was annoying me.’

‘We’ll have to fight our way clear, and –’

‘Not so. Close your eyes and let me guide you.’

Daretor heard him say a strange word, and a deepening blackness blossomed before him.

‘What in the name of Black Quell is –’

‘Close your eyes if you don’t want your mind sucked out through them,’ Thull hissed. ‘Keep your mouth closed, too. We don’t want to attract attention where we walk for the next few yards.’

The air suddenly became ice-cold, and whatever was beneath their feet was unsteady and yielding. Leading Daretor, Thull walked steadily for perhaps three dozen paces, then spoke another word.

Something shrieked at the sound and huge wings began beating. The sound was cut off abruptly, and the air that Daretor gasped was the warm and humid air of D’loom again.

They were standing in the street, just outside the gates of Fa’red’s great house.

‘How did you do that?’ asked Daretor.

‘We stepped through a world close to our own where we are as like to mice in a room full of owls.’

‘And your magic protected us?’

‘No. We were just lucky. Now hurry, the city constables will soon be here.’

Jelindel had run to the smithy along every shortcut and overwalk that she knew. She prayed that the mage and his warrior would be stopped or even killed by Fa’red and his guards.

Limping up to the smithy, she paused to listen for voices inside. It was silent. She made several attempts to jump for the loading beam’s rope, but she was too tired and her ankle hurt too much. It took several precious minutes to pile enough garbage beneath it for her to reach the rope. She used her feet to climb it, twisting her right ankle into a base while her left foot pushed off it. Zimak had trained her well.

Jelindel dragged herself over the sill and found Zimak still alive but desperately fighting for tiny shallow gasps of breath as the blue coils slowly tightened. Down in the shop she could see Thull’s blue glow binding the hinged bar on the front door. Even as she watched, the tendrils heaved the bar up and pushed it clear before vanishing into the wood. Two men were outlined by the light of Blanchemoon, then they stepped inside and she heard the creak of the bar swinging home again.

I barely slowed him at all, Jelindel thought, at the edge of despair. She pulled back into the shadows as a snap echoed through the smithy and a tinfloat lamp lit up by itself. Thull was back, looking dishevelled but unharmed. The robes of his warrior accomplice suggested that he had been fighting red hot wires or whips studded with hot coals. His right hand was crudely bandaged with a strip torn from his own cloak.

‘I thought you said that you were a match for Fa’red,’ said the warrior as he sat down and began to unwrap his right hand.

‘I lied. He was an Adept 12, I am an Adept 11.’

‘You lied to me!’ snapped the warrior. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Would you have followed an Adept 11 against an Adept 12? I hoped that you could best his swordwork while I tied up as much of his life-force as he dared to spare for magic. He spoke the coils to bind me for a full minute, and he would have run me through with cold steel had you not been there to distract him until the coils returned to his lips.’

‘He nearly killed me. Your gamble was damn near a loss.’

Thull’s lips drew back to reveal sharp, yellowish teeth. ‘Such is the price when the stakes are so high. I too was stretched beyond my limits. Another few heartbeats and I would not have been able to maintain my globe of resistance. His coils would have contracted and burnt through my flesh and crushed my bones. You see, other debilitating circumstances arose earlier that I’d not taken into account.’

‘There are others to confront?’ Daretor said in alarm.

Thull waved aside the youth’s panic. ‘Pah! It was nothing. I was simply weakened when I was forced to snare some churl up in the hayloft this afternoon.’

‘Get me some axle grease or leather dressing,’ said Daretor, who had lost interest in the excuses that were probably lies as well. ‘My finger swelled when his coils burned it, and the link will not slide easily over the knuckle.’

Thull stoked up the coals in the forge as Daretor struggled to get the link off his finger. Jelindel could see that the link was glowing bright orange as he finally worked it free and held it high.

Thull picked up a battered leather drawstring bag and upended it. A mailshirt that glowed more brightly orange than the coals of the forge slithered out with a musical jingle. It was exquisitely beautiful, like a pile of glowing jewellery.

Jelindel crawled back to Zimak. Tears of frustration and rage streaked her cheeks because she had failed him. She stroked his hair and whispered encouragement, but knew that her words were no less lies than Thull’s.

It was close and hot in the shop, but the lack of anyone else in there made Daretor more uneasy than the heat. No longer able to maintain even a shred of trust in the mage, he drew his sword and motioned Thull away from the glowing pile at his feet.

‘Where’s the blacksmith?’ he demanded in a quavering voice that he had hoped would sound menacing. He raised the blackened point of his sword to touch Thull’s throat. ‘Tell him to come out. Now!’

Thull raised his hands. ‘Come out, blacksmith, it’s all right!’ he called. Silence was his reply. ‘See? No trap. I have rented the dwelling for this night’s work. Ah, Daretor, your distrust offends me.’

Daretor gestured to the glowing forge. ‘Would not the blacksmith have quenched his forge before leaving for the night?’

‘Normally, yes, but we have need of a forge so I asked him to leave it hot.’

Yet again, what Thull said was plausible. ‘I know not what to think anymore,’ Daretor admitted.

‘Have I not given you everything? Have I ever lied to you?’

‘Yes! About your Adept level. Stand back, right back! What is to stop you putting on the mailshirt and defeating me with the combined fighting skills of the links that make up its fabric?’

‘I’m making no claim to it. The mailshirt is quite simply yours. It will serve me far better with you wearing it.’

‘And when that service is done?’

‘Oh, you can keep it then. I shall have something far better.’

Daretor slowly undid the length of leather thonging that tied his axe’s head to his belt, then he picked up the glowing mailshirt. In pain from his burned right hand, he began to clumsily lace up the neck of the chainmail shirt with the thonging, all the while keeping a wary eye on Thull.

The mage stood leaning against the wall with his arms folded, looking more amused than angry.

‘There,’ Daretor said at length. ‘Now do your work.’

‘Very well,’ Thull said. He moved cautiously forward. ‘I’ll use the link to repair this little gap midway down.’

‘An invincible suit, yet it has a hole in it,’ Daretor said. It had been a nagging doubt.

‘Not an invincible suit, but a suit that enhances the skills of the wearer, say even that of a healer. In this case there must have been a warrior who pitted himself against too many skilled opponents, or perhaps he was shot at a distance by a crossbowman. Now, the link if you please?’

Daretor gave it to Thull, who nestled it into the coals of the forge and puffed the bellows. The metal already glowed with the colour of the coals. Presently he removed it with a pair of tongs and placed it on an anvil. With one strike of his hammer and chisel the link was split. He returned it to the coals and began pumping the bellows.

‘All that pretty, fine writing, spoiled,’ commented Daretor.

‘Oh it will come back by itself,’ Thull said enigmatically.

‘It will?’

‘Trust me.’

After several minutes amid the stoked-up coals the link glowed yellow rather than orange. Thull spread the chainmail so that the tear was over the anvil and the ragged links were lined up. He removed the link, beat the ends flat then returned it to the coals for the last time.

‘All this for one miserable link,’ said Daretor. ‘The mailshirt itself must have been years in the making.’

‘When you have a hundred or so links in the forge at once, the work goes faster. Still, it does take a lot of time.’ In the glow of the forge he looked even more menacing, like a daemon stoking the furnaces of the underworld.

Daretor tightened his grip on his sword. ‘Unless, of course, a master mage has a hand in it.’

With a coarse, crackling laugh Thull removed the link, tapped the two ends together, then quenched the hot link. The suit of mail was complete.

‘The mailshirt’s stopped glowing!’ Daretor said, astonished. ‘That cold orange light is gone.’

‘Very observant,’ said Thull. ‘Now, there is one more thing for you to do.’

‘What’s that?’ Daretor asked as he walked forward to claim the mailshirt.

‘You must run for your life, or you can stay here and be killed,’ said Thull as he drew his sword from its scabbard in a leisurely sweep. ‘It makes no difference to me.’