15
An hour later, Hyam walked back across the square. Joelle and Meda accompanied him, while Connell remained behind to question the banker. The crowd held to such a still attentiveness he found it unnecessary to shout. “Who among you saw the attack?”
A woman cried back, “Is that what it was? The mage—”
“I will answer your questions. First answer mine. You heard there was an assault on the banker’s home. Did anyone actually see it?”
A man stepped forward, dressed in dusty clothes and a builder’s leather apron. “I heard it, your lordship. And saw a bit. I was putting a new roof on a house one street over. You can’t see it from where we’re standing, but I was high up.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“There was a great crack, like the sky itself was split open. The earth shook enough to topple over my ladder, carrying my boy with it.”
“Aye, your lordship.” He tugged on the sleeve of a young man taller than himself. “This is the great lout here. Shaken, but that’s it.”
“So you heard a blast. What did you see?”
“I was mostly watching after my boy. But I saw . . . Tell the truth, I can’t say for certain what I saw. The air seemed to shiver above the wall, like. And there was this great tumbling roar from the house. Then nothing.”
Hyam thanked him, then asked the group, “Did anyone else see what took place?”
A woman called, “I saw it.”
An older woman standing beside her protested, “Don’t speak up.”
“He asked and I’m saying.” The woman was young, slender, and dressed in the grey cotton frock of a maidservant. She pointed to a cluster of houses at the plaza’s north end. “I was ironing in the upstairs front room of the home back there, your lordship. It was just as the builder says. I heard a great blast, then the earth shook hard enough to crack the window where I was standing. Dust rose in a great billowing cloud, out the front door and the back both. Then it all went quiet as the tomb.”
“Aye, she’s right,” the builder said. “I forgot about the dust.”
Hyam asked, “Did you see anyone leave the manor?”
“Nary a soul, your lordship, and I was watching close.”
Hyam thanked her and raised his voice a notch. “Everything these good people have reported confirms what we have found inside. Some dread force has attacked the Ashanta banker and destroyed his home.”
The crowd gave off a single rustling breath, then a woman demanded, “It’s as I feared, the mage is back?”
“No. That I can say for certain. The crimson one who ruled this city has been destroyed. Whoever attacked here does not carry the same threat. This is a lesser force, but dangerous just the same.”
Another voice called, “What of the banker?”
“He is safe. As are all his family and servants. No one perished in the attack.”
A man called, “And our money?”
“That too was untouched by the attack.” Hyam gave the crowd time to chatter, then continued, “Here is what we know. A new force lurks in this city’s shadows. And we need your help to identify who or what it is. The enemy is not so strong as to operate in the open. Keep a careful eye for the unnatural, the stranger, the one whose presence is threatening. Do not provoke it! Come to us. We will do what is necessary, and defeat it.”
The querulous woman demanded, “You’ll keep us safe?”
“Come to us,” Hyam repeated. “We have been sent by Bayard, your rightful earl, to identify this threat, destroy it, and ensure your safety. Remember, Emporis is your city! Help us keep this threat at bay!”
The communications mirror served as a window most clearly at its center. Around the borders its surface became tinted by the pewter backing, and the images wavered somewhat. Bayard had brought his entire council this time. They all shared the same grim countenance as Hyam made his report.
When he was finished, Bayard pondered for a time, then said, “Tell me of this desert trader.”
“His name is Jaffar, and thus far no one has seen him, including the banker.” Hyam gestured to Connell, who was seated to his right, with Joelle to his left. “Your master mage questioned the banker while I dealt with the crowd. I would ask that he relate this portion himself.”
Bayard demanded, “Crowd?”
“Drawn by the blast,” Hyam explained.
Connell said, “Several times the banker sent for Jaffar, but the merchant was always represented by his chief drover, Selim. A roughish man by all accounts. Selim claimed that Jaffar is secretive by nature, and this was what has kept him alive so long. He also claimed that his bird had instructed Jaffar to not set foot within the city walls. For if he did, he would perish.”
“A desert trader claims to receive instructions from a bird?”
“A great eagle with desert plumage,” Hyam said. “A magnificent bird with wings broader than my arm span. Let Connell finish and I will explain.”
Trace asked, “What else did the bird say?”
Bayard examined his chief wizard. “You believe the trader speaks with a bird?”
“The banker and his entire family survived,” Trace replied. “I have no choice but to accept the man’s report as true.”
Connell went on, “The night before the attack, Selim slipped past the Ashanta banker’s guards and entered their dining hall. He claimed to have done so to demonstrate how the real enemy would be arriving. Perhaps within the hour, certainly within a day. If the banker wanted to survive, they would hide where none could find them, for already the enemy was watching the house’s only exit. He gave the banker a sack, one his master had been instructed to deliver to the hero of Emporis.”
“More instructions from this bird, I suppose?”
“Precisely, sire. Then the banker said Selim left through the kitchen door, crossed the rear garden, and scaled the city wall like a spider.” The mirror’s illumination tinted Connell’s features with a severe metallic gleam. “The banker and all his household spent a frightened night crammed inside the secret treasure chamber. Sometime around dawn, the earth shook so violently they were all bounced around like pebbles in a stone box. One strap holding gold bars to a shelf broke and knocked a guard out cold. The chamber was filled with the most horrid odor of ash and cinders, and they assumed the entire house had been set alight. But there was neither heat nor smoke.”
Bayard pondered this, then asked Hyam, “What did the sack contain?”
“A scroll, a note from Jaffar to me, and the merchant’s own private seal,” Hyam replied. “The note stated that Jaffar was ready to take me wherever I needed to go, whenever I was ready to depart. The seal was offered as a guarantee. The scroll contains another Milantian spell.”
“Which none save Hyam can read,” Connell added. “To my eye it is utterly blank.”
“The spell is there, and it is complete,” Hyam assured them. “Jaffar wrote that the bird claims this scroll is vital to our enemy. Jaffar apparently did not even know he carried the scroll until the bird told him. He broke open one of the amphorae to find it. The bird told Jaffar to keep the scroll safe until we arrived. It is a binding spell, that much I can tell you, and centers upon transforming some kind of gemstone. To what purpose, I have no idea. The scroll merely says, ‘Use a shard of heartstone, and draw together all that remains.’”
Bayard frowned at Trace. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“I am still grappling with the idea that a merchant has offered his services to a man he has never met,” Trace replied. “On instruction from a bird.”
Bayard turned back to Hyam. “What do you propose to do?”
“What we must,” Hyam said. “Try to determine what secrets the new scroll holds that grants it such importance to the enemy. Then draw our foe away from the realm of men, out into the yellow desert.”
“Risky,” Trace muttered. “Perilous in the extreme.”
“And yet the correct move,” Bayard agreed.
Hyam asked, “Do either of you know what might be meant by the term heartstone?”
“None whatsoever,” Trace replied.
“Perhaps Timmins can help,” Bayard said, rising from the table. “But first he wishes to have a word with his daughter.”