Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Prophecy, page 8
Leandra walked in the direction of the town, Cymric at her side. After a few strides he saw that her expression had changed from grim to scowling. When she broke into a trot, he stayed with her. Thirty paces ahead was an ogre dragging a pulped townsman from a smoking building. Leandra sprinted toward the ogre, shrieking as she took the last few steps like an eagle diving onto its prey. The ogre dropped the corpse, but wasn’t able to unlirnber his club before Leandra struck. The blow landed on the side of his knee. Cymric heard a cracking sound and then a scream before the ogre fell over, clutching his wounded leg. Cymric cleared the thrashing ogre with a clumsy leap. Leandra was still opening the distance between them.
When she hesitated for an instant, Cymric closed the gap. To their left was a blazing building. His eyes stung from smoke, and the heat from the flames immediately raised a sweat. Leandra was coughing, trying to peer through the thicker smoke ahead. She nodded to her right.
“This way to the center.” She took off at a sprint again. Cymric sneezed on a whiff of smoke, following as best he could. The closer they got to the center of town, the more burning buildings they saw. Blistered wounded lay moaning in the streets; blackened and cracked corpses sprawled in the doorways where they had fallen. Desperate townspeople fought in defensive huddles against enraged ogres. Other ogres were dashing in and out of burning buildings seeking loot. They seemed content to ignore a swordmaster and a wizard.
Leandra stopped, and Cymric also came wheezing to a halt. Seeing her look of puzzlement, Cymric decided to cast his leaping spell, the better to avoid any over-enthusiastic ogres. Just as he began his casting, Leandra nodded and started running to her right. A sharp right, but too sharp a one. She was heading straight into the thick flow of smoke, away from the center of town.
Cymric’s throat was dry. With his concentration so focused on the spell, the most he could manage was a feeble croak of protest. Leandra was well into smoke by the time Cymric could move again.
“Leandra!” His shout was hoarse, none too strong as he followed her into the smoke. The fiery ruins of a house glowed on his left, and other dots of flame outlined the street. Cymric chose a path as near to the middle as he could. To his left a shop groaned and crackled. Support beams collapsed, sending thousands of sparks riding out on a wave of heat. Cymric leaped sideways, the magic carrying him yards clear of the sparks, straight into a startled ogre.
Cymric rolled to his feet just as the ogre shouted his anger. The ogre was armored in chain mail, and carried an axe that looked like a troll design. His left hand held bolts of shiny cloth now smudged with smoke. His hair was tied back in a war braid. His nose ring was adorned with a garnet half the size of Cymric’s thumb. At least I’ll die at the hands of an important ogre. Cymric leaped back, out of the path of the ogre’s attack.
The ogre’s eyes widened. He bellowed, “Koffra, Haggs, ji hav lig cortomancV’ Cymric did not speak ogrish, but he decided to translate the ogre’s words as “Koffra, Haggs, please fetch me that wizards intestines.” Two large, leather-wrapped bodies rushed from out of the smoke just as Cymric was attempting another magically powered leap over a burning house. The spell rushed energy to his legs. Cymric somersaulted slowly as he gained height, but he saw that he wasn’t going to clear the building.
He crashed through brittle shingle and weakened roof supports, then slammed into a burning window frame. The flesh on his forearms burned at contact with the fiery wood. Then his chest hit the frame, stamping a dark brown line across his robe. The ogres bellowed excitedly. Cymric screamed and leaped through the window frame.
He landed in the street, across from two stone buildings constructed with dwarven masonry. The roofs were on fire, hut the rest of the structures had yet to catch. Cymric could see ogres looting inside the buildings. There must be money here; he must be close to the center of town and to Leandra’s magician. Short, skittering jumps took him to (he alley between the two stone buildings. Crouching beneath a window, he paused to re-cast his jump spell.
Koffra and Haggs must also have made it to the street, because he could hear a pair of ogres shouting. The voices of ogres inside the buildings answered them. As Cymric finished casting, one of them opened the window above him. The huge, pimpled face looked down the alley one way, then the other. The ogre grunted, an eyebrow went up, then he looked directly down at Cymric. The ogre smashed the window in his attempt to grab Cymric; the wizard’s bound left the ogre holding only pieces of glass.
Other ogre-shouts sounded around Cymric as more of them apparently joined in the chase. Cymric dove into another alley to give himself time to think. The upper story of the storefront across from him was engulfed in flames, smoke pouring through every window. Soot and heat blackened the stone forming the storefront’s lower story, but some of the stonework stubbornly refused to get as dirty as the rest. Cymric hunched a few inches from a wall, not wishing to touch hot stone. A shift in air currents swept some smoke into the alley; Cymric coughed. An ogre pounded past the alley. Their shouts were everywhere.
The structures here were built along concentric circles, roads ringing the circles, alleys cutting between the circles. The buildings were more substantial than the outlying houses and shops, many of brick or stone, most more than one story. If Cymric’s guess was correct, he was now in the center of town. Leaving Corthy would mean having to get past a lot of ogres. Finding the magician would mean having to spot a clue to her location. Sitting here would mean just waiting for an ogre to find him. Cymric decided to keep moving. He crawled beneath the level of the smoke to the edge of the alley, then took a leap that carried him across the street.
Ogres were busy carrying barrels out of a tavern. One spotted him, shouting to the others, but none seemed eager to drop a barrel just to chase a spindly human. Cymric disappeared between the buildings before those searching in earnest had a chance to spot him. He kept moving from building to building, looking for one that might suit a magician.
Cautiously circling the center of town, Cymric saw ogres trapped in a burning building surrounded by dozens of infuriated townspeople. He saw ogres smashing all the valuables in an abandoned clockmaker’s shop, while others carefully looted the sausagemaker’s shop next door. He skirted a spirited melee between twenty or so ogres and the dwarf and ork defenders of a temple. He flitted down an alley as ogres leapt overhead; the brutes were assaulting the roof of a goldsmith’s shop, looking for a weakness in the well-fortified structure. The shop’s defenders had enough arrows and accuracy to wound their attackers as well as produce a solid thunk against Cymric’s backpack.
Finally he found a building that might be the one. The still-intact shop had a sign showing a gentle-faced woman with a golden aura around her long white hair. The face didn’t look particularly elven, which Cymric chalked up to either artistic license or inexperience. One ogre was carrying an astrolabe out into the smoke-filled street. Others stood by the steps of the same shop, arguing loudly. Perhaps the magician was still holed up in her shop, and the ogres were unhappy about the prospect of taking her on. But then why did the one ogre go in and take the astrolabe? Perhaps the magician was holed up where the ogres couldn’t find her. Looting the shop of a magician whose whereabouts were unknown—that could create some confusion, as well as explain the one theft of the astrolabe. Of course, with my luck, they’re probably just arguing about where to go for some ale. He might be able to sneak inside. He might also trigger a defensive ward of some kind.
Cymric hid as best he could near his building, which, judging from the burning odors, must once have contained considerable stores of green tea. If the magician were hiding, where would she hide? Cymric scanned the building. The upper story was white plaster, now dingy from smoke.
Fire from the neighboring building had tarnished the stone walls, streaking them with soot. All the buildings around here were either on fire or stained by the ash of a neighboring structure. Cymric felt a small thrill shoot up his spine. One building had been a little different, possessing a wall section that seemed to resist the smoke and soot. Just like my clothes do after I cast my ‘tailor’ illusion.
Cymric got his bearings. The building with the suspicious wall would be on the other side of the magician’s shop, kitty-comer across the street. Cymric recast his leap. He bounded out from the cover of his building, past the surprised ogres arguing by the steps. He quickly went around the shop, cleared the street in a single bound, then scurried into the alley.
The building was now burning on both floors. Cymric found the cleaner section. He licked his fingers, touched the section; hot. Studying the wall carefully, he saw that it looked natural, whole, with the variations one would expect from organic rock. But the soot just didn’t stick quite right. It was a good illusion, but Cymric was sure that was all it was. He summoned a spark of life energy to power his will. You aren’t the real wall; leave so that I might see you as you truly are. The first attempt didn’t affect the wall. The second produced a white shimmer as the wall went out of focus.
Then it came back into focus as a sliding stone door with carved handholds. The door was hot. Cymric reached into his backpack for the ale, which he squirted onto the handhold until it stopped sizzling. Touching the handhold as lightly as he could, Cymric slid the door open. It moved easily and quiedy, revealing a passageway that sloped down to his left and was only tall enough for a stooped walk. Bending over, Cymric stepped in, then closed the door behind him. The door choked off the outside light, leaving him in darkness.
Moving along the passageway, he kept his left hand on the wall while probing the way ahead with his staff. The tunnel was cool after the inferno above, but the air was stale. His body, which had not yet cooled, dripped sweat. Moving slowly gave him time to realize how thirsty he was, how much the burns on his arms and chest hurt.
Cymric stopped, fumbled for his ale. He drew four slow swallows. He continued down the dark tunnel until he heard a single step, then felt a sharp prick at the base of his spine and a cold edge at his throat.
“Twitch or speak in a way that displeases me, and you die.”
9
Cymric swallowed hard, an act that only increased the bite of the blade at his throat. He raised his left hand in the air, only to have it jam into the ceiling of the tunnel. The pain from his jammed fingers almost forced a curse from his lips, but Cymric’s will kept his tongue silent.
“Gently lay your staff on the ground.” The unseen assailant spoke flawless dwarven, except for a hesitation in the long a of “lay,” almost breaking it into two pure a sounds. That was typical of elven speech. Cymric rotated his staff until it was about hip-high and horizontal to the ground. He touched one end of the staff to the ground, then let the other fall into the dirt with a whump.
“I’m looking for Gelthrain.”
“Many different people are looking. For whom might you be doing your looking?”
“My name is Cymric. I am a wizard. I am working with ...” Cymric hesitated, then was angry at himself for the hesitation. The blade tightened on his throat, nicking his skin when he swallowed. Cymric had assumed that his captor was Gelthrain. If he was wrong and the person was actually working for the bat-summoners, mentioning Leandra could get him killed. Then again, if his captor was Gelthrain, she might also want to kill him because he’d delayed suspiciously in mentioning Leandra. A jab from the blade at his back interrupted his reasoning.
“I’m working with someone interested in finding a piece of the past, a piece the magician Gelthrain is said to have saved for us.”
“Cymric, I need your help. Vague answers make my wrist twitch. Given where I am holding my sword, a bad twitch could ...”
“I came to Corthy with Leandra.”
“Thank you, my wrist feels better.” The point at his back pulled away, the edge at his throat held. Light shone from behind him. A slender, almost bony, hand holding a light crystal by a leather thong appeared next to his face. Tattoos covered the person’s wrist, illustrations of lizards and beetles entwined in a chain.
“Take this, hold it above your face,” said the person behind the wrist. Cymric used two fingers to take the thong. The person behind him hissed.
“You are young, spell boy. Leandra never struck me as a cradle-robber. How long ago did you complete journeyman?”
“I left my master nearly five years ago,” Cymric said. If I’d stayed another three years, I probably would have completed journeyman. But best not bore your host by volunteering information.
“Leandra’s choices never did sit all that well with me. I considered our differences of opinion one of my survival traits. But I do believe you are her choice.” The sword moved away from his throat.
Cymric turned his upper body a few inches to the left, turning around completely when the blade-wielder did not object. By the glow of the light crystal he saw an elven woman with white hair cut into two levels, the top full but cut short around her ears, the lower part cut close to her head, with strands of hair hanging over her shoulders. Her jaw ended in a rounded chin that seemed out of place in her otherwise angular face. The eyebrows had been arched and braided in the old fashion of Blood Wood, her left ear scarred at the back. Her expression was smooth and ageless, except for the eyes. The lines around them seemed more like runes than crow’s feet. That was certainly possible, for Cymric knew elves had strange habits. The padded cloth of her drab clothes were also stitched with myriad runes. Seeing how comfortably she handled her short sword and dagger, Cymric felt profound relief that she hadn’t tried to kill him; she would most surely have succeeded. The elf woman gestured with her sword in the direction Cymric was heading.
“We can go back to my workshop. The calendar is still in there.”
“Why did you leave the workshop?”
“I had prepared my day’s spells for research and possible defense against the Ristular.”
“Ristular?”
Gelthrain glanced at Cymric. She extended her lower lip, then sent her bangs flying with a poof of air. “Leandra has left a few gaps in her explanations,” she said.
“She seems to have glossed over some important details in her haste to get here.”
“Then I will not deprive you of the joy of personally extracting the story from her.”
The elf led the way up a sloping passage. Slender beams supported the roof, and these were covered with runes similar to those on Leandra’s scabbard. Gelthrain stopped at the passage’s end. She sat down cross-legged, gesturing for Cymric to do the same. Overhead the floorboards vibrated with the sound of heavy footsteps.
“My spells were inadequate to defeat the five-hundred-pound marauders with small brains who entered my shop. Most of the valuable items in my shop are warded; the wards would discourage at least the first ogre to touch each item. I thought I could hide here until the townspeople drove them away. 1 apparently overestimated the abilities of my neighbors.”
“You underestimated the number of ogres. There are too many of them out there.”
“The mistake cannot be unmade. If you are willing to retrieve two items—the calendar and my grimoire—-I would waive my fee for the calendar.”
“Most noble of you, but that gesture only benefits me indirectly, if at all, while the risks are most certainly mine.”
“Without my grimoire I cannot choose new spells. I think you need those spells to dispatch the ogres.”
“I do not think my need is that dire.”
“I think it might be. You came looking for me. You sought out this tunnel rather than enter my ogre-infested shop. You cannot handle the ogres without me, and I cannot handle the ogres without my grimoire.”
“Why did you leave your grimoire? Mine fits neatly in my backpack.”
“My knowledge is no doubt a bit more extensive than yours, and the book is no longer so compact. Besides, I warded it to the lectern on which it sits. 1 couldn’t move it without dispelling the ward.”
“And you couldn’t dispel the ward with your current mix of spells,” Cymric concluded. Gelthrain nodded. Cymric ran his hands through his hair. Footsteps continued to sound heavily on the floorboards above. An ogrish shout sounded from further off. Cymric didn’t need his grimoire to use spells he had already learned; inscribing them in the grimoire was part of learning the spell. Perhaps Gelthrain’s magic worked differently, but he doubted it. What wasn’t she telling him?
“How do I get past the ward?”
“Earlier screams tell me some ogres have already triggered the ward by removing the grimoire from the lectern. It should be lying close to the ogres slain by the ward. The ward has no more power until the book is returned to the lectern.”
Perhaps, perhaps not. Cymric still believed Gelthrain was lying to him. He decided to go up, retrieve the calendar, then assess the situation. If the grimoire looked too dangerous, he could claim not to have seen it. Besides, the ogres might already have made off with it.
“What does the calendar look like?”
“It’s a stone disk, one knuckle thick and three hand-spans across. But it’s much lighter than you might think to look at it. It’s on a shelf.”
“The grimoire.”
“Large book in blue lizard-hide; three silver bands along the binding.”
“All right, Gelthrain, you’ve got a deal. I need one more spell, then you can open the floor up.”
Cymric assembled the pattern for an illusion of an undisturbed room, a spell that would mask his movements within the room—as long as none of the ogres were too discerning. The illusion slipped easily from his mind into the matrix in astral, waiting to be cast. He returned to the external world, gently touching the floorboards. Gelthrain spoke two words, and a dozen strips of wood separated from the rest of the floor, lifting less than an inch.
Cymric surveyed the room. It was empty of ogres, but the walls were lined with oddly shaped jars suspended in translucent green fluid and boxes sealed with wax. Shelves to his right held metal masks and serrated knives, while directly below were racks of familiar herbs, the foxglove and basil Cymric had seen in use by other town magicians. In the comer to his left lay an overturned lectem, a mahogany piece flowing with carved faces and hands. Cymric touched the floor and cast his spell, levering himself out of the hole, the dozen pieces of flooring floating just above him as he emerged. Once he was in the room, the boards settled back into place.
