The Crosser's Maze (The Heroes of Spira Book 2) Read online

  “Doesn’t that get confusing?” he asked. “Is the Black Circle the god, or you and the rest of his minions?”

  Mokad shook his head. “Both, Dranko. We use the term for both. I’m sorry our semantics bother you so much.”

  “Right,” said Dranko. “So you’re not pretending to be a faithful follower of Delioch then?”

  “Your little god served his purpose. But no, I have moved on from him. The Circle is ascendant.”

  “Good for you! Congratulations on your journey of discovery. Speaking of which, I’m still hoping to discover if there’s a point to all of this.”

  Mokad sighed. “Did Abernathy tell you why he summoned you and your little band?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  “And did he say why he summoned you in particular?”

  Dranko didn’t have a ready retort to that one. Truth was, Abernathy had never provided a wholly satisfactory answer.

  “Your employer knows more than he’s letting on,” said Mokad. “So let me fill in at least one important gap. Abernathy needed servants whose deaths will not derail his long-term plans. He’ll get what use out of you he can, but I promise that most of you—perhaps all of you—are going to die in his employ. Or have died already, in the case of Ysabel Horn.”

  “Whereas you only have my best long-term interests at heart?”

  “That depends,” said Mokad, “on whether or not you will join the Black Circle.”

  Dranko could hardly think of anything less appealing. “I’m sure it’s a great organization. Tell me all about it!”

  If Mokad detected his sarcasm, he didn’t show it. “You’d be given knowledge, Dranko. The Black Circle is a holy embodiment of knowledge, and you would be granted a great deal more of it than Abernathy has been willing to share. You would see clearly how the self-styled archmagi are manipulating things to their own unsavory ends. And, if you serve the Circle well, you would be taught how to read the thoughts of others.”

  “Unsavory ends?” Dranko snorted. “Like trying to free Naradawk Skewn from his prison, so he can terrorize the kingdom like his father? Sorry, Mokad, but I can see where you’re going, and it’s a dead end.”

  “You see less than you think,” said Mokad. “Surely you are familiar with the old saying that history’s pen rests in the victor’s hand.”

  Dranko laughed. “So Naradawk is just a poor, misunderstood soul who wants to spread flowers and bunny rabbits across the kingdom? I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not working. You’re too late.”

  “Because you have friends now?” A note of impatience crept into Mokad’s voice. “Let’s consider them, shall we? Morningstar finds you repulsive. Grey Wolf despises you and still blames you for Ysabel’s death. Ernie thinks you are a bad influence, Aravia couldn’t think less about you if she tried, and Tor barely thinks at all. They all tolerate you because you can channel, but how long can you keep that up? Delioch gives you power only in exchange for your soul, and you’re using it up quite rapidly.”

  Damn, but how did Mokad know all this? Did the Black Circle truly give him that knowledge? Or did he have a more mundane source of intelligence? A spy, maybe? One other thought came into Dranko’s head just then. Mokad had mentioned everyone in the company except for Kibi. Was it possible that the stonecutter’s odd resistance to magic extended even to the Black Circle’s powers of divination?

  Mokad wasn’t finished. “Yours has been a life of rejection. Your family rejected you. Your hometown rejected you. The church of Delioch rejected you. ‘Horn’s Company’ only accepts you because you’re a walking bandage. But the Black Circle will embrace you. We see your potential, your talent.”

  Here Mokad smiled and gave a little laugh. “Your performance out in the desert was magnificent, by all accounts. I thought Lapis was going to tear off my head with her bare hands when she confronted me about my arrogant servant ‘Pietr.’”

  “Yeah, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Dranko projected nonchalance, but Mokad’s words had stung a bit. In the weeks since the Ventifact Colossus had died, Dranko had been trying harder to fit in with the rest of his team but couldn’t say for certain how much progress he’d made. Tor, Ernie, Grey Wolf, and Morningstar were certainly bonding well, a direct result of their hours practicing their battle tactics in the backyard. Dranko would sometimes wander out and watch them, but his adherence to Delioch’s tenets precluded his participation. Aravia was hip-deep in piles of books nearly every hour of the day, and Kibi was a hopeless introvert.

  Dranko had convinced himself that they all were his friends—even Morningstar—but was that overly optimistic? Who could say if Mokad’s thought-reading insights weren’t accurate?

  “Indeed.” Mokad inclined his head. “But for all of your admirable heroics, you are no closer to becoming famous than you were back when you lived in a rented room on Fishwife Row. Yes, you and your friends assisted in killing the colossus, but not before it wrecked the city. The entirety of Sand’s Edge has been evacuated, a once-thriving hub of trade and culture wiped off the map. Be thankful that in the chaos that followed, your little rabble avoided becoming widely known as the catalyst for the event. My advice would be to avoid any public connection with that tragic loss, particularly if it comes out that you had a chance to stop the turtle from being summoned in the first place and didn’t take it. Abernathy’s promises to you must be ringing rather hollow, after all you’ve done for him.”

  Dranko felt a twinge somewhere deep inside his gut. Was there anything Mokad didn’t know about him? “There’s plenty of time yet,” he growled. “I imagine saving the world from people like you is going to make me a gods-damned hero.”

  “No. It won’t,” said Mokad. “Quite the opposite. If you continue on your current course with the Spire, when you die, not a single living person on the surface of Spira will remember who you are. That is an incontrovertible truth, Dranko. The Circle has seen it. You pride yourself on reading people, so look into my eyes. Tell me if I’m lying.”

  If Mokad truly was some kind of evil priest to a dark god of knowledge—or whatever in the hells the Black Circle was—the ability to spout convincing lies seemed like an obvious talent to have. Sure, the bastard looked sincere, but that didn’t mean squat.

  “Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t. But even if you know every single detail about my life, right down to how many times I crapped in the privy yesterday, it still doesn’t matter. You know stuff. I get it. But for all that you know, you don’t seem to understand. If you wanted to convince me that you’re the good guys, you should have done it before you embezzled a fortune from my church. You should have done it before I stood face to face with your blood gargoyle. You should have done it before your friend Aktallian hacked up my teammates. You should have done it before your giant turtle stomped all over Sand’s Edge. If I judge you by your actions and the company you keep, you end up smelling like a steaming turd. Mokad, we’re done.”

  Mokad shook his head. “Disappointing, but not unexpected. Your reputation for making poor decisions is well-earned. I told the others it was a long shot, but I promised I would try.”

  This would be when Mokad would make his move. Dranko tensed as he nodded toward the stairwell. “So, now we go our separate ways?”

  As Mokad uttered a quick string of odd syllables, Dranko leapt toward the window—but he was too slow. He’d hardly taken a step, when his arms became squeezed down to his sides and his legs seized up. An unseen force held him upright, like a giant’s hand crushing him in its grip.

  “Oh, no,” said Mokad. “Now I take the few things out of your mind we still don’t know and then kill you.”

  Mokad fixed him with an intense stare, and just as happened with Lapis out in the desert, a feather-light tickle played over Dranko’s mind.

  “I see that you’re still wearing the talisman you stole from Haske. You just can’t stop yourself from stealing, can you? Well, that will have
to come off.”

  Dranko began seriously to regret not telling anyone where he was going. Mokad walked forward until Dranko could smell the man’s breath on his face. Up close his scars looked like fat worms clinging to his cheeks. The Scarbearer twitched aside Dranko’s collar, revealing the little black circle on its slender chain. With a quick yank that left a burn on Dranko’s neck, Mokad snapped the chain and pocketed the talisman.

  “Now, let’s see what—”

  From the window came a blur of motion. Something struck Mokad in the temple; he staggered backward, and at the same moment the squeezing grip released Dranko. A horseshoe clanged to the wooden floor.

  Praska perched in the window frame, eyes wide, breath rapid. “You were right. He is dangerous. We’ll catch up later. Now get out of there!” She dropped out of sight.

  While Mokad reeled and clutched his head, Dranko dashed down the stairs and into the street, past the bewildered guard, and didn’t stop running until he had reached the Greenhouse front door. Once inside he slammed the door closed, put his back to it, then doubled over, entirely out of breath.

  “Dranko?” Ernie’s voice carried its usual solicitous concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Mokad,” Dranko managed to wheeze out. He raised his head; Grey Wolf and Kibi moved a table across the living room floor. Tor, Ernie, and Morningstar carried chairs in from the kitchen. Still gulping air, Dranko staggered through the foyer to the living room.

  “Who’s Mokad?” asked Tor.

  “Dranko’s tormentor from his church, remember?” said Aravia. “The one who worked for the Black Circle.” She was the only one not moving furniture, instead lounging on a couch, leafing through one of Abernathy’s spellbooks.

  Grey Wolf set down his side of the table and peered around Dranko at the front door. “Did he follow you back here?”

  Dranko also glanced at the door. “I doubt it, though I’m sure he knows we’re in here. Let me catch my breath.”

  Kibi hurried over with a chair, into which Dranko gratefully slumped.

  “He cannot get into the Greenhouse,” Aravia reminded no one in particular. “Not unless one of us invites him in.”

  “Which we won’t!” said Ernie.

  Morningstar brought Dranko a glass of water. As he gulped it down, he replayed those last few seconds in his mind, the terrifying pressure of Mokad’s sorcery and the rescue by Praska. Damn, but that had been a close thing.

  Over the next few minutes, Dranko told the others what had happened. When he had finished, Grey Wolf shook his head and made a show of looking disgusted. “You knew Praska was on the run from the Black Circle, and you went to meet with her without telling us where you were going, let alone taking someone along? Gods, Dranko, that was stupid even by your standards.”

  “I’m more concerned that the Black Circle knows so much about us,” said Morningstar. “What if they know that all the archmagi are meeting here today? Or that we’re going after the Crosser’s Maze?”

  Kibi finished dragging the table into place without Grey Wolf’s help. “Don’t see that it matters much. We ain’t gonna change our plans either way, I’ll bet. Not sayin’ we shouldn’t be careful, but we oughta be smart ’bout how we go ’bout our business, no matter what them cultists know.”

  Aravia set down her book. “Tell the archmagi when they arrive. They’ll certainly want to hear about it, and I’m sure they’ll have suggestions on how we ought to proceed.”

  Right. The meeting with Abernathy’s crew. It was still tough to wrap his head around that. Dranko wished he had had more time to tell Praska about it, about all the adventures and perils he had enjoyed or endured in the employ of good ol’ Abernathy. Where had she gone? Back to the church, he supposed, now that Mokad and his cadre of turncoats had fled. Hells, with the worst of the Scarbearers gone, and being a channeler of Delioch’s blessings, Dranko might find welcome there himself.

  Nah. He had burned down too many bridges, not to mention the outhouse. And he was about to get shipped off to foreign parts anyway, so none of it mattered.

  “Dranko, since Mokad didn’t kill you, why don’t you make yourself useful and move that footstool?” Grey Wolf glared at him. Hadn’t his mother taught him his face might stick that way?

  Only one more hour until the wizards would arrive.

  * * *

  The archmagi of Charagan came down one by one, navigating the Greenhouse stairs with varying degrees of wobbly deliberation. Gods, but they were old. Dranko had always assumed that Abernathy must be the crotchety old grandfather among his wizardly peers, but now he saw he had it backward. Their white-haired employer looked like the sprightly younger uncle in a family of octogenarians.

  Abernathy had explained ahead of time that none of the archmagi would be coming in through the front door. Of some unspecified but vital necessity, all five of them needed to stay within protected confines, defined, apparently, as either their own towers or the Greenhouse. The other four had teleported first to Abernathy’s tower, which had a unique and mysterious magical connection to the upstairs room housing the crystal ball.

  On his previous visits, Abernathy had been limned with blue light, an indication that he wasn’t actually present, but rather (to use Aravia’s fancy-arsed words) projecting a semi-tangible simulacrum to serve as a personal proxy. But none of the elderly wizards, including Abernathy, were outlined in any kind of corona. They all looked real. Eddings greeted each of them and escorted them to comfortable armchairs arranged in the living room.

  The most senior of these ancient luminaries, a spotted pumpkin-shaped woman with wispy, gray hair and a goiter bulging beneath her flabby chin, stumped into the living room, leaning heavily on a thick wooden cane. She peered suspiciously at the ceiling, as though she expected something unpleasant were going to drop on her head. Once Eddings had seated her, she shifted around in her chair as if sitting were something new to her and brusquely declined a slice of the buttered bread Ernie had baked especially for the occasion. Ernie looked mortified at the rejection.

  “What’s your name?” the old woman snapped at him.

  “Uh…Er…Ernest, ma’am. Ernest Roundhill. It’s an honor.”

  The woman broke into a smile crowded with crooked gray teeth. “An honor! Oh, yes, that’s good. Abernathy’s got you trained up right, little poppet. Ernest Roundhill, I am Ozella Westbrook, and my aged chompers are no match for crusty bread. Smells good, though. Now be a good boy and fetch me some porridge. Mind it has plenty of salt!”

  Ernie stammered an assent and scurried off to the kitchen.

  Ozella chuckled to herself, then turned her head with surprising quickness and stared at Kibi. The bearded stonecutter looked back at her.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  Kibi looked nonplussed. “Beg your pardon?”

  Ozella clicked her tongue. “You’re not right. Why is that?”

  “Couldn’t say,” said Kibi. “Ain’t sure exactly what you mean.”

  Waving her hand vaguely above her shoulder, the round old woman looked annoyed. “Never mind. Oh, and before I forget.” She reached into the folds of her brown garment, something like a cross between a rumpled dress and a huge blanket. “Here. You’ll be needing these.” Ozella produced a black cloth bag and tossed it onto a low table. A few small C-shaped metal bands spilled out, each carved with tiny, intricate runes. She looked at Kibi as she spoke. “These ear-cuffs were among the Spire’s most treasured possessions,” she said. “Clip one to your ear, and it will let you speak and understand just about any human language. Non-human languages we’re less sure about, but the cuffs should be better than nothing. I brought one for each of you, plus a few spares. You’ll need them once we send you away. Mind you don’t lose them; they were enchanted by Parthol Runecarver himself, and each one is certainly worth more than everything else you’ve ever owned. By a great deal, judging by the looks of you.”

  “Ozella, please, these are our hosts. Show some courtes
y.”

  These words were spoken by a tall, high-shouldered scarecrow of a man, tattered brown clothes draped over a stick-figure frame. His thick white hair jutted out at a variety of angles, giving the impression that he had just gotten out of bed.

  “Salk,” croaked the pumpkin woman. “When am I not courteous?”

  “Every day you grace this world, my dear Ozella,” said Salk.

  “You wound me.”

  As Dranko watched this exchange, fascinated, Ozella looked straight at him. “You, Tusky, fetch me an ottoman, or a chair, or anything else that will prop up my weary feet.”

  This woman might be an all-powerful wizard, but there were some indignities Dranko was unwilling to endure. “My name is Dranko,” he grunted. “Not ‘Tusky.’ And if I understand things properly, you’re about to ask me to do something incredibly dangerous, so showing a little respect wouldn’t hurt.”

  Ozella grinned at him. “Ask? Who’s going to ask? You’ll do as you’re told, young man, unless you fancy having your hair set on fire.”

  A bespectacled woman dressed all in orange, with deep wrinkles and hands like gnarled wood, cleared her throat as she took a slice of bread from Ernie’s plate. “You’ll have to forgive Ozella. One can forget one’s social graces when one has been living a mostly solitary life for so many decades.”

  “I forget nothing, Fylnia,” Ozella snapped. “Social graces are for people not concerned with preventing the end of the world.”

  Fylnia sniffed. “That’s your opinion. I would like to think there’s room for both gentility and professional competence in our lives.”

  The fifth of the archmagi, a twitchy, agitated little man with nervous eyes, spoke in a voice that one might expect from a talking rabbit. “Er, shouldn’t we, uh, be getting on with this? I don’t have the confidence in Caranch that the rest of you do. For all we know, Naradawk may be standing on our soil while we’re nattering away in here.”