The Hammer and the Blade

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jyme, prone in the sand to Nix's left, groaned and rolled over to face the sky.

"Gods, what happened? Why do I…? How do I know what I know? Is it real?"

Nix did not bother to explain. He looked over to the eunuch, at the bloody crater in the skull from which the truth had erupted.

"Gods," he said, balling his hands into fists. "Gods."

He stood, pacing the sand on his wounded leg, agitated, periodically returning to the eunuch's corpse and unleashing a frustrated kick into his bulk.

"You're bleeding," Jyme said, pointing at Nix's side.

Nix's shirt was stained where the eunuch's blade had penetrated his leather jack. He waved off the wound with a grunt.

"We have to follow them," he said to Egil. "We have to."

Egil's expression fell. "How? They're gone."

"Follow who?" Jyme asked. "Rakon? Are you both mad?"

Nix whirled on Jyme, the hiresword a convenient target for his displaced ire. "Did you see what we saw when Egil split this… thing's head? Did you?"

Jyme colored, looked away. Nix did not relent.

"So you know what awaits them? You'd just let them go? What kind of man are you, Jyme?"

Jyme looked up, shame coloring his cheeks, but his chin stuck out defiantly. "The kind that wants to stay alive. I see things different now, sure. I wish I'd never pawed at that lass back at the Tunnel and that's sure. But bad things happen everywhere, all the time. I'm worried about my own skin, you know?"

Nix didn't know.

Be that kind of man.

"They're too far gone anyway," Jyme continued. "You saw how fast that… thing flew. You'd never catch them, not unless you could fly. You got something in that bag of yours?"

Jyme meant his words as a joke, but the words triggered an idea for Nix, a hope, a desperate ploy. He turned to the shoreline. He could not see the surf but he could see the wheeling sea birds. He reached into his bag, touched a wand he'd pocketed in the tomb of Abn Thuset.

"What are you thinking?" Egil asked, reading Nix's expression.

"I'm thinking we can fly."

"What are you talking about?" Jyme said.

"I'm talking about flying," Nix repeated, warming to his idea. He held up the teak and gold wand. "With this. All I need is a living bird. The magic in the wand…"

Egil cut him off, eyeing the wand with distrust. "I thought Abn Thuset used it to change her sex?"

Jyme looked on, hopelessly confused. "What about sex, now?"

Nix ignored him and spoke to Egil. "Yes, but that's a particular use of the wand's general power. It's transmutational magic, Egil."

"Which you learned in your year at the Conclave, before…" Egil held up his hand to forestall Nix's inevitable correction. "… you ceased attending."

"Yes. It'll work, Egil."

The priest looked skeptical, but Nix saw hope in his eyes. He ran his palm over Ebenor's eye. "You're certain?"

Nix pulled the end of his nose. "Fairly certain."

Egil stared at him while the tattooed eye of Ebenor stared hopelessly at the sky. "Fairly certain? That's it?"

Nix looked over at the eunuch, back at Egil. "That's it."

Jyme shook his head and paced a tight circle. "After all we've been through, now you're talking about changing into birds? You are mad. Don't you remember the last wand you used?"

"I remember," Egil said darkly.

"That was a mistake," Nix said. "I missed something. This won't be."

"I can tell you I'm not doing this," Jyme said. "If you two do this, you do it alone. Think me a coward if you want."

Nix never took his eyes from Egil's blood-spattered face. He forced a grin.

"Come on, Egil. Fun's in finding out, right? This is a moment, right?"

Egil sighed, shook his head, obviously torn. He stared at the wand as if daring it to do something other than what Nix claimed.

"Look," Nix said. "We both know what's going to happen to Rusilla and Merelda. Isn't it you who talks about alms and grace?"

"That's not why I hesitate," Egil said.

"Then what is it?"

Egil shook his head. "Never mind. We do it."

Jyme stomped his foot in the sand. "That's just a stick you found in a tomb! Gods, you're fools! What if it… does something awful?"

"When it comes to Nix and his gewgaws, I find it best to anticipate something awful," Egil said. "Then, if it doesn't, I'm pleasantly surprised."

Nix gave him a half-hearted obscene gesture.

"Come on," Jyme said. He looked at the eunuch, at Baras's body, back at Egil and Nix. "Get your heads on right. We find the nearest city, spend whatever gold you took out of that tomb on drinks and women, and forget any of this happened."

"There's no forgetting," Egil said somberly.

"Truth," Nix agreed. The story of House Norristru had been graven into his brain, etched there by horror.

"No, I guess there's not," Jyme said. "Even so, I don't understand you two."

"You're not the first to say that," Nix said. He waved the wand at Jyme. "Last chance, slubber."

For a moment, Nix thought Jyme might reconsider. He stared at the wand a long moment, then said, "I can't."

"Well enough," Nix said. "No shame in it, Jyme. We are who we are."

"How will you get back to Dur Follin alone?" Egil asked him.

Jyme shook his head. He looked around as if he were lost and seeking direction.

"I'm not sure I'll go back. But if I decide to, I'll manage. Find a ship or something. But I ain't riding the magic of some ancient wizard-king."

"Ah, you're no fun," Nix said.

"And it's a wizard-queen, as it turns out," Egil said.

"You two make my head swim," Jyme said.

"Not so difficult a task," Nix said. "Now, we need to get moving."

Jyme seemed to have something to say, so Nix gave him a moment. Finally, the hiresword spit it out.

"Listen, I plan to collect payback on that coin you lifted from me, yeah? If I get back to Dur Follin and the two of you ain't there, well, I'll have to come looking for you."

Nix was almost touched. "I think he loves you, Egil."

"You, maybe," Egil answered.

"Whoresons," Jyme muttered.

Nix smiled sincerely and shook Jyme's hand. "We'll see each other again, Jyme. I haven't lived like a hero, so I have no intention of dying like one. And when we meet again, I'll pay you that coin with interest. Drinks on me, yeah?"

"You have no notion of how rare an offer that is," Egil said. "Both on the interest and the drinks." The priest shook Jyme's hand, too. "Apologies again for the jaw and the insults. You're all right, Jyme."

"Done is done," Jyme said, and waved off the apology. "I hope I see both you slubbers soon."

And with that, they parted. While Jyme scavenged supplies and tethered the horses together, Nix and Egil recovered their weapons and hurried toward the shoreline. As they ran, Nix took out his sling, and let it hang loose at his side.

"There's some sense in Jyme's words," Egil said. "I have an ill feeling about this."

"Me, too," Nix admitted. "But you saw what I saw. No one should have to endure that. I couldn't live with myself if I just let it happen."

"Agreed," Egil said. "I wonder though…"

Nix waited, eyebrows raised. Egil continued:

"I'm beginning to wonder how much of what we've been doing since the beginning has been our own thinking, and how much hers."

"Rusilla?"

Egil nodded. "She's been planning from the outset. All of this could be her plan."

"If so, she gets drinks on me and that's sure. And she's no one I'd ever play in chess and expect to win."

"I'm serious."

"I know, but not now, yeah?"

Egil didn't let it go. "She said, 'Be that kind of man,' and here we are, doing just so."

Nix considered that. "But Jyme's not. He heard and saw the same things."

Egil grunted. "A fair point."

"We are those kind of men, Egil. But, uh, let's just not tell anybody."

"Aye."

They crested the rise. The surf lapped the shore, the sunset splashing the sea in color. Rocks stuck out of the shallow water here and there. Sea birds stood on one leg on the rocks, raced the incoming surf along the shore, and picked at mollusks in the pools.

Nix took a lead bullet from a pouch on his belt and, with it, loaded the sling. He swung the leather strap loosely as he picked his target.

"Could've used a crossbow and fowling quarrel from the supplies," Egil said.

"Could've," Nix acknowledged, and picked his target. "But I've been shooting rocks at birds since I was a boy."

He wheeled the sling over his head and the humming sound it made caused the nearby birds to take wing. He picked one, thought of his days scrounging the Heap, and let fly. Feathers flew and a black-winged gull spiraled to the shore. It hit the shallow water, fluttered. The surf washed it toward the beach.

Egil and Nix sprinted toward it, the priest easily outrunning Nix. Egil waded into the ankle-deep water and took the still-struggling bird in his huge hands.

"Still alive!" he called, and waded out of the surf.

The priest cupped the bird in his hands and the creature went still. Nix met Egil at the shore, the teak wand in hand.

"So, what? You touch the wand to the bird and…?"

"And it shapes the magic of the transmutation. Then I use it to change us."

Egil stared down at the bird. "I don't understand how magic works."

"In truth, neither do I," Nix admitted, and pronounced a word in the Mages' Tongue before Egil could object. He felt the wand warm in his hand and touched it to the bird. The gold cap on the end of the wand shimmered, the magic powered and shaped. He and Egil shared a glance, the priest released the bird and held out his hand, palm up. Nix touched the wand to him, then did the same to himself.

"Feels odd," Egil said, his speech slurred and indistinct.

Nix watched with horror and wonder as the priest's facial features ran like melted wax, his body, clothing, and weapons dripping in lazy runnels until the core of him collapsed in a viscous heap at Nix's feet.

"Egil," Nix tried to say, but the word came out garbled. His body tingled, then burned. He held his hand before his face and looked with horror on the streams of flesh falling from his fingers. His vision went blurry as his body began to collapse, pooling in a mass on the shore. The burning continued somehow, and even in shapelessness he seemed destined to retain thought and feeling. He perceived a flash, or a popping, and tried to scream but all that emerged was a caw.

A caw.

He stood a few hand spans in height. The water temperature registered only distantly through the skin of his thin legs. His feet, however, felt almost every grain of sand and pebble under them. He twisted his head nearly all the way around to view his body — sleek, feathered, winged. He let out an exultant squawk.

He looked at Egil, who had also transformed into a gull. Together, the two squawked, called, and cawed at one another for a few moments of collective, uncommunicative idiocy before leaving off.

Trying to familiarize himself with the new form, Nix extended his wings and walked a few steps along the beach. When he felt comfortable, he beat his wings and jumped into the air. The bird form seemed to know what to do, or perhaps the transmutational magic conveyed some facility to use the new form, but Nix cried with delight as the ground fell away beneath him. He swooped and dove, reveling in the feel of the air under his wings, the wind in his face.

Looking to his right, he saw Egil — or the bird he assumed to be Egil — doing exactly the same. Nix flew to Egil's side, called sharply, and wheeled westward.

Take me back to the prison, Rakon had commanded the sylph. Back to the prison.

Nix knew where they were going, where they had to be going. He should've seen it the first time. Rakon had been looking for looking for Abrak-Thyss's prison in the sea of glass. He needed the Horn of Alyyk to open it and free the devil.

And then the devil would violate Rusilla and Merelda.

They soared upward on a warm column of air, and the rolling, tan ocean of Afirion's sands stretched out below. Behind them, many leagues in the distance, his sharp eyes saw a shoreside town, two dozen wood and stacked stone buildings, a few small boats. Jyme would make his way there. Nix hoped he saw the hiresword again someday.

Ahead, the brown outcroppings of the Demon Wastes extended into the desert sands like stone fingers. The outcroppings gave way to the tumble of hills that marked the true border of the Wastes. They flew high over hills, the wind in their faces and under their wings, joyous in flight despite the somber nature of their task.

As soon as they crossed over the hills, the acridity in the air over the Wastes put a scratch in the back of Nix's throat. Waves of heat rose from the surface, as if the world were feverish. The thermals made it easy to soar at speed. He glanced down and the jumbled, ruined terrain reminded him of the skin of a pox patient soon to die — dry, discolored, lined with jagged cracks and bulbous pustules. He tried not to think too much about it.

Using the setting sun as his guide, they flew west until Nix saw below them the enspelled road they'd followed. It stretched through the scarred terrain in a clean, straight line. Height provided perspective and in the distance Nix saw the other roads that joined it, the angles at which they met, the arcs the outer lines described. At first he did not believe what he saw. But it made sense. Four roads had come together at the cardinal points at the sea of glass.

He angled higher to get a better view, scanned the terrain with his sharp eyes, and it only confirmed his initial thought. He cursed in amazement but it came out only as a squawk.

The roads formed a shape, a shape he knew. He could not see the entirety of it, of course, but he could see leagues of it, and it was enough. The implication was clear. The roads were not roads at all. They were the lines of a binding cross, a circle divided into quadrants by perpendicular lines, a tool used to summon, contain, and constrain horrors.

He squawked and cawed at Egil but the priest just made a confused squawk in response. Egil couldn't see it. Nix could see it, but he could hardly believe it.

Almost the entirety of the Demon Wastes was circumscribed by a magic circle, an arcane symbol carved into the face of the world, a circle that delimited an area leagues in diameter.

He tried to imagine the time and power it would have taken to scribe such a symbol, but could not wrap his thoughts around it. He struggled in vain to come up with a compelling reason to scribe it in the first place.

His mind worried at the problem. Was it connected to Rakon's plan somehow? Could the circle be designed to contain the Vwynn? Or perhaps to hold some other horrors that slept under the broken land?

Had the civilization that once ruled the lands have inadvertently awakened something under the earth, scribing the circle as a way to hold it, perhaps while they fled the region? Or had the civilization been trying to draw something toward Ellerth? Perhaps to use as a weapon?

He looked skyward, in his mind's eye seeing magical energy reaching up from the circle and into the vault of night, into neighboring planes and dimensions, drawing and pulling creatures and magical esoterica from all over the vault of night. He imagined flaming objects shrieking toward Ellerth, drawn by the power of the symbol carved into the face of the world. He imagined balls of stone and metal and flesh and scales slamming into the surface, leaving the once-fertile plain a ruined waste inhabited by degenerate devils. He imagined slits in reality forming in the air, saw spirits and demons and devils slipping through, summoned by the symbol.

He thought the idea fanciful, but then… he'd seen much. Anything was possible.

He pushed it from his mind and gave it no more thought. He didn't need to know the purposes of the people who'd once ruled here. He knew Rakon's purpose, and that was purpose enough.

They flew on in dour silence, chasing the sun, chasing the sisters, heading to the center of the binding cross, to the glass sea, where sat the prison of Abrak-Thyss.

Nix stayed as high as he was able, hoping thereby to avoid the swarms of fiendish, bat-like creatures that patrolled the night skies of the Wastes.

They eyed the air ahead, looking for the sylph and its cargo, their speed westward stretching the day's length. Frustratingly, they saw nothing. After a couple hours in the air, Nix felt his body tingle. He knew what it meant. He tried to curse, but the beak allowed only an angry squawk. He angled downward for the earth. The tingling increased and his body started to shift back, the magic unable to maintain such a foreign form for long. Egil followed him down and they alit on the rockscape of the Wastes as their bodies painfully reverted back to their normal form.

"Shite!" Nix shouted.

Egil held out his arms, checking his form, his gear. "What? Change us back. You still have the wand."

"I need to touch the thing into which I change us, Egil. You see any gulls about?"

"Shite," Egil said. He started to say something else but Nix held up his hand.

"Don't! Don't!"

"Damned gewgaws," Egil said with a grin.

"Fak you."

"I jest because this problem is easily solved," Egil said. "We find a flock of those winged things we encountered before. Touch one of those. Change, and continue the pursuit."

"You call that easy? A flock of those nearly killed us all."

"Aye," Egil said. "You have a better idea?"

"No. Let's go find some. Wait…"

"Wait what?"

Nix checked his body, saw that the cut in his stomach was healed, most of his burns. "My wounds seem healed. Reconstituting after the transmutation must help the body heal."

"I take back what I said about your gewgaws," Egil said.

With that, they readied weapons and stalked off. The sun stared at them, red and orange, just hanging on over the horizon. The both knew that nightfall would bring the Thin Veil, and the Thin Veil promised horror.

"The roads here aren't roads," Nix said to Egil, making conversation to distract himself. "They're the lines of a binding cross. I could see it from the air."

Egil stared at him. "So what does that mean?"

Nix made a helpless gesture. "I don't know."

"Bah. Then stop worrying about it. It's ancient. Whatever happened here happened long ago. Ponder it when we next sit at the Altar of Gadd in the Slick Tunnel, yeah?"

Nix nodded slowly, letting go of the problem. He appreciated his friend's pragmatism.

"Aye. Let's find a hole and get airborne."