Krunzle the Quick Read online

  “Baalariot gets straight to the point.”

  The inspection of the goods completed, the first prisoner in line was called up and bidding began. Krunzle was no expert in slave-market economics, but it seemed to him that the bidding was neither enthusiastic nor competitive: most of the items went for a few pieces of silver.

  Then it was his turn. He laboriously mounted the hustings and looked out over the diminishing throng. Purchasers were leading their new acquisitions away, and only two faces looked up at him. One, the merchant who had prodded him, gave his head a shake, turned and walked off. The other was the gaunt, blade-nosed man from the tavern and the caravanserai. He regarded Krunzle with a dispassionate aspect and said, “One copper.”

  There being no other bidders, the official in charge of the auction banged the butt of his staff of authority on the boards and said, “Sold.”

  Krunzle was hustled down the steps and into the care of the man in the figured robe, who scarcely cast a glance in his direction as he paid over the single coin and signed a document held out to him on a scribe’s copy board. Then he signaled to the bailiff that the manacles and fetters should be struck off.

  A few moments later, lighter by several pounds of iron, Krunzle regarded his purchaser from the corner of his eye as he assessed his own condition. Being unfed for a whole day had sapped some of his vigor, and the torture had taken even more out of him, but once out the gate and into the warren of streets and alleys around the Gyve, he thought, there might come an opportunity or two…

  His thoughts were interrupted by the tall man’s action. He placed a round metal object against Krunzle’s forehead and voiced an obscure word. The thief felt a coldness that penetrated through to the inner reaches of his skull, and for a moment his eyes bulged of their own accord. Then the medallion was withdrawn and the sensations ebbed.

  “Strike yourself smartly,” said the man who had bought him, “in the groin.”

  Krunzle was framing a derisory reply when a bolt of agony shot from his crotch to every other part of his torso, and the breath left his body. He found himself in an involuntary, knock-kneed crouch, a posture which gave him a good view of his own fist still wedged into the softness at the apex of his legs. The strangled sound he made was as much from surprise as pain.

  “Good,” said the man who had bought him. “Now come with me.”

  ∗∗∗

  “You have inadvertently done me a service,” said Krunzle’s purchaser when they were settled in the sumptuous room to which the thief had been led. They had reached it by traversing half the city, climbing to the elevated district where large public buildings and major temples predominated. Then they had ducked down an alley—by then Krunzle was walking almost normally—and through an unobtrusive gate in a blank wall, across a small courtyard and through a heavy ironbound door that opened when the robed man said a quiet word.

  “I am Baalariot,” he said, seating himself on a backless chair made of polished wood and curved aurochs horns. “My profession should be obvious to a discerning thief. You are now in my service.”

  From the man’s portentous tone, Krunzle deduced that he was expected to express a respectful gratitude. Somehow the sentiment eluded him, but he judged that the circumstances—especially the residual ache between his legs—called for a measure of dissembling. “I look forward to—” he began, and was interrupted.

  “Spare me the soft-soaping,” Baalariot said. “I would rather trust to my skills than to your feigned goodwill.”

  Krunzle was not pleased at having been bought for small change and introduced to a novel form of self-abuse, but he smiled and agreed that his owner was a gentleman of rare insight.

  Baalariot raised an eyebrow. “You are a canny one,” he said. “I believe you will not only succeed in your mission, you may even survive.”

  The implied possibility that he might not survive whatever the wizard contemplated immediately focused the thief’s attention. “What mission?” he said.

  The other man preened the lay of his robe and said, off-handedly, “One that requires an able member of the thieving profession.”

  “Ah,” said Krunzle, “I see where the error lies. I am but a traveling pearlmonger from—”

  “Shh,” said Baalariot, and Krunzle found that his lips and tongue would no longer obey his brain. “I’ve seen your transcript from the Gyve,” he said. “More to the point, I know how you inveigled your way into the caravan’s guards troop. You even fixed it so poor Idrix had to talk you into taking the job.”

  Speechless, Krunzle replied with a confessional lift and settle of eyebrows and shoulders.

  “You showed intelligence and resource,” said the man in the chair, “and, as I say, you’ve done me a service. I was on my way to Kerse to purchase someone like you from the Kalistocracy’s prisons—they catch some of the cunningest specimens there, you know—but now you’ve saved me many days travel, there and back. Plus, you were a bargain.”

  Krunzle’s face and hands now expressed a desire to communicate. “You may speak,” said his owner, “so long as you do not waste my time. And,”—he glanced around at the walls of the chamber—”so long as you do not use… blunt language.”

  The slave found that his vocal apparatus was his own again. He thought he understood the admonition against blunt speech, and said, “You have bought me to ‘acquire’ something for you?”

  “Technically, to ‘acquire’ something back from the one who ‘acquired’ it from me.”

  “And my reward?”

  Baalariot moved a finger in a circular gesture. Krunzle felt a sudden intrusion, like a whirlwind of red-hot sand, in an intimate orifice. After a moment, it ceased, and so did his hopping about. “I see,” he said.

  “Good,” said the wizard. “Best not to labor under any misapprehensions.”

  Krunzle gave over fanning the seat of his breeches. “So what is this object?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know,” said the wizard. “But I cannot say.” He gestured toward the walls of the chamber. “Some of the spiders and cockroaches are in thrall to the… opposition. If I speak the name of the… object, it will be reported.”

  Krunzle wrinkled his brow. “And I’ll wager you can’t tell me who the opposition is, either.”

  “I said you were canny. The small eavesdroppers do not understand much,” he tilted his head toward one wall, “but they are empowered to notice certain key words and report their utterance to the one who commands them. Then that person listens in. Sometimes, also, the listener tunes in at random intervals.”

  “Why don’t you just kill the vermin?”

  “Because they would be replaced by something else, and that something might be more difficult to circumvent.”

  “So how do I–”

  “I will instruct you in your duties,” Baalariot said, loudly, with a meaningful flick of his eyes toward the walls. “The floors must be swept morning and evening, the censers and braziers continually refilled…” He went on listing domestic requirements, but meanwhile, his hand slipped inside his robe and emerged with a small scroll, tightly rolled and tied with a horsehair. This he proffered to Krunzle, who took it and secreted it within his own upper garment.

  “Your quarters are in the lower basement,” the spellcaster finished. “You will remain there when not on duty. You will take your meals—two a day—in the servants’ refectory, and—”

  The wizard broke off, and Krunzle presumed that whatever force informed him of the surveillance had also signaled its end. He pointed at Krunzle and made a few incomprehensible sounds, then said, “There. I have placed you under the influence of Cardimion’s Discriminating Geas. You will go to your quarters and study the scroll. When a chime sounds, you will set off on the mission detailed there.”

  “But,” said the thief, “I don’t know what I’m—” There was no point finishing the complaint because he found that he was suddenly possessed by
an overwhelming desire to find the lower basement and read the scroll. He exited the room and found a corridor. For a moment he did not know which way to go, but then a small globe of light appeared in the air some distance away. When he turned toward it, it moved off at a walking pace. He followed it.

  Chapter Three: The Apprentice’s Eye

  He descended several flights of steps, took a number of turns along torch-lit corridors, and came at last to the threshold of a windowless cell deep below ground. The glowing orb entered and Krunzle did likewise. Once within, the light blinked out, and he had a momentary glimpse of a small, winged man fluttering out through the open doorway and disappearing along the corridor.

  Krunzle made to put his head through the opening to see the creature more clearly, but the air that filled the exit now demonstrated the ability to become a clear, springy substance that flung him back into the room. By the light from the corridor, he looked around and found an ill-smelling pallet, a rough stool, and a terra cotta oil lamp with a wick of greasy wool. He was able to just reach this last item around the edge of the door to meet the torch ensconced in the passageway and, with the lamp’s feeble light, sat down on the stool and took out the scroll.

  It was written in a script that he could read, and he quickly took in what it had to tell him. He was to wait until the pixie returned to lead him out of his cell. Then he must go to a house in the lower town—a map to find the place, an image of its exterior, and a second, multi-leveled map of its interior were provided. He was to find his best way in, locate something called an “apprentice’s eye”; the note said that the geas he was under would ensure that he recognized the object when he saw it.

  You may use whatever means and procedures you deem appropriate, said the note, but if you offer violence against any persons within the house, the hand you raise will instead strike you where you have already felt a blow.

  Once he had achieved the goal of the mission he was to bring the apprentice’s eye back to Baalariot. The note said that while exiting the target area he was encouraged to make as much noise and commotion as possible.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked the walls of his cell. He received no answer.

  Krunzle turned over the single sheet of parchment, but there was nothing on the other side. He reread the note again and, when he realized that the letters were steadily fading away, applied himself to memorizing the map before it disappeared.

  A few moments later, he was left with two things: a blank piece of scraped sheepskin and a question. The question was: what was an apprentice’s eye?

  Then came a third: an overwhelming urge to sleep.

  ∗∗∗

  He awoke to find that his various pains had faded. He was also hungry, and was glad to find that while he slept someone had brought him a platter of bread and cheese, as well as a stoneware jug that proved to contain an almost drinkable wine. He refreshed himself, then sat on the stool and contemplated his predicament. He failed to see any immediate advantage to being the slave of a spied-upon wizard. Nor did he envision that his situation would much improve: as he understood these things, spellslingers tended to rely on conjured assistants, like the pixie, for their domestic needs. They generally kept no slaves—which meant that upon successful completion of his mission, he would become surplus to Baalariot’s requirements. The wizard would cast around for some useful purpose that a superfluous thief-slave could serve. Several images came to Krunzle’s mind, none of them encouraging.

  His early education at a rather prestigious rogue’s academy had taught him the cardinal rule of the thief’s life: always have a plan. He quickly devised a scheme that had two parts. Part one: break the enchantment that bound him to Baalariot’s will. Part two: depart Elidir at maximum speed.

  He was sure he could execute part two with energy and dispatch. Part one, however, remained a problem. His mind failed to gain traction, and soon he lacked the leisure to pursue the matter, because now the winged manlet returned, hovering in the corridor at the center of his globe of light.

  Krunzle stood and the light moved away. He was able to exit the cell as if the air in the doorway was nothing but air. He strode after the guide, and noticed that he was not retracing the route that had brought him down from Baalariot’s chamber. Instead, he and the winged fairy-man proceeded deeper into the warren of dark rooms and barely lit corridors beneath the wizard’s manse, until he came to a narrow space which contained a spiral iron staircase leading up and a rough table on which were spread several items Krunzle recognized.

  They had all be taken from his person after he had been delivered to the Gyve, and they constituted the tools of his trade: picks and slips; grapples and cords; a double-bent tube with mirrors inside that bent light and allowed him to peek around corners, under doors, and through windows without being seen; and a handful of other objects.

  Krunzle was glad to recover them. Not only were they useful, but as part of his first tasks as a journeyman, he had personally made each one of them. Thieves could not usually afford much sentimentality, but an exception was made for the toolkit. He disposed of them in the various concealed pockets and loops that abounded in his garments, and felt slightly better about the course of events.

  He was given little time for satisfaction, however. No sooner had he stowed the last implement, than the pixie flew up the staircase, illuminating the darkness above. Krunzle experienced a strong desire to follow and began to climb. He noted, with faint gratitude, that his groin no longer pained him with every lift of a foot.

  No sooner had he risen out of the small room—it turned out to have been the bottom of a shaft—than the globe of light disappeared. In complete blackness, Krunzle felt the flying creature flutter past him as it went back to wherever it perched when not on duty. He was unable to do likewise and continued to ascend until he arrived at a confined space that offered not the slightest glimmer of light. He felt in front of him and found a wooden surface which, when he explored further and discovered a simple latch, turned out to be a door.

  But thieves’ caution prevented him from opening the portal until his searching fingers discovered what he expected to find: another moving part at eye level that, when he slid it aside, uncovered a peephole. He peered out and saw a darkened Elidiran alley, lit only by a few gleams leaking through the closed shutters of houses that turned blank walls to the narrow passage.

  He opened the door and stepped out, then looked up at the evening stars to orient himself. The map appeared on the screen in his mind—no magic there, but the mental discipline learned in the academy and practiced ever since—and he set off for the lower town. His route avoided the city’s major thoroughfares and plazas, leading him instead along narrow, twisting alleys and down flights of stone steps that reeked of urine and rotting vegetables. Clearly, he thought, whoever occupied the house to which he was headed did not enjoy the elevated social status of the wizard who was sending him.

  The building, when he came to it, was not imposing. Mud brick rather than stone, it stood two stories high, with a flat roof; he knew from the map, though, that its foundations had been dug down three levels, creating sub-basements and even a bottomless pit. Baalariot hadn’t said anything, but Krunzle knew enough about magic-wielders to have reasoned out that anyone who could steal from a wizard was likely to be another practitioner of the arcane arts. Wizardry and subterranean chambers seemed to be an infallible combination. Maybe it was a matter of containing unruly powers; or maybe it was just that depth muffled the screams.

  His urge to get to the target eased when he came to the mouth of an unlit passageway that met the sloping street on which the house stood. His vantage point was several doors down from the entrance, which featured a sturdy-looking front door between tapered pillars, all carved with some complex design he was too far away to see clearly, flanked by two torches that burned with a green flame. There was something about the arrangement of the portal that argued less for decor than for defense.

  He would not be
going through that door. Some thieves preferred the direct and obvious approach—get in, grab it, and get out while they’re still blinking—but Krunzle was an old-fashioned practitioner of the full art.

  He wondered how much leeway Cardimion’s Discriminatory Geas would grant him. Experimentation revealed that he could move a certain distance from the target structure, but only enough to circumnavigate it. If he tried to go farther, he experienced shaking limbs, nausea, and a sense of impending dread. When he struggled to overcome the resistance, his fist swung up and struck him sharply in an eye whose surrounding flesh was still tender from the wart-nosed torturer’s attentions.

  Trial and error over, the thief turned his attention to the house that contained the apprentice’s eye. The memorized map had highlighted an area in a lower, though not lowest, level of the building. There was probably a concealed entrance much like the one through which he had made his exit from Baalariot’s manse, but it would be a waste of time to look for it. He worked his way around the building and its neighbors again, seeking the opportunity that would make the task easier.

  The house had not been constructed as a detached structure; its sides abutted directly against the neighboring buildings; its front was two stories of sheer, unbroken mud brick; its rear was separated from the alley behind by a walled courtyard, also lit by green flames.

  The courtyard presented easier access but too much light, the thief decided; besides, the rear wall was as unwindowed as the front.

  He examined the buildings to either side: one was of stone, tall and solid as a bank, but a half-hidden glyph near the door identified it in the language of thieves and street people as a temple of the demon Nocticula, which meant that its main use was as a brothel, and not a particularly safe one. The other building was a rickety, three-story tenement, with a wooden staircase running up the rear wall to give the residents false hope that they’d be able to escape in the event of a fire.