Light of a Distant Star Read online

  “Don’t worry!” Shess beamed, patting Idrek on the head with the flat of her sword. He f linched, crouching half upright in the crawl space, clad pathetically in clothes that were little more than rags. “Bet you’re confused, though,” she said, and proceeded to tell Idrek an abbreviated version of the fall of the Char Street Clippers. In this new version, however, it seemed that Aeventius described by Shess as “Aroden’s Tall, Dark, and Chosen One”-had destroyed the gang single-handedly. Shess’s own involvement was left out.

  “So,” she finished, “you need to tell us where we can find some answers about gleam. And just maybe we’re the only ones that can keep it on the street now that Garso is gone. Besides, you know what they say about gnomes, Idrek.”

  Idrek looked blankly at Shess, his eyes straying to the packet in her hand.

  “They say that we’re only as tall as we need to be but that’s really only half true. So where’s the place that Garso never talked about? I know every den, front, and f lophouse the Clippers ever ran gleam out of, but there’s something else that was a big secret. I know you know what it is.”

  Idrek’s eyes darted around the room as if he sought a way out of a trap. But always they returned to the gleam. Shess started humming a popular pirate shanty, swaying and dipping the envelope in her hand to match the rhythm of her song.

  “Garso is gone, Idrek,” I said as gently as I could, “and the Clippers with him. Why keep their secrets?”

  He swallowed once, hard, and nodded his head. “The Forty Fathoms.”

  Idrek reached an arm out for the envelope and Shess smacked it away.

  “A cheap alehouse in Rotgut? It’s not even Clippers’ territory.”

  “Shows what you know!” Idrek, angry now, straightened up out of his hiding spot and shook a knobby finger at Shess. “That’s where they take them. Would have taken me ifi didn’t have the right friends on the street. That’s where Gleamers go to die blind and screaming, the light of the universe burning out their eyes!”

  He advanced on Shess, fingers hooked into claws, madness in his bright eyes. I could see his withered chest clearly, the rags barely covering it. Carved there in the pale skin, weeping blood where the scabs had cracked open, was the ubiquitous ten-pointed star.

  Mordimor snarled. Shess raised her sword and took a quick hop backward, f linging the packet of gleam at Idrek as she did so.

  He stopped, all menace in him gone. Slumping to the f loor, he clutched the envelope in bony hands and sobbed. Idrek’s head hung low, his hair drooping down like the filthy seaweed that roped the pylons of the dockyards. The tips of his ears, so like mine, could clearly be seen protruding from the black snarl.

  “Thank you, Idrek,” I said softly, placing a restraining hand on Shess’s shoulder. “I wish we had more for you. I suspect you’re heading for a tough time, so try to make that last.”

  As we walked out of the bunkhouse, Idrek’s hollow laughter spilled out after us, running up my spine like an arctic wind. I looked back and saw the twin lamps of his eyes glowing in the dark. He nodded at me as if in formal farewell-or was it recognition?-and I wondered what it was he saw in my own eyes.

  Shess knew every shortcut and alleyway in Riddleport’s seedy shoreside, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves on the verges of the Rotgut district, mere blocks from Gundsric’s home. Could the location be simple

  coincidence? If the alchemist were somehow connected to the gleam trade, it would explain why he might desire to live in such a squalid section of town. I thought then of my last encounter with him: Had I really stumbled upon some hidden, ugly truth, or just panicked over my own transgressions? And even if the dwarf was connected to gleam, even if he had been giving it to me for whatever twisted purpose, was digging through every Clipper hideout and drug den in the city really going to get me any closer to the journal of Jan Lortis? Shouldn’t I have just kept to my appointments in his home, waiting for another chance to search for it undetected?

  No, I decided. This was the story I had chosen for myself, and its irresistible pull was all the evidence I needed to know I was on the right track.

  The Forty Fathoms alehouse leaned drunkenly at the end of a row of rundown, three-story buildings, all faintly out of square. This was fairly typical of construction in the poorer sections of town. It was said that, on a windy day, parts of Riddleport creaked as much as any pirate brig under full sail. As we drew closer, we could see light flickering through the thick, cheap glass of the windows. We slowed, moving against the walls of the neighboring buildings, not wanting to be seen by anyone inside the Forty Fathoms.

  But the place was empty.

  We waited, peering through the windows, staying low. Passersby seemed unfazed by this-perhaps such clandestine behavior was a common sight in Rotgut. The common room of the Forty Fathoms was a jumble of rude benches and tables presided over by a single flickering lantern, but details were difficult to discern through the distortion of the glass.

  “Someone had to light that lantern,” I said to Shess, and she nodded. After a time we grew tired of waiting for some hint of movement within, and decided to go inside.

  The door was unlocked, but I didn’t stop to wonder why an unlocked alehouse should be empty at this time of day. It opened outward, and I stepped inside ahead of Mordimor and Shess, my eyes scanning the far sides of the room. It was dark and still, the single lantern just enough to reveal the tomb-thick coating of dust that clung to the furniture and battered bar top.

  But the dust on the floor told a different story, one of multiple footprints and a maelstrom of drag marks. I started forward, intent on the tale written in dust and grime there on the planks, curious about the bare section of floor immediately in front of me.

  I heard Shess’s warning shout just as I took the step that triggered the device. With a click like the snap of bone, the floor gave way beneath me, pivoting upward on the far side of a fulcrum as it dropped under my feet. I flailed futilely for the lip of the hole and fell into darkness.

  Chapter 5

  An Overdue Appointment

  You,” was all he said, stomping toward me with bloody hands.

  The wererats had seized me before I even knew what had happened. One to either side, they dragged me from the foul-smelling straw that had broken my fall. My left hand and wrist throbbed painfully where I had landed on my hand, having extended my arms in a foolish attempt to arrest my descent. Fortunately, the trapdoor was only some ten feet above the moldering straw pile. Whoever had set the trap obviously wanted those who fell into it alive and in good condition.

  Looking into the Gundsric’s wild eyes, I had to wonder how long that would last.

  He lumbered over to me, the heavy pewter flask he wore around his neck swaying like a pendulum, his hunchback giving him a strangely lopsided appearance. The basement was lit by a few sputtering candles, but even in such low light I could see nearly the entirety of the room with uncommon clarity, no doubt the continued effects of the gleam in my system. Beyond the small alcove into which I had fallen-which could be locked up like a prison cell with the closing of a barred gate at one end-the basement was long and rectangular, its dirty plaster walls flaking away in patches to reveal ill-fitting stone blocks. The scribblings of gleam addicts filled every section of plaster that had not yet crumbled to the ground, stretching from floor to ceiling like a detailed

  map of an insane mind.

  But it was the bodies that were the core of the place dozens of men and women, nearly all of them human, stacked in piles or lying in the few cots scattered around the room. The thick smell of blood and rot in the air seemed only magnified by the underlying mustiness of the basement, andI choked back the rising bile in my throat. The dingy cots gave the impression of long use, like those in the common room of some cheap flophouse. But there were far more bodies than beds, and many of the oldest corpses were stacked against the wall opposite the alcove, heaped up like swollen sandbags bracing a levee.

  I scream
ed then, shouting for Shess or Mordimor or some other deliverance. The rats to either side of me hauled me farther into that gallery of death, and I could see that there were more hunched shape-shifters in the basement all around me.

  Riding on instinct, not caring at all about the futility of my struggle, I drove my heel into the bare foot of the one on my right, then tried to pull him off balance. He staggered, but his center of balance was lower than mine, and his tail kept him from tipping.Snarling, he slammed a blow into my stomach, and I dropped to my knees. He clamped a hand over my throat and jerked my head close, chittered threats or promises in my ear. His garbage-foul breath washed over me, and I retched.

  The rat to my left was running his paws over my body, taking his time. Upon finding the long knife under my jacket, he snatched the weapon from its sheath and threw it into the corner. There was another such blade in my boot that he didn’t find, and I hoped I’d have a chance to use it.

  Gundsric loomed over me, a misshapen, palpable malignance. He smiled, teeth filmed with fresh blood, his beardless face wrinkling up like crumpled paper.

  “I don’t remember making an appointment with you today, elf.” His laughter bubbled thickly up from blood filled lungs. The harsh chemical reek he exuded was almost a welcome respite from the sickly sweet stench of decay that filled my nostrils.

  I didn’t reply, doubting the claw-tipped hand around my neck would allow any speech.

  “Check upstairs,” Gundsric barked. “This spy has friends.” Dark shapes in the corner moved out of my line of sight, andI heard the faint sounds of feet scraping up stairs.

  It was then, while trying to follow the movement of the second group of wererats, that I noticed the final detail about the corpses that lined the basement.

  They were gleamers, of course-that much was obvious from the markings on the wall. But these bodies told a further tale. Shess hadn’t seemed to know how or

  why gleam users disappeared eventually, but they always turned up dead, if they turned up at all. Dead and blind. And here they were: each face devoid of eyes, the sockets yawning a deeper black in the dark.

  “Go with them, my sweet.” Gundsric’s murmur had taken on an oddly affectionate tone. “See all.”

  I turned back to him, wondering whom he was speaking to, only to find him shrugging as if in a seizure. Beneath his clothing, his malformed shoulder twitched and jerked, the hunch shuddering as if it had a life of its own.

  And it did. Emerging from beneath his jerkin was a lopsided mass of flesh like a lesion, a cancerous growth made animate. It chirped once through a pore-like orifice, unfurled membranous wings the color of burned skin, and took flight after the departing wererats. Riding above a sudden heaving nausea, my thoughts tracked back to the persistently circling batI had seen the night before, the one that had hunted the skies as the wererats arrived at the Clippers’ hideout.

  Gundsric chuckled. “So, you’ve seen dear Carchima around, perhaps? He gave a most specific report about you. Though neither of us has yet deduced who it is you work for.”

  I started to speak, gurgling out a response as the wererat tightened his grip on my throat. Gundsric stepped forward and backhanded me across the face.

  “One or the other of them,” he growled. “I don’t care! Cromarcky would be most likely, yes? Croat and his boys would have a better use for the likes of you. Right now the both of them are at a stalemate, pacing around outside my home like gulls waiting for the tide to bring in the trash. After tonight it won’t matter. I’ll tread on their charred corpses and watch this whole damn town burn.”

  The hand that had slapped me came back around to cup my chin. “And it’s because of you,” he crooned. “I had been complacent. Me, complacent! But you made me step things up, made me round up as many of these insects”-he waved a bloody hand in the direction of a pile of corpses-” as I could get hold of last night. Made me come out here and do it myself, take the rest of them all in one go.”

  Gundsric scooped a gnarled hand into the sealskin bag he wore at his side and produced a palmful of glistening eyeballs, each glowing with its own light.

  “No one upstairs, not even that vicious little badger of hers,” hissed a voice I faintly recognized. I tore my eyes away fromGundsric’s palm, his handful of luminous orbs like bloody organic pearls. Carchima fluttered clumsily

  back toGundsric’s shoulder and landed with a wet smack. The wererats had returned from their exploration, and in their lead was the scarred, black-furred female I had fought at the Clippers’ wharfside hideout. She fixed beady eyes upon me and licked her lips. ”I’ll take that elf’s eyes now.”

  “No,” Gundsric said flatly. Carchima squirmed its way back under his clothing with nauseating intimacy. “I can better use her, I think. She wasn’t given that street garbage, she’s as pure as I am. And… she showed me the way.” He leaned in close to me, and it was then that I noticed for the first time that his own black eyes shone as intensely asIdrek’s had.Gundsric nodded at the recognition, and I wondered if my own eyes were filled with such light.

  “Is the fire behind your eyes, elf?“Gundsric was nearly whispering now. The stink of sulfur and dizzying reek of carbauxine poured out of him as if he were some poisonous fissure in the earth. ” Do you hear the radiant choir, as I first did all those years ago? The others said I was mad, wanted no part of my search, butI kept digging. Digging toward the voice-the burning voice like a pyre for all the world! ” He smiled his bloody smile at me, his eyes luminous and searching.

  “Ziphras didn’t send us out to be dog-slaves to a mad dwarf,” the female wererat interrupted. She spat on a corpse, and hissed something at the wererats to either side of her. There were half a dozen of them in the basement, all wearing their in-between forms, standing on their hind legs as hideous, man-sized rats. “I owe this elf a debt of blood. Her gang killed my kin, ruined our

  trade. Ziphras will mark me for this failure.” The livid scar beneath her eye twitched. “You owe me her life, blood-debt to be paid.”

  Gundsric only growled, then began to cough.The other rats in the basement chattered among themselves, and I could sense the anxiety of the two that flanked me, their uncertainty as to which way this challenge to Gundsric would go.It seemed all was not well in the dwarf’s employ.

  The black-furred female was padding closer to Gundsric’s back, and I saw the glint of a hooked blade in her hand. “No trade now, and no Clippers. No more buyers-all dead or fled. I wonder… how much longer will Ziphras make deals with you for a drug he can’t sell?”

  The alchemist’s coughing had subsided to a rhythmic hitch, like a second heartbeat. Gundsric didn’t speak, didn’t turn, but I saw his hand stray to the belt he wore beneath his stained and scarred leather apron.

  “Take your hand off the potion, dwarf,” the wererat hissed, creeping yet closer to the alchemist’s back.

  Gundsric spat a gob of black mucous onto the floor. Keeping his eyes on me, he pulled his hand away in a flash, withdrawing a coin pouch from beneath his apron. The nervous rats next to me tensed as if an electric jolt had pulsed through them, then relaxed just as quickly when they saw what the dwarf had been reaching for.

  Gundsric raised the coin pouch high, tipped it, and spilled out a small fortune in gold sails that rang upon the stones of the floor. Every rat in the room watched them fall, the gold reflected in their beady eyes.

  Then he spun and threw something with his other hand, straight at the black-furred wererat. With uncanny accuracy it struck her face, exploding in a blast of white and blue fire.

  I flinched, feeling the blast even from half a room away. The wererat shrieked as alchemical flame engulfed first her face, then the entirety of her body. Rats darted away from her, a few suffering minor burns themselves. But the female blazed like a torch, stumbling blind before toppling over one of the corpse-filled cots and crashing to the ground.The other rats stood stunned for a moment as the female writhed on the ground, her body roiling in sulfurous whit
e flame that clung to her like tar.

  Gundsric raved then, shouting threats at the rats, telling them their choice was between the gold on the floor and the burning body on the ground. The stink of scorched fur and flesh filled the room, and smoke stung my eyes and brought tears. But even through my blurred visionI noticed the silent figure that had just entered the room from the far corner, whereI knew the stairs to be.

  It was Gyrd, but not as I had ever before seen him. His mail glistened silver, polished and well maintained in contrast to the dirty and rent hauberk the fighter routinely slept in. He stood taller, straighter, like a noble warrior out of some Ulfen saga. His beard was trimmed close and clean, and his long hair was gathered neatly into thick plaits.There was no gray in the fiery red mane, no flush of drunkenness on his fair skin, and no shadows under the clear, proud eyes.

  He drew a mirror-bright sword and opened his mouth in a silent roar.

  The wererats saw him. They crashed around the room in surprise, some heading for the shadows, one even managing to fall over the smoldering form of the dead female on the floor. Some let fly a few knives and darts, which sliced through the dark with no effect. Gyrd advanced, rolling his wrist so that his blade danced deadly circles in the air.

  I could hear Gundsric’s shouts over the din and squeal of the panicking rats. He had noticed the same thing I had: That this bright image of Gyrd, standing tall like a hero of legend, wasn’t real.It was an illusion.

  But the blade that ripped through the wererat next to me was real enough.

  The image of Gyrd vanished.The rat let out a piercing wail and crumpled to the floor, limbs twitching in his death throes, and then Shess was next to me, sword in hand.

  I spared no time marveling at the gnome’s skill in sneaking undetected into and around a basement full of wererats. Whipping my newly freed right arm around in an arc, I drove my palm into the face of my remaining captor, smashing the soft nose at the end his snout. He chattered in anger, jerking me forward and raking his claws against my shoulder and chest. Warm blood flowed from the stinging wound.