James West - Queen of the North

Invisible and untouchable to the dead and to the living alike, Algar watched a pair of shave-headed men in thick brown cloaks creep up the stairs, unaware of the roving spirits passing through them.

Algar instantly recognized the fellow who had named himself Edrik. He had been waiting for Rathe when Algar came out of the Zanar-Sariit earlier. Edrik had babbled some nonsense tale about needing help. When Rathe denied him, the fool had drawn a dagger. Rathe had easily disarmed the youth. If Edrik was a bounty hunter, Algar judged that no man had ever been more ill-suited to the task. Instead of cutting Edrik’s throat, Rathe had let him go. During his years of hunting the man, Algar had seen his rival slaughter many foes without hesitation. He supposed mercy, just this once, had stayed the Scorpion’s sting.

Mercy is for fools , Algar thought, watching Edrik fish a small golden flask out of an inner pocket of his cloak, pull the stopper, and take a sip. Grimacing, he handed the flask to the hulking man beside him. Of the pair, the second looked a man suited for battle. But when he drank from the ornate flask, he grabbed his belly and bent double, gagging like a boy taking his first taste of wine.

Algar’s stifled chuckle died when the two men began to grow dim, insubstantial . Soon, they had vanished entirely. For a moment, Algar feared they would emerge within his refuge, but they never did. They were simply gone.

After a few anxious moments, his fear abated, replaced by covetous admiration. Now that’s a trick worth having! But where did they get off to?

His eyes narrowed when a linty ball of dust skittered down the hall, as if disturbed by an errant breath of air. What’s this? Before the thought was complete, something unseen squashed the fluff against the wooden floor. Algar blinked in amazement. The two men hadn’t gone anywhere, but had become transparent. Unlike him, it seemed they had no need to lurk within shadows. What other tricks do they have?

“You’re sure this is the room, Edrik?” a gruff voice whispered.

“I’m no fool, Danlin.”

“Never said you were, but mistakes happen.”

“Not this time,” said Edrik.

Algar marked their progress by their voices and the way the grit on the floor shifted at their passage. They halted at Rathe and Nesaea’s door. If he acted swiftly, Algar knew he could kill them and take their potion for himself. Yet if he did that, doubtless the bustle would alert Rathe. Also, in killing the two, he would rob himself of finding out where the potion had come from, and how to acquire more.

“We should kick in the door and take him,” Danlin said.

Having survived his first encounter with Rathe, it seemed Edrik was more cautious. “I’d rather persuade him to join our cause. If we hold him against his will, he’s not likely to help us. We must convince him.”

“You tried that already. As I recall, you’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

“I’ve no fear of death at his hands,” Edrik said, his confidence sounding forced.

A pause. “A foretelling from the Oracle?”

“As befitting his station, Quidan Salris never reveals all of the Oracle’s tellings to Essan Thaeson, but our master was able to glean enough for us to find Rathe. More than that, I looked into Rathe’s eyes, and it was not my death I saw.”

“Well,” Danlin said dubiously, “now that we’ve found him, and he’s refused you once already, how do you plan to ‘persuade’ him to come to Targas?”

Another pause.

Algar waited, scarcely breathing.

The thin layer of dirt outside Rathe and Nesaea’s door scuffed about. Behind the door came soft, breathless laughter.

“Can you hear them?” Edrik asked.

“I’d rather not,” Danlin said. “But, yes.”

“Have you seen the way they look at each other?”

“I have, but I cannot see how that helps us.”

“ Love , Danlin, is a potent tool.”

A gasp. “You don’t mean to…?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes, Danlin. We all must. This man, the Scorpion, has given us no other choice.”

“I suppose.”

“Come, Danlin, we must prepare.”

Algar waited until the sounds of stealthy feet moved off, then touched the cool gray stone buried in his chest. With a thought, he sank through the floor, shadows dancing across his vision, until he was standing in a dank storeroom below the inn’s lowest basement. He had no worry of anyone finding him. By the age of the masonry blocking what had been a doorway, and by the dusty bones clad in a man’s rotted clothing in one corner, he guessed murder had been done here, and the storeroom then sealed off for several lifetimes.

Still fingering the Spirit Stone, Algar murmured a different phrase than the one that had brought him into the Zanar-Sariit. The stone went cold and colder, freezing his bowels, stiffening his limbs. Gradually, he began to feel the cracked floor tiles under his boots, the familiar heaviness of his body. The iciness fled, leaving him shivering but otherwise unharmed. With his return to the world of his birth, the darkness of the storeroom dropped over him.

Reaching into a pouch at his belt, he withdrew flint and steel, then moved by touch to a fat candle tucked into a small nook in the wall. After a few tries, he sparked the candle wick alight, then collected a coarsely woven sack off a stone shelf. He sat down next to the bones, and propped his elbow on the dusty skull. By the dead man’s gap-toothed grin, he didn’t mind.

Algar swung the leather sack before his eyes. The seeing glass hidden inside was an orb the size of his fist, but it was not made of glass, at least none like he had ever seen. I never should have returned to Skalos, Algar thought. And I never should have taken the glass, or Jathen’s gold.

But he had returned to the mountain citadel governed by the brothers of the Way of Knowing, and he had taken the warrior monk’s tainted gifts. While the Spirit Stone granted him the ability to become the finest thief or assassin the world had ever known, he despised those who practiced such illicit and disreputable trades. He was a man above reproach, a man of honor. As such, he needed honest gold to replace that which he had frittered away while chasing Rathe from one kingdom to the next, from Onareth to Fortress Hilan, and finally across the Gyntor Mountains to Ravenhold. To earn gold in a way he deemed respectable, he’d had no choice but to form a tenuous allegiance with Brother Jathen, which in turn forced him to meld his plans with the monk’s.

I raised you to be more than a puppet-boy , his mother said within his mind.

Always there! Always! Always! Always! Algar ground his teeth together, tamed his silent raving. I was never more than a ‘puppet’ for you to earn a bit more coin.

Does a puppet cut his strings?

This puppet did, Algar thought, a smile tugging his lips. In truth, he had cut more than the imaginary strings his mother had used to make him dance for men who enjoyed a boy’s sweet favors. Isn’t that so, mother? Do you remember how you screamed? Do you remember how you bled … how you burned?

You’re an evil, vicious brat. Always were!

When he sensed her fleeing him, a blurt of harsh laughter gurgled from his throat. The blackest memories of his heart always made the rancorous whore take flight. She would return, she always did, but for now he was alone with a stack of companionable bones.

Algar spilled the cloudy sphere from the sack into his palm, and traced a pattern over the curved edge of the seeing glass, just the way Jathen had shown him.

The familiar low chiming sounded.