Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

"Is truth! I swear it! Vik-Thyss is dead, or so say the Afirion winds. Now burn it!"

"Silence," Rakon said, and tried to control his beating heart. He clutched at the lectern in a white-knuckled grasp. Vik-Thyss's death put the Pact at risk. And if the Pact failed…

In his mind's eye, he saw the family's power foundering, saw House Norristru losing what wealth it still possessed, its seat on the Merchants' Council. He saw himself losing his position as Adjunct to the Lord Mayor, saw his many enemies emboldened, coming for him. He had ordered murders over the years, many murders. He had bound spirits and elementals, destroyed some. Absent the Pact with House Thyss, he would be quickly dead and his house annihilated. His own sorcery would not be enough to preserve them.

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know," the sylph answered, and Rakon heard the truth in it.

"Find out," Rakon said. "Now."

He needed to know if one of his enemies was moving against him by trying to destroy the alliance with Hell.

The sylph keened with frustration, swirled around the incense, and was gone.

Rakon remained on the platform, the air still, but his thoughts chaotic. Vik-Thyss had sired Norristru offspring for centuries. The matings had consummated the Pact and provided heirs to both the Norristru and the Thyss. Without Vik-Thyss…

He looked off to the east, toward the city that housed his many enemies. The Norristru manse was built atop a tall escarpment, and from that lofty perch looked down on Dur Follin's crumbling walls from more than half a league away. The moonlight afforded him a clear view.

The city straddled both sides of the wide, torpid River Meander. The glowing dots of the city's street lamps blinked at him like fireflies. The temple domes of Orella, the narrow spires of the Lord Mayor's extravagant palace, and the great water clock of Mad Ool jutted into the night sky, their height unusual among the otherwise one- and two-story patchwork decrepitude of Dur Follin's urbanscape.

Minnear's light reigned viridian over the city. Barges and scows clustered along the city's countless piers, torches and lanterns glowing on their decks. Above all towered the Archbridge, an ancient stone expanse that stretched across the river, linking Dur Follin's two halves, the origin of its construction lost to the ages. Only Ool's clock compared. Master masons made pilgrimages across Ellerth to see the Archbridge.

Orange and green pyrotechnics exploded in the air off the side of the bridge, some nameless cult celebrating this or that, the whistles and pops audible even at a distance. Scores of churchless cults and apostate philosophers held worship on the Archbridge, littering its length with the detritus of belief. The monumental size of the bridge, its awe-inspiring construction, seemed to draw the faithful. Common parlance called it the Road to the Heavenly Spheres.

The pyrotechnics left a fading afterimage in the sky, a few puffs of smoke, the ghost of a celebration. A westerly wind blew, brought with it the faint stink of the Deadmire, the expansive, ruin-haunted swamp south of the city.

Rakon eyed the city for a long while, the maze of its buildings and politics a puzzle for him to solve. His mind moved through the faces of the men and women who'd kill him if they had the chance. He realized quickly that they'd become too many to count. They blurred in his thoughts into one collective countenance of hateful vengeance.

A sudden thought gave him pause. Might the Lord Mayor himself have moved against Rakon? Could Rakon's mind-numbing spells on the Mayor have weakened enough to allow the fat fool independent thought?

Before he could chase the thought further, the wind picked up and the sylph's voice gave him a start. "There are corpses in the breeze. The Deadmire is awash in bodies. Ancient bodies and old memories."

Rakon glared at the empty place in the air from which the voice had originated. "Tell me what you've learned."

"An ancient breeze in Afirion had the tale of the devil's death. Vik-Thyss was slain by Egil Verren of Ebenor and Nix Fall of no god, whose names are known on earth, in the air, and to the knowledgeable in Hell."

Rakon knew the names too, though only vaguely. He'd heard them in tavern tales and gossip, along with many other such rogues, adventurers, and tomb robbers who sometimes called Dur Follin home.

"Continue. Were they hired to kill Vik-Thyss? If so, by whom?"

"I think not. They killed Vik-Thyss while robbing the tomb of Abn Thahl. They triggered a binding even older than the Pact you hope to preserve, a binding that summoned Vik-Thyss, whom they subsequently slew."

At that Rakon felt some measure of relief. VikThyss's death had been chance, not the result of the machinations of his enemies. He could still salvage the situation if he could find a way to honor the Pact before Minnear waxed to full and Kulven waned new.

"I need another true son of House Thyss," he muttered, more to himself than to the sylph.

"Indeed you do," the sylph said, tittering. "One of the half-breeds born in this house, perhaps?"

Rakon made a dismissive gesture. "A true son of the Thyss. Not a cambion. Name the other Thyss sons, sylph. There's where preservation lies."

A soughing wind, then, "House Thyss is empty of males."

"What? That… cannot be. You lie!"

"I spoke truth, Rakon Norristru." The spirit giggled. "The air around you stinks of terror. Do you fear for your life?"

Rakon swung his hand through the air, a futile gesture that only summoned more giggles from the sylph. He reined his emotions and replayed all he knew, considered with care the sylph's exact phrasings. The spirits of the air enjoyed toying with sorcerers.

House Thyss is empty of males.

"The incense, Rakon Norristru!" the sylph entreated.

House Thyss is empty of males.

The answer was right there.

"You said House Thyss is empty of males. But do any Thyss sons live elsewhere?"

The wind blew and the sylph giggled. "I am caught!"

Rakon glared at the empty sky. "Speak, sylph! Tell me all you know."

"Abrak-Thyss, brother to Vik-Thyss, was imprisoned on Ellerth long ago, summoned by the Great Ward. He is not dead. But neither is he free. He is the only true son of the Thyss that still lives."

Rakon grabbed at the words, his hope renewed. "Imprisoned where, precisely?"

"What matter? He knows nothing of your Pact. It was made long after his imprisonment."

"He'll honor it, sylph. His blood requires it. Now tell me, where is he?"

"Alas," the sylph sighed. "There are no winds old enough to tell the specifics of Abrak-Thyss's fate. I hear only echoes in the wind and I've told you all they say. I don't know the location of his prison."

Rakon raised a fist. "If you are lying, sylph-"

"I promised truth, Rakon Norristru, and truth you've had, though bent to my amusement for a moment. Now, burn the incense as you promised."

Rakon figured he'd learned all there was to learn from the sylph. He'd keep his bargain. He always kept his bargains.

"Very well."

Absently he put the candle's flame to the stick of incense. Foul, thick smoke spiraled into the air, collected in a cloud around the sylph. For a moment, Rakon glimpsed an outline of the sylph's current form in the smoke: a large sphere covered in hundreds of thin tendrils, flailing in the smoke.

"I may need to speak with you again, sylph," he said. "Answer when I call."

The sylph, lost in the odor of the incense, made no answer, but the breeze hummed with delight.

Rakon left the sylph to its ecstasy, turned and descended the stairway, heavier with worries than he'd been when he ascended them. He tried to focus his mind on what he must do. He would pore over the tomes in his library, consult with every spirit in the spheres, and discover the location of Abrak-Thyss's prison. Knowledge of it had to exist somewhere. He'd find it and do whatever was necessary to preserve the Pact.