David Chandler - A thief in the night

“Silence,” he said, in a voice that conveyed no emotion at all.

Instantly the clamor in the hall ceased. The musicians stopped playing in mid-chord. The jugglers caught their torches and held them. The warriors drew apart and came to attention. The ladies stopped exactly where they were, and lowered their hands to their sides. Around Malden, Cythera, and Slag, the guards all stood up very straight and held their arms down at their sides.

“What,” the black-robed elf asked, “are these?”

As if noticing the newcomers for the first time, the gathered elves all turned to stare at the two humans and the dwarf. They grabbed at one another’s arms and pointed. Some pressed hands to their mouths, or their nostrils flared in surprise. None of them made the slightest sound.

The soldier who had threatened to kill Slag if he couldn’t walk hurried forward. The clattering of his armor sounded very loud in the still room. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands in supplication.

The black-robed elf stared down at him for a moment as if he had no idea who the guard was. Then his face cleared as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “You… may speak.”

“Your excellent presence be preserved, your beneficence praised in every quarter, Hieromagus. These are the human trespassers you sent us to retrieve.”

“I sent… you? Trespassers?”

Malden started to quake. He remembered the elf-the one who’d been so horrified by Slag’s vomit-say that a Hieromagus had ordered them to be brought in alive. The only reason they hadn’t been killed already was because of this elf’s command. If this Hieromagus couldn’t remember why he’d wanted them alive, they might very well die in the next moment.

“Hold,” the Hieromagus said. “It is time for my sacrament.”

The curtains behind him moved again and an elf hurried out. She wore a shift made of patches and rags. In her hand she held something small and dark. The Hieromagus opened his mouth wide and she placed the thing on his tongue. Before he closed his mouth again, Malden saw that it was the cap of a black mushroom. The Hieromagus swallowed it like a pill.

“I sent you,” he said. “I sent you to retrieve the trespassers. That happened in the past. Yes. I have it now. I see again their future. Very… very important, that they are… alive. It will be very important. Though… though…”

He fell silent then. Seconds passed but he said no more.

One of the soldiers, standing just to Malden’s left, moved his hand very carefully up to his face. He scratched his nose discreetly, then very quickly lowered his hand again, as if afraid someone would see him moving.

The Hieromagus suddenly slumped forward, leaning hard on the railing of the balcony. His eyes opened so wide Malden thought they might fall out of his head. His mouth twisted in a grimace of utter horror and his whole body convulsed.

Then, a moment later, he stood back up as if nothing had happened. In a quiet voice, the voice of a boy asking for a candy, he said, “Is it time for my sacrament? Why is there no music? When there’s no music I hear… I hear everything…”

The musicians launched back into their riotous song. The jugglers tossed their torches in the air. The warriors began to fight once more in jest. The ladies giggled and whispered among themselves. None of them looked at the newcomers anymore.

The Hieromagus walked through the curtain, not even bothering to lift it away from his body. With a sigh, the leader of the soldiers rose to his feet and gestured at his warriors. “Take them inside and lock them away. Maybe he’ll remember what he wanted them for, or maybe he’ll order their deaths. Who knows? I can’t say I find this game entertaining, either way.”

“That fellow’s in charge of our fates?” Malden asked. “I cannot describe the depth of relief that I feel.”

The guard behind Malden jabbed him in the back with a spear. The three of them were marched forward, only to stop again after a moment as the leader grabbed hold of Malden’s sleeve. “Don’t be fooled,” he said. “The Hieromagus sees everything-the past, the future as well. His sacrament allows him to confer both with his ancestors and his descendants. If he seems scattered about the present, it is only because he sees so much.”

Malden knew enough to stay silent, yet he had so little left to lose. “He didn’t seem scattered,” he answered. “He seemed insane.”

He fully expected the soldier to strike him with a mailed fist and break his already bruised jaw. Yet the soldier only laughed. “Right now his madness is the only thing keeping you alive, human.”

Interlude

Aelbring climbed the stairs to the top level of the Vincularium, dreading what he would find. Like most elves, he hated the cemetery of the dwarves. The elves lived in a relatively small section of the lower levels and shunned the rest of the underground city, and for good reason. There were too many memories up high. When one got too close to the world outside the mountains, the ancestors refused to be quiet in one’s head. They remembered that world, even if Aelbring didn’t. They wanted so badly to escape the darkness and the dust. Maybe the Hieromagus could bear their whispering voices, but for a low-ranking soldier like himself, they threatened to overwhelm his senses. It just wasn’t fair.

And today of all days to draw this duty! There were humans down below-humans! After all this time. He wanted to see them. Wanted to know if they were as ugly as the ancestors said, or as hairy. Maybe the old legends were wrong. They said there was a female human among them. Aelbring had a secret yearning, a half-formed hope that maybe she would be different from the others. Maybe she would have an exotic beauty unfound among his own people. He burned with curiosity. Maybe he could arrange to have himself assigned to guarding her. Maybe he could show her some small kindness, some bit of unexpected compassion that would cause her to look on him with whatever humans had that resembled affection…

He had his orders, though. Something had stirred up the revenants on the top level. Well, of course it had-the humans who broke in through the seal, yes? But no, he had been told this was some new intrusion. The eternal guardians had calmed down since the humans arrived, but now some new excitement was brewing among them. The revenants did not speak, nor did they have any way of sending a message down to the lower levels. The queen, however, was in tune with them in some arcane fashion, and she said she’d felt their rage burning stronger than ever. Which meant something had set them off. And someone had to go up and find out what had so upset them.

And of course that someone had to be him.

At least it wasn’t nighttime up there. The red sun burned as it did every twelve hours, and this high its light went everywhere, illuminated every dark corner. Its beams were almost too much for Aelbring’s eyes to bear, accustomed as they were to the gloom of the lower levels. The geometric tombs of the dwarves draped long shadows along the far walls.

At first he could see nothing out of place, no horrid surprises waiting for him in that haunted region. No revenants waited to greet him, but of course they wouldn’t make it that simple, would they? He checked the bronze sword he wore at his side and went to look for them, intent on getting this over with as soon as possible.

Up ahead, just to the side of a tomb shaped like a marble column, he saw something scattered on the ground. Some refuse left behind by the invading humans, most likely. Animals that they were, they could hardly be expected to pick up after themselves. He jogged over to see what it was, but before he’d taken half a dozen strides he tripped and nearly fell on his face.