Richard Byers - The Captive Flame

The thief peered around wildly. “What is she talking about? What did she do to me?”

Jhesrhi had to admit it was a good imitation of confusion. But she thought she’d demonstrated her credentials and the trickster’s duplicity to any reasonable person’s satisfaction, and despite the city’s prejudice against mages, she expected the bystanders to lose interest and turn away.

They didn’t. In fact, though it was difficult to be certain in the dark, it looked like their expressions had hardened. It belatedly occurred to her that her demonstration of her powers, petty and harmless though it had been, might have heightened their mistrust.

A woman bigger than most men shouldered a man aside as she stepped to the front of the crowd. Judging from her buckler and her short, heavy cleaver of a sword, she might have been a member of Luthcheq’s underworld too, or conceivably even a sellsword. “Let these fellows go,” she said in a startlingly sweet soprano voice.

“I told you,” Jhesrhi said, “they’re robbers, I belong to the watch, and it’s my duty to turn them over for judgment.”

“If you are a part of the watch, you shouldn’t be. Not when your kind are skulking around murdering decent people. And we’re not going to let you take these lads off to who knows where, and then maybe they turn up torn to scraps before the night is through.”

“If that’s what you’re worried about,” said Jhesrhi, “you can tag along and watch me hand them over.”

“Don’t!” said the thief. “For your own sakes! For all we know, there are more of them lurking in the dark! She could lead you into a trap!”

“Oh please,” sighed Jhesrhi, addressing herself to the crowd. “Surely you people know where the guard station is. It’s just a couple of blocks farther on.”

“Who’s to say they’ll do justice there?” demanded a dandy with a rapier at his hip, a mail glove on his off hand to catch and hold an opponent’s blade, and a brooch adorned with a red wyrm pinning his cape. “The folk in charge of the watch-and the folk over them-are stupid or worse. That’s why they can’t catch the Green Hand. That’s why the realm is falling apart.”

“I think,” said the enormous woman to Jhesrhi, “you’d better let these fellows go and slink back to where you belong.”

Not moving her head, just her eyes-she didn’t want to appear apprehensive-Jhesrhi glanced up and down the street. There had to be a watch patrol somewhere in the vicinity, but none was in sight.

“The thieves are going to the guard station,” she said. “And if you people don’t want to join them in their cell, you’ll disper-”

A clay flowerpot smashed at her feet, dashing shards, dirt, and the twiggy, leafless remains of a dead plant across the ground. Someone had thrown it from an upper-story window.

Startled, she recoiled a step. Her prisoners bolted. She pivoted and pointed her staff at them. The huge woman lunged and cocked her fist.

Jhesrhi glimpsed the threat from the corner of her eye. She dodged and the punch only glanced across her cheek, although that was enough to sting and to infuriate her as well.

She jabbed the head of her staff into the big woman’s stomach and spat a word of command. A burst of force like the kick of a mule flung her attacker back and dumped her on her rump.

But by then, the dandy’s rapier was whispering clear of its scabbard. He extended his arm and charged.

Jhesrhi jabbered rhyming words. Sleep claimed her assailant, and his momentum smacked him down on his belly.

Still, that wasn’t the end of it. The huge woman clambered up and drew her sword. With fists clenched or with knives and cudgels in hand, the other meddlers spread out to flank the object of their hatred. More missiles showered from overhead.

Jhesrhi raised her staff high and cried out to the wind. Howling, it exploded out from her in all directions, like she was a bonfire shedding a tempest instead of heat and light. Her attackers reeled, unable to make headway. Some fell down. The missiles raining from the windows blew off course.

Now she had to decide what to do next. The gale wouldn’t last forever. She surveyed her adversaries, and the answer came to her.

She snarled an incantation in an Abyssal dialect and jerked her staff through short, stabbing passes. Hate buttressed her will and lent additional power to the magic taking form around her, swirling green fumes that stank like carrion.

Because she’d hated Chessenta for her entire adult life, and now she knew she’d been right to do so. Certainly she had every right to despise the idiots before her, brutes and bullies every one.

She was almost at the end of the incantation before something-perhaps the pure concentration required to perform a complex spell with the necessary precision-cooled her fury a little. Then she remembered that she hadn’t gone to war, and that her employers didn’t consider these folk to be their enemies. She mustn’t slaughter them wholesale for fear of repercussions.

Even then, it was difficult to alter the spell so close to completion. The magic was eager to manifest the pattern the opening phrases had defined, and the final words were flowing automatically. Straining, she regained control of her tongue, then recited a line that completed the conjuration-but in an attenuated form, like music played an octave lower.

With the last of its strength, the wind she’d made caught the malodorous vapor seething around her and blasted it into the faces of her foes. Those who had somehow remained on their feet doubled over or collapsed, and then they all started puking their guts out.

The sickness wouldn’t kill them. The diluted poison was too weak. But they were likely to wish it would.

She tried to enjoy their misery, but she couldn’t. Except for their retching, the street suddenly seemed too quiet and too empty. At first glance, she didn’t see any watchers peeking down at her from the windows or the rooftops, but she felt the pressure of their stares.

Her instincts told her what was coming, and she retreated toward the wizards’ precinct. She’d only gone a few yards when, as though evoked by a spell potent as any at her command, the first shadowy figures swarmed out of the doorways. Her heart thumping, she whispered a message for the wind to carry to her comrades.

Working as fast as they could, Khouryn and his spearmen hauled furniture out of the houses-or just tossed it out the windows-then piled it across the street to make a barricade. The householders with their tattooed palms stood watching in distress, either because they disliked seeing their meager belongings so mistreated or because they understood the reason for it.

If it was the latter, then that made them shrewder than some of the sellswords. “I don’t think anything is going to happen,” grumbled Numer, a beak-nosed fellow with a limp, a missing finger, dozens of scars, and a clinking collection of “lucky” amulets that never left his grubby neck. “We’re doing all this work for nothing.”

“If Jhesrhi says it’s going to happen,” Khouryn answered, “then it will. Didn’t you see the crowds gathering as we rushed over here?”

“I’ve seen plenty of crowds since we came to this stinking town. Marching around with their dragon banners or whatever. Doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything.”

Khouryn scowled. “Just keep stacking.”

They had time to make the barricade a little stronger. Then a mob surged into the mouth of the street. Forged by All-Father Moradin for life underground, dwarves saw well in the dark, and Khouryn had no difficulty making out the faces of the newcomers. He almost wished it were otherwise. He didn’t like the wildness, the edge of hysteria, that he found there.