Mel Odom - The Black Road

Cholik put a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. He felt her shudder and cringe at his touch. "Easy, child. I only need to know about the man who tried to kill me. I won't hurt you, either."

She looked at him. "Promise?"

The girl's innocence touched Cholik. Promises were easy to give to the young; they wanted to believe.

"I promise," Cholik said.

The girl looked around, as if making sure the hard-faced mercenaries had heard Master Sayes's promise as well.

"They will not touch you," Cholik said. "Describe the man who shot me."

She gazed at him in big-eyed wonderment. "I thought he killed you."

"He can't," Cholik said. "I'm one of the chosen of Dien-Ap-Sten. No mortal man may take my life as long as I stay in the prophet's favor."

The girl sipped air again, becoming almost calm. "He was burned. Nearly all of his face was burned. His hands and arms were burned."

The description meant nothing to Cholik. "Is there anything else you noticed about him?"

"No." The girl hesitated.

"What is it?" Cholik asked.

"I think he was afraid that you would know him if you saw him," the girl said. "He said that he was surprised that he was let into the building."

"I've never seen a man burned so badly as you say who still lived."

"Maybe he didn't live," the girl said.

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. I just don't see how anyone could live after being burned so bad, is all."

Pursued by a dead man? Cholik turned the thought over in his mind for a short time.

Come, Kabraxis said in his mind. We have things to do. The assassin is gone.

Cholik reached into the pocket of his robe and took out a few silver coins. The amount was enough to feed a family in Bramwell for months. Once, perhaps, the money might have meant something to him. Now, it was only a bargaining tool. He placed the silver coins in the girl's hand and folded her fingers over them.

"Take this, girl," Cholik said, "as a token of my appreciation." He glanced up at the nearest mercenary. "See that she gets back to her family."

The mercenary nodded and led the little girl away. She never once looked back.

Despite the fact that more than a year had passed since he'd found Kabraxis's gateway under the remains of Tauruk's Port and Ransim, Cholik's mind wandered back to the labyrinth and the chamber where he'd released the demon back into the human world. One man had escaped that night, a Westmarch sailor who had even evaded the skeletons and zombies Kabraxis had raised to kill everyone there.

Cholik felt that no one in Bramwell would have dared attack him in the church. And if the man were burned as badly as the girl described, someone would have come forward to identify him and hope to earn a reward from Dien-Ap-Sten or himself.

So it had been an outsider. Someone not even the populace of the city had known about. Yet it had to be someone who had known Cholik from before.

Where had the man who had escaped from Tauruk's Port gone? If this was him, and it made no sense for it to be anyone else, why had he waited so long before he'd stepped forward? And why approach Cholik now at all?

It was unsettling. Especially when Cholik thought about how near the quarrel had come to piercing his heart. Thoughts churning, Cholik reentered his private chamber to plan and scheme with the demon he had freed. Whatever chance the assassin had had was now gone. Cholik would never be caught unprepared again. He consoled himself with that.

Back and shoulders on fire from all the lifting he'd done during the day, Darrick entered the Blue Lantern. Pipe smoke and the closing night filled the tavern with darkness. Men swapping stories and telling lies filled the tavern with noise. To the west, near where the mouth of the Gulf of Westmarch met the Frozen Sea, the sunset settled into the water, looking like dying red embers scattered from a stirred campfire.

A cold north wind followed Darrick into the tavern. The weather had changed in the last hour, just as the ships' captains and mates had been thinking it would. Come morning, Sahyir had told Darrick, there might even be a layer of ice covering the harbor. It wouldn't be enough to lock the ships in, but that time wasn't far off, either.

Men looked up as Darrick walked through the small building. Some of the men knew him, and some were from the ships out in the harbor. All of their eyes were wary. Seeker's Point wasn't a big village, but the numbers swelled when ships were in the harbor. And if a man wanted trouble in the village, the Blue Lantern was where he came.

There was no table space in the tavern. Three men Darrick knew slightly offered their tables with their friends. Darrick thanked them but declined, passing on through the tables till he spotted the man Sahyir had talked about earlier that day.

The man was in his middle years, gray showing in his square-cut beard. He was broad-shouldered and a little overweight, a solid man who had seen an active life. His clothing was second-hand, worn but comfortable-looking, and warm enough against the cool winds blowing in from the north. He wore round-lensed spectacles, and Darrick could still count on the fingers of both hands how many times he'd seen such devices.

A platter of bread and meat sat to the sage's left. He wrote with his right hand, pausing every now and again to dip his quill into an inkwell beside the book he worked in.A whale-oil lantern near the book provided him more light to work by.

Darrick stopped only a short distance from the table, uncertain what he should say.

Abruptly, the sage looked up, peering over his spectacles. "Darrick?"

Startled, Darrick said nothing.

"Your friend Sahyir named you," the sage said. "He told me when he talked to me last night that you might be stopping by."

"Aye," Darrick said. "Though I must confess I don't truly know what I'm doing here."

"If you've seen that symbol as Sahyir seems inclined to believe that you have," the sage said, "it's probably marked you." He gestured to the book before him. "The Light knows that the pursuit of knowledge about it has marked me. Much to my own detriment, according to some of my mentors and peers."

"You've seen the demon?" Darrick asked.

Renewed interest flickered in the sage's deep green eyes. "You have?"

Darrick paused, feeling that he'd admitted more than he should have.

An irritable look filled the sage's face. "Damnation, son. If you're going to talk, then sit. I've been working hard for days here, and weeks and months before that in other places. Looking up gets hellaciously tiresome for me." He pointed at a chair across from him with the quill, then closed his book and put it aside.

Still feeling uncertain, Darrick pulled out the chair and sat. Out of habit, he laid his sheathed cutlass across his thighs.

The sage laced his fingers together and rested both elbows on the tabletop. "Have you eaten tonight?"

"No." Unloading imported goods from the ship and then loading exported goods had filled the day. Darrick had only eaten what he'd carried along in the food bag, which had been empty for hours.

"Would you like to eat?"

"Aye."

The sage gestured to one of the serving wenches. The young woman went to get the order immediately.

"Sahyir told me you were a sailor," the sage said.

"Aye."

"Tell me where you saw the demon," the sage suggested.

Darrick held himself in check. "I never said that I saw such a thing, now, did I?"

A frown deepened the wrinkles over the sage's eyes. "Are you always this churlish?"

"Sir," Darrick stated evenly, "I don't even know your name."

"Taramis," the sage replied. "Taramis Volken."

"And what is it that you do, Taramis Volken?" Darrick asked.