Jeff Crook - The Thieves’ Guild

Slowly at first, and then faster, her feet began to fly. She ran faster than she’d ever run before, but still it was difficult to keep pace with the elf. It was speed born of terror.

Terror became horror. She saw the end of the pier ahead. “Trapped” she shrieked.

“Into the sea!” Cael shouted in answer. “Grab my staff. Don’t let go.”

Without slowing they reached the pier’s end and leaped. Cael sailed out ahead of her and struck the water. Alynthia crashed after him, feet first. She struggled to the surface and gasped for air. The water was black and cold as the grave.

Hands grasped her ankles and dragged her under. She struggled, fighting to kick free. She drew her dagger and lashed out, but still the hands pulled. Down, down she sank, the golden light from the pier’s lamps fading. Replacing it was a greenish glow. Something cold and hard touched her face. She clutched at it, and then she saw in the weird glow the face of the elf, his long hair floating about his head like the fronds of a sea plant. His jaws gaped and closed, as though he were breathing the water. He held her, and held the staff in her hands.

The need for air grew too great. Blood pounded in her ears, her chest began to heave for want of breath. He shook his head and gripped her tighter to hold her under, but she struggled free of him, her fear of drowning lending her the strength of an ogre. She thrust for the surface, seeing the golden light growing stronger.

A light like a thousand suns burst before her eyes. The water around her exploded, the air was driven from her lungs in an agonized scream. She was propelled backward, downward.

The sea closed round her with its dark, cold, deadly embrace.

Cael dragged Alynthia’s limp body ashore beneath Blue Crab Pier, down amongst the piles and the scurrying blue crabs. He laid her gently on the pebbly shore, kneeling beside her as he lowered her head to the ground. He bent over, opened his mouth, and exhaled enough seawater to fill a bucket, retching it out in one long groan. The first thing that his master taught him about the ironstaff was that it gave him the ability to breath water as readily as air, but the transition was always a painful one, something he avoided when he could.

At last, he threw his head back, his lank, wet red hair whipping across his back, and filled his lungs with air. Again. Again, drinking in the salty air, until finally he began to cough, clearing his lungs of the last remnants of the sea.

He turned his attention to his companion. She lay before him, her flesh chill, her lips blue, eyelids parted to reveal her dark eyes, now dull, staring blankly at nothing. He felt no lifebeat when his fingers touched her neck. His coughs turned to sobs. His hair fell across his face, hiding his features from her unblinking stare.

When the blue dragon breathed its lightning breath into the water, the blast had stunned Alynthia. Cael had felt the staff absorb much of the energy just as it had done with Mistress Jenna’s spell. Now, he berated himself, blamed himself for letting go of Alynthia, for not holding her beneath the water while the dragon attacked. By the time he had reached her, she had already filled her lungs with water.

Now, as he looked at her, he saw in his mind the faces of all the others who had been killed on his account. He saw Pitch’s charred remains heaped against the wall of the Chamber of Doors. He saw Hoag turned to stone and Ijus blasted by Mistress Jenna’s magic, Kharzog with a sword through his old dwarven bellows, Gimzig gripped in the jaws of a sewer monster, and Claret’s entire family pulled apart and destroyed. Now, one more life was added to this score, one more innocent victim of his games, and this one, he realized, grieved him more than all the others, even more than Kharzog. If only he had stayed by Alynthia’s side while in the dragon stables of the Lord’s Palace, if only he had not let her struggle free of the staff, if only the dragon hadn’t blasted the depths of the sea with its lightning breath.

With a scream of rage, he unleashed his sword. He stormed about beneath the pier, sending blue crabs scurrying in every direction, slashing heedlessly at everything around him. His magical blade passed through braces, supports, ropes, and even through a wooden pile supporting the pier. Only when the pier began to creak ominously, after many of its supports lay in chunks along the shore or bobbed in the surf, did his anger begin to subside. Still the pain remained.

He returned to Alynthia’s side, tossing his sword on the ground beside her. “She will not die,” her growled. He knelt at her side again, placing one hand beneath her neck and lifting it slightly, tilted back her head, which caused her lips to part He’d seen his mother do this a dozen times. A dozen times she’d saved the lives of shipwrecked sailors in this manner. He wasn’t even sure if he knew how to do it properly. But he had to try.

“You will not die, Alynthia Krath-Mal,” he whispered as his placed his lips over her cold blue ones. He covered her eyes with his hand, at the same time pinching together her nostrils, then breathed forcibly into her mouth, puffing out her cheeks.

He lifted, inhaling, and listened to the air escape her lips in a sad parody of breathing. “Come back to me,” he whispered again, returning his lips to hers. Again her cheeks puffed. “Come back to me.” Again. Again.

He continued, continued on past the moment when hope failed, grimly past the moment when it began to seem a sacrilege, when his conscience told him to leave her body in peace. He continued, with each breath whispering, “Come back to me, my love.”

As he bent to her lips yet one more time, she blinked. He paused, waiting, hope renewing, searching her dull eyes for a flicker of life. It came, dimly, but it came. He blew into her mouth again, felt her twitch, and when his breath escaped her lips this time, with it came a bubble of seawater. She coughed. He rolled her on her side, letting her retch the fluid from her lungs, gently patting her back, and holding her in his arms until she had finished.

The place was called The Bone and Four, which was short for the Bone and Four Skulls. Above the door hung a battered wooden sign painted with these symbols. Cael kicked open the door and lurched into the room, carrying over his shoulders what appeared to be a large wet bundle, and leaning heavily on his staff.

“We’re closed, mate,” said a man behind the bar. “After curfew.” Another man rose from the end of the bar, his head bumping among the low rafters. He was fully seven feet tall, and his sallow yellowish skin identified him as having ogrish parentage. He clenched a pair of warty, ham-sized fists and growled.

“Plus, the dragon’s about,” the first man added.

Cael merely stared at the two for a moment, then shut the door with his staff. The common room was small, having only a few tables and booths, but at most of these sat wretched-looking men in various stages of debauchery. Not a few snored with heads sunk onto folded arms. The place was remarkably quiet. It seemed most of the patrons were content to wallow in their private miseries.

“Closed. Right,” the elf snorted, but there was no mirth in his laugh. He struggled to an empty corner booth and, leaning his staff against the wall, lowered his bundle onto one of the benches and shoved it into the corner. He then squeezed in beside the bundle and gently pushed aside the wet blankets in which it was wrapped. A face, dusky but drawn, with sunken cheeks and a bluish tinge about the lips, appeared from the folds.

The innkeeper shrugged, and the ogre resumed his seat.

A barmaid approached Cael’s booth. “Brandy,” he barked, as he chafed Alynthia’s cold hands between his own. “And a dry blanket, if you have one.”