Notes: JFC, it's been a minute, huh? I went through a minor nervous breakdown when it looked like the US might actually do something INCREDIBLY stupid instead of just extraordinarily or regularly stupid on the world stage, but now we're back with three posts in one, so YAAAY!
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Ch 19 Pt 2 and all of Ch. 20
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Chapter Nineteen, Part Two
Photo by Leo Chen
Attitude
Hiram stared in utter incomprehension at Avery. He…what? “Excuse me?” he managed after a moment, brushing away Avery’s thumb as the other man tried to pull down Hiram’s lower lid to give him a better look at the pupil.
“You’re probably concussed,” Avery said gently. “That idiot healer, he—never mind.” He took a deep breath and put on a brave smile. “Let’s get you to the Temple of Melemor, all right? They’ll heal you the rest of the way and you’ll be as good as new, no more delusions and—”
“I’m not deluded,” Hiram protested. “I really am Xerome Denilzen. I left Galenish almost half a year ago, and I was on the road looking for a place to lie low until I came to Lollop.”
Avery shook his head. “Hiram, no. That’s not…actually, never mind, it’s all right. Believe whatever you want, just come with me to the temple so I can see for myself that you’re truly well.”
No. No, the last thing Hiram needed right now was to waste more time feeding the gossip machine. He would heal with the proper care and tinctures soon enough, but Avery was on the verge of being forced into infiltrating a place that was sure to try and kill him. He’d escaped that massive wizard’s hole twice before—three times was pushing it, especially with Marlon being as uncaring as he appeared to be. “I swear I’m all right,” he assured Avery. “I’m thinking very clearly, I’m in full control of my faculties, I’m just a bit worse for wear. I’m well.”
“You’re not. I know—” He sighed. “Hiram, I know you’re more than you seem, but claiming to be the most powerful wizard in the world is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’ve heard a lot of incredible things from certain quarters.” He bit lightly at his lower lip. “What if we just—ah!” He suddenly bit into his lip hard enough to draw blood. He let go of it, and Hiram, with a start, eyes wide. “Shit,” he whispered.
“Avery?”
“Shit.” Avery stood up and whirled in the opposite direction, black cloak swirling around him like a living shadow. Lancre silk…it was whole and repaired now, the perfect cloak for a rogue. Hiram opened his mouth to protest, to cajole Avery into believing him, but when the other finally looked back, he knew it was too late.
The geis was actively under effect. Hiram could see it in the fresh tension and pallor in Avery’s face, the way his fingers trembled uncontrollably. “I—I have to go,” Avery blurted, and Hiram’s heart dropped. There was no way the man who’d just been insisting on taking him to a healer would leave voluntarily.
Perhaps I could break the geis right now. Break his curse completely.
It had to be within his capabilities. Hiram might be a bit out of practice, but he was the strongest gods-damn wizard in this entire gods-damn empire. He could do it. He could.
And if he did, he would give himself away completely, imperial agents would swarm down upon him, and he’d end up leaving Avery little better off than he was now, simply tied to another criminal…if he even wanted to be tied to Hiram.
No. He couldn’t show him the truth, and Avery didn’t believe his words. All Hiram could do now was try to stay ahead of everyone and take care of everything before it was too late.
All by himself.
“I understand,” Hiram said simply, eager to try and set Avery’s mind at ease.
Avery looked miserable. “You don’t,” he whispered, “and I want to tell you but I can’t, and—”
“Dearest. You say you have to go, and that’s all right. I know sometimes things happen that are out of our control.” Hiram got up from his chair, biting back a groan, and came over to stand in front of Avery. Gods, the man’s whole body was vibrating now, echoing with the effort he was putting into staying in place. “It’s all right. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
“I want to—to take care of you…I want to—to—”
“I’ll be fine.” A little exaggeration wouldn’t hurt here. “I’ll check in with a healer as soon as possible.” It wouldn’t be possible for some time, though.
Avery was actively leaning forward now, fighting the compulsion that was pulling him away. “Narion will be back soon,” he insisted. “Let him take you to the Temple. Please, he can help you.”
But he can’t help you, can he? Hiram took Avery’s hands in his own and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I know he can.” And perhaps he will, someday.
Not right now, though. No, the path forward was clear.
“Hira—aah!” Avery bent over and clutched at his head. When he looked up, his nose was bleeding.
Gods, he was hurting himself. “Go, go.”
With a strangled cry, Avery whirled around and stalked out the front door and down the stairs, vanishing into the darkness of the forest a moment later. The woods were so dense that the moonlight didn’t penetrate deep enough for Hiram to follow his movements, and with the Lancre cloak as well, it was hopeless.
That didn’t stop Hiram from standing at the edge of his sagging porch and staring off into nothing for far too long, his heart aching and his hands tingling from their last shared touch. He was breathing too shallowly, his heart beating too fast—he was on the verge of panicking.
He did not have time to panic.
There were plenty of spells for calming mind and body, but Hiram went with an old standby, the way his father had taught him to self-soothe when he was a distraught child, overwhelmed by powers no one around him seemed to understand.
Close your eyes, block out the world. Wrap your arms around yourself, hold on tightly. Breathe in through your mouth loud enough to hear, then exhale so slowly you can’t hear a thing. Squeeze your toes and fingers, set the rhythm of your squeezes to the rhythm of your breath, and repeat…again. Again. Good, love. Good.
Soon Hiram was able to relax his grip and open his eyes without his body trying to run away with his brain. He still ached, but the physical pain was a distant second to the hurt in his heart right now. “Poor Avery,” he murmured.
“Poor you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re really not, Hiram. Your young man might not be right about everything, but he was right about that. You need better healing.”
There wasn’t time for that. If Avery was being called by the geis right now, then he might be pulled to Gemmel’s Tower before the night was out. Hiram couldn’t let him face that alone. “I’ll take a painkilling tea before I leave, but more healing is going to have to wait for a while.” He turned and headed for the stairs, pausing to pat Knight, who’d hunkered down in the corner of the main room from the moment Avery stepped through the front door. He hadn’t been that scared of Granth, but something about Avery put the Lollop Grand on edge.
“Can you sense his curse?” Hiram murmured as he gave the big rabbit’s ears a rub. He checked to make sure Knight had food, water, and a way outside should he want it. Good. “Poor boy. Don’t worry, we’ll fix him up right as rain.” He walked up the stairs, feeling every tired bone in his body protest the movements.
“You can’t go after Master Surrus, Hiram.”
Hiram ignored Phlox as he rummaged through his trunks, evaluating and comparing offerings for the task ahead. Once he was to the Tower, he could probably use his magic again with near impunity, because if it was to be expected anywhere, it was there. That assumed the Tower wasn’t already being staked out by imperial wizards waiting for him to emerge. No, he needed to put off using his power for as long as possible.
“Hiram.”
“Phlox.”
“You’re out on your feet. You need to rest before you do anything else.”
“There’s no time for that right now.”
“Make time.”
He nodded. “I will once I get inside the Tower.”
“Hiram.”
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it, do you understand? I might have come to Lollop to leave my past behind, but it’s caught up to me now. This isn’t just about Avery; I’d have to deal with the fact that the Tower is radiating my energy to the world regardless. I have to step in, or I’ll never be able to go to another market day without feeling like I’ve got to watch my back. If I want a future here, whether Avery’s in it or not, I have to do something. Now.”
Phlox was quiescent for a long moment, and Hiram was almost able to finish filling his pack with various and sundry helpers before the elemental finally said, “You can’t combine that stimulant with the tea you have in mind, it will give you a heart attack.”
Hiram peered more closely at the glass bottle he’d set aside. Oof, Thorns of Atrides, not bark. “Mm, good point.”
“All my points are good.”
Hiram smiled grimly. “Well, I hope you have a lot to share soon, then.”
“Here’s my first one—how are you even going to get to the Tower of Gemmel tonight, much less inside?”
That…was a good point. Narion had Mule, and Hiram wasn’t going to wait around for him to bring her back. Esme was out doing Esme things; he couldn’t rely on her help. But he couldn’t walk it, either; he wouldn’t get there fast enough. But…he did have a necklace of minor enchantment he’d won off a witch several years ago. It was attuned to her power, not his, and was rather unstable, but it might just be enough to do the trick.
“Let’s see if Knight wants to come with us, hmm?”
Chapter Twenty, Part One
Photo by Holly Chisholm
An Unexpected Turn
The Vanishing Cloak of Melekanthos ended up getting a workout that evening after all. It was a truly marvelous artifact, one that its creator had put a lot of time and effort into making as perfect as possible. The cloak—a generous name for something that was more like a blanket, really—sized itself up or down depending on the bearer, and as long as one part of it was pinned together, the whole of the entity it was pinned around was invisible to the naked eye. And not just the eye, either—the Vanishing Cloak of Melekanthos was an effective barrier to scents and sounds, and even reflected light in such a way that there didn’t appear to be a void in the eye of the beholder. It was a comprehensive invisibility on every plane except the ethosphere.
It was also the only artifact of its kind. Melekanthos had been a wizard devoted to research and utterly obsessed with keeping his findings to himself. The cloak was his version of enforcing solitude from the nearby townspeople who had loved to come calling on him, but he’d neglected to add a failsafe into it for if the wearer went unconscious. He wore it out one evening on a solitary stroll and never returned home. His housekeeper had become frantic after a few days, but the local trackers lost his scent as soon as they left his home. Soon the town put out a notice for magical assistance in finding him.
Xerome, a young and untethered man at the time, had answered the notice. It had taken several days, but eventually he found Melekanthos not by tracking him physically or etherically, but by finding a trickle of ooze seemingly spilling out of nowhere. The cloak didn’t prevent scents from spilling out once they were detached from the wearer, and he was able to follow the effluvia back to its source—the broken body of Melekanthos, whom it seemed had taken a wrong step and fallen off the cliff he liked to walk the edges of. Xerome had guided trackers to the body, but kept the cloak as his fee.
Good thing, too, because otherwise this would be even harder, and riding a six-foot-tall bunny was hard enough.
“This is absurd!”
“It’s fun!” Hiram said, carefully tugging on Knight’s right ear to get him to change course a bit. It had taken a good deal of trial and error to figure out how to move the massive rabbit in the right direction. Knight was game for it, to his credit—most horses bucked wildly the first time you saddled them, but Knight had taken Hiram’s presence on his back in stride. His stride, unfortunately, was far from smooth, and Hiram’s ribs were making their presence known even through the painkillers he’d dosed himself with.
“It is not even in the same hemisphere as fun! This is a humiliating way to traverse the countryside, all loppity-lop and hippity-hop.”
“You’re quite the poet, you know.”
“Shut up, I’m talking here.”
“Right, of course.” He let Phlox get on with his complaints and checked the compass again to make sure they were going in the right direction. The sky was slowly beginning to lighten, and while Knight was faster than going it on foot, they weren’t making great time since they had to avoid the roads. Still, he thought they were getting close. There was a different feeling to this part of the forest, a smell in the air that was more than burbling stream and rotting wood. It was decay, pure and simple, and pervasive decay at that. The trees were less vigorous here, the undergrowth thinner and thornier. The few animals he’d heard were limited to birds, no other wildlife to be seen.
They’d already crossed the river that fed into Lollop, Knight swimming with surprising alacrity. The Tower of Gemmel passed close to that river, didn’t it? How many of the gut problems plaguing the townspeople were due to that mess? Hiram would find out tonight—well, more like today at the pace he was going.
It wasn’t so easy to embark on an adventure these days. Not just because of his shoulder, either; the days when Hiram had lived out of a single sack were long gone. And those days before had been supplemented with the sort of magical assistance that made the bumps easier to bear, whereas he’d been going without his magic for long enough to truly miss it by now.
Hiram didn’t just like magic because it made his life easier. For years, wizardry had been his blessing and his calling, his greatest passion in life. Hiram had dedicated himself to the study of magic in order to make change in the world, to discover new things, to better himself and those around him. He’d failed at times, spectacularly, but it had been a creative outlet for him like no other. To be without it, even with other pursuits at hand, was like trying to make the perfect cup of tea with only one hand. He could do it, but it was slow, and by the time he began drinking the tea had already started to cool. It was still good tea, it just…could be better. So much better.
Well. At least he’d have that handled soon enough.
“—and furthermore, I—oh, I think it’s just up ahead.”
“Excellent!” Hiram urged Knight through a tangle of bushes with a few leaps, and on the other side of the trees, not a hundred paces distant, was the base of the Tower of Gemmel. “Goodness,” Hiram said, staring up at the spire as it vanished into the midnight blue of the sky. “Look at that.”
“Ostentatious, like all dwarven construction.”
“This from a being who decorated his personal home with gilded mirrors on every wall.”
“Obsidian is a natural formation around an elemental of my stature!”
“Mm. And the gold backing on it?” Hiram asked as he carefully eased himself to the ground. The grass crunched under his feet, oddly dry for so close to the river. He bent down and ran his fingers over one of the stalks; thin and brittle.
“Gold is always in good taste.”
“Especially when it’s reflective, I suppose.” Still keeping one hand on Knight, Hiram looked around the clearing. He didn’t see anyone, although that wasn’t saying much given that it was still so dark out, but… “Do you think any imperial wizards have arrived yet?”
“If they have, they’re likely encamped on the eastern side.”
True. It was standing practice among the servants of the Vordurian Empire to sleep facing Galenish, with as few perturbations between themselves and the emperor as possible when they did their morning and evening salutes. It was an excessive display of loyalty, and one that Hiram had argued with Andy about time and again, unfortunately never to great effect. Hiram glanced at Knight, whose head was down, nosing at the grass disinterestedly. Knight would be more skittish if someone was close, he was sure of that.
“All right, then. We’ll have to chance it.” He looked Knight over and, after some consideration, decided to leave both the necklace of minor enchantment and the cloak on him. Making him small again would be dangerous in the woods, but if anyone caught sight of an absurdly large Lollop grand with Knight’s distinctive markings, Hiram would be in for more questions than a simple herbalist cared to answer. He would find his faithful steed again later.
“Thank you,” he murmured to Knight, stroking him just under the chin. “You’re a good friend.” Knight nudged him with his enormous, fuzzy nose, and Hiram chuckled before stepping back and, after a final breath to ensure everything was locked down, letting go.
Knight vanished from his sight. Not even the grass beneath his feet looked trampled. “Remarkable,” Hiram whispered, then turned to face the Tower of Gemmel.
All that was left was to get inside without alerting a wizard, then make it impossible for anyone else, including Avery, to follow suit.
There’s a puzzler. But the first step, at least, was obvious.
Hiram followed his nose.
Chapter Twenty, Part Two
Photo by Dylan Hunter
Sticks and Stones
Once upon a time, a great number of people died at the Tower of Gemmel.
It wasn’t a smell that told Hiram so. It wasn’t the presence of skeletons or armor, or the decay that spread across the ground beneath the tower like an infection. It wasn’t the stories he’d been told either, although he believed that they were largely true. No, the thing that told him better than anything else that this place was a tomb was the absence of aura around it.
Aura was a thing of near-inexplicability; you didn’t really notice it until you didn’t have access to it anymore. Every living thing had an aura, a connection to the greater world—through family, community, the ethosphere, or most often through a connection to the divine. Every person who worshipped a god, dark or light, took on a hint of that worship in their aura. It was the invisible hand of their god, a tendril of power, of life.
This place had no aura. Power…there was a sense of power, one built into the edifice itself, but it wasn’t connected to a deity. The spells were old and spiky and hardy, imbued in every stone of this place, but that was it. There was no living connection to the ethosphere; this place was as much a corpse as the bodies it held, just one with a bit of kick. And that kick seemed to be spreading.
Not the first task, Hiram reminded himself. The first thing he had to do was get inside the Tower. Once there, he could concern himself with ensuring that Avery didn’t hurt himself breaking in, that the imperial wizards who might be on the verge of arrival didn’t discover his new life in Lollop, and that he did his best to put a stop to the vile humors that were slipping from this place and poisoning the land and water around it.
And he ought to try and stay alive. That would be good too.
Hiram laid his hands on the base of the Tower of Gemmel. It felt…it certainly felt like blackstone; perpetually sharp and cold, every corner you encountered on it close to cutting through skin. Blackstone was the material of preference for many dwarves when it came to armor, even moreso when it came to armaments. It was incredibly tough, but when it shattered, it did so like a tree whose heart had frozen—explosively.
But this wasn’t truly blackstone. Hiram could sense that as well. Hell, he could see it in the faint dawn light—there were literal whorls in the surface of the stone, remnants of the blocks of wood that had been transfigured.
Transfiguration was a challenging school of magic, one better suited to loftier minds than Hiram’s. He’d always excelled as a battle wizard, mastering spells from every specialty that had the dynamism that appealed to him, but transfiguration…he could do it, but it wasn’t easy, and this tower was the result of a master’s work. He didn’t have time to unravel the spells holding even a single block of this together.
But another wizard had managed to get a strike team in here, and Avery himself had found a way inside. Hiram was once the greatest wizard in the Vordurian Empire—he knew he could finagle an entrance to this place. He just had to do it fast.
Fast usually meant inelegant, and Hiram could get away with being a battering ram right now if he needed to, but then the last of the element of surprise would be gone. Luckily, he had some singularly elegant help at hand. “Phlox,” he murmured, “do you remember the touch of blackstone?”
“Yesss,” Phlox hissed. “It resists my heat. Even at the height of my powers, blackstone refused to crack for me. I cannot help you here, Xerome.”
“Hiram,” he corrected. “And I think you can. Blackstone can only be shaped by itself, but these blocks were shaped by magic from something else. They still carry the malleable nature of their origin inside of them.” He brushed his fingertips over a knot, able to trace exactly where a branch had once grown from the side of it. Then he reached up to his ear and took out his earring, the phylactery that carried his greatest foe and ally. “I want you to reach deep inside of yourself and bring forth your power. Let it burrow through this stone the same way you connected to the heart of the earth through the fissures in your mountains. There’s a path through here, I know it.”
Phlox flickered with alarm. “Even if I can find a path, I don’t know that I have the power to enlarge it enough for you.”
“I can probably spare the power for that.” The Tower already reeked of his magic; if he carried his own spell on the back of Phlox’s inborn power, he ought to be fairly safe.
“But…you won’t be able to take me with you in there. What if something happens to you?”
Oh, Phlox. Hiram smiled. “Are you worried for me, old friend?”
“I’m perpetually worried that you’re going to get yourself killed, old fool,” Phlox groused. “And then where would I be?”
Hiram shook his head. “I have no intention of getting into trouble—”
“You never do—”
“Or leaving you here—”
“You better not!”
“But you know that there’s a plan in place if you and I are separated,” Hiram finished up. “You won’t be left alone, I swear it.”
Phlox pulsed. “We’ve never tested that plan before.”
“But it’s a good one, you have to admit.” He cupped the sparkling stone in both hands. “Just try. Please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, and I wouldn’t risk you either way.”
Phlox sighed. “They should have called you Silvertongue. Fine. But good luck finding a purchase for me in blackstone.”
Hiram smiled. “I already have, my dear.” He bent the golden post every so slightly and then slotted the earring into place at the tip of the knot. It nestled into place like it had been made for such a purchase. Then Hiram took a step back. “Give it a try.”
Phlox pulsed again, then went dark as he sent his power from the phylactery into the block. Hiram watched and waited, one hand slowly tightening its grip on the pouch at his waist as the sun rose higher, illuminating the grounds in a worrying way. He was still in the deep shadow of the Tower, but it wasn’t going to suffice for long. He would either have to move back into the trees and wait for some sort of sign from the elemental, or he’d have to—
A sparkling seam appeared in the block in front of him, faint glimmering within the blackstone becoming a line of tamed fire. It spread down from the knot, black going gray, and the scent of burning wood rose up from it. Soon the flame diminished, the smell died down, and Hiram reached out and placed his hand on the surface of the stone.
It crumbled to ash at the lightest touch.
“Oh, well done,” Hiram murmured. “Very well done. See if you can’t spread it to a few more seams while I’m inside, my friend.” He stepped forward, then added, “But not so many that you bring the Tower down on top of us, if you please.”
Phlox glowed annoyingly bright for a moment, then faded again. Hiram pushed his hands into the ash, which tumbled to the ground, and stepped into the space it left behind. Another step, and another, and before a minute was out he was squeezing through the much smaller hole on the far side of the Tower wall and into…
Hiram pulled a match from the pouch at his hip and struck it against the wall. The little light flared, and as it settled, the glow seemed to spread across the floor ahead of him like a contagion.
Oh.
Well, damn.
This many diamonds was never a good thing.