Notes: Let's have some just desserts, shall we?
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Ch: 17 Pt. 2
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Chapter Seventeen, Part Two
Spill the Cup
There were so many things to think about, Hiram scarcely knew where to start as he hooked up Mule and began to head for home. He’d said his goodbyes, joyous and tender and slightly fearful on Letty’s part, and promised he’d be there the next morning to see her off with the Thread. He’d made sure to let Tilda know to come to him if she needed help caring for Celiane and her children, then slipped out of the still-bustling crowd and onto the darkened road with Knight sitting calmly at the front of the wagon with him.
He took a breath and closed his eyes, doing his best to think of nothing at all for a moment. Inevitably, his mind would sort the problems from most into least dire, and he could tackle them accordingly. Soon enough, now that his hopes for Letty had come to pass, the next great barrier presented itself: Avery’s connection with and binding to the bard, Robb—or Marlon, whatever his name was.
The thought of him trying to penetrate the dark morass that was Gemmel’s Tower gave Hiram chills. It was more than unsafe, more than reckless—such a thing was suicidal. Hiram had never tried to penetrate Gemmel’s Tower himself, but he’d come up against plenty of wizard holes in his day. Some of it had been purposeful, a piece of adventuring that he was uniquely suited to, and some of it had been because there was no other option. Never, in any of those instances, had he walked away from the experience unscathed. Such reservoirs of power, imbued through will and blood and death, took a piece out of you no matter how strong you were.
Hiram huffed as he remembered the first time he’d come up against a wizard hole, back when he was first adventuring on his own. He’d been so full of himself, young and strong and determined to investigate tales of the Wizard of the Wood in eastern Dortheon. Supposedly the man had been able to make the trees talk, the birds share their secrets, and the flowers themselves dance when he walked by.
It had sounded quaint, idyllic, and if the man was gone then it was worthwhile investigating what he’d left behind—Hiram had never been much of an earth-oriented practitioner. He’d found the wizard’s home, an enormous tangle of a treehouse in the middle of a glen, disarmed the obvious traps with aplomb, and headed inside.
That was when the man’s death-curse found him. Hiram had ended up fighting for his life against the roots of the tree house, which had done their damndest to clamp onto him and drag him down into the depths of the wet, worm-dark earth with them. He’d ended up having to set the whole thing on fire to escape, which once he was clear-headed enough to think about it had been an awful outcome. All that knowledge, all that potency, destroyed just because he’d been careless instead of cautious.
And Avery had lived through Gemmel’s Tower twice. How had it hurt him? What was he carrying, even now, that left him in lingering pain and made him wary of letting others in? And what would the Tower do to him if he dared to try it a third time? Often such magics were cumulative, after all; a slap on the wrist with the first infraction, and knock to the head the second, a knife to the heart the third.
Not for Avery. There had to be something Hiram could do for him, a way to break the geis, a way to hide him from Marlon’s sight until the chance was past. Hiram couldn’t do magic himself right now, but he had a veritable repository of magical items tucked away in his private rooms. He hadn’t looked through them for a long time, preferring to leave as much of his past as out of sight as possible, but he’d brought the spoils of a lifetime along with him. Hmm, what did he have in his bags that might help? Hiram racked his memory as he arrived at home and began to put Mule away.
The Vanishing Cloak of Melekanthos… Ah, but that one was purely physical and wouldn’t stop music from reaching Avery’s ears. If he heard Marlon’s music, he could still be compelled by it, especially in light of the geis.
The Glittering Glass of Heliador… That was a full-on aura blocker; nothing that traveled the ethosphere was getting through that sucker. A start, but still not in and of itself sufficient. Perhaps if he combined it with the Cloak—no. No, that was too dangerous without prior testing. The last thing he needed was to combine two reagents and end up making an explosion with Avery in the middle. No.
Hiram idly patted Mule’s nose as he refilled her food bucket, adding a dollop of a sticky mixture that the local harness maker had assured him would do her joints good. He checked her water—plentiful—and patted her one last time before taking Knight’s makeshift leash and heading for the back of the house. He could go in the front, but the last thing he’d seen on his porch was the faces of the Devane children, all grouped together with his former assistant, and he wasn’t ready to replace that image in his mind yet.
A Wayfarer’s charm, perhaps…or one of the Reflectors to confuse the geis… Hiram ambled up the stairs and opened the unlocked door, stepping into the darkened interior of his home. He made it two steps before he realized that something was wrong.
The sound of his entrance was different, not breaking an emptiness but stepping into a silently occupied space. And the smell…sweat and salt and the stench of sour beer…
Hiram barely had time to drop Knight’s leash before a fist like a blacksmith’s hammer struck the center of his chest. He staggered back, arms raising protectively, but he couldn’t avoid the heavy kick to his side that sent him falling—straight into the side of Mistress Shore’s heavy, ancient iron stove. His head struck the corner, and then all Hiram could see was light flickering across his vision as he gasped in pain.
“You think you can fuck with my family, you piece of filth?”
Oh damn. Granth. He wasn’t still locked in an oblivious, drunken stupor at home or making a nuisance of himself in town. He’d come straight to the architect of his problems, in his mind—Hiram himself.
“Give my oldest girl delusions of grandeur, eh?” He leaned over and hit Hiram hard in the face, twice, three times. Hiram felt the fragile skin over his cheek split, and he readied himself to blast this bastard through the ceiling—
Then stopped. No magic. I can’t touch him with magic. He tried to use his own fists instead, striking at the man above him, but Granth was longer and stronger than Hiram, and avoided his blows with ease.
“I will stop him!”
“No,” Hiram croaked. Phlox’s magic was just as trackable as his, he couldn’t—
“Oh, you don’t think it’s your fault Letty’s gone from heeding my words to being as much of a bitch as her mam used to be?” Granth dragged Hiram up by the front of his tunic and threw him further into the living room. There was a bit of light in here through the windows, enough that when Hiram turned he could make out the man’s hulking form. One of his hands was empty, but the other held a long piece of iron—a poker, perhaps.
This was meant to be more than a beating. He would kill Hiram if he could.
Better me than the children. But neither would be best.
“Hiram…”
“No,” Hiram said again. It hadn’t gotten that far yet. He could still figure a way out of this without using his magic.
“You can’t run from me now, old man,” Granth sneered. “Caught you out like a fish in a barrel, I did.” He slapped the length of the poker down against his palm. “And I’ll gut you like one, too.”
“You’ll be found and tried,” Hiram said, casting about for a weapon even as his mind worked desperately for another way out of this. “They’ll hang you in the town square if you murder me in cold blood.”
“You’re nothin’ but an outsider,” Granth said, spitting to the side. “You think Uriel cares about outsiders? You think the priests do? They’ll call it a random attack an’ leave it alone as long as I don’t leave evidence behind, same as always.”
Same as always…was Hiram not the first person Granth had done this to? Was he more than a slovenly rabbit breeder and patriarchal tyrant?
Hiram didn’t have time for more thinking, not with the poker coming his way. He ducked, and it hit the wall hard enough to leave a gouge in the wood.
Come on, solve this! Before Phlox solves it for you and puts an end to your time in Lollop! He couldn’t use new magic, he hadn’t had time to go through his things but if he could make it up the stairs perhaps he could—
The stairs. The stairs, the charm! Hiram twisted past Granth and ran for the stairs.
He caught the very tip of the next swing across his upper back, and Hiram gasped as his shoulder blade made a hideous cracking sound that reverberated through his upper body. Breathing became difficult as the pain made itself known, and he fell onto the first few steps with a gasp.
“Hiram!”
“No,” he ground out, pressing onto his knees with his good hand. Behind him, Granth chuckled.
“Oh, yes.” Hiram heard the swoop of the poker swinging through the air from side to side. “I’ll beat your damn head in, old man, and the last thing you feel will be me ripping your fingers from your hands. I’ll joint you like a plucked chicken.”
Somehow, Hiram got his feet under him in time to start up the stairs again. Granth could have stopped him, could have reached out and grabbed his ankle and tugged him back into range with ease, but he let Hiram scramble, still laughing low and dark.
Just a little further…a little further… Hiram finally crossed the threshold of his bedroom at the top of the stairs and turned, breathless, to watch Granth follow him up. His head spun with pain, agony radiating from the broken scapula, and for a moment as his pursuer stepped up in front of him Hiram wondered if the charm had failed.
He was going to have to strike, and ruin everything.
Granth’s mouth twisted in a smile, and he took a step forward.
Then he vanished, poker and all.
Hiram exhaled a relieved breath that turned into a moan of pain. The pain spread like a fire across his tormented muscles, and his intention to make a new plan came to nothing as the pain in his back joined that in his head and finally, inexorably, overwhelmed him. He collapsed onto the floor, unconscious, as the power in the translocation charm sputtered and ran out.
Phlox pulsed with indecision and worry, but didn’t act.
Hiram was still alive. As long as he lived and could recover, Phlox wouldn’t take the step of ending things here for him. But if Granth returned…
Phlox would protect his master with Granth’s life.
***
Granth barely kept his feet as he stared around at the…trees? What the fuck?
He turned, gripping his weapon tighter as he spun in a slow circle. He was…he was in the road. In the light of the moon, he could just barely make out the point of that bastard’s house in the distance. What in the…how had he…
He growled in annoyance. So that filth had hired someone to give him a few little tricks. No matter. If he couldn’t afford a spell that was strong enough to kill, he deserved what was coming to him.
For so many reasons. Granth was going to enjoy this.
He started back toward the house, swinging the poker and muttering about the ways he was going to take Emblic apart under his breath. The front door was less than fifty feet away when a sudden wash of hot air poured over Granth’s body, startling him so badly he stopped mid-step.
“What the hells?” he grunted, spinning once more. It was nighttime in early autumn; there was no good reason for heat like that to strike with no reason. “Who’s there?” he demanded, raising the poker. “Come out and face me, you worthless trash!”
A pair of glowing green eyes appeared in the darkness at the edge of the woods. Out stepped a dainty little cat-like figure with a human face, and Granth shook his head at the incongruous sight. “What kind of crazy little thing are you, then?”
“I sit with eyes of stone in the morning and eyes as clear as the moon at night,” the creature said. “I run with children in the woods and stalk the prey of my master. I am she who guards the forward path and steps unseen in the mist. I. Am. Death.”
Granth laughed. “Here to take a bite of him too, puss?” he asked.
“Mm, not him,” the sphinx replied. “I am here to fulfill a vow. Several, in fact.”
What the— That was all Granth had time to think when the creature leapt forward, somehow crossing twenty feet in a single bound and growing at the same time, growing large enough that he could see its claws glisten like silver in the moonlight. An atavistic fear gripped him, and he got out the very first note of a scream.
A second later, the poker hit the ground. If the metal had been sentient, it might have winced at the sounds of chomping and chewing, but it was just a poker. It didn’t know what had just happened.
Neither would anyone else, Esme decided once she was done. She burped delicately, sniffed to ensure there was no scent of death that didn’t belong to her dinner, then turned and made her way back into the forest, purring with satisfaction.
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