Special Smashwords Edition
A Tool Most Dangerous
A Seven Signs Short Story
Volume 1
By
D.W. Hawkins
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Tool Most Dangerous
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Copyright © 2012 Daniel Wesley Hawkins. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Cover Art Design: Jason Peek
Cover Art: Jason Peek
Copyright © 2012 Daniel Wesley Hawkins
Visit the author website: http://www.dwhawkins.com
Published at http://www.smashwords.com
A note about these short stories, and The Seven Signs
I decided to write this series of short stories chronicling the lives of some of the characters from The Seven Signs, and what happened to them before the events of the story itself. I wanted to give you, the readers, a little extra content and insight into what was happening to people before they all got together in The Sentient Fire. This will be a free series of prequels, if you will, and they won’t be very long, but hey; free is free, right? I’ll be posting these on Wattpad, my blog, my website, and I’ll be uploading them to Smashwords to release them as free “eBooks”. I’ll be writing them infrequently, because my main focus is on releasing The Awakening Storm, which is book two of The Seven Signs. So read, enjoy, and I hope these stories paint a larger picture for those who have read The Sentient Fire, and for those of you who haven’t, I hope you head over to your favorite retailer and pick it up. So, without any further ado, enjoy this first in a series of free short stories from me, D.W. Hawkins.
A Tool Most Dangerous
The Keep was a marvel of Thardish construction. Its stone was so dark in color that it was almost black, and the huge bricks fit together so tightly that one could only see the actual cracks in them if one tried very hard to search them out. The Keep sat like an angry giant perched on the side of a sheer cliff that overlooked a bay, the waters of the Sea of the Beast beating a steady rhythm on the rocks below. It was built, of course, on the highest point of the surrounding countryside, which overlooked the city of Thardin on the north side of the cliff, which was opposite the bay.
When one stood in the city and gazed to the south, the Keep loomed over him and dominated the skyline like a titan from the old Thardish myths, squatting on the edge of the cliff. The locals referred to the cliff itself as “Harridan’s Fall”, named for an ancient Thardish King who, rather than face imprisonment and execution at the hands of his rebellious vassals, threw himself from the cliff and into the deadly waters below. The local legends stated that on the anniversary of Harridan’s death, one could commune with his spirit if he had revenge in his heart.
D’Jenn thought that stories like that spoke a lot about the Thardish people and their cultural attitudes. They were a hardy bunch; fierce and dark-haired, and their warriors were renowned all over the world for being some of the most brutal men alive. Their women were as fierce as the men, and beautiful to boot. If it weren’t for the history between the Sevenlands and Thardin, D’Jenn thought that he may come here more often, if only for the women. Thardish attitudes toward his people, the Sevenlanders, leaned more toward “obsessively violent”.
The city itself was built on some of the hilliest ground that D’Jenn had ever seen a city built upon. The avenues and streets of Thardin wound up and down, through dips and rises in the terrain, and often D’Jenn found himself looking down at the roofs of buildings on his right, while gazing up at a brick wall that shored up the ground to his left, where more buildings sat on the other side. It was dizzying at times, but it gave the city an air of mystery that other places didn’t have. D’Jenn thought that he might round a corner and discover some new tunnel or drop, and he found that he rather liked the look of Thardin, even if he did have to come here in disguise.
Sevenlanders were rare here, and he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion, or expose himself to any unnecessary danger. His mission was important, and the Mekai – the leader of the Wizards of the Conclave, his leader - had stressed stealth above all else. No one could suspect that a Warlock from the Conclave of Wizards was in the city, especially with what he was charged to do. It could start another war between the Sevenlands and Thardin, and knowing the Thardish, it would.
So D’Jenn had stowed his own vestments somewhere outside the city, buying some clothes that a common Thardish workman might wear, and donned those. He’d wrapped himself in a ratty old cloak, keeping his Kai – the place inside of him where his magic slept – firmly quiet so as not to alert any Blessed that may be in the city, or any members of the Cult of Aeglar. He highly doubted there would be any of the former, those born with the inherent connection to magic, in the city; given the prejudices of the Thardish, though, he thought that the latter was definitely a possibility. The Cult of Aeglar believed that their God had charged them with the holy task of ridding the world of magic completely. That sort of belief system had no place for D’Jenn, and he didn’t feel much like being abducted and executed, so he kept to a low profile.
So D’Jenn strolled idly over the gray cobblestone streets, trying to project the image of a poor workman walking home after a long day. He didn’t let his eyes linger too long on the beautiful, dark-haired and bosom women that strode by him. He was just another passerby, another faceless person drifting down wide, packed avenues between square buildings made of grey bricks, lightly stained timber, and even white plaster, in some places. He strode through the city streets, getting a feel for the population and gazing constantly toward his goal for the night – the Thardish Keep.
A prominent Lesmiran Infuser, a type of wizard who makes magical items, at the School of Magic Arts had contacted the Mekai with a problem. Apparently, one of the Thardish Princes, Mygan, had commissioned an item to be made in secret by the Infuser, and though the Infuser was ambiguous about the job, the Prince’s sum of gold swayed him. So, unbeknownst to the Archmages at the Magic School and the Thardish King, the Infuser had constructed the item and given it to Mygan. It was a small charm, apparently, that would dazzle the mind and allow the Prince to plant suggestions into the thoughts of others. He’d apparently told the Infuser that he wanted to use it to bed women, and excited about the gold and the challenge to his own skills, the Infuser had taken the job. It was the first item of its kind, at least as far as D’Jenn knew.
The Infuser had realized his mistake by the next season.
The item was an abomination. It basically gave the Prince the power to influence events in any way he saw fit, and rumors had started to come out of Thardin. First, there was word that Vardic, the Thardish King, had decided to appoint Mygan, his second son, to be his heir. There was a small outcry about it, and apparently Mygan’s older brother had objected and threatened a civil war if the King went through with this rash action. Then, suddenly, Mygan’s brother was backing his claim to the throne, all talk of civil war gone as if it had never happened.
Mygan now presided over court more often than his father, and the rumor was that he was a cold, unfeeling bastard who only cared for women, ale, and gold. He’d executed a number of commoners for small offenses, apparently taken the daughters of some common men who’d come to him with grievances as payment, and placed them into his quickly growing harem of personal playthings. The city was practically rumbling with resentment to these actions, but the King was silent. Every time someone went to the Keep for answers or with their own grievances, they left in a dazed state without knowing exactly what had transpired during their audience with the Prince. Mygan had the power to throw the entire eastern continent of Alderak into turmoil, all thanks to one reckless Infuser.
The School of Magical Arts, which was located in Lesmira – only a few leagues to the west of where D’Jenn stood now – was considered by many to be an offshoot of the Conclave of Wizards in Ishamael, where D’Jenn hailed from. It wasn’t entirely true; the Conclave was certainly older, and they had helped to build the Lesmiran Magic School, but the Lesmirans were in no way subject to the Conclave. Many of the wizards back in Ishamael considered the Lesmirans to be something like little brothers and sisters to them, right down to the protective instinct. When the Infuser had contacted the Mekai with the problem, the Mekai had answered by summoning D’Jenn. The Conclave abhorred magic used in the manner that Mygan was using it, and so here he was – across the sea, alone, and in hostile territory.
These types of jobs were his specialty. Stealth and cunning was one of the things that D’Jenn’s fellow Warlocks knew him for. He prided himself on it.
The dusk was in full swing as D’Jenn made his way up the winding streets of Thardin, headed for Harridan’s Fall. Men and women in the streets pushed past him without ever really seeing him, an effect of the illusion he’d cast on himself, a slight suggestion to look elsewhere, and so he made it to the cliff without much trouble. The setting sun blazed on the walls of the Keep, casting them in strange hues of orange and purple, and D’Jenn walked through pools of shadow as made his way up the slope toward Harridan’s Fall.
He chose his spot carefully. The cliffs in Thardin made the waters in the bay too treacherous to build any real port, so the only people gathered about the cliff’s edge were sight-seers and idle passersby. The Keep’s walls butted right up to the edge, so there was no walkway between the walls of the Keep and the edge of the cliff, just craggy rock that supported the outside wall.
He’d have to be careful. D’Jenn craned his neck upwards and gazed at the sheer walls of the Keep. They were towering constructions of nearly black stone, and as far as D’Jenn could tell from where he stood, there were no handholds he could use to climb the thing. Guard towers stood at the corners of the outer wall; massive, square things that added to the Keep’s grim appearance. If it weren’t for the flags hanging from them, bearing the Thardish standard – a white sword on a clean, ice-blue field – the thing would have been completely devoid of color. He suspected that the flags, massive things themselves, were weighted at the bottom to keep them from whipping violently in the wind that regularly buffeted the heights of the cliff. Perhaps he could use that.
It was nearing the Summer Solstice, and though Thardin was a land that lay in almost perpetual winter, the evening was only slightly cool as night fell. D’Jenn pulled some food he’d bought at a local vendor out of a small pack he was carrying for the purpose of this mission, and ate thoughtfully. He hadn’t exactly planned out what he was going to do, and upon seeing the Keep, it had become apparent that he wouldn’t be able to just sneak in and steal the thing – not in any of the conventional ways, anyway.
He’d thought of disguising himself as some sort of foreign dignitary, but he wouldn’t pass for any other nationality than a Sevenlander. The Thardish were mostly dark of hair and light-skinned, and D’Jenn’s long tawny hair and gingered goatee would stand out like the sun at midnight. There was no way that he could use an illusion to alter his appearance drastically enough, and for long enough, to use magic to get the job done. It was simply too mentally fatiguing. The Thardish would see right through his disguise before the mission was complete.
Deception was out of the question – he’d have to rely on simple concealment.
As the night came on in full, and darkness swept the cliffs in a blanket of shadows and starlight, D’Jenn rose from his seat near the rocky edge of Harridan’s Fall. The cliff was deserted now, except for him. The only sounds he could hear in the shadow of the Keep’s walls were the waves smashing against the rocks below, and the wind howling across the hills. He could smell the salt water, and the dry stink of smoke coming from the inhabitants of Thardin, down in the city. The night was as quiet as it was going to get.
It was time.
He pushed his concerns away, and with a long-practiced ease, reached down to his Kai. His magic flooded into him, bringing the sights, smells, and sounds of the night to his senses more than twice as strongly as they had been before. He could feel the timeless energy moving through everything around him, through him, and back out into the world. He gazed out over the sea, and felt the timeless power of the ocean undulating in a slow dance with forces that he would never understand, and the sensation made his head swim with excitement.
He gazed up at the Keep, a dark silhouette against the moonlit sky, and could feel the ancient stone thrumming in time with the earth beneath it, and his body began to reverberate with the tone. The magic flowed around him like invisible silk, singing to him, crooning with a desire to be used. Then, for just a moment, everything around him was completely silent.
D’Jenn tightened the straps on the pack he’d acquired. He checked to make sure that the long, thin dagger he carried – the only weapon he’d brought into the city – was tight in its sheath. He took a deep breath.
The world seemed to slam back into motion as D’Jenn moved. He pushed off with his right foot and flew into a full sprint, running directly for one of the rocky outcroppings beneath the wall of the Keep. He made it up the rocky slope in three quick strides, and whipped his Kai into action. The magic coalesced beneath his hands and feet, altering the fabric of the world, and as his palms touched the smooth, black stone, they stuck there as if it was natural. His feet supported his weight, toes digging against the wall, and as D’Jenn got a feel for the spell, he began to climb.
Wind buffeted him as he pulled himself steadily upwards. Even with the magic, the climb wasn’t as easy as crawling over the floor. He could feel the drop beneath him, beckoning to him every tense second. His shoulders began to burn with the effort, and sweat beaded on his forehead. His legs began to shake, and he grew dizzy. For a moment, he pulled his body as close to the cold stone as possible, breathing hard and closing his eyes against the fatigue. It helped, a little, but before long D’Jenn knew that he’d have to keep going, or risk tiring himself to the point of falling. There was nowhere to go but up.
After what seemed like an eternity, he heard voices nearby, and upon glancing upwards, realized that he was near the top edge of the outer wall. Boots clumped on the stones of the walkway atop the wall, and D’Jenn could hear two men conversing as they tromped nearer to his position. He was only two hands’ distance from the top, and he feared that if he moved lower, the guards might hear him scuffling against the stone. He froze, heart beating loudly into his chest, the sweat running down his face and into his goatee, itching him to irritation. It was always that way on these types of missions. The worst thing wasn’t the guards, the tension, the heart-bursting excitement…it was the itches, the struggle to stay quiet when all he wanted to do was let out an explosive breath, or the need to piss at the most inopportune times.
D’Jenn pulled his body close to the stone again, as if he were lying against it, and struggled against the urge to scratch his face.
“…and I’m telling you she did, Murlon!” boasted one voice.
“You’re a Gods-damned liar,” answered the other.
“I saw her myself. Sneaking into the pantry with his brother, bold as you please! I swear it by Eindor, or he can mark me as a liar.”
“You’re worse than Nalia’s maidservants, always gossiping about as if you were a common scullery maid. You’re a damned Sworn Man of Thardin, Hurid! You should act like it.”
“I’m about to act like I didn’t hear that last bit…”
The voices trailed off to D’Jenn’s left, the boots thumping along rhythmically. D’Jenn let out a slow, quiet breath, and counted slowly to thirty. Only after the count was up did he move.
He pulled himself over the side of the battlements slowly, glancing in both directions to ensure that he was alone before sliding silently onto the walkway into a low crouch. The moon shone down on the guard’s path, illuminating the stones in soft, silver tones. The pathway ran to those square guard towers on both sides, but D’Jenn was closer to the tower on his right, and if Hurid and Murlon’s passage was any indication, that way would be clear for the next few moments. He checked over his shoulder and saw that the two Sworn Men were moving along in the same direction, oblivious to his presence. One of them, Hurid, he guessed, was gesturing wildly at the other. D’Jenn smiled to himself, and moved quickly down the path in the opposite direction.
The inner compound that made up the Keep was slightly taller than the walls themselves. D’Jenn supposed that slightly was a relative term, when one was speaking about defensive walls that rose hundreds of links into the air. The inner Keep was around a hundred links taller, which was still a considerable height all on its own. Its walls appeared to be just as smooth and sheer as the outer defensive wall, and it rose like a blocky sentinel against the pale light of the stars and moon.
Nearer the ground, the Keep had a mass of squared, stone buildings attached to it, giving it the appearance of a humongous pile of bricks. He glanced over the inner edge of the wall, and took in as much as he could in a few spare seconds. He saw what appeared to be a main hall, with kitchens just to side of it. Smoke rose slowly into the night from a few chimneys built into the squat construction, and D’Jenn could smell a faint aroma of roasting meat on the air.
He could hear faint shouts and singing, and what passed for music in this dour place. It appeared that the King was hosting a banquet of some sort – that could be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on how D’Jenn made it inside the compound. There would be more eyes about, more guards, but chances were that most of the King’s closest retainers would be drunk and sleepy.
On the other hand, the Sworn Men, the elite fighting men of Thardin, may be more alert.
D’Jenn glanced to his right, where there appeared to be a bridge that spanned the space between the outer wall and the inner Keep, in the center of the next side of the wall. That was odd; D’Jenn would have thought that from a defensive perspective, building such a bridge would be a mistake. Any attacking force that gained the walls would have access to the inner Keep, for the simple price of crossing the bridge.
He didn’t let the bridge get his hopes up, however. He still had to make it down the rest of the walkway he was on, past the guard tower to his right, and then even further down the next section of wall to reach it. He’d tried to find building plans for the Keep, and had come up empty handed. The rumor was that after the Keep had been constructed, hundreds of years ago, the Thardish King had executed the workmen who had built it, and burned all the plans. The Thardish guarded the Keep’s secrets closely; apparently the penalty for any Thardish man or woman who revealed anything about its design to an outlander was death. It had galled D’Jenn that he’d had to come here virtually unprepared, with no advance knowledge about the Keep and how he would get into it, but in this case there was no getting around it.
He’d just have to rely on his cunning, and his magic. D’Jenn began moving, as quickly and silently as he could, toward the bridge. The crenellations in the wall were higher than others he’d seen – just taller than an average man, and sloped outward as well, to make it that much harder to scale. The parapets on the inner side of the wall, however, were just low enough for D’Jenn to crouch beneath them. He hated moving in that manner, but even in the shadow of the inner Keep, all it would take was one pair of eyes alighting upon him and wondering what he was doing.
There was a torch burning at the landing of the next guard tower, casting flickering orange light over the stones. The wind whipped dangerously at the flame, and D’Jenn wondered how the thing stayed lit in the high winds of the eastern coast of Alderak. Light was a barrier to him as sure as a stone wall in the dark, though, so D’Jenn reached out toward the flame with his Kai, and leached the energy slowly from it. The torch flickered for a moment, and then went out, plunging the walkway once again into silver moonlight.
D’Jenn moved as quickly as he dared, rushing toward the landing and past it, turning the corner onto the walkway atop the next section of wall. There was most likely another pair of roving guards who be coming this way soon, and he had to get onto that walkway before they turned up to relight the torch. Sure enough, as he rounded the corner and stepped out onto the wall, he saw the shadowy forms of two large men striding in his direction with confident, measured steps. Moonlight glinted off of chain hauberks and conical steel helms.
D’Jenn had only seconds.
He wrapped his magic around himself, willing the shadows of the night to come along with it, and flattened his body against the outside parapet, concentrating hard on pulling the illusion of the stone over his body. He held his breath and listened as the boots rapped on the stone as the men came closer to him; this pair was silent.
His beard itched again, and D’Jenn wrinkled the muscles in his face around, trying in vain to convince the itch to go away. It ignored him.
One of the guards passed only a hair’s distance from D’Jenn as they made for the torch. He sent a silent prayer to Eindor, the God of magic, that they would not see him, or notice anything out of the ordinary. The wind whipped over the battlements and whistled through the crenellations, causing the workman’s garments that D’Jenn wore to flap about in the air for a moment. Every muscle in D’Jenn’s body tensed, apprehension rising in his stomach like icy fingers gripping his insides.
The guard passed in front of him.
For a fraction of a moment, D’Jenn thought that everything would be alright. He watched the entire scene play out as if it were in slow motion. The guard’s hand swung in mid-stride, fingers loose, arm rising out to counteract the step he was taking with his opposite foot. The nondescript, dark tunic that D’Jenn was wearing whipped out with the wind, closing the distance with a dreadful finality that tightened the muscles in D’Jenn’s abdomen. The moment stretched on.
The guard’s hand brushed the hem of D’Jenn’s tunic, and the man jerked his hand back and stumbled into his friend in confusion.
D’Jenn wasted no time. His hand tightened around the dagger at his belt, whipping it from its sheath as he exploded into motion. The farthest guard cursed as his companion stumbled into him, and the two of them shifted their feet around for a moment, trying to get their balance. The nearest one, the one who’d felt the hem of D’Jenn’s tunic, screwed his face up in confusion for a moment, glancing down at his hand.
His eyes fell on D’Jenn a spare moment too late.
The dagger gave a slight tug against D’Jenn’s hand as it slashed into the guard’s throat. He hadn’t had time to utter a cry, so the only noise that came from him was a gurgling exclamation. He clutched his hand to his throat and fell into his friend, blood pouring over the back of his palm, eyes wild in the moonlight. D’Jenn knew he had little time and even less chance of getting into the Keep if someone heard this altercation, so he lashed out with his Kai, enveloping the two guards in the grasp of his magic.
They rose from the surface of the walkway, frozen in place, unable to cry out or raise any sort of resistance. He could feel them for a fraction of a moment, struggling against his magic, against the implacable force that held them motionless above the stones. The sensation registered on his senses like discordant tones ringing out in his Kai, as if someone were hitting dissonant notes on a bittern or dulcimer. He held them for just long enough to feel it.
With a gesture like a king dismissing a servant, he tossed them over the battlements, into the cold and unfeeling dark below the walls of the Keep. They made no sound as they fell, and the sight of them hurtling over the wall, motionless and silent, was so strange that D’Jenn almost poked his head over the side to check and make sure that they had actually fallen. He knew, though, that no such gesture was required. He felt it through his magic when they died, like twin candle flames were being snuffed out. D’Jenn shook his head, and surveyed the scene.
Surprisingly, little blood had spilled onto the stones. He almost left it there, on the off chance that the next pair of Sworn Men wouldn’t notice the stains upon the dark stone, in the shadow of the Keep. D’Jenn hated carelessness, though, and the act struck him as such. So he brushed his magic over the stones, willing the blood to seep deeply into the porous surface. It obliged him, until the bloodstains looked like faded blotches upon the battlements. Turning, D’Jenn continued toward the bridge.
He made it to the bridge with no trouble, though his apprehension rose with every careful step. The next pair of guards would be along at any moment, and he had to think fast. Coming to a crouch behind one of the parapets that faced the Keep, he poked his head out to take a quick look at what he was dealing with.
The bridge was uncovered, and both sides of the narrow walkway were lined with the same low parapets that he was currently leaning against. The door looked thick and menacing from here; some sort of thick, strong wood shod in steel bands to reinforce it. It was recessed into the Keep itself, and there would no doubt be murder holes above the entrance so that Keep defenders could drop all sorts of nasty surprises down on the heads of would-be attackers. Two said defenders stood passively on each side of the entrance, conversing and resting their hands on long pikes that were mounted with thick steel spear heads. A large, tower-style shield rested against the Keep behind each one of them.
D’Jenn pulled his head hurriedly behind the parapet once again and though furiously. He didn’t have many options, and he had even less time. He needed to come up with something quickly – every precious second that passed him by increased his chances of failure. He needed a distraction so that he could get past the guards, but there was absolutely no way he could think of that would let him slip past the two of them, open the doors, and get into the Keep.
On that thought, slipping through the doors of the Keep would be a fool’s errand in the first place. He would be discovered shortly, gutted, and hung by his entrails – a fate that D’Jenn didn’t plan on experiencing at any point in his life. He needed to change his strategy.
Glancing upwards, toward the top of the Keep, he groaned inwardly and realized that he’d once again have to scale the outside of the castle. The upper reaches of the Keep would be mostly uninhabited, and rubbing shoulders with anyone would lead to his discovery. He didn’t relish the thought of another climb, but with so little time to make a decision he didn’t have any other choice.
That still left him with the problem of getting past the guards, though. The bridge was still his only path to the Keep, and he still had to cross it somehow. He still needed a distraction, and something that wouldn’t cause too much commotion or too many comments from the guards who may be looking on. If he simply put them to sleep or killed them, it would be noticed shortly. If he did something too obviously magical, then it would be discovered later that he had been here. Part of his mission was avoiding any political fallout.
D’Jenn cursed under his breath, readying his mind to craft yet another illusion. There were two ways to go about creating illusions. The first was to create an actual ghostly entity, a moving, interacting specter that everyone could see because it was actually visible. It was mentally taxing, and required heavy concentration from the wizard who cast it in order to maintain the image. If the wizard wanted his illusion to interact physically with the world around it, then it required even more power and concentration on the wizard’s part. In all cases except for the most adept and powerful wizards, direct control was required.
The other way to do it was to plant the suggestion in the minds of those that the wizard wished to see the illusion that it was there, and in fact, real. Sometimes this way was the best way to accomplish what the wizard wanted; for instance, if he or she wished to create auditory illusions or suggestions to simply look in another direction, it was the best option. Affecting multiple people with the illusion was difficult, though, and if the wizard wanted to create the suggestion that there was something very real standing before the target or interacting with it, then sometimes the first option was less taxing.
The first type of illusion was the one that D’Jenn prepared himself to cast.
He’d need all his concentration to pull off this spell. He’d have to create the illusion and concentrate on making it do what he wanted, while simultaneously casting the climbing spell he’d used earlier to scale the outer wall. In truth, D’Jenn had no trouble casting multiple spells at a time – it was, in fact, one of his strengths as a Warlock. The trouble would come from the physical exertion needed to slip over the edge of the battlements, crawl beneath the bridge, and keep from falling to his death in the courtyard below.
He took a deep breath, walling away his concerns and apprehension. He felt the magic moving through the night around him, singing to him in low tones and lilting melodies. He reached out to it, joining the tide of music with the tones singing in his own Kai, and began pulling strings of melody together, crafting them from shadows and moonlight. He whispered into the dark with his magic, and it whispered back.
D’Jenn split his concentration then, and prepared to cast his climbing spell. He turned his eyes to the guards on the bridge, still conversing with each other and standing at ease. His heart beat in his ears as he put his spell into motion.
From the shadowed side of the Keep, three ravens suddenly wheeled out of the night and flew toward the bridge guards, cawing angrily and flapping their wings. D’Jenn held the image of the birds in his mind, making them slightly larger and more menacing than actual ravens would be. He sent them hurtling at the guards, harassing them but staying just out of reach of their flailing arms and spears.
The guards reacted just as he’d hoped they would, cringing away from the birds and trying to take them out of the air, cursing and yelling at the things to try and scare them away. D’Jenn smiled at his good fortune, and while the guards were distracted, he divided his concentration and cast the climbing spell. As quietly and quickly as he could, D’Jenn slipped over the side of the inner wall and scooted beneath the bridge.
The spell he’d used to climb the wall earlier worked just as well to hold him to the underside of the bridge, but the sense of vertigo was twice as strong at this angle. He couldn’t help but feel all the empty space beneath him as he crawled, upside down, along the underside of the bridge. He wasn’t sure how far the drop was, but he was sure that he didn’t want to find out.
The underside of the bridge was crisscrossed by huge studs of hard wood shot through with iron, and a column that was placed directly in the center of it, to help with the stability. The studs and supporting column made the going a little tougher than D’Jenn had thought it would be, and he found himself shimmying around the column, crawling carefully over the studs, and hoping the entire time that he wouldn’t place a foot wrongly and plummet into the courtyard beneath him. His abdomen began to burn with the effort of the climb.
D’Jenn reached the wall of the Keep and hugged it for a moment, letting out a slow exhalation in relief. He still had to climb to the top of the castle, but he took a moment to rest his weight on his legs and steel himself for the arduous task. Knowing that he had little time, he finally began to shuffle around to the shadowed side of the Keep wall.
He set himself on a path that would take him between opened windows, and began to pull himself upward. The climb was no easier than it had been before, but D’Jenn’s earlier bout with the bridge made this section of his climb seem normal by comparison, and his body was getting used to the task. He kept himself in good shape, as did all Warlocks, and though his muscles burned with the effort and sweat began to bead on his body, he did not flag.
The wind blew horrendously this high up, and D’Jenn couldn’t help but clutch tighter to the stone beneath his hands and feet when it gusted, even though he knew logically that it wouldn’t help. He climbed for what seemed like hours, and his shoulders began to shake with the effort of pulling his body constantly upwards. He passed by opened windows, where light spilled out into the night, sprinkled with random bits of laughter and conversation. D’Jenn passed these windows without hesitating or glancing inside. He had a good idea that Mygan would keep his chambers somewhere high in the Keep, and those chambers would inevitably have a window, and hopefully, a balcony.
As it turned out, he was right.
The second balcony that overlooked the city of Thardin jutted out from the side of the Keep, supported upon stone buttresses that were carved with the semblances of dour old figures from Thardish history. D’Jenn shuffled around the base of the balcony and climbed up beside the vast opening, being as quiet as he possibly could. Low, flickering light whispered out onto the balcony’s landing, and sheer curtains fluttered in the wind, hanging between a pair of wooden, ornate doors that were thrown wide to the night.
The sounds of lovemaking came from the room, soft moans and exclamations of pleasure that lilted out onto the balcony in a steady rhythm. D’Jenn pushed his magical senses inside the room, trying to see the energies flowing inside through the eyes of his Kai, and sensed the presence of not two people, but three. If what he’d heard of Prince Mygan was true, then this certainly helped to support the claims.
D’Jenn whispered out with his magic, sending tendrils of it into the room softly, brushing his Kai against the minds of the inhabitants with a touch lighter than air. The moaning subsided. D’Jenn waited for a full count to thirty, until he heard the sounds of soft snores and the incoherent noises of sleep. He slipped down from the wall, and stepped into the room.
If D’Jenn were to say that this were a large room, then that would have been an understatement. A fireplace twice as large as any he’d ever seen was set into the wall on his left, packed with firewood that burned cheerily against the chill of the eastern coastal air that came in through the balcony doors. There was a writing desk next to the heavy door that led into the hallway, scattered with discarded bits of documents and a spilled tankard of what D’Jenn thought could be mead, if the sweet smell was any indication. An arming stand stood next to it, decorated with a full set of ornate armor made of highly-polished black-enameled plate, and an overly large broadsword hanging haphazardly from a scabbard and baldric that was wrapped around the stand. D’Jenn’s eyes lingered on the sword for a moment – his Kai registered the thing as magical, ringing out against it with harmonious tones. The sword was old, very old, unless D’Jenn missed his guess.
His breath caught in his throat. This sword must be Ice Shard, the sword of office for the Kings of Thardin, rumored to be magical and as ancient as the country itself. The Conclave had wanted to get its hands on the sword for as long as D’Jenn could remember; to study it and determine if it had indeed come from an era before the founding of Thardin. The hilt was half again as long as a normal broadsword, and wrapped in red-stained leather tooled with silver wire. The pommel contained what D’Jenn at first thought to be a gem, but soon realized was an actual piece of ice, held in stasis by a network of magical energies so complex that D’Jenn had to squint his eyes and concentrate to actually make out.
This sword was worth more riches than D’Jenn would see in ten lifetimes.
Regretfully, he pulled his attention from the sword and went back to studying the room. If he took it, he would have a hard time carrying it out, and it would ignite a war the likes of which the Sevenlands hadn’t seen since the Second Great War. As badly as he wanted to take the thing, he knew he could not.
He turned his eyes to the large four poster bed that dominated the room. It was festooned with sheer curtains of red silk, a display of wealth so disgusting that D’Jenn almost spat upon them, just for good measure. The blankets and bedding were of a deep purple color, and also very expensive. They were tossed about on the bed, kicked into the floor, and rumpled with the exertions of the three people that lay in a sleepy tangle atop the soft mattress.
Prince Mygan, the second son of King Vardic, lay with his mouth agape, snores escaping his throat in a much undignified stream. Mygan was admittedly a handsome youth of some twenty-odd years, dark of hair like most of his countrymen. He had a sharp jaw line and a fighter’s build, and as he lay in the throes of D’Jenn’s magical sleep, he didn’t look like the bastard that the rumors described him to be.
The two buxom ladies that lay tangled with him certainly spoke to his tastes, however. D’Jenn couldn’t blame the man, though. He’d had his head turned plenty of times by young, beautiful women. These two lovelies – one laying atop Mygan in a state that was, if anything, even more undignified than the snores coming from the Prince’s throat, and the other laying beside them – were well groomed and well bred, unless D’Jenn had gone blind. They must be noble ladies who were undoubtedly coerced into the Prince’s bed with the Infused talisman that D’Jenn had come to find. D’Jenn shook his head. If the young Prince were going to bed beautiful women, the least he could do was go about it honestly. Using magic robbed the women of their free will, at least to some degree, and the act was repugnant, in D’Jenn’s opinion.
He had no fear of the Prince or one of the women waking up as he approached the bed. His magic would hold them deep in sleep until D’Jenn was long gone from this place. The Prince would not even discover that his talisman was missing until well into the morning, and the hold that he held over everyone in the Keep would be shattered.
D’Jenn had to reach up and push the girl from atop the Prince in order to see if the charm was around the man’s neck. She was a beautiful girl with a wealth of dark hair, and as she slid over onto her side, the hair slid from the Prince’s chest and revealed the item that D’Jenn was looking for. D’Jenn smiled.
It was a nondescript little thing. He’d almost expected it to be a large ruby, or a giant amulet with a menacing golden eye, or some such nonsense. What he found instead was a tiny silver harp – the symbol of Neesa, the Goddess of love and music. That was undoubtedly the Infuser’s attempt at humor, playing upon the Prince’s apparent purpose for commissioning the item to be made. He reached down and gently lifted it from the sleeping Prince’s chest, and snapped the chain as easily as any normal necklace.
Well, he thought, that was easy enough.
He gazed down at the little charm, amazed at the craftsmanship that had gone into the thing’s Infusing. The amount of magic that was tied into the very silver of the harp was astounding. It sang to his Kai, a lilting, happy melody that put D’Jenn at ease and actually made him smile a bit. The harp twinkled in the firelight, and D’Jenn almost fancied that he could see the tiny silver strings plucking, and playing.
The only warning he had that the door was opening was the click of the latch being lifted. He hurriedly ripped his attention from the harp – an act that was more difficult than he’d expected – and glanced around desperately for a hiding place. It was too late.
A woman stood in the doorway, her posture indicating that she had been attempting to sneak into the room. Her eyes met D’Jenn’s and for a moment, they both stood completely still. She opened her mouth to scream.
D’Jenn whipped out with his Kai, the panic in his emotions coloring his magic, and wrapped the woman in his grasp, pulling her from the floor and into the room so quickly that her hair whipped out in her wake. At the same instant, another tendril of his magic shut the door behind her, and it boomed lowly into the hallway. D’Jenn winced at the noise, and cursed his carelessness at being caught up in studying the harp.
He glanced around the room, halfway expecting guards to rush at him from hiding places and subdue him, but the room was as silent as it had been before. D’Jenn cursed under his breath, and turned his attention to the girl that floated a couple of hands above the floor, caught in the grasp of his Kai.
His breath caught in his throat.
She was breathing hard, struggling against the power he’d wrapped her in, and against her own fear, he guessed. Her eyes were wide and very blue, and they bored into D’Jenn’s with a tightly controlled apprehension wrapped in complete defiance. Her hair was long and the color of inky midnight.
She was the absolute most beautiful woman that D’Jenn had ever seen.
He knew she had to die. She’d seen him, and he couldn’t allow her to report his presence here. What had she been doing, though, sneaking into the Prince’s room? He doubted that this noble creature was one of the Prince’s paramours; her attitude spoke plainly to him of that. Gazing more closely at her features, he realized something suddenly, and that just made the entire situation that much more bizarre.
She was his sister. It had to be true. Which again begged the question – what was she doing here? Feeling the magic of the silver harp sing against his Kai once more, he realized that perhaps he didn’t have to kill the girl after all. Still, there was more going on here than he knew, and D’Jenn hated to be ignorant of anything.
He made a gamble.
“I’m going to let you go,” he said quietly, his voice sounding strange to him after the entire day spent in silence, “But if you scream, or try to escape, or attack me, it will be bad for you. Do you understand?”
The girl was unable to nod, but her eyes hardened and D’Jenn held them for a moment to drive his point home. When he felt that they understood each other he lowered her gently to the stones and let his power recede from her. He did, however, cast a spell around the room that would dampen the noises coming from within, just in case the girl’s rebellious spirit won out over his threat. The air in the room seemed to tighten a bit as the magic took hold.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked, as if she were a Queen and he was her subject, come begging for a favor at court.
“I believe that I am the one with the knife, here,” D’Jenn commented, showing her the dagger, “and the magic. I think I’ll be asking the questions.”
“You are an intruder in my father’s Keep!” the girl spat, “Either answer me, or do with me what you will and get it over with. I am not some washer-woman to swoon at your threats!”
D’Jenn raised his eyebrows. Despite her vehemence, and perhaps because of it, he found himself becoming even more entranced with this fierce beauty.
“Who are you, then?” he asked, “Since you don’t cower so easily, and seem to hold such disdain for washer-women.”
“I am Nalia, Princess of Thardin. And you, obviously, are a Sevenlander savage. At least do me the honor of telling me why the Tal-Kansil would have my brother assassinated before we fight. Mygan! To arms!” she shouted the last at her brother.
D’Jenn chuckled at her attempt to wake the sleeping Prince, but was impressed with her intelligence, misplaced though her conclusion might have been.
“He can’t hear you,” D’Jenn said, smirking at the Princess.
Her eyes filled with a cold anger, “You have killed him, then?”
“No,” D’Jenn said again, not able to hold his laughter back this time. Her eyes hardened again at his tone and flippant attitude, but he held up a hand to forestall her before she said anything else. “I am no assassin. I did not come here to kill your brother.”
Realization and disgust entered her eyes, “Ah, a thief, then.” Then, her eyes narrowed further and she glanced to her sleeping brother’s chest. “You came for the harp.”
D’Jenn raised his eyebrows and gave her an appraising look, “You know of it?”
“It wasn’t hard to figure out,” she said, crossing her arms and shooting a disgusted look at her brother and the nude women tangled with him, “I am neither the object of my brother’s appetites, nor am I in his way, politically. He wasn’t very subtle in his machinations, and Mygan has never been the recipient of so much personal and political favor. I knew that it had to be something, and so I watched him at court from a distance one morning. I saw him use that…thing…on a blacksmith who came with a grievance. He hung the man, and forced his son into servitude in order to ‘repay the insult’. It was disgraceful.”
D’Jenn nodded to her, “You came to take it?”
“Yes,” she replied, lifting her chin as if daring him to gainsay her, “Someone had to. My brother would have brought our house to dishonor, and ruined Thardin itself, should he have been allowed to continue. No man should hold something so…repugnant.”
D’Jenn caught the slight emphasis Nalia placed on the word ‘man’, but didn’t comment on it. It seemed that the two of them had come here tonight with the same goal in mind. The harp, as if it knew he was thinking of it, sang lightly against his magic. D’Jenn silenced it.
“What would you have done with it, had you been successful in taking it?” he asked.
“Buried it, tossed it into the bay…something to keep it from the hands of anyone who would so use it again.”
“You would not have kept it?”
“That wasn’t my plan, no.”
D’Jenn considered the woman for a few moments, until his eyes upon her seemed to make her uncomfortable. Gods, but she was beautiful. One day, her father would undoubtedly marry her off to some Alderakian Prince, and either make him a very happy man, or a very frustrated one. She would make a strong Queen.
“I commend your bravery, Princess,” D’Jenn said, bowing slightly.
“I spit on your commendations, Sevenlander.”
D’Jenn smiled and shook his head. What he wouldn’t give to be an Alderakian Prince, one day. It was of no matter, though. Time was stretching on, and he had to go. He held up the harp, dangling from its broken chain, and regarded the little silver charm. Its song filled his senses.
“It’s quite unassuming, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.
Nalia started to reply, but as her eyes fell onto the charm, her voice trailed off. She stared, pupils wide and expression preoccupied, at the harp. D’Jenn could feel the thing’s magic taking effect, singing to her and lulling her mind into a dreamy state. He raised his eyebrows and regarded the thing for a moment, impressed. It was effective, indeed.
“I have to go now, Nalia,” he crooned to her softly. She nodded. He continued, “You will head back to your rooms and sleep through the night, remembering nothing of my presence here. This was all a dream, and none of it was real.”
The Princess smiled slightly and nodded again, yawning as if she were sleepy.
“You were never in your brother’s rooms, and why would you be? You are a Princess of Thardin, not some sneak-thief to be skulking through hallways at night. And Princess, do try not to be so prejudiced against Sevenlanders, eh?” That last bit put a smile on his face, and for an instant he was struck with the power of the little talisman and what he could do with it. In his hands, it would be a dangerous tool, indeed. He briefly entertained the thought of begging a kiss from the beautiful Thardish girl. It was a hard thought to banish, he had to admit, but finally he dismissed the notion.
It would have made him no better than Mygan.
“Goodnight Princess. Be on your way, now.”
She nodded again, and turned to leave. D’Jenn grasped the pendant, and placed it deep in the pocket of his trousers, ensuring that it would stay put during the climb out. He turned to go, and slipped quietly onto the balcony and back out to the wall. He heard the click of the door latch as he left the balcony behind.
****
Many days later, D’Jenn gazed down at the little harp in his hands. Then he checked it against the copy he’d had a silversmith make back in Fal-Nelek. Every detail was the same, at least as far as his eyes could discern. He smiled.
Then, he placed the original into a tiny wooden box he kept in the rooms he maintained here in Tauravon, in Lesmira. It was a small tenement building, though well made and out of the way. He paid his rent up front every year, and the tenement supervisor said nothing to anyone of his residency, and asked no questions about D’Jenn’s business. No one knew that he kept these rooms, though many Warlocks did such things at different places around the world. This was only one such room that D’Jenn paid for.
He placed the wooden box into a compartment that he’d constructed himself after he moved in, a hollow under the stone floor that required a brick to be pried up from the stones. One couldn’t do it by hand, only magic could accomplish the task. Placing his copy into the folds of a cloth kerchief, he turned and left his rooms behind, locking the doors and windows with a spell as he made for the streets of Tauravon.
In the end, he’d decided that the harp was simply too dangerous a tool for Mygan to possess, or for D’Jenn himself to carry around. It was also too useful to simply destroy. Such things could prove useful one day, and D’Jenn enjoyed having hidden advantages. They were what kept him alive, more often than not.
After he’d left Thardin behind and travelled south into Galania, then west to Neleka, he’d found a silversmith who claimed to have skill enough to copy the harp. The man had looked at him strangely when D’Jenn had insisted on being present during the entire process of the copy’s creation, but hadn’t balked at his presence. The extra coin D’Jenn had paid him served to keep the man’s mouth shut, and he had never felt the magical energies that D’Jenn was laying into the copy’s very metal.
His creation wasn’t as good as the original, but it might deceive the Infuser enough to serve its purpose. The Infuser would never question him outright, he knew that. The Lesmiran Wizards respected the Sevenlanders too much, and he’d asked for help in the first place. If D’Jenn brought him a harp, told him it was the original, then the man had better take him at his word. He could always tell some story about it deteriorating over time, or just shrug and say that’s the one I found, perhaps it wasn’t as good as you thought it was.
His thoughts turned to Nalia as he strode through the streets of Tauravon. He’d heard that Mygan had been ousted by his father, and publically humiliated. He’d been made to overturn all his court rulings and pay recompense to the people he’d wronged. Apparently he’d also had to fight a number of duels with jilted husbands, or angry fathers. He wondered if Nalia were sitting somewhere right now, watching her brother get his just rewards and smiling in satisfaction. He imagined that it was probably so.
Above everything else, he regretted not stealing that kiss from the girl. After all, a kiss wasn’t nearly as bad as bedding her, was it? He’d never get the chance again.
D’Jenn smiled and shook his head at the thought. He whistled a light tune as he walked through Tauravon’s streets, headed for the School of Magical Arts, or the Mage Tower to those who were more familiar with it. It was time to deceive another wizard. Afterwards, he thought he might go and find another beauty that would be willing to kiss him without magical influence.
If not…well, he could always come back and get the harp.
****
The End
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D.W. Hawkins lives in Savannah, Georgia. He spent over nine years in the military, and has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is married to a beautiful woman, has a baby on the way, and has a Pit Bull who is thoroughly convinced that she is actually a Chihuahua.
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