Swords: 06 - The Third Book of Lost Swords - Stonecutter's Story (19 page)

      
The open passage leading into the courtyard went round a right-angled corner, so that now the busy street was out of sight. The torchlit enclosure in which they found themselves was small, no more than five meters square, closed on three sides by the mortared stone walls of a low building, each wall containing one or two heavily barred windows. There was one door, even more impressively fortified, in one of the walls. Save for themselves, the courtyard was empty. Kasimir caught only the briefest glimpse of their guide, small bare feet vanishing onto the roof at the top of a fragile-looking drainpipe.

      
“Now,” said a sepulchral voice, moderately loud, speaking from within the darkness inside the barred window on Kasimir’s right. Nerves triggered by the sound, he spun that way.

      
“Show us,” added a tenor from the window that was now behind him. He turned again, seeing Wen Chang and the Firozpur sergeant at his sides turning more slowly.

      
“The Sword,” concluded a voice that Kasimir had heard once before, in the courtyard of his own inn. This time it came from within the window Kasimir had originally been facing.

      
Kasimir held up the weighty bundle.

      
“Unwrap it,” ordered the central voice, its owner still invisible behind a protective grille.

      
“Not so fast,” interposed Wen Chang. “We should like to know who we are dealing with. And that our path of retreat out of this courtyard is still secure.”

      
“Stay where you are,” said the Juggler’s voice. “Show me the real Sword, and you will be able to retreat fast enough.”

      
“First you will identify yourself somehow.” The voice of the Magistrate sounded as firm as that of a judge seated on the bench. “Or else this dealing proceeds no further.”

      
There was a pause. Then something, a small, harmless-looking object came flying out of the darkness of the barred window to bounce at the feet of Kasimir. Looking down, he saw it was a juggler’s ball. The energy of the small sphere’s bounces died away, and it came to a full stop almost touching the toe of his right boot.

      
Kasimir glanced at Wen Chang, who shrugged and with a confident small gesture seemed to indicate that Kasimir should undo the bundle he was carrying. Kasimir hesitated marginally, then set one end of the wrapped sword on the ground, and pretended to be trying to untie the cord that held the wrappings together. He could only assume that Wen Chang would manage some interruption at the last second.

      
The sounds of the bazaar, the music of people blithely indifferent to villainy, drifted into the three-sided enclosure.

      
“Hurry, get on with it!” the voice of Tadasu Hazara urged, from out of darkness.

      
“I’m trying,” Kasimir protested, endeavoring to sound irritated rather than frightened. “These knots—”

      
“Cut them!”

      
From somewhere, almost lost in the noise of the open street behind Kasimir, a low whistle sounded. In the next instant, as if coincidentally, Wen Chang stepped forward to give Kasimir a hand. “Here, let me.”

      
Kasimir let go and stepped back—and recoiled as from the murderous lunge of a madman. Wen Chang had grabbed up the bundle, still tied shut as it was, and lunged with it straight against the white stone wall in front of him.

      
There was a minor thunderclap of impact. Wen Chang drew back his arms and thrust again with the concealed blade, slashing and sawing with demonic energy. Stones and their fragments burst from the wall, showering and bruising the astonished Kasimir, while the hammer like sounds of Stonecutter rose into the night.

      
Inside each of the three dark rooms behind the window bars, pandemonium burst out. Someone fired a crossbow bolt out of the window at the right, a dart that by some sheer good luck missed the Firozpur sergeant, who was near its line of flight. Kasimir was not quite so lucky. The impact, just under his right armpit, felt like that of an oaken club swung in a giant’s fist, and for a moment he staggered off balance.

      
Now there were cries and the clash of weapons in the rear of the central room, from which the Juggler’s voice had sounded. Someone was beating down a door back there, and torchlight shone through, even as a section of the front wall went down before Wen Chang’s continuing assault with the Sword. The inside of the room was suddenly open to inspection, but Valamo was gone.

      
Kasimir looked down at the pavement near his feet; the crossbow bolt was lying there, a wicked-looking dart whose needle point was barely tipped with red. His own red blood. The physician put a hand under his outer shirt and felt the fine mesh of the heavy mail beneath; there in one place the perfect pattern of the links was slightly strained and broken. There was a wound in his bruised flesh, but it was superficial.

      
And how armed men were swarming everywhere. It appeared that most of Valamo’s support had evaporated on the spot. An outcry went up; that gentleman himself had just been spotted trying to get away over the rooftops.

      
Inside the otherwise barren room from which the Juggler had been speaking, there was a ladder and a trapdoor. Kasimir, halfway up, saw Wen Chang, still on the ground, throw the Sword, still wrapped, up on the roof ahead of him, where presumably some trusted figure was waiting to take it in charge and keep it safe.

      
And now the Magistrate was on the roof himself, leading the pursuit, shouting: “We must not let him escape!”

      
The pursuit led in the direction of the river.

      
The buildings in the neighborhood were mostly low, the streets more often than not mere pedestrian alleys, narrow enough for an active man moving at rooftop level to leap them with a bound. Kasimir’s wound did not much trouble him, and he forgot about it once he was caught up in the excitement of the chase.

      
The moon, perversely from the point of view of the fugitive, was now out, near full and very bright. The broken clouds that would have dimmed its light seemed to avoid it wholly. The figure that must be the Juggler was moving on, leaping and running, in the direction of the river, keeping half a roof ahead of the nearest pursuer.

      
Kasimir was gaining ground slowly. In a moment the man, one of the Watch, who had been closest to the fleeing Valamo tried to jump too broad a gap, and disappeared with a cry of despair.

      
Now Kasimir himself was closest to the enemy. Glancing off to one side, he was astounded to catch a glimpse of someone else running in the night, moving away from Valamo rather than toward him, and carrying some object. Light, timing, and distance were all against Kasimir, but he thought that he might have just seen Natalia. Or perhaps it was only that he expected to see her now in every scene of action.

      
He had no time now to try to puzzle the matter out. The river was very near ahead; the quarry was being brought to bay.

      
Someone’s slung stone whizzed past Valamo’s head; the shot had been too difficult in moonlight. The white-haired figure turned on a parapet, two stories above the water’s edge. Kasimir, running up, knew that he was going to be too late. There were men rowing a small boat in the stream just under the place where the Juggler perched, men who called up to him with urgent voices.

      
Valamo turned toward Kasimir, and made a graceful gesture of obscenity. The acrobat’s body crouched, then lunged out in an expert dive that ought to land it in the water just beside the boat.

Running out of shadows, the figure of Wen Chang appeared beside the leaping man at the last instant. Moonlight glinted on the faint streak of a bright rapier.

      
The Juggler’s body, pierced, contorted in the air. A choked cry sounded in the night. The graceful dive became an awkward, tumbling splash into the river.

      
Wen Chang, panting with the long chase, his own sword still in his hand, stood watching beside Kasimir. No one saw the submerged man come up.

Chapter Seventeen

      
Before nightfall Wen Chang, Kasimir, and Komi had made their way wearily back to the inn. Kasimir’s wound—an ugly bruise, and minor laceration—was throbbing, and at his direction his companions helped him wash it, then took salves from his medical kit and applied them. Wen Chang needed no directions to apply a professional-looking bandage. Kasimir was still functional, doing as well as could be expected.

      
Meanwhile Komi had retreated below to look after his men, and the Magistrate had ordered food brought to the upper room. While he and Kasimir were eating they conversed.

      
“I cannot believe that I had Stonecutter in my hand and lost it.” Kasimir was loud with growing anger.

      
Wen Chang did not reply.

      
“It was you yourself who took it from me. You who passed it on to someone else.”

      
Still no answer.

      
“Magistrate, I saw you wrap a fake Sword in a bundle. Then you gave the package to me. But later the Sword in the bundle was genuine. I saw it, in your hands, hack to bits a wall of solid stone. I heard the sound of its magic as it did so. The Sword I was carrying was genuine, and I am sure you knew it.”

      
Wen Chang appeared to be meditating.

      
“I know you are the real Wen Chang, and I cannot believe that the real Wen Chang is a criminal.”

      
At last the narrow gaze turned back to Kasimir. “Thank you.” The words sounded sincere, and curiously subdued.

      
“Then, am I going mad? Or is it not your objective, after all, to get the Sword and return it to its rightful owner?”

      
“That is my objective,” said the Magistrate stiffly, for the first time sounding offended. “I have undertaken it as sincerely as any commitment in my life.”

      
“Then—” Kasimir made a helpless gesture. “Then I am at a loss. If I am to be of any further use to you, I must know what is going on. Was the seeming appearance of the real Sword some result of magic? But no, you do not like to use magic, do you?”

      
“Magic is not the tool I prefer. Kasimir, if you cannot see what is going on, now is not the time for me to tell you. For your own good, if my efforts should fail.”

      
“Then tell me this at least. Are there magic powers, a curse, arrayed against us? The Sword comes almost into my hands, again and again, and then it flies away—generally into the hands of that woman.”

      
“There is no curse upon us that I know of. We face no overwhelming magic.” Wen Chang drank tea from a mug and put it down. “I have heard that the Sword Coinspinner moves itself about freely, refusing to be bound by any merely human attempts at confinement, whether by means of solid walls or of spells. I have not heard that about Stonecutter, or any of the other Swords.”

      
“Then what is the explanation? All I can see clearly is that Stonecutter’s gone again,” Kasimir declared, in what sounded more like an indictment of Fate than a lament. “You wrapped an imitation in a bundle here; and when I unwrapped the same bundle there, the Sword inside was genuine. I can imagine no nonmagical explanation for that.”

      
Unless, of course
, Kasimir’s thought went on,
you substituted the real Sword for the imitation by some sleight of hand. You could have done that easily enough. I wasn’t really watching. But that means you had the real Sword here, and didn’t…

      
No, Kasimir told himself firmly. That would make no sense at all. The Magistrate himself was trustworthy, if anyone was. He, Kasimir, had committed himself to that.

      
Unless…

      
“If it was true that we were faced by some overwhelming magic,” said Wen Chang, as if he were calmly unaware of all that might be going through Kasimir’s mind, “impossible for us to understand or overcome, then there would not be much point in worrying. However that may be, I am going to get some sleep while I have the chance, and I suggest you do the same.”

      
Kasimir was on the verge of pointing out that more than half of the Magistrate’s twenty-four-hour grace period had now elapsed, but he decided that would be useless, and took himself back to his couch. The salves were working, and his wound pained him hardly at all. He dozed off hoping that enlightenment might come in dreams.

      
But this time there were no dreams. It seemed to Kasimir that he had barely closed his eyes, when he was awakened by a remote pounding, as of mailed fists or heavy weapon-hilts upon some lower portal of the inn. Groaning and cursing his way back to full wakefulness, he rubbed his eyes. By the time the sound of boots ascending the stairs became plain, Kasimir was sitting up and groping for his boots.

      
A few moments after that, Lieutenant Komi, also freshly awakened, was at the door of the upper suite. “A robbery attempt is reported at the Blue Temple,” the officer informed Kasimir tersely. “It seems certain that the Sword of Siege was used.”

      
Kasimir groaned. “An attempt, you say? Was it successful?”

      
“It doesn’t sound like it to me. But the messengers didn’t really tell me one way or the other.” Komi glanced down the narrow stairs. “Naturally, you and the Magistrate are needed at the Blue Temple at once. The Hetman commands it personally.”

      
“Of course. All right, we’ll go. Give us one minute. And get your men up and ready for action. We’re probably going to need them again, though for what I don’t know.”

      
“They’ll be ready before you are.”

      
Wen Chang was sleeping as peacefully as an infant when Kasimir intruded upon the inner chamber to bring him the news. But he woke up with a minimum of fuss, and gave no indication of surprise at this latest development.

      
Everything was soon in readiness. The trip on riding-beasts through the evening streets was uneventful. This time the Hetman had sent a larger escort, and the level of their courtesy was noticeably less.

      
When they came in sight of the Blue Temple, Kasimir beheld a swarm of people, many of them bearing torches or lanterns, gathered at one corner of the fortress like edifice. The High Priest Theodore himself was present, to grab Wen Chang by the sleeve as soon as he had dismounted, and attempt to hustle him forward like a common criminal.

      
But somehow the hustling was not to be accomplished in that fashion. Wen Chang remained standing where he was, erect and dignified, while the priest stumbled, slightly off balance, as he moved away, and had to recover his own dignity as best he could.

      
A confused babble of accusing voices rose. Kasimir, now that he could get a good look at the corner of the massive wall, had to admit that it certainly did look as if the Sword had been used on it. Carvings had been made in the stone blocks, deep and narrow cuts that must have required a very sharp, tough tool. And there on the pavement below the cutting were the expected fragments of stone.

      
Kasimir picked up one of these fragments and held it close to someone’s torch. There was no mistaking those smoothly striated markings—yes, the Sword of Siege had really been here, and had been used against this wall.

      
“It looks,” said Kasimir, “as if Natalia’s gang isn’t going to be easily discouraged.”

      
The Blue Temple priests, as they were not slow in explaining, had an extra reason to be upset. They had been spending time and effort, and presumably even money, in an effort to have their walls rendered proof by opposing magic against the powers of Stonecutter. All this had now proven to have been time and effort—and money—wasted.

      
Komi said: “The thieves must have been frightened off by a patrol or something, before they could dig in very far.”

      
Wen Chang nodded soberly. “But I wonder how far they fled when they were frightened off?”

      
“What do you mean?” the Director of Security demanded of him sharply.

      
“Has it occurred to anyone here that the same band of thieves, armed with the same Sword, might even now be at work beneath our feet? Tunneling out of reach and sight of ordinary patrols, or other defensive measures. Intent upon creating their own entrances to the treasure vaults below?”

      
This was of course said in full hearing of the High Priest and other Blue Temple officials. They immediately dropped their angry attempt at confrontation with the Magistrate, and began to cast about in search of some way of meeting this new threat. One man immediately went down on all fours to put his ear to the pavement. In a moment almost a dozen people, including the Magistrate himself, were doing the same thing.

      
Kasimir also gave that tactic a try. But he gave it up in a matter of moments, unable to convince himself that he was really able to hear anything that way.

      
Others were having more success. One of the relatively minor temple officials was certain that he could detect the sounds of steady digging. Presently two or three others were in agreement with him.

      
Wen Chang stood up, shaking his head, and said that he could give no firm opinion. His senses were growing old, he said, and were no longer to be absolutely depended upon.

      
There was some minor excitement as Prince al-Farabi, accompanied by a couple of mounted retainers, came galloping up. He had come, the Prince said, as soon as he had heard the news of the attempted robbery.

      
He, at least, continued to address Wen Chang with great respect. “What are we to do, Magistrate?”

      
The investigator stroked his beard. He said, “If it is possible to pin down the direction of these underground sounds more precisely, starting a countermine might be one useful tactic.”

      
Several people took up the suggestion at once. The numbers of low-ranking workers present had been growing steadily, as first one official and then another took it upon himself to order some further mobilization; and now a call went up for digging implements.

      
Meanwhile the party of dignitaries, some of them keeping an eye on the two investigators as if afraid they might try to escape, adjourned by more or less common consent to inside the temple. There they descended in a body into one of the deeper treasure vaults, and here again there was much listening, with ears now applied to walls.

      
More lights were called for, and soon supplied, so that even the darker corners of the many underground rooms could be illuminated. More guards were called for too, though it seemed to Kasimir that the place was inconveniently crowded with armed men already.

      
By this time someone—Kasimir was certain only that it was neither himself nor Wen Chang—had suggested that the robbers’ new plan might not be to dig a tunnel at all, but rather to undermine an entire section of the building, so that walls, roof, and everything would collapse suddenly, in a cloud of dust and a pile of rubble. In this disaster and the ensuing confusion, the suggestion was, there would be little to prevent the brigands’ bursting up from underground like so many moles, and looting to their hearts’ content.

      
Theodore was trying simultaneously to counter this and other perceived threats. He had another problem, in that his vaults were crowded with authorities and aides from several organizations and of all ranks, from a head of state on down; and each authority, wanting to make his presence known, had something to say. Already a swarm of laborers armed with picks and shovels were—presumably on someone’s orders—descending into the lower vaults to begin the task of opening the floors there and getting the countermining under way. Some other leader, driven into a frenzy by this invasion of the sacred precincts, was trying to organize a force of clerks and junior priests to move some of the musty piles of wealth elsewhere. Still others were trying to delay this tactic, until they could come to an agreement on where the treasure would be safest.

      
In the midst of all this turmoil, Mistress Hedmark and one of her aides appeared. They had come down from their quarters near the gem room to see what was going on; terrible rumors had reached them up there, and there had been nothing to do but see for themselves.

      
The suspicion crossed Kasimir’s mind that Mistress Hedmark might now actually have the Sword in her possession, and that she and the Blue Temple had worked all this wall-carving, and the rumors of tunnels, as a distraction to keep suspicion from themselves. Somehow the situation had that kind of feeling to it. But Kasimir had not a shred of evidence, and he kept his wild theories to himself for the present.

      
Meanwhile Wen Chang, as might have been expected, was maintaining his calm amid all this confusion. The flurry of accusation against him and his partners had died down now; but when, as still happened now and then, someone blamed him to his face for being responsible, he answered mildly if at all.

      
As the hours of the night dragged by, nothing at all seemed certain to Kasimir any longer, except that the robbers had not yet managed to cut their way into the temple. Beyond that he had more or less given up trying to keep track of the theories and fears regarding where the blow was likely to fall, and the various efforts to forestall it. Instead he sought out a quiet corner where a pile of empty treasure sacks offered a reasonably soft couch. Relaxing, his back against a wall, the young physician entered a period of intense thought. Or tried to do so; the effort was made no easier by all the noise and activity around him.