The City of Ravens (18 page)

“Jack! What in the world is going on here?” Illyth appeared behind the shadow Jack, still holding up her dress with one hand. “Who—?” The noblewoman halted in amazement, watching the duel between Jack and his twin.

“Illyth, get back!” Jack cried.

He met a high swing by ducking under it, then rolled to one side to avoid a follow-up thrust that would have gutted him had he been a hair slower. He responded with a couple of wicked jabs in the general vicinity of the shadow Jack’s midsection, but his evil clone merely rolled aside. They exchanged another blinding pass of swordplay in which neither could penetrate the defenses of the other, and then sprang apart.

“Insolent mimic!” Jack snarled. “Who are you? Why do you steal my likeness?”

The shadow Jack merely grinned and worked a spell of visibility, vanishing from sight.

“He can do that?” Jack asked in amazement. He worked the same spell and vanished likewise, stepping softly away from the last place he’d stood. Matching him in physical skill and agility was one thing; that made the shadow Jack a dangerous adversary, but one that Jack could defeat. But if the shadow-clone actually shared all of his abilities, all of his knowledge, all of his magical strength, Jack couldn’t imagine how he could beat the fellow.

Illyth whirled, looking for some sign of either one. “Jaer Kell Wildhame, if you’ve left me standing in the middle of this dusty road with a torn dress and no escort for the Game tonight, I am going to be quite upset. I demand an explanation!”

The dusty road! Jack smiled and froze in place, looking carefully at the ground. If his opponent was still moving—there! Stealthy footfalls, right behind Illyth! Jack hurled himself forward and swung his sword in a waist-high arc. His invisibility spell failed as he broke the enchantment by striking out, but he was rewarded with the unexpected clang of steel and a soft resistance to his blow. The rapier wouldn’t cause much of a wound wielded edge first, but droplets of dark blood spattered

the earth, and a slim blade appeared in the dirt, skidding to a halt.

“Hah! I have disarmed you, villain!” Jack gloated. He snatched up the other weapon and swung wildly with both blades, groping for contact with his adversary.

Instead his adversary fled. Jack caught sight of a couple of quick footfalls in the dust, and then the brush and branches up on one side of the road rustled violently. Droplets of blood marked his assailant’s trail—but the blood drops lasted only a moment before sizzling away in some strange dark vapor.

“Come back here!” Jack roared. “You have much to answer for, my friend!” He ran a couple of steps in the general direction of his foe’s retreat, swinging aggressively, but there was no sign of the shadow Jack. “Curses!”

“Is he gone?” Illyth asked.

“I’m afraid so. He ran off, as if to mock the character of that noble hero whose likeness he so impudently stole,” Jack said. He leaned against the carriage, suddenly tired beyond belief from the strenuous duel. “Do you have any idea of who that was?”

Illyth rounded on him with a look of such anger and amazement that Jack took a step back. “In the names of all the gods, why should
know who that was? He was your identical twin! Are you telling me that you have no idea why someone who looks exactly like you showed up at my doorstep, ushered me into the coach, and started pawing at me like a lovesick ore?”p>

Jack shook his head, although he couldn’t shake a very odd sense of guilt over his double’s actions, as if he were somehow responsible for what anyone who looked like him did. “Dear Illyth, I am many things, not all of them reputable, but I have never sought to force my attentions on anyone. And I would never do so to one of my dearest friends. I am at a complete loss to explain

who that person was or what he was doing.” He paused, and then added, “I am just glad that I was able to drive him off before he did you any harm.”

The noblewoman looked down at her dress. She had to hold it with one hand to cover her bosom. “Who would want to impersonate you? And why would he want to abduct me? What can this possibly mean?”

“I suspect that this stone was aimed at me and not at you. I seem to be collecting enemies at a very unhealthy pace.”

“Which of your enemies would take the trouble to impersonate you so perfectly?” Illyth asked. “Tell me a name, and I’ll see to it that the authorities arrest him. I have some friends in high places, and I want that… that person locked up safely in a cell somewhere.”

Who, indeed? Jack thought for a moment. The House Kuldath? Zandria? Morgath and Saerk didn’t have the means or motive to strike at Illyth, and creating doppelgangers to strike at those close to her rivals simply was not Zandria’s style. The Knights of the Hawk? Marcus and Ashwillow would certainly have nothing to do with such a scheme. Iphegor? Now there was a possibility, although it seemed overly subtle for the necromancer, and Jack couldn’t imagine that even a black-hearted scoundrel like Iphegor would willingly strike at Illyth to get at Jack.

No, what they needed was someone who was anxious to strike at both Jack and Illyth.

“Lord Tiger and Lady Mantis,” Jack said. “I am sure they were behind this. Who else would have reason to strike at both of us together, or to strike at you alone? Somehow they must have determined our identities outside the Game, and they mean to silence you and discredit me.”

“Or to silence you by framing you for rape, murder, or worse,” Illyth added. “It makes sense. Oh, Jack, what

should we do? We have to find out who they are so that we can involve the authorities before they try again!”

Jack wasn’t quite so certain that involving the authorities would be a wise move on his part, although he couldn’t fault Illyth for thinking so. Best to move softly and avoid coming forward unless he absolutely had to.

“I know that you were looking forward to tonight’s Game, Illyth, but do you think it would be wise to attend? If we fail to appear tonight, Tiger and Mantis might guess that their ploy has succeeded, and we might finally have them at a disadvantage. Perhaps they’ll make a mistake.”

Illyth looked down at her dress. “Solving the riddle of the Seven Faceless Lords doesn’t seem as intriguing as it did an hour ago,” she said. “I don’t share your certainty that Tiger and Mantis are responsible, but I agree that attending the Game isn’t a good idea at the moment. That person escaped, and who knows where he’s going to strike next?”

“I intend to confront him at my earliest convenience and settle this issue,” Jack replied. “The Green Lord’s banquet is in four days, correct? By then I will have certainly apprehended the miscreant who borrowed my appearance, thus ending the threat.” He offered Illyth his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, then helped her to his coach. “I’ll stay with you awhile and keep watch, in case he returns, and well pass the time by comparing clues, as we’d planned.”

“That’s right,” Illyth said, narrowing her eyes. “Jack, you were late by nearly an hour!”

“Punctuality is a virtue I never claimed to possess in abundance, dear Illyth,” Jack said. He climbed into the coach behind her and signaled to the driver. “Back to Woodenhall, good man. We will be staying in this evening.”

Jack passed the night comfortably stationed in the parlor of Woodenhall, ostensibly watching for any return of the doppelganger or shadow that had attacked Illyth earlier. But well before dawn he rose and slipped away, anxious to get back to the city in time to meet Anders and Tharzon. He left word with the staff that Illyth was to be guarded carefully and made his preparations for an expedition into Sarbreen’s depths. He should have been trembling with anticipation, given the situation; if all went well, he might take possession of a prize so valuable that Elana’s commission and the Game of Masks would pale in comparison. But Jack still couldn’t help but feel that Zandria had excruciatingly poor timing. He had too many other things to think about, so, with a mind full of dark suspicions and an uneasy heart, he met Anders and Tharzon near the house rented out by the Company of the Red Falcon and followed Zandria into Sarbreen.

The Guilder’s Tomb proved to be a surprisingly accessible place. From the sewers beneath Tentowers, an old vertical shaft led to a deep drain tunnel far beneath the city. Deeper tunnels and complexes intersected the shaft at various

intervals, like floors of a building connected indirectly by a laundry chute or dumbwaiter. About sixty feet below the city sewers, a long, vaulted passage slanted across the vertical drop, leading to a broad chamber guarded by fierce-looking stone statues of grim dwarves. Zandria’s company splashed through the sewers for a time, then rappelled down to the intersecting passage and marched only a hundred yards to reach the place. Jack, Anders, and Tharzon followed at a discreet distance.

Dwarves were hewers of rock and carvers of stone; Sarbreen, their ancient city, was bored through the rocky prominence of Raven’s Bluff, in some cases hundreds of feet below the surface. The place was a maze in three dimensions, an endless labyrinth of shafts and passages, halls and chambers. In over a century and a half of human habitation on the hillside above, no one had ever mapped more than a tiny portion of Sarbreen’s lost halls, but no part of Sarbreen was more than an hour’s walk from the city above—if one knew the way.

If one didn’t, the dwarven ruin might as well have been a wilderness the size of a kingdom. Most expeditions returned empty-handed after wandering aimlessly for hours or days through the same chambers. A few encountered old dwarven traps, hidden pits, and deadly blades that scythed out of dark alcoves, and some ran into dangerous and deadly monsters—undead things that hungered for the blood of the living, ferocious scavengers that fed from the city’s effluvia drifting down from above, and horrifying aberrations that crept up into Sarbreen’s halls from even more mysterious and remote depths far below the light. Jack had abandoned dungeoneering as a pastime after one such encounter. Hours of tedium punctuated by rare moments of utter terror hardly seemed like a heroic pursuit to him. Besides, the few expeditions that were successful brought their loot back to the surface, where

rogues like Jack could easily help themselves to someone else’s good fortune.

Following the brilliant magical lights of Zandria’s company, Jack and his companions carefully tailed the band to the broad chamber at the end of the passageway. They carried no lights of their own; Tharzon’s dwarven eyes were more than capable of piercing the darkness, and Jack worked a spell he knew that sharpened his own sight. Anders they led carefully along until they were close enough to see by the distant light of Zandria’s expedition. The three rogues found a spot to wait about a hundred feet down the hall and settled in to watch.

“What do we do next?” whispered Tharzon.

Jack replied, “Let’s see if Sarbreen’s legendary perils do that work for us. Zandria is not a mage to be trifled with. She has at least two capable swordsmen with her—I met them when I visited their stronghold in the city. See, there they are.” In the yellow light flooding the end of the hall, Zandria’s companions spread out to search the chamber, while the Red Wizard consulted papers and notes before a gleaming slab of stone in the center of the far wall.

“Those other two in armor are probably priests,” Tharzon added. He pointed to a short, stocky man and a young, athletic woman with a shaved head. “See the emblems of Tyr, there, and Tempus? Best to figure that they are both trained warriors, too, as well as potential spellcasters.”The dwarf shifted slightly to change his view. “There’s another fellow in dark clothes, probably a lockpick or burglar.”

“That makes six to our three,” Anders observed. “We should have brought a couple more stout lads to even the odds. Jankizen from Shadystreets would be useful.”

“Jankizen can’t add two and two twice and come up with the same result,” Jack snorted. “Besides, more help means more shares.” He peered down the hallway at the small pool of light.

Zandria and her allies were busy readying for a fight, checking weapons and arranging potions and scrolls so that they could be easily found in a hurry.

“They’re getting ready to open the tomb. Wait here, lads. I’ll creep a little closer to see what unfolds.”

“Don’t get caught,” Tharzon muttered.

Jack winked at the dwarf and wove his spell of invisibility, vanishing from sight. He stepped out from behind the broken columns they’d chosen for cover and advanced toward Zandria’s company, picking his steps carefully. Invisibility did not make him inaudible as well, and the crunch of a thoughtless footstep on rubble or a carelessly kicked stone would alert Zandria. Mages had spells to reveal things invisible, and Jack had no wish to put the Company of the Red Falcon on its guard.

At the moment, the adventurers stood in a loose half circle surrounding Zandria as she faced the wall opposite the entrance—except for the swordsman Brunn and the Tyrian priest, who deliberately watched the hallway outside for the approach of any enemy from that quarter. Jack nodded in appreciation; these were professionals, as he’d suspected. He stopped about ten feet short of the two sentries and studied the scene.

Now choked in rubble and ruin, the chamber had once been grand indeed. Two twenty-foot pillars had been carved into the likeness of grim dwarven sentries, guarding the entrance to the room. The chamber itself was a high rotunda, its walls lined with tall columns. A great carving in relief circled the entire chamber, a pastoral scene of grain fields and vineyards. In the center, directly opposite the entrance, stood a smooth glossy stone with a smaller, more intricate carving.

“Zandria’s inscription,” Jack whispered to himself. “Excellent!”

The red-haired mage stood with her back to him,

facing the wall. She carried a long staff of dark, rune-engraved wood and wore a short sword of strange black metal at her side. Holding the staff in the crook of her elbow, she studied a parchment scroll.

“Now, ten paces south from here,” she said. “South is toward the entrance, correct?”

“Aye,” said the priest of Tyr, speaking over his shoulder. “The hall outside runs straight north and south.”