The Magic Thief (21 page)

I
went straight back to the dark alleyway where my locus magicalicus was hidden. The cave of ice had frozen around it, so I had to paw it out of the snow onto the ground. Then I put my front paws on it and thought the reversed embero spell.

In the darkness, my locus stone gave a feeble glow; almost all the magical being was imprisoned in the Underlord's device. I thought through the reverse embero again. Slowly, I changed back, part of me cat, part of me boy. I said the spell over and over again until every claw and whisker had disappeared. And the tail.

When I looked up, morning had come. On my arm was a long, bloody gash from one of the rats' teeth. It stung, but it hadn't bled much. Stiff from crouching, I got to my feet and put my locus magicalicus in my coat pocket. Overhead, clouds hung low and gray, and flecks of snow blew down the street beyond the alley. I peered around the corner. Nobody was about.

I wasn't sure what to do. The best thing would be to go to Nevery and try to convince him that I'd seen the device. But Nevery…

I took a shuddery breath. Nevery was furious with me, and he wouldn't believe anything I told him. I didn't have time to argue with him.

I could try going to Brumbee. But what could he do? He'd wring his hands and worry, and then he'd call a meeting of the magisters. And besides, Pettivox had told the other magisters that I was Crowe's spy. Drats.

Then I remembered what Rowan had told me. Her mother, the duchess, was clever. She knew something was going on. I had a feeling she would listen to me if I told her about the Underlord's device.

That decided, I headed for the Dawn Palace.

 

I ran as fast as I could from the Twilight, across the Night Bridge, and up the hill toward the Dawn Palace, stopping now and then to catch my breath, then running again.

It was early morning and barely light, and the streets were deserted. Too quiet. The magic level had gotten so low, even people who weren't wizards could feel it, and they'd shut themselves up inside their snug houses, frightened of what was happening outside.

Finally I got to the Dawn Palace. As I crunched down the icy driveway, my breath steaming in the air, the two guards on duty at the main doors caught sight of me.

One of them was Farn, the guard from the cells, the one who had given me the phlister.

He started down the steps toward me.

I stopped.

Farn called over his shoulder to the other guard. “Tell Captain Kerrn that the wizard's thief is here.” He ran a few steps, then reached out to grab me.

The duchess wasn't expecting me this time, I realized. Curse it, Kerrn had warned me not to come back, or she'd throw me in the cells again. She'd chain me up and force me to drink phlister. She sure as sure wouldn't let me talk to the duchess.

I ducked under Farn's reaching hand. He lunged after me, slipped on the ice, and fell. “Come back here, you,” he grunted, getting to his feet. Two more guards burst out of the front door
of the palace and hurried down the stairs.

I backed away. “Tell the duchess to send men to the Twilight,” I shouted. “The Underlord is stealing Wellmet's magic!”

I didn't have time for more. Farn lurched after me again and the other guards reached the bottom of the steps.

They chased me out the front gate and down the hill, shouting. One of them split off from the others to cut down another street.

I pelted down the hill as fast as I could. Went 'round corners, down alleyways, still heard the shouting. They had plenty of men to call on, and they knew this part of the city better than I did.

Finally I got clear and ducked into a cellar coal hole. Trying to catch my breath, I crouched in the darkness. My legs quivered with tiredness from all the running. Outside, the chase faded into the distance.

After a while, I climbed up out of the coal hole and into a deserted alleyway. I had to get back to
Heartsease. Maybe Nevery would listen. Keeping my head down and my scarf wrapped around my face, I eased along a street of closed-up shops. I turned a corner, and someone grabbed me and yanked a black bag down over my head.

C
aptured. Not by Kerrn's men, though. They weren't black bag types.

I struggled, but the men who'd jumped me gave me a couple of thumps, wrapped a rope tightly around the bag, then one threw me over his shoulder. I tried shouting, but the bag muffled my voice. And the streets were empty, so nobody would hear.

They went quickly through the streets, me with my head hanging down, bumping up and down in the bag. It was completely dark and the cloth pressed up against my face smelled moldy and a little like rotten potatoes.

The one carrying me paused for a moment, then stepped up. I heard the sound of a door opening and then closing.

“Want me to take him?” a deep voice said.

The man carrying me answered. “Nah. Doesn't weigh anything.”

“He'll be here in a moment,” another voice said.

They stood around waiting. I tried wriggling, and the man carrying me set me on my feet, but kept a tight grip on my shoulders.

Someone else came into the room. He walked with a heavy tread. Silence. Inside the bag, I felt prickly, like somebody was looking me over.

“Are you sure it's him?” he said. Pettivox. I recognized his high-pitched voice at once.

“Yes, sir,” one of his men answered. “The lockpick. Underlord's had a word out on him. We know him.”

“Good. He will be very pleased.” Pettivox paused for a moment. “I think we shall put him in one of the storage rooms, downstairs. He will want to have a look at him later. Don't let him get away; he's slippery.”

Who was “he”? Underlord Crowe? That was someone I definitely didn't want to see. I wrenched myself out of the man's grip. But the rope was wrapped too tightly around me, so all I did was topple over. One of the men laughed.

They picked me up again and carried me down some stairs, then along an echoing corridor. They unwrapped the ropes, pulled off the bag, and before I could find my feet, they shoved me into a dark place. The door slammed behind me and locked.

 

After a moment catching my breath, I picked myself off the floor, pulled my lockpick wires out
of my pocket, and felt over the door for the keyhole. Found it. It was gritty, maybe rusty. Still, if a key could open it, so could I. Just as I was probing the lock with the wires, I heard the scrape of a boot on stone. A guard was stationed outside the door.

I put the wires back into my pocket. The room was completely dark, without a glimmer of light. I paced across it with my hands raised until I got to a wall. I felt in my pocket for my locus magicalicus and brought it out; it glowed very faintly, a soft-edged bit of dawn in my hand. The light wasn't enough to see much by.

The room was small, maybe three paces across. Low ceiling, no windows. The walls were clammy stone that radiated cold. Not the kind of biting cold that takes your breath away, but the kind of damp cold that seeps down into your bones and makes you miserable.

For hours I paced, gripping my locus magicalicus, pausing once in a while to listen at the door
for the guard. I had to get out. The magic was in trouble; if Pettivox and the Underlord were going to do anything, they were going to do it
soon
.

I bounced off one wall and whirled to pace,
step step step
across the cell to the door. Outside, two deep voices were talking. Then, right at the door, I heard the jingling of keys in the lock.

I backed away from the door, a hand in my coat pocket holding my locus stone, and put my back against the cold, clammy wall. The door cracked open, swung wide. A dark shadow stepped into the cell.

Click-tick
.
Click-tick-tick
.

A minion came up behind the shadow and opened a lantern.

I put up my hand to shield my eyes. When I blinked the brights away, I saw him as he stepped closer.

Underlord Crowe.

He looked just the same as he always had. Ordinary. Not tall, not short; not handsome, not
plain; not old, not young. Neat black suit, cloak with a fur collar. Combed and oiled dark hair. Pale gray eyes like locks, like gray locks with a keyhole in the middle showing only emptiness. He looked me over and his face stayed still and blank.

He had a hand in his cloak pocket, where he kept his clicker device.

The cold from the wall seeped through my clothes and into my bones. I shivered.

“You. Connwaer,” he said, his voice flat.

I nodded.

Without taking his gaze from me, he spoke to one of the minions in the doorway. “Has he been searched for lockpick wires?”

“Ah, no, sir,” said the minion. He shifted, and the lantern light wavered across the damp cell walls.

“See that it is done,” Crowe said. “Check his hair, the collar of his shirt, his boots, and the seams of his clothing. Do not touch the locus magicalicus when you search him.”

“Yes, sir,” the minion said.

Crowe nodded. A silent, dark moment. “Your locus magicalicus, I am told, is exceptional,” Crowe said. “And my man Pettivox says you have shown an interest in our affairs. Not very intelligent of you, was it, to draw my notice when you have tried for so long to avoid it.”

I stayed quiet. I wasn't going to talk to him at all if I could help it.

“Your new skills make you worth even more to me.”

I didn't answer.

“You are just as stubborn as you ever were.” He paused.
Click-tick
. “You will not join me; that is clear enough. So it follows that you must be dealt with.” Crowe shifted a little, and I edged away from him, along the cold, dank wall, into the corner of the tiny stone room. “We will not seek to harm you. You will simply be left here.”
Click-tick-tick-tick
,
tick-tick
. “Four days, possibly five depending on the variables. And you will
cease to trouble my plans, just as your mother did.” The way he said it wasn't a threat, he was just informing me of what would be. He was completely cold, colder than the iciest wind off the river. He looked me up and down; his keyhole eyes calculated how much I was worth, which was nothing.

He turned on his heel, his cloak flaring around. “See to it,” he said to the minions, and left.

The minion holding the lantern set it down in the doorway and crowded into the cell, with the other minion right behind him, blocking the door. “Now, keep still,” one of them said. He reached out for me, and I ducked under his hands, pulling out my locus magicalicus.

“Watch the stone!” one of the minions shouted; the other one grabbed me by the collar of my coat and slammed me hard against the wall; I lost my grip, and my locus stone flew from my hand and went clattering across the stone floor. Before I could go after it, the minion put his
forearm across my throat. I gasped for breath. “Keep still,” he growled. I kept still.

While he held me against the wall, the other one searched me. He found the lockpick wires in my pocket right away. “Keep looking,” the minion holding me said. He loomed over me, breathing stinking breath down into my face while the other minion checked my shirt collar, ran his fingers through my hair, pulled my boots off and checked them, and finally found the other set of lockpick wires in the seam of my trousers.

Without speaking, they took the lantern, backed from the cell, and locked the door.

In the darkness, I groped across the floor until I found my locus magicalicus, which had stopped glowing, and put it into my pocket. Then I found my boots and put them on again.

I sat down with my back against the wall. I felt suddenly very tired. Nevery wasn't going to come and get me out, as he'd done before, when the duchess's guards had caught me in the Dawn
Palace. Without lockpicks, I couldn't open the door.

A creeping dread seeped into me, along with the cold from the wall and the stone floor.
You will simply be left here
, Crowe had said. Left here to die, he meant, though that would take a while. Four or five days. I edged into the corner and curled up with my head on my knees, my arms wrapped around me.

The stone room was completely dark and silent. Hours passed. I grew colder and colder. Nevery would not come. The Underlord had left me here while he killed Wellmet's magic. There was nothing I could do about it. My shivering turned to shaking.

Something touched the top of my head. I looked up, clenching my teeth to hold the shivers in. Nothing, just silence. Then something soft and bitterly cold brushed along my cheek. I jerked away, my eyes wide, seeing nothing.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my locus magicalicus.
“Lothfalas,”
I whispered. The
light flashed, and died down to cast a thin glowing circle around me. In the glow I saw, hovering above me, right below the stone ceiling, a writhing mass of shadows. As I watched, a long, black shadow, rippling like a silken scarf, unraveled from the mass and probed down toward me. I scrambled away, but felt its radiating cold and dread.

Misery eels. A whole nest of them.

“Lothfalas,”
I said again, louder. The light from my locus stone pulsed and then contracted. The mass of eels flinched away from the light, then spread across the ceiling. A few rippling shadows snaked down the walls; others gathered in the corners.

I clenched my locus magicalicus. The light dimmed. The eels writhed beyond the dim circle of light, waiting. The light dimmed.
“Lothfalas,”
I said, my voice sounding wavery and scared. A faint glow seeped from the stone. The eels pressed closer, closer.

Lothfalas
.
Lothfalas
.
Lothfalas
.