“I am not cursed! I am not the hand of death!” he shouted, but the crowd drew away from him, continuing their droning.
Azerick grabbed the loaf of bread from the table, casting a glare at the baker and everyone around him. He half expected the baker to change his mind and demand that Azerick pay for the bread but his face had gone purple, black splotches stood out against the plum-colored flesh, and his tongue protruded, swollen and blackened like a plague victim.
The street rat threw down the loaf and ran. The street-clogging populace parted like the water at the bow of a swift moving vessel to let him pass.
“Beware death’s shadow, beware the hand of Sharrellan,” the people’s mantra continued, following him, chasing him away like a swarm of relentless bees trying to drive him away from their hive, the chanting, mimicking the bees’ angry buzzing.
Azerick found himself near the docks and burst into Peg’s shop, not knowing where else to go. “Peg, what is going on around here?” Azerick asked as he approached the long counter where the old sailor sat minding his store and watching for customers.
“Now why did ya have to come back here, lad?” Peg asked, his face purpling as black splotches began spreading across his visage. “Hasn’t old Peg treated ya right since he met ya? Ain’t he done
nothin
’ but help ya?”
“Of course, Peg, I know you have. What is wrong?”
“Then why’d ya come back and kill him? Look at me, boy. Already your foul curse is on me. Ya killed me, boy; ya killed me sure as sure. Go on now and let me die in peace.”
“No, Peg,” Azerick wailed, “I did not want you to die, I did not mean to!”
“Meaning don’t mean
nothin
’ when you’re dead. Go on now, I can’t hardly talk no more,” Peg slurred around his swollen, blackened tongue.
Azerick ran from the store, sprinted down the harbor front past the long piers and moored ships until he saw a ship with someone he recognized shuffling about on the deck.
“Bran!” Azerick called out as he ran the length of the long dock. “Bran, you have not left yet. I do not know what is going on. Everyone is acting strange and dying. I think the plague has come to Southport. We need to get out of here.”
His friend turned towards him, his face already showing the signs of death. “It’s no plague, Az. It’s you, you are the plague. I was too slow. Everyone on the ship is dead already. I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway. Andrea is long dead, killed by your curse when she met you, just like the rest of us.”
“No! I did not kill her! It is not my fault!”
“Yes it is. Do you know why she was out the night the slavers took her?”
Azerick shook his head.
“Her father put her hands on her again. He did that sometimes when he was really drunk. Just his hands. They fought and she ran off even though she knew it was dangerous.”
“No, no, no,” Azerick moaned, not wanting to hear it.
“You could have kept her safe, Az. You knew what it was like for her, but you kept your nice, safe little haven all to yourself, safe from the depredations of the city above. You let her die, your selfishness let her die,” Bran accused him.
“It is not my fault!” Azerick vehemently denied. “I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died, mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.”
“Now you begin to see,” Bran told him. “Everyone around you dies. Your family died because you are cursed and Andrea died because you were a coward, because you were too much a coward to try to keep her safe. Better to let others take her, that way you would not feel the weight of responsibility. Your conscience would be clear. She would be dead but you could deny culpability. But you know the truth. You know it is your fault.”
Azerick barely heard Bran’s last words. His own thoughts were echoing inside his head too loud for him to focus upon his friend.
I could not keep her safe! I could never keep those around me safe! They all died, mother, father, Jon and the others, they all died.
“They all died because I did not keep them safe. I may not have been able to save father but I should have been there for mother, Jon and the others, and Andrea,” said, talking to himself as he left Bran behind.
Azerick awoke in a cold sweat, somehow knowing it was not the nightmare that woke him. Someone was coming. He heard someone open the trapdoor hidden beneath the burned out timbers of the tanner’s shop then a sudden cry and thump of a body hitting the stone. He sprang out of bed, grabbed his knife, and prepared to defend his home. If the gods cursed him, then his enemies would suffer under the spell of his shadow as well. He would make certain of that.
Half a dozen men surrounded the trapdoor in the burned out remains of what appeared to have once been a tannery. All six men were slavers and normally would have been hunting the streets for valuable targets on this moonless night. Instead, they had followed Kaleesh, one of their own that claimed he knew where one of the men, or boys as it turned out, lived. The man in charge of the slave ring had put out a very sizable reward for the capture of whoever it was that had cost them a fortune by freeing their last shipment slaves and making them all look foolish.
Kaleesh had been with the group that had chased the boy into the squatters’ district before losing him thanks to the help of what many thought was the thieves’ guild. Kaleesh had not gone back to the warehouse, now rendered useless by the infiltrators’ knowledge. Instead, he stuck around the dilapidated ward hoping to find where the boy had gone to ground.
Kaleesh was an experienced thief out of Bakhtaran and knew that they had chased the young intruder to his warren like hounds running a fox back to its den. It was as much luck as skill that led him close enough to the hidden entrance that let him spy the street rat sneaking away the next day. He was cautious and far from inept, the fact that he was still alive testified to some measure of skill, but he was not a real thief like Kaleesh was.
The swarthy-skinned, hook-nosed Sumaran knew there was no need to follow the boy throughout the city though he easily could have without detection. He simply waited for the boy to return, using far less caution than he should have, and pinpointed the location of the trapdoor.
Kaleesh considered ambushing the lad inside his own home but could not be certain if there were others living inside. He was confident that the boy was not a member of the local guild despite their apparent interference. Still, entering another’s lair by oneself was unwise so he decided to let a few of his closest cohorts in on the plan. He would take half the reward and split the remainder between the others. It was still very profitable, much more so than if he had foolishly told the entire company. Telling the boss directly was even more foolish. The thieving bastard would have simply ordered everyone down the hole and not paid out at all.
“The way in is under here,” Kaleesh told his group. “Raheem, you go first, we’ll follow you down.
Raheem lowered himself into the dark hole, climbing down the metal rungs of the ladder bolted to the stone wall of the shaft. He had only descended a few steps when the ladder rung suddenly pulled out in his hand. Raheem’s stomach lurched with the terrifying sense of falling. He reached out desperately to grab onto another rung as he plummeted into the darkness but his weight pulled the slick rung out of his hand.
The slaver never heard the snick of the iron spike that sprung up from the recessed bore below. The wind was blasted from his lungs when he struck the hard floor at the bottom of the shaft then looked dumbly at the iron rod that protruded from his chest and realized why he could not get his breath back.
Kaleesh heard Raheem’s body strike the ground and was glad that he had decided to let the fellow Sumaran be the first to descend. He never did like Raheem and figured that if the boys trapped his lair, as he certainly would have, then let Raheem find the first one.
“Be careful and watch for more traps,” Kaleesh told the others.
Jonah went next, followed by Kaleesh and the others. Jonah climbed carefully down the ladder, reaching with his leg when he came to the missing rung. The next step was slick and coated in grease or animal fat.
Jonah supported most of his weight with his arms until he was able to get his feet firmly on the next rung, avoiding touching the slicked rung with his hands. He saw where the missing rung slipped into a slot in the sides of the ladder. It let a person step on it without incident but the moment they leaned back, it slid right out of the slot. The bar itself dangled from a stout cord against the wall just a few inches in front of his face.
He was only two rungs from reaching the bottom, just three feet above where Raheem laid, moving his lips like a dying fish, when the step moved. Not far, it only shifted a fraction of an inch, but that was enough to pull the cord that disappeared into a crack in the wall, which pulled the trigger of the crossbow hidden behind it. The slap of the cord striking the spring steel bow heralded the death of Jonah. The former slaver dropped the last few feet, landing atop Raheem with a quarrel protruding from his side just below the armpit.
Bah, two men dead and they had not even reached the den’s floor! The god’s only know how large the place is. It could cover half the damn city for all he knew. The first flickering doubts began to fill Kaleesh’s mind. Maybe he had better go back and tell the others? No! It was just one street rat, he was certain! The rest of them would just have to be more careful.
“Now the rest of you watch what you’re doing!” the Sumaran hissed up the shaft.
Kaleesh grabbed the sides of the ladder with his hands and the inside of his feet, slid the rest of the way to the floor, and then motioned the others to follow him the same way. One after another, the other three men slid to the bottom and joined the Sumaran in the gloomy passage, looking warily for signs of any more traps.
Kaleesh could hear the men’s fear in their breathing as they all stared up the dimly lit passage. A luminous fungus grew on the walls, adding a small amount of bluish light to the dim yellow light of a low turned oil lamp at what appeared to be a four-way intersection perhaps thirty yards ahead.
“Death awaits all who enter here,” an eerie voice whispered down the passage. “Flee; run while you can, body thieves, you vile purveyors of flesh, run.”
Kaleesh’s men looked ready to do just that until he froze them with a glare that promised a knife in the back of the first man to flee.
“It is just a boy playing tricks with you,” he growled at his men.
“I know who you are, boy! I know your face! It is you who had better run if you can!”
Laughter, more disconcerting than the eerie whispers had been, filled the dank passage. Only Kaleesh’s unspoken threat kept the men behind him from running away and fleeing back up the ladder.
Azerick watched the first man that attempted to climb down the treacherous ladder strike the ground, landing on the spring-loaded spike that the slip-bar released from within the narrow secret passage behind the wall where most of the traps were set up, ready to unleash their hidden death upon anyone unfortunate enough to find their triggers. When the second slaver triggered the crossbow and dropped atop his associate, Azerick’s fear at the intrusion became anger then a grim sort of amusement.
When the dark-skinned man threatened him after hearing his spooky warning, he could not help but laugh at the fear the man tried desperately to conceal. His friends were even worse at hiding their emotions than their apparent leader was. He could smell the sweat rolling off their already normally pungent bodies. Fear sweat had an altogether different odor to it than the stale stench of poor hygiene.
Azerick watched through small holes in the wall revealed by simply pulling out a stone not mortared in place. He saw the swarthy man take the lead and move like a man who knows something about the art of thievery and trap setting. His movements reminded him of the way the guild thieves moved, careful and precise, spotting and avoided the trigger plates that would spell his death.
It was obvious that this man was too skilled to trip any of the traps that lay hidden along the floor so Azerick was going to have to take a more direct course of action. When Kaleesh stepped passed another trigger plate, Azerick simply pulled the trigger on the crossbow himself. With a speed and agility that shocked Azerick, the man dropped to the floor as the bolt clattered off the wall just above his head.