So the party gambled, and he tried for the plaza. He hit it spot on, and though the others had stared at him in amazement for a moment before everyone was up and running, Phin knew the credit was not really due himself. He had wrapped his hand around the golden jewel atop the wand within his right sleeve as he read the spell, and he had felt the surge of the Witch King’s power when the world around him began to fade.
The party emerged from the gatehouse and their feet rang loudly as they raced across the iron drawbridge. Then they were off it and out of the mist at a step, people shouting in surprise as after four days in a gray-and-black world they emerged into a different one with impossibly green grass, and a brilliant blue sky high above them.
They ran on a hundred yards or so before warning horns started to blow ahead of them in the Shugak towers fronting Camp Town, and Deskata shouted for everyone to halt.
“Do it again, Phoarty!” he yelled, and everyone who had drawn weapons snapped them back into sheaths and scabbards. Phin dropped to a cross-legged seat on the ground and opened the book on his lap. He opened to where a finger marked a page that was now blank, and hurriedly flipped ahead to the next teleport spell. The others joined hands in a circle around him, except for Claudja who knelt behind Phin, one hand linked to Tilda’s and the other sliding into the collar of Phin’s robes to rest on his bare shoulder.
Phin found the next teleport spell and started to read aloud, the rhythmic words of old Tullish flaring blue on the page as he spoke them, moving one finger along the lines. With his other hand, still within his right sleeve, he again clasped the golden gem atop the wand of the long dead Witch King, and felt the warm surge of its power.
The words on the page faded even as Phin read them, and he listened only to the sound of his own voice, not to the horns nor the sharp croaking noises, nor to the people telling him to hurry. Phin’s mind fell away from itself and he thought of long months of longer nights and early mornings, boredom and uselessness. The grass and the sky disappeared and there was another stomach-churning jolt, though actually not as bad as the first one. Phin knew the place he was going to this time, only too well.
In an instant Phin was sitting on hard stone in an ugly barren courtyard with mismatched walls, next to a dirt-filled fountain out of which sprouted weeds and the hacked stump of a dead tree. Phin’s friends were all around him, if he could call them that, and he thought that now he probably could as that had been some serious magic he had just performed, without killing any of them.
Two horses whinnied and Zeb yelled, “Whoa!” A wagon with a very startled-looking driver stopped just short of the party, the man on the board staring at them with his mouth hanging open.
“Souterm?” Claudja asked, her hand still on Phin’s shoulder, holding on tight.
“Welcome to the Empire, your Grace.” Phin said, and then Claudja was hugging him, weeping and laughing at the same time. Everyone else started doing the same.
Chapter Forty-Two
A gray-robed Circle Wizard had run away from the area of Souterm’s North Gate as soon as the party appeared, and any number of travelers stood staring at them in amazement. The group did not linger. Phin Phoarty led the way south along side streets and back alleys all the way to the docks just short of the Miilarkian Quarter at the foot of Broadsword Ridge’s southern end. The party had vaguely agreed that was the best place for everyone. On the way the ragged, dusty band stared around in wonder, for a living city full of colorful storefronts and signs, trees rustling in the breeze, and people of all descriptions laughing and talking and strolling along seemed the strangest place imaginable.
The party took rooms in an inn before evening started to fill the place, and plans for a meal were put aside as people collapsed in the comfortable quarters. Most slept through the rest of the day, and the night as well.
Tilda awoke feeling very strange, and it was a moment before she realized it was because she was lying on a bed for the first time in weeks. She sat up and saw the shallow light of morning shining in through the wooden blinds. One other bunk in the room was occupied by the small shape of the Duchess Claudja, while the other two were empty. Amatesu’s was neatly made, Nesha-tari’s was a tangle of sheets and covers.
Tilda let Claudja sleep for the Duchess had told her she intended to approach the officials of the Codian Empire today, as well as the reason. The noblewoman from Daulic Chengdea would need her rest. Tilda washed up in a room at the end of the hall and looked at her face for a long time in a mirror above the basin. She could not decide whether or not she looked older but the plains of her face seemed sharper than she remembered, and the cheeks more hollow. Home cooking in Miilark could repair that, at least on the surface.
The thought of food sent Tilda rapidly downstairs to the common room of the inn. Nights on the docks went long but the mornings started slow. Uriako Shikashe sat alone at the bar and Tilda hardly recognized him until he nodded at her, for he seemed much smaller without his full o-yori armor. His swords remained as ever on his hips.
Zeb and Amatesu sat at a table by a paned window fronting the porch, and both smiled at Tilda as she approached. She glanced past them at the masts bobbing in the harbor, the warehouses and the blue water. If it was not Miilark, yet, it at least looked a bit like home.
Tilda settled into a chair and Zeb pointed at the mug on the table in front of him. The rich aroma of imported Xoshan coffee rose on the steam, as no self-respecting Soutermese drank the local Doonish brew.
“Oh, gods yes,” Tilda said, and Zeb raised a finger at the barman.
“You look well, Matilda,” Amatesu said.
“My friends just call me Tilda.” Tilda reached out impulsively and hugged the shukenja, who tensed for a moment but then patted her on the back.
“Even this miscreant looks almost presentable,” Tilda said, smiling at Zeb. He had shaved down to a heavy goatee and a light mustache, which together made him look like a fellow who could not quite make up his mind. He smiled back, and he looked more himself.
“So what has you three up so early?” Tilda asked, looking eagerly toward the bar for her coffee.
“We’ve been on the docks,” Zeb jerked a thumb. “Found Madame Nesha-tari an Ayzant boat, bound up Channel.”
Tilda blinked. “When does it leave?”
“Today. She is already aboard.”
“What?” Tilda was surprised to feel something like a loss at the thought that a member of the party was leaving the others so soon. She scarcely knew these people at all, it was true, yet after the last several days she felt close to each of them. Even the Zantish sorceress, Dragon Cultist, man-eating-monster.
“She says goodbye to everyone,” Zeb said, and Amatesu frowned at him as she stirred her own coffee.
“Madame Nesha-tari did not say this.”
Zeb sighed. “Well, it would have been nicer if she had, correct?”
“Doesn’t she still owe you all a great deal of money?” Tilda asked. She attributed the return of her Miilarkian interests to her proximity to the sea.
Amatesu looked unconcerned but Zeb sagged back in his chair and groaned at the ceiling.
“We had this out on the docks. The Madame feels we were paid, as the Shugak set aside big chests of money for us. Of course, the little blighters will kill us if we go back to collect, but the Madame seemed to feel that was our problem.”
Zeb rocked forward in his chair and looked miserably at Tilda.
“I was a rich man, Tilda. For about thirty seconds. The hobs opened a chest with two hundred and fifty gleaming pieces of gold in it, with my name on them! Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean? I just stared at it, and nodded okay. If I knew I was never going to see it again, I at least would have touched it. Actually, I would have stripped to my skivvies and rolled around in the pile, tossing coins in the air and singing tra-la-la!”