The Sarge blinked, then a wry smile pushed the last lingering traces of fear off his face.
“Sorry, your Highness. We passed through that place on the way here. I know the look of a realm teetering on the brink of disaster. There’s not enough gold left in your Daddy’s coffers to get a fellow drunk.”
The Duchess screwed her eyes shut and grimaced. She turned her face away from both the Sarge and Phin, and her shoulders shook once more before she steadied them. Phin balled his hands at his side to keep from touching her, stood up and walked away.
As he passed the Sarge, the man grabbed Phin’s arm.
“You know anything yet?”
“What?”
The Sarge nodded at the book lying open in the corner.
“Oh. No, not really. The text is very old, and dense.” Phin’s arm was still in the Sarge’s grip and he raised an eyebrow at the man. “There are spells written within it, but I first need to understand them in the context of the whole. I am confident that I can, but for now…for now I should memorize my regular spells for tomorrow.”
The Sarge’s eyes were on Phin’s. Phin did not know why they were not green anymore, as they had been back in Camp Town, but thought it must have had something to do with the ring the Sarge had lost along with the ring finger. The jewel had also been the green of a shining emerald. Nothing else made sense.
“Nifty little fire you have going there,” the Sarge said, tilting his head at the candle without breaking eye contact.
“That is nothing,” Phin said. “A parlor trick.”
The Sarge nodded. “Not like the spell you used to flatten that wench with the braid and the whoopin’ stick, back at the Dead Possum.”
“No,” Phin agreed. “Not like that.”
The Sarge looked at Ty, and at Rickard, then back to Phin.
“How many men do you think you could knock out with one of those spells, at the same time?”
“No more than one.”
The Sarge nodded. “And how many times can you cast it?”
“A handful,” Phin said, though he was thinking three.
“There are different kinds of handfuls, Phoarty.” The Sarge released Phin’s arm and patted it with two fingers. Phin stepped around him and moved toward the book.
“Nice job tying-up her Grace,” the Sarge said to Phin’s back. “And you told her we are going to Ayzantium, eh?”
Phin stopped. The Duchess had let that slip out in her fear but Phin had hoped the legionnaires had not caught it. He turned around.
“I did, to calm her down. I thought that was preferable to having her think she had been taken for…other reasons.”
Phin looked meaningfully at Ty, who glared back at him.
“Bad idea,” the Sarge shook his head. “The Fire Priests of Ayzantium are frightening enough to a Daul. You should have come up with a lie.”
“I am afraid I am a bad liar,” Phin said.
The Sarge chuckled, and it was a sound somehow more evil than any roar in the night.
The legionnaires moved to settle back down where they slept, as it was still a couple of hours before dawn. Phin was exhausted himself, but he moved back to his corner and shut the book he had been reading. He put it back in the leather satchel and removed his slim traveling spell book from an inner pocket of his robes. He pinched the blue flame off his candle as he could not maintain the cantrip while meditating over spells for the next day, and relit it mundanely with a flint.
It took Phin a few minutes to clear his mind enough to concentrate, for there were too many thoughts running around inside his head. Chief among them was the fact that judging by what he had read so far, there was nothing at the heart of Vod’Adia that would allow teleportation to Ayzantu City. Nor to anywhere else that he wanted to go.
Chapter Thirty-One
Zeb had swapped the blankets and tent he had shared on the road with Phinneas Phoarty for a bedroll provided by the Shugak as the party had marched out of Camp Town. The Shugak gear consisted of a flat floor mat stuffed unevenly with feathers and down, and two large blankets big enough to cocoon a hobgoblin. Though the cloth was coarse it was roomy and warm, and it did not smell like it had ever been used. That had not been true of Zeb’s previous bedding by the time he got to Camp Town.
The roominess only became an issue when a monstrous roar boomed over Vod’Adia, shaking Zeb out of a dream that had just been getting good. He blinked in the darkness until a second roar sounded and with no thought or plan he tried to scramble to his feet and run. The wide blankets tangled around him and he tripped over his own armor on the floor. Zeb tried to throw his arms out to break his fall but the blankets had them pinned against his chest. His fall was interrupted by someone else in the dark, someone that grunted as Zeb careened off them. Zeb hit the ground and rolled out of his entanglement, then crawled until his face bumped against a helmet. He popped it on his head and scuttled in the direction he thought his weapons might lie.
A third roar sounded in the night like a detonation, in time with the door to the stairs crashing open. Someone ran in and put a boot in Zeb’s ribs, then sailed over the top of him with a cry. Zeb kept crawling. Voices in several languages were shouting as his grasping hand found a wooden stock. Zeb grabbed it and staggered to his feet, got his back to a wall, and raised what he hoped was a weapon over his head with both hands.
Heggenauer stuttered in the darkness, then paused and spoke more clearly. A white light filled the chamber with blinding suddenness. Zeb cringed and blinked until the chaos around him began to settle into identifiable shapes.
The big blonde acolyte was across the room from Zeb, dressed in skivvies but with his shield raised and his mace held aloft, a nimbus of white light shining from the head of the weapon. John Deskata’s tower shield was in a corner, dark hair and darting eyes visible above the rim and the blade of his Legion short sword poking around the right side. Uriako Shikashe was sitting upright in his bedroll, holding the longer of his two swords by the scabbard with his right hand ready to draw the blade. The samurai’s hair was loose of its top-knot and hanging to his shoulders, and his head was tilted to one side as he listened intently.
It had apparently been Tilda who had run in and tripped over Zeb. She had then sailed halfway across the room and crash-landed on top of Nesha-tari, who was kicking and spitting furiously in her own bedding. Tilda stumbled backwards and her heel hit a pack on the floor. She fell on her back but rolled up to her feet even as she snatched a heavy dagger out of either boot, standing in a crouch in the center of the room with her blades before her. She snapped her head and wild eyes around the room so rapidly that her long braid jerked in the air.
“Everybody heard that, right?” John’s voice asked from behind his shield.
Amatesu walked in through the open door next to Zeb and he barely stopped himself from braining her with the crossbow he was holding over his head. Amatesu shut the door behind her and put her back to it. Her face was set, but pale, and Zeb could hear her breathing through her nose.
Shikashe said something that sounded like “ Loong?” The shukenja nodded. There were beads of sweat on her forehead.
Nesha-tari finally shook herself free of her bedding and stood with her feet apart, hands balled into fists at her side and looking rather fetching in the knee-shorts and heavy shirt in which she slept. Zeb tried not to notice, and turned to Amatesu. He began to ask a question in Minaun Danoric, then for some reason in Antersian, before finally finding his way to Codian.
“What the hells was that?”
“A dragon,” Amatesu answered, probably in Codian though it really didn’t matter as dragon was the one word that was the same in every language spoken on the continent of Noroth. Some said it was the first word Man had been taught to speak.
Nesha-tari barked a question at Amatesu. Zeb waited for an answer until Amatesu turned to him and lifted an eyebrow.