The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller Page 2
A glimpse of movement to Pyke’s right confirmed he hadn’t lost the man: his back and the trailing edge of his dark cloak were disappearing around the side of the Wayhouse.
Matching the skulker’s hurried pace, Pyke followed him clockwise around the building. As he leaned around the corner, the mists covering the scraggly stands of trees to the north swallowed up the large man’s silhouette.
He didn’t take the Old Road. Pyke glanced at the paving stones ahead and to his right, where the highway ran parallel to the forest path.
A brigand or other manner of thief. I didn’t see a weapon on him.
The road north is dangerous, then. Perhaps I can use a warning as leverage to get information from Jenna.
Pyke returned his attention to his surroundings. A narrow pillar of winding darkness rose from among the trees and into the sky’s mists: smoke, discolouring the sunlit fog.
Yes. Best if I hurry.
Pyke followed the outer wall of the Wayhouse until he reached the large stable doors, which hung open. The sounds and smells of horses and sweating stablehands emanated from within. As Pyke approached, a group of youths in their mid-teens appeared from inside the stable, talking animatedly and pushing and pulling one another about by the shoulders of their winter coats.
“Lucky ass!”
“What’re ya gonna buy wiv it, Calin? That fishin’ rod ya been eyein’ all week?” asked the smallest of the group, a boy who looked to have lived thirteen cycles of the seasons at most, and who was having to jog to keep up with his older compatriots.
“Don’ be daft,” snickered a girl, grinning insouciantly at the young man who led the pack. “He’s like to spend it on a gift for that lady he likes… no matter he ain’t got a chance in Ashen hell wit’ her!”
“Yer all guessin’ wrong,” retorted Calin, grinning over his shoulder. “This coin is buyin’ me a sword. So’s I can train to join the Fiend Hunters an’— oof!”
The boy’s statement was cut off as, failing to look where he was going, he passed through the doorway and collided headlong with Pyke.
Calin stumbled back and fell on his rear, and the gaggle of teenagers drew closer together, staring up at Pyke. Pyke could see them trying, and failing, to keep their mistrust and trepidation from showing. No doubt every parent in Void’s Rim told their children the dangers of travellers who wore hoods to hide their faces.
“What’n the Ash-curst Void…?” Calin’s gaze drifted to the emblem on the right shoulder of Pyke’s travel-worn cloak, which depicted a cogwheel beneath an artificer’s lens. Where his friends had paled only a little, the youth blanched white as a cotton sheet and stared, mouth open.
“Un-Guild...!”
Pyke simply waited. His guild’s reputation was often more effective than words.
After a few seconds of staring, Calin caught himself. Finding his tongue, he got to his feet and stammered, “S… sir, I’m… I wasn’ lookin’ where I was goin’. I’m sorry.”
Pyke pulled his hood back, revealing short, thready black hair and dark circles of exhaustion surrounding sunken brown eyes. At that moment, a chill wind gusted out of the foggy north. As it raised goose-bumps on the youths’ arms and billowed underneath Pyke’s cloak, the bitter cold caused the Antiquarian’s eye colour to shift. The teens stared, transfixed, as Pyke’s irises changed from an ordinary brown to an unnatural slate blue with too much grey in it to be anything but unnerving.
“Don’t be afraid of a mere Oddity like me,” Pyke told the boy. “Instead, fear those Fiend Hunters you’d so like to join.”
“S… sir?”
“You want a career in swordsmanship? Take a job as a security officer down south, or even a mercenary,” Pyke murmured. “Your life won’t be nearly so short, and you won’t live it in constant fear of being found guilty of heresy for killing a fiend or monster the wrong way.”
So saying, he brushed past Calin, stalking through the group of cowed teens and through the doorway.
The stable was dim, lit by lanterns hanging from two of the rafters. The rest of the light came through the door from the tavern, along with plenty of noise. The floor was covered by a layer of mostly clean straw, and the room’s centre was enwrapped by a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of fifteen stalls, some twelve of which were occupied by horses chewing placidly at feed bags or socializing with their neighbours in grunts and snorts.
Stablehands hurried to and fro, mucking out stalls and caring for the horses. One section of the stable’s centre was reserved for merchants’ covered wagons, two of which were sitting there watched by a group of four bored-looking guards. The bed of one wagon was filled with crates chased with metal, while the other lay empty.
Pyke raked the room a second time with his gaze, but there was no sign of Jenna.
“You, there. Three keili if you tell me what happened to the girl who was just in here.”
The stablehand paused in his duties for long enough to size Pyke up, perhaps concerned for Jenna’s safety. It seemed the dim lighting concealed Pyke’s strange eyes and the Antiquities Guild patch on his shoulder: the fellow, seemingly content that Pyke’s five foot six, average frame wasn’t unduly threatening, shrugged and said, “Kind gal. Local. Few minutes ago, she paid the stable-master’s son a half-sharppe, just fer havin’ her horse ready t’go by dawn every day she works fer the last t’ree fortnights. Must be payin’ well up there at the House.”
Damnable luck. She must have already been riding out the door by the time I followed that brigand around the building.
Make the best of the situation. An Antiquarian is trained to be pragmatic… and those bandits will be distracted.
“Thank you. Goodbye.” Pyke reached into the pouch at his side and tossed the stable-hand three silver coins. Each was pressed with a picture of a crown on one side and the stylized image of a long-tailed bird on the other.
Pyke left the stable at once, the tattered edges of his cloak whirling out behind him. The cold still didn’t bother him, but he raised his hood against the winter wind as it began to dry his eyes. He was alone with the drifting fog and the evenly laid stones of the Old Road, for the teenagers had already taken off.
Turning north up the Road, Pyke let the rhythm of his footsteps fall into the steady lope he had learned from ten cycles of travelling on the business of the Antiquities Guild. His was a career which didn’t lend itself to staying anywhere for a long time, which suited him just fine. After all, few places welcomed an Oddity.
Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Earlier, in the Wayhouse, the Voice’s commentary had jarred Pyke, but he had never found its presence obtrusive on the long, solitary walks between places. When he was on the road, it was sometimes a relief simply to have somebody, or something, to talk to.
I was just considering the nature of people, particularly their reactions to the unknown.
I’m feared by those around me. The frightened faces of those youths keep returning to my mind’s eye.
That’s your opinion, Pyke responded, his thoughts calm but melancholy. I’m not one to pretend the trade of an Antiquarian is prestigious. The job may pay well for the few of us with the skills to survive it, but our reputation for leaving a wake of chaos isn’t entirely unearned, even if it is exaggerated.
A poetic way of putting it, particularly for you, Voice. I wouldn’t call them family, but yes... I do feel the burn of the Antiquities Guild’s brand keenly today.
The title of ‘guild’ was essentially honorary where the Antiquarians were concerned: unlike the guilds of the proper trades, like blacksmithing or clockwork, the Antiquities Guild garnered little respect from reputable citizens. There was no trust to be had for a group so closely scrutinized by the Church of the Phoenix and its inquisition, the Fiend Hunters.
The wan orb of the sun-comet struggled higher on the southern horizon as Pyke walked steadily north, but its meagre warmth did little to chase away the clinging fog of the morning. From time to time, stunted trees loomed like hunched monsters in the mists to either side of the Old Road. Besides these, the only things to break the monotony were small clinging shrubs and tough grasses. Nature had not overtaken the Old Road: it had been built by advanced technology long before humanity had come to rule these lands, and not one of its stones was so much as cracked. Despite the hundred cycles since the fall of the suns and the disappearance of the Ancients, the Old Road was still seemingly indestructible, and formed the backbone of commerce and travel in the Phoenix Kingdom.
Not that the Kingdom extended past here. Void’s Rim was the northernmost town to which the Phoenix Kingdom laid claim. Everything beyond it was left to the Void: the darkened lands where the sun did not shine and humanity’s rule was not recognized. There, it was said, there were stranger, more deadly things than hunger and cold. The Void was home to the fell creatures and unknown dangers from which the Fiend Hunters protected the Kingdom.
But the Fiend Hunters hereabouts turn a blind eye to the most common monster of all: desperate human beings. Pyke’s keen ears had picked up shouting from ahead.
Leaving the road, the Antiquarian crept in amongst the fog-shrouded trees. The stunted undergrowth gave way to shrubs and clinging vines which crowded the trees near the base of their trunks. Pyke slowed to a near stop, treading carefully on the frozen leaves.
Ahead and to his left, on the Old Road, voices came into focus, though their owners were still hidden amidst the fog. A man barked orders to what sounded like at least ten scurrying, shouting individuals. Underneath the hubbub, Jenna sobbed quietly.
“Keep the damn horse under control!”
“I got its lead!”
“Oh, Ashen hell, lookit all that blood.”
“Dagan, it’s Peret… he’s dead.”
I don’t like it, but it doesn’t seem I have a choice, Pyke replied. Using a stranger as a diversion seems cruel, but since I couldn’t forewarn her... it’s the practical choice here. I can’t fight a dozen bandits.
Oh, shut up.
Pyke took another quiet step. More shouting from the road hid the quiet crunch of the frozen soil under his boots, and he increased his pace.
“...Ash,” swore a man’s voice, an edge of rage running through it like a brutal current. “Horseshoe straight through the head. Stupid bastard got his due, lettin’ himself get stuck behind the creature.”
“Dagan, what do we do?”
“Search the saddlebags fer coin, an’ keep outta harm’s way this time. Girl’s gonna pay fer loosin’ the vicious animal on Peret! Where’s a peasant girl come by a warhorse, huh? Ya workin’ fer somebody important, ya li’l witch?”
Jenna’s weeping quieted, and she spoke up in her own defense. “She… she’s just a retired draft horse, it was an accident, she panicked! Please, I’ve given you everything. Let me go!”
“Peret was my friend, ya bitch. I oughta make ya pay for his life with yers.” Metal scraped against metal as a blade was drawn from its sheath.
Don’t tell me that, Pyke said, his stomach roiling with a mess of conflicting emotions. Your intentions are clear, Voice. You want me to intervene against, what, a dozen bandits?
Liar.
Another of the men standing on the Old Road spoke up. “Dagan, listen... we got almost a whole sharppe worth o’ silver from the girl, and I reckon we could sell the horse fer even more. There ain’t no need—”
The speaker was cut off with a noise like an empty waterskin being squeezed violently. Pyke knew this sound well: he’d been punched in the stomach more than once. The most fervently magic-fearing parts of certain cities were a poor place for an Oddity or an Antiquarian.
“Shut up, or yer gonna share her fate.” Dagan’s breathing was heavy, and his voice dripped with vitriol. “Push me, an’ I’ll carve both yer tongues out, then leave ya to starve!”
I’ve heard enough. We’re getting out of here, Pyke thought.
The Voice didn’t respond. Its silence grated on Pyke as he resumed his course away from the ongoing situation. Naturally the Voice would be quiet now, for it had no more information to supply. And, infuriating as it was for Pyke to admit, the Voice wasn’t prone to suggesting particular courses of action. Pyke was left with the truth: he had supplied the impulse to step in all on his own.
Pyke shook his head. Best to leave all this far behind, before he did something stupid.
The noise of his footfalls was covered by the retching of the man Dagan had struck, and by the ripping and rattling sounds of the thieves tearing items out of Jenna’s saddlebags. But Pyke had only taken another ten steps by the time the brigand leader growled out another curse.
“Ashes ‘n’ blood! Ain’t there more’n blankets in these damn bags? Get that worthless offal outta my sight, Mots! What kinda skinflint traveller carries not even an extra sliver o’ coin in her bags?”
The brute threw something to the ground, likely another blanket. “I’ll tell ya what kind… She’s a woman what goes up to that House to work as a whore! Figures she don’ need to carry coin if she pays wit’ her body… well, she won’ be so ready to look down on folks like us, not after I’m done wit’ her! My knife’s gonna ruin that pretty li’l face!”
Jenna’s breaths grew laboured, and Pyke could hear Dagan’s feet shift as the bandit turned to regard her.
“You scared o’ havin’ scars, like me? Scared o’ bein’ a cripple?” The bandit took a threatening step toward Jenna. “Ya should be. A scarred face is the only way a li’l hussy like you could know what it’s like ta struggle... t’be without work, nor food, nor so much as a word o’ kindness from a misbegotten Kingdom and its craven King! Yer just like the rest of ‘em… I think I’ll cut out yer tongue, too.”
The conflicted, unfamiliar feelings deep in Pyke’s gut continued to boil and writhe. He’d felt disdain for many a selfish human being before, but this brigand had brought forth something far colder from Pyke’s heart, as though the conflict were awakening a half-remembered darkness in him. It was an emotion he couldn’t name, one so harsh and raw that it frightened Pyke.
Tell me. Pyke’s thoughts were so very cold that he barely recognized his own voice in his head. What are my odds of ensuring Dagan never threatens another woman?
Every means at my disposal. Including and not including the Serpent’s Tongue.
Out on the road, Jenna found her voice. “Listen, I swear that’s all I own in the world. You have everything. I ain’t... I’m not holdin’ out, I promise. I’m no whor—”
Dagan grabbed the young woman’s face, silenci
ng her.
“I musta misjudged. Maybe yer good fer somethin’, girl,” the brigand leader growled. “Maybe I’ll have my way with ya, afore I cut yer smart li’l tongue out. Would ya like to know one last man afore yer too ugly? Huh? I may even leave ya a couple o’ yer silvers by way o’ payment.”
Pyke had heard all he needed to hear. Mentally cursing his own inability to do the reasonable thing and leave well enough alone, he tuned out his Voice’s continuing drone and reached into a fabric envelope sewn into the inner lining of his cloak. From it, he lifted free a rod of dark-coloured metal twice the length of his hand.
The Relic was solid iron, blackened by some unknown impurity. A groove at one end of it was inlaid with inscriptions in Old Ancient, the mostly lost language of the Dead and the Fae. Balancing the rod on both of his palms and raising it to eye level, Pyke hummed a quiet note which caused the Serpent’s Tongue to resonate and quiver like a living thing.
Pyke’s senses of sight and hearing cast themselves out of his body and into the mist, seeking out Jenna’s whimpers and Dagan’s heavy breathing some twenty metres away at the edge of the Old Road. As his mind fixed on his target’s location, Pyke’s senses shifted again. Now, he saw the mist-bound Road from a new perspective: a point of view which seemed to rise from between the very paving stones.
By this second-sight, Pyke made out a huge man with a scar across his face standing a short distance away. Dagan was lifting Jenna with one hand clenched around her jaw. The brigand’s other fist gripped the hilt of a knife with white-knuckled intensity. Jenna could be seen trying to struggle out of his grip despite the pain of being lifted so roughly, but a length of rope held her hands behind her back.
Pyke took in another eleven brigands: a mix of men and women who stood watching, one of them holding the reins of Jenna’s mare. A twelfth bandit lay curled up on the paving stones, where Dagan had left him wheezing for breath. Not far from the prone figure, a crumpled form lay in a pool of blood: the corpse of Peret.