Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Ifound myself lying face down on the wooden roof of a big wagon.
Dathka was next to me on her side, and by all the saints, the lid to the lamp remained closed.
When I went to sit up, there was a lot of tinkling and crunching, which was when I realized we were both covered in broken glass, and any sudden moves might result in getting cut.
Turned out, the lift’s roof was made of a bunch of different smaller panes of glass, rather than one big magical one like each of the sides. And we’d only shattered one of those panes, rather than the entire thing, which would have dropped jagged shards onto all the innocent passengers.
As for them, from the noise they were making, most were confused or frightened, while a few cooler heads were urging the others not to panic.
The merchant’s wagon was tall enough that they hadn’t even seen us lying atop it yet.
There’d just been an extremely bright light coming up the chute, and then a moment later, some glass had broken.
We’d been lucky to hit the wagon. Between the tall body and big wheels, that extra ten feet of falling probably would’ve injured a lot more things than my pride.
“Don’t move,” I whispered to Dathka, who was still getting her vision back.
“I’m scared to. Did we fall through the lift?”
“Yeah.”
The passengers hadn’t spotted us yet, only because the merchant’s wagon was really large and the roof was flared out to the sides, but as soon as we reached ground level, this lift would surely be swarming with investigating paladins.
At minimum, they’d confiscate our treasure.
At worst, they’d blame us for all the violence above and we’d be off to jail in chains.
We needed to get out of here, and that wasn’t going to happen through the front door.
There was a hole above us, and through it, I could see the corkscrew road passing by. “Do you trust me?”
“Not particularly,” Dathka hissed.
“Then you can stay and get arrested. Otherwise, stand up real gently so we don’t get cut, and then hold on.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
When we got up, the passengers spotted us and began shouting.
I ignored them as best as I could as I shook the broken glass off my cloak.
“Ouch.” I got a few little cuts anyway. Trax would have no problem finding us now!
With the box tucked tight under one arm, I lifted my air glove skyward. “Grab tight.”
“This had better work,” Dathka said as she wrapped her arms around me.
If it didn’t, we’d find out really fast. “I’ve never tried to Ascend with this much weight before.”
“Are you calling me fat?”
Rather than answer that, I concentrated on awakening the Clear embedded in my glove.
When I felt the air solidify and wrap around my extended arm, I willed it to pull us upward.
“Ascend.” I’m fairly certain that if I’d tried this on the ground, the spell would’ve barely lifted us at all.
Except we were on a descending platform, so it was more like the spell held us in about the same place as the floor kept going down without us.
Dathka held on to me hard as she had Gerzog when she’d been trying to murder him. The broken pane passed us, and then we were dangling in the open shaft.
“Shit!” she exclaimed as she tried to squeeze the life out of me.
That was probably what I’d sounded like flying on a kwetzel. From the lights of the district, we were probably halfway to the ground, but thankfully, there was a patch of corkscrew road only twenty feet away and below us. This was going to be the tricky part.
“Hang on.”
I focused on the road as my target and cut the spell. We began to drop. “Descend!”
My descent was rough even at the best of times, but with a box in one arm, and a shrieking deadlander hanging off me, it proved even clumsier. We went down at an angle, way too fast, bashing first against a pillar, then tumbled over the metal railing. We hit the road and went rolling.
The stupid box popped open again.
The beam of light illuminated the entire district. If the authorities hadn’t known we were here before, they sure knew now!
“Why didn’t Gerzog install a latch on this damned box?” Totally blind, I crawled toward where I thought I’d dropped it and fumbled about until I found it and slammed the lid shut.
The two of us lay there, waiting for our eyes to sort of clear.
“They’re going to catch us,” Dathka said. “We should get our stories straight.”
“We’re not caught yet.” I stumbled back to my feet. “I’ve got to get this stupid thing to your dad or else.”
“Why do you care so much about your fake wizard school?”
“It’s not fake!” I shouted. “It’s all we’ve got! And I’m not going to let some prick take what little bit of hope we have left away from us.”
With the box in hand, I half-blindly groped about for the safety rail. I might as well keep moving until I could see fully. At least this felt like I was doing something.
Dathka swore at me, but from the noise, I could tell she’d followed.
A few seconds later, I was still seeing stars and spots, but I was making progress. “There were some tall buildings all along the lift plaza. If we find a good angle, I might be able to Descend us to the roof of one of those. If we’re lucky, nobody will be looking up when we do.”
“A moment ago, you almost broke our necks going a fraction of that distance.”
“You got any better ideas?”
“I got an idea,” Gerzog said as he stepped out from behind the pillar right below us and pointed something at my chest. “Hand over the lamp.”
I didn’t know if he had a wand or gun aimed at me, but whatever it was, it was sure to be deadly. But how had he gotten below us?
“You son of a bitch.” Dathka was outraged. “You learned how to use my shadow charm.”
“I did.” Gerzog held something up, but it was still too blurry for me to tell what it was. “Whoever enchanted this is good. Really good.”
“My mother gave that to me.”
“That makes me using it to kill you an even sadder story.” Gerzog turned his weapon toward Dathka.
I stepped in front of her just as he fired.
I could pretend I’d done that out of honor, but the truth was, Dathka had no charms left, while my Frunza Tarlev protective charm was still on my person. I could take a hit and live. She couldn’t. And two versus one was better than me fighting Gerzog by myself.
The weapon turned out to be a gun, which I learned the hard way, by having the lead ball flatten into a pancake against my abdomen. The protective spell took most of the impact, but it was paper thin, and a whole lot of that energy managed to sneak through in the form of a nasty gut punch.
Dathka rushed past as I fell on my ass, launching herself at the much larger orc.
It was two versus one, except he was nearly three times her size and she was unarmed.
At least, I thought she was unarmed, until she revealed that she had a knife that she tried to bury in his chest. Then I realized that was my knife. The thieving skag must have taken it off me when she’d been hanging on to me for dear life.
Fat lot of good my knife did her, though, as Gerzog smashed the barrel of his empty pistol against her. Dathka went rolling away.
I yanked out one of Azarin’s Jolt rods and threw it. Gerzog ducked as the sparking metal flew past his head. That gave me enough time to abandon the box, get up, and charge. I closed enough distance that this time, my Shroud of Flame set his grey robes ablaze.
Gerzog got burned good, yet he calmly shrugged out of the burning priest’s clothing and tossed the flaming bundle at me. I swatted it out the air in a shower of sparks, not realizing he would be right behind it.
Orcs hit really hard.
That shot rocked my head back on my neck. His knuckles left a dent in my cheek. I reached up and slugged him right back, which he clearly hadn’t expected, but hitting an orc’s jaw is like punching wood. I think I hurt my hand more than I hurt him.
He dropped the pistol and yanked a short sword from his belt. I leapt back as the steel whistled through where I’d just been.
I responded with more Red. But when the Shroud of Fire cleared, Gerzog wasn’t there.
Confused, I blinked for a few seconds, thinking my lamp-damaged eyes were playing a trick on me, then Gerzog came out of the shadows of the pillar fifteen feet behind me. I turned just in time to see him aiming a wand. I was in the open. He had me dead to rights.
“Shred.”
Out of pure instinct and desperation, I reached for the metal railing and willed the Clear embedded in my glove to activate. It was all the speed and violence of an Ascend but sideways.
I was pulled ten feet to the side in the blink of an eye just before glowing sawblades spun through my last location. My boots hit the ground, and by the time I slid to a stop against the railing, I’d pulled out a handful of screws and tossed them.
The Screws of Chaos ignited in midair. There was a shimmer around Gerzog as a few of sparked off of his protective charms. He simply took a few steps back into the shadow of the pillar and vanished.
I spun around, but wherever he’d gone, it wasn’t behind me. From the way he wasn’t leaking blood from the many stab wounds Dathka had put in him above, he probably took a healing potion and was pausing to take another dose.
I used that opportunity to reload my pistol.
I broke it open, fished out the spent paper, and went to pluck another from my belt.
I’d practiced that move a lot and gotten to where it was rather smooth and fast, but I hesitated…
and moved my hand to pick a different cartridge at the other end of the loops.
I stuffed that one in, then snapped the action shut.
Dathka was down and looked to be in bad shape.
He’d clubbed the snot out of her. I could hear the lift approaching, which meant the paladins from below were probably on their way up, and it was likely they could stop the thing at whatever level they wanted.
I could also hear noise above us too, which meant more of them were on their way down to find the source of the incredible light burst. It was get out now or never.
“We’ve got to jump. You’re going to have to hold on to me again.”
Dathka had gotten to her feet. I didn’t think it was possible for a deadlander to get any paler, but she’d managed to do so. “I can’t. I think my arm’s broken.”
It took only a brief glance at the awkward angle of the bone beneath her sleeve to know that was true. I couldn’t hold on to an awkward box and an injured woman and still control a Descent. I’d be sure to plant us all in the ground.
“It’s alright. Get the lamp to Carcalla. I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Half a dozen priests just witnessed you attempt a murder on holy ground. You will not be fine.” I looked around desperately but couldn’t see any other options. “Hang on.”
I ran over and scooped up the box, then took it to the rail and looked over the edge, the lift quickly approaching. “I sure hope these church guys will put this Permanence to good use.”
“No, don’t. I’m not worth it.”
“Oh shut up.” I didn’t want to go through all this just to break the damned thing, so I picked up Gerzog’s blackened priest robes, wrapped them around the box, and dropped it as gently as I could over the side.
“You fool!”
It weighed a lot less than Dathka and me, so it didn’t break the pane of glass it landed on, but the thump was enough to cause the paladins inside to immediately stop the lift in place right below us. It would take them a minute to figure out what that noise had been.
I ran back to her. “You can stay here and be mad in jail, or we can go.”
She was furious about losing the treasure, but she had the sense to not stick around and cry about it. “Let’s go.”
“We’re going to try and float as far from here as possible.
Just know I’ve never tried to hold this spell for that long.
” We went to the outside edge, and even in the dark, it looked like a long way down.
“I’ll aim for those rooftops, and I think we’ve got the angle to get there, but I don’t know how good this is going to work. ”
Chest to chest, she wrapped her good arm around me, and I put mine around her waist and squished her tight—if Azarin saw us like this, somebody would be getting electrocuted, that was for sure—and then we went over the side.
I activated the Descent spell, and focused on those rooftops as best as I could.
That’s easier said than done when it feels like you’re falling to your death, and the wind is howling in your ears, and your eyes are blinking away involuntary moisture, and a deadlander is screaming with her face shoved into your neck.
It took everything I had to keep our feet under us, because at this speed, if we landed headfirst, we were going to die.
I’d been worried that someone below would see us, but that turned out to not be a problem, because one of the paladins must have opened the box. There was so much light shooting out of the lift shaft that nobody on the ground was going to be able to see a thing.
Problem was, neither was I.
I think we were still going the right direction.
I tried to remember everything Azarin had taught me about air magic, understanding the Clear, and the nuances of flying.
Then the mental strain of keeping up the spell pushed all of that aside, and it was all I could do to keep the spell going.
It was like suspending yourself from a bar and holding on as long as you can as your fingers burned more and more, and your muscles shook, until you just couldn’t hold on anymore… only with my brain.
Except the spell broke before my concentration. We’d long wondered what the limits of this spell were. Welp… I found them.
My enchantment abruptly died. The Clear was all used up. We went from a haphazard, slightly slowed fall in a useful direction, to a total freefall at the mercy of gravity.
To my great surprise, that only lasted about two seconds before we crashed into someone’s shingles.