by David Starobin
in Issue 127, August 2022
It was no ordinary wizard’s tower. But then again, he was no ordinary burglar. At nearly six-and-a-half feet in height and nearly eighteen stone, it was an improbable occupation for him.
But he had held many improbable occupations in his young life: master sergeant in His August Melifluence Duke Zane’s special corps; mercenary chief of the Blood Pate Company out of Winnow Downs; moonlight gigolo to the Countess Lucinda’s plump niece Caffron. Now, at a tender twenty-seven winters, he was self-proclaimed Prince of Thieves of the seaside sprawl city of Gizzard’s Gulf on the Opaline Coast. He would anoint himself King of Thieves after this caper, if he managed to live through it.
This particular tower was a tricky one, as the burglar’s sheer size prohibited entry into the numerous narrowly slitted windows rising along the cylindrical face. Fortunately, his natural agility coupled with an adolescence spent scaling the frozen high places of his native land made for an easy transition to stone edifices of this sort. Were the tower less sheer than it was, he might have done it without the aid of rope and grapnel. But there it was.
The Northman’s name was Magni and he was halfway up the tower face when the silver crescent of the moon burst through the thunderheads and cast him in pale stark relief on the midnight stone. His eyes were very nearly colorless; the barest traces of frozen arctic lakes pigmented the fringes of his irises. His hair was tousled, lank with sweat sheen now from the fifty-foot climb, and coppery in hue. He was naturally pale, befitting most of those native to his frozen homeland. He was ponderous with thickly sculpted muscle but the striated lines of his form were sleek and pantherish rather than ungainly with bloated bulk. He possessed the strength of thew to lift a man twice his weight overhead, and the speed and endurance to outrun a pack of howling wolves with the scent of his blood in their snouts. That too he had done, and in recent memory.
He wore simple garb, a tunic and breeches dyed midnight blue to match his environs so that, when the moon finally retreated behind the clouds, he was a chameleon against the stone. He had left his sandals hidden in the brush far below, the better to grip the striations in the surface with his toes. Strapped over his prodigious chest, in a baldric and scabbard wrought from the gray-green shagreen of the manta ray, was a broadsword of uncommon size with an obsidian hilt. A gift from his father.
Magni reached the top and vaulted over the battlement to crouch low on the flat stone of the roof. Peering between the crenellations, he surveyed the night city below, alive with far-flung echoes of drunken despoilery. No hue and cry from some unseen sentry in the tower courtyard below had gone up. He had spied out the two guards and followed their patrol routes along the tower garden path for three nights previous to cement in his mind their pattern and position. Tonight, before the climb, he had waylaid them in turn and soundlessly snapped their necks. Then he had laid the corpses amid the deep undergrowth on the far side of the tower that was unfavored by the moon.
He had counted himself lucky this night, as on the previous three when he had surveilled the compound there had been a guard on the battlements. But now he saw the reason for the sentry’s absence. There was his corpse, tucked away in the shadows opposite. The guard had been murdered by sword or knife blade, serrated by the mess of blood pooling beneath the body and the ungainly line of the cut. Someone had beaten him here and dispatched the man with a gory haste that verged on unprofessional. Someone unprepared. But how had this clumsy interloper managed to scale one hundred feet of tower undetected by the sentries below?
There was a trap door of oak and ivory implanted at the center of the roof. It too had been accessed in marked haste, for it was slightly ajar. Puzzling, Magni drew from his broad sash a short leaf-bladed knife. And climbed silently below to see what awaited within.
#
The wizard Garibane had become something of a magnet for burglars after rumors began to circulate amongst the thieves of Ratswharf that he had discovered an arcane formula allowing the transmutation of ordinary rock into gemstone. Then, on a night of the full moon a fortnight past, a tremor shook the wizard’s tower to the bedrock of its midnight foundation. A lurid platinum brilliance beamed from the high narrow windows that could be seen for half a league beyond the harbor of Gizzard’s Gulf, and the thieves were soon convincing themselves over their ale and mead pots that Garibane had somehow managed to capture a shard of Luna Herself.
A series of intrepid burglars had followed, and near as quickly fallen, to the sentinels, both human and bestial, that guarded the walled courtyard and garden surrounding the tower. All master burglars in their own right, some odious enough in self-importance to style themselves with bold epithets invoking challenge to the dominion of the Prince of Thieves himself.
First had come Gabriela of the Moorlands, the Spider Queen. But her fitness for scaling the midnight tower face was never tested, for she had been peremptorily eaten by the twin golden leopards lying in wait amongst the orchids and azaleas. Some phantom groundskeeper had then interred her bones there as fertilizer and planted her twin scimitars as a grave marker.
After the Spider Queen had come Lynx and Ocelot, the thieving pair who somehow managed to dispatch the leopards only to fall to the owlbear just recently awoken from its hibernation in a secluded shallow cave in the south garden. Then the Rogue Marquis Helm, the only thief in Ratswharf other than Magni himself powerful enough to wield a spiked great hammer. Helm had wielded it successfully enough to dispatch the owlbear but was then unceremoniously feathered through the heart with an arrow from the belfry.
And so on in succession, the graves steadily accumulating in the courtyard. Until this most recent trespasser, who had skirted the ground sentries, scaled the tower without being seen by the belfry archer, and then messily dispatched him.
“All for naught,” Magni told himself. He would dig this interloper’s grave himself and inter his bones in the lichyard below.
Inside now, the Northman made his way down spiraling stone stairs from the spider-haunted belfry that served as the archer’s guardhouse into the tower proper. He eventually found the wizard’s laboratory which hovered, an entire level unto itself, somewhere in the tower’s upper midriff. The door leading from the landing was of ebony wood with a strange grain. And it was open a hand’s breadth. Guttering candlelight beckoned within.
Magni was about to take hold of the latch when his arctic night eyes spied the needle traps. Three of them circling the door handle and the oiled deadbolt. Disarmed and then deliberately sprung to catch the unwary preying at the burglar’s heels. The brass needles were viscous with the cinnamon-scented serum of the brown lotus. Instant death. Whoever his competitor was, he was no amateur. The Northman took a firm grip on his knife and pushed the laboratory door silently open.
Black tallow candles flickered within. But they were not needed to see. For upon Magni’s entrance the moon once again emerged from the dark clouds beyond the slitted windows to bathe his prize in silver luminescence. It lay on a nest of pale silk, upon a ritual tripod of black iron at the very center of the vast chamber.
Crouching before it, slender hands outstretched to draw it from its bed, but now seemingly frozen in abject awe of the scintillating moon jewel, was a diminutive figure. Evidently, it had somehow heard Magni’s predatory footfalls, for it turned calmly and the beady black eyes barely widened in recognition of the Northman.
“You are too late, Prince of Thieves! The Moongem has already been claimed!”
“I don’t see it in your hand.”
Magni stepped closer and in the silver lunar lambence discerned the finer features of his rival: A small man, birdlike in the delicacy of his bone structure, flint-eyed and raven-haired in the manner of the Horselords of the East. But this one was no bow-legged rider of the steppe. Rather he seemed to slither where he stood, shifting his weight on velvet-soled feet with the sinuousness of a cobra poised to strike. He wore an ornate smallsword on his hip which he drew out to the harsh stinging rasp of steel on leather. Magni knew this weapon. The Cobra’s Fang.
The Northman tossed his leaf-bladed knife into the shadows and drew the obsidian-hilted broadsword from between his shoulder blades. It was a runic brand, inscribed with the symbols of power that called the Lords of Blood and Ice from their frozen tombs to fortify the wielder in combat. Or so his father had claimed at its forging. But the only power it had exhibited in Magni’s hands was an uncanny knack for splitting skulls. And that was all he had ever required of it.
“So there is no honor among thieves,” the small rogue said.
“Should we cut the gem in half and go our separate ways?” Magni said in jest.
“I meant along the lines of first one to the prize,” the small rogue countered.
“There is no first among my people, there is only the last.”
“You are looking at the last. But if you wish to go this very night to meet your frozen gods, it is the same to me,” said the small rogue.
“Tell me your name first, so I know to mark the grave where I’ll stow your bones,” returned Magni.
“You know me by my blade. It is Ariastes the Cobra, King of Thieves. It is good to finally meet the second-best burglar in Gizzard’s Gulf, if only briefly.”
As they traded verbal barbs, the rivals for the Moongem circled slowly closer, neither yet ready to commit to a first strike and therefore reveal the barest smidgen of his skill to the other. The parlay had instilled a healthy respect on both sides, albeit only a modicum.
But impatience finally overcame Magni and he slashed out with his great blade, the time having come to bisect this impertinent little man for crowding his prize. But the other was not there to be split. Ariastes had taken a languid step back, precisely far enough so that the mighty cut missed him by the length of an errant thread on his silken tunic, and struck only air.
“Your eyes betray your intent,” said the King of Thieves with a jolly guffaw. “I know the game of you northern swordsmen, all great wild swings and hacking cuts. But I am too fleet a target for you, I fear.”
“We shall see about that!”
Magni knew the Cobra was playing on the northern tendency to fly into a berserk rage in combat, losing all sense of battlefield positioning and tactics in the frenzied hunt for the killing blow. But though he understood, he still could not help himself, did not want to help himself. And besides, who knew what other sentries, both mundane and supernatural, might be lurking yet nearer, biding the right moment to invade the laboratory and slay them both? And here was this blustery southerner deciding the time had come for a test of arms, right there in the dragon’s maw, and with the prize so close at hand!
Magni lunged this time, his runic broadsword intent on skewering the little thief through the stomach. But Ariastes once again sidestepped, this time incorporating a burning slash with the smallsword’s razored tip across Magni’s dominant wrist, causing the northman to reflexively drop his sword with a clatter. The barbarian clenched the wound as the blood poured forth.
“You’re not going to slay anything like that,” said the King of Thieves.
“Mayhap not!” And Magni charged, catching his stricken adversary in the midriff and driving all the wind from the Cobra’s belly before slamming him into the wall behind with bone-snapping force.
The smaller man collapsed in a heap, his weapon skittering from limp hands.
“You’ve broken two ribs by the feel,” Ariastes grimaced as he braced his left side.
“Just so,” said Magni. “Stay there and avoid being slain. The jewel is mine.”
As the Northman said this, a sudden cacophony rose from the landing, heralding the arrival of six armored guards who stormed into the laboratory to surround the burglars. They bore halberds, great polearms that combined cleaver and long spear, allowing their bearers to strike from well beyond the range of sword or knife.
“Hold where you are!” The chief of the halberdiers shouted as he planted his iron-shod feet and set his weapon for the charge.
The thieves looked at each other. Their joint perilous circumstance had implanted the same thought in each man’s mind, as though it were divinely instilled by the Gods of Thievery themselves.
Ariastes was still on all fours but close enough to reach Magni’s broadsword. The smaller man rolled beneath the encroaching spear line, caught the weapon up, and tossed it to the barbarian, who at the same time had kicked the Cobra’s smallsword across the floor for his waiting hand to snatch up. Then Magni had recovered his own brand from the air and was turning it up and under the nearest guard’s lunging thrust to fillet him through the liver.
Meanwhile, Ariastes had catapulted himself directly into the midst of two halberdiers, simultaneously catching one with his Cobra’s Fang through the exposed femoral artery pulsating betwixt the iron scales of his greave, the other through the groin with a stiletto that had somehow blossomed in his left hand from a hidden redoubt within his velvet boot. Both guards collapsed in rising twin founts of scarlet.
Within moments the remaining three sentries were dispatched in like grisly manner, Magni issuing the coup de grace with the removal of the bellicose leader’s head cleanly from his shoulders. And the combat was over.
They stood for a span of several heartbeats, each staring down the other over a field of gore.
“That was a handy maneuver, for a man burdened with two broken ribs,” said Magni.
“Don’t discount your own puissance; that broadsword may as well have been a bardiche by the cut of that poor fellow’s stump,” said Ariastes with a nod to the barbarian’s own handiwork.
“And now…” They both began as one, each only to find that the other had already secured a vice-like grip on the prize. The silver jewel dubbed the Moongem was of a near incomprehensible size to the mind of either rogue, both having burgled a fair number of mundane gems in their day. But this specimen of moonstone was immense, larger than the crown jewel of His August Melifluence’s ruby diadem, larger than the Countess Lucinda’s left tit, larger even than the Northman’s closed fist. And in the shape of the crescent moon of its namesake goddess.
Again they stared at one another.
“We have both spilt blood for it.” They surveyed again the bodies.
“Three each, by my count,” said the King of Thieves.
“And by mine as well,” said the Prince of Thieves.
“They teach you to count in the northlands?” said Ariastes.
“They teach you manners in the south?” countered Magni.
“I shall not relinquish my claim. It is my prize,” said Ariastes.
“Nor shall I relinquish mine,” said Magni in mocking tones.
“The fact remains I was still here first.”
“Yes, but I shall be here last.”
“I hear footfalls on the stairs.”
“As do I.”
“I propose a truce,” said Ariastes. “We ally with each other for as long as it takes to escape this place and find safe harbor for the prize. Then, in comfort and solitude, and with all civility, we complete our duel. And the winner shall have the Moongem for his reward.”
“That is satisfactory,” said Magni. “For the sake of expediency and since you did arrive first, albeit by no more than a trickle of sand in the hourglass, you may be custodian of the gem for the nonce.”
“Your trust is appreciated and well placed. I shall not disappoint in my duty.” The King of Thieves beamed as Magni finally relinquished his grip on the Moongem. Ariastes then secreted the great jewel snugly in his satchel.
“Those tramping boots can’t be more than two landings away now,” said the barbarian, listening intently.
“And rising from the bowels of the tower, if my own ears don’t deceive.”
Magni shook his great copper mane. “They do not, if my ears are half as keen as yours.”
“Perhaps the roof then?” said Ariastes.
The barbarian nodded and extended his huge hand. The other man gripped it in his small, slender one.
“The pact is sealed. Let us depart.”
In the small hours of the night, safe harbor took the form of an abandoned fishery on the edge of Harbor Row not far from the maze of Ratswharf.
Escape from the wizard’s tower had not been unduly difficult. Ariastes had brought his own rope and grapnel, which allowed them to flee down the wall in unison. A hue and cry had gone up in their wake, but the guards proved less puissant with their crossbows than their comrades in the laboratory had been with their halberds. The only real moment of danger came when one of the sentries had the bright idea of cutting the grapple lines. The escaping thieves discerned the intent just in time to find holds in the stone for their hands and feet, then watched as their lifelines plummeted into the garden fifty feet below. But the King of Thieves proved as skillful a free climber as the Northman, and they were both safely on the ground and long vanished into the shadows of the nighted city beyond the courtyard before the guards could descend the body of the tower to arrest them.
Now they found themselves facing off in this boarded shanty house overlooking the bay of Gizzard’s Gulf, the smell of brine wafting in through the broken eaves on the night breeze, and the silver crescent of the moon beaming down on the prize that lay glittering between them in a pool of its namesake lunar light.
Magni drew his broadsword. Ariastes brandished his fanged blade. They circled for several tremulous moments. The barbarian had stanched the blood where the southerner had laid open his wrist, though the wound still wept beneath its makeshift dressing. The King of Thieves had wrapped and braced his rib cage where the northerner had splintered his bones. And they circled.
The moon was shifting in the dome of the sky, the celestial crescent’s dwindling arc writ plain in the scintillating facets of the Moongem. The starfield above was slowly waning before the dawn. And still they circled.
Finally, both sighed and lowered their weapons.
“Perhaps there is another way to resolve this,” Ariastes grunted. “My ribs are paining me. Were we to finish this duel now, you would not get my best.”
“I was hoping you might say that,” Magni grunted in echo. “My wrist aches abominably. I fear that were we to engage in heated swordplay, the cut that you so expertly rendered to my weapon hand would reopen. The resulting blood flow would cause my grip to become too slippery to fully employ my own skill.”
“Good,” said Ariastes. “It’s settled then. Now, what are we to do about that?”
Magni followed the King of Thieves’ eyes to the Moongem. “Let us retire to my office. It is the only place I care to discuss business of this sort.”
The northerner’s “office” turned out to be conveniently nearby to the harbor shanty, amidst the jumbled labyrinth of byways and cul de sacs forming the beating black heart of Ratswharf.
The district of thieves, pimps, and waghalters was a tiny city unto itself, its crumbling gambrel rooftops a shield against the prying eyes of respectable folk, and a world apart from the Quarter of Magi where Garibane maintained his residence. In any event, it was beyond the ken of the City Watch; no sane city guardsman would patrol there even in broad daylight. Too many had been murdered within its mazy confines, resulting in the unwritten agreement between lawful and lawless that was still strictly adhered to today, and thus the miscreants of Gizzard’s Gulf keep their turf inviolate.
The meeting place itself also served as a boarding house for wayfarers having covert business in the crowded anonymity of its taproom. A colorfully painted sign above its saloon-style entrance proclaimed its name. The sign depicted a satyr, a male nymph of the deep woods, pleasuring himself by means of his very own abnormally abundant flesh flute. The place was called, appropriately enough: THE HAPPY WOODSMAN.
And there they sat, royals among rogues, at a shadowy corner table just beyond the circle of merry orange firelight where giant iron spits roasted fowl, rodents, and the occasional incautious feline.
The satchel lay on the table between them, its contents sealed tightly within, away from the prying eyes of fellow carousers. Each had several empty beer mugs before him. They stared across the chasm at one another. Each gathering the measure of his adversary, this time as a businessman.
“There is no question,” Magni said, the initial drawl of intoxication slurring his words, “that the sale of this bauble would net enough gold for five men for five lifetimes.”
“And yet we are only two,” said Ariastes, the slur creeping into his syllables as well. “That would make two-and-a-half lives for each of us. Multiplied by five. Which is…”
“The trouble now, if we agreed on this course, would be finding a fence. I know of no one who traffics in this sort of rarity.”
Ariastes nodded. “Particularly when there is a wizard involved, the ranks of potential buyers grow thin and timid.”
“Indeed,” said Magni. “And need I say we’d be summarily murdered on the spot by half our admirers here if they knew the contents of your satchel.”
“Indeed,” echoed Ariastes.
Both men cast hooded looks about them. The other drinkers were eyeing them, the friendly nods of recognition unable to conceal the shadows of glimmering avarice rising behind their irises.
Magni chuckled to himself, saying: “It might be considered unwise for royalty among thieves, such as we are, to congregate so openly. Perhaps it was hubris that made me think to conduct our business in such a venue.”
“Nay,” Ariastes replied. “It is our combined prowess at arms that allows us the freedom to discuss grand fortunes in plain view of Ratswharf’s most deliciously despicable miscreants.”
Magni laughed.
“Bide a moment,” Ariastes said.
The southerner slipped from his chair and waded into the crowd gathered around the bar, where Three-Thumbs was feverishly filling mugs. In a few moments, he returned with a man whose face Magni knew well. It was a visage too young, too pure, too undamaged by the travails of life in Ratswharf. An angel floating amongst the curdled flotsam of a sea of leathery wretchedness. Oringeld. The fence.
“My prince,” Oringeld sketched a mocking bow to Magni as he sat in the proffered chair.
“How do you…?” Magni looked at Ariastes who was grinning.
“I sometimes conduct business here as well. And I occasionally maintain a room upstairs. For emergencies.” The southerner held his smile.
Magni laughed.
Oringeld the Angel, despite his divine appellation, did his dutiful best to keep a low profile. Yet among the elite thieves who had need of his services, he was known widely as the premier mover of rare stolen goods in the city. He specialized in reliquary: the gem-studded gold and silver containers anointed as repositories for holy relics sacred to the denizen temples along the Street of Gods. He also specialized in rare gemstones, which more often than not came from the same place.
If rumor was to be believed, not a month past the Spider Queen, who so recently met her ignominious end in the jaws of the golden leopards of Garibane’s courtyard, had prior to that struck the Temple of the Purple Lotus, sanctum of the Dreaming Goddess, and absconded with the priceless golden casket containing the fabled Dream Orbs. The Angel had ostensibly then fenced the lot to a bitumen magnate from across the Narrow Gulf for an ungodly sum.
Magni had his doubts as to the veracity of this tale. If it were true, and Gabriela the Spider was not as blindingly stupid with avarice as her epithet was thirsty for blood, why then after such a mighty haul take on Garibane’s tower? All knew the cunning and depravity of wizards’ wards outmatched those of the most black-hearted priests.
Magni was about to open his mouth to voice these thoughts when the fence laid a slender hand lightly on the barbarian’s arm.
“I understand you have an item that requires a steady and delicate touch,” the Angel said.
“You might say that,” Magni acknowledged.
“You are in good hands, old friend. My results will be spectacular and my commission slim, a tiny sliver off your wheel of cheese. May I see it?”
Magni exchanged a look with Ariastes who nodded. “Be quick and covert. There are many other eyes dying for a peek.”
Oringeld reached for the satchel. He untied the knotted cord securing it and peered circumspectly within.
“By all the goddamned gods!” the fence whispered. “Is it…?”
“That and more,” Ariastes said.
“Can you move it?” said Magni.
“The gems of wizards, ensorcelled or otherwise, are fearsome commodities. There are but a few collectors. Few and far between, unfortunately, as inspiring the ire of the mage who formerly owned them can result in life-shortening side effects. Still, I might know of one or two individuals who would take special interest in this particular bauble.”
“Like the bitumen magnate?” Magni mused aloud.
The Angel chuckled his deflection of the barbarian’s inference. But the fence knew where the inquiry was leading.
Oringeld rose from his chair. “It is not my place to wonder at the whims of intrepid rogues, only to traffic in the fruits of their labors. You have succeeded where the Spider Queen failed, and your reward might be many times her final haul. Allow me to conduct my inquiries. In the meantime, say nothing to anyone.”
The fence reached for the satchel and both rogues caught his arm.
“Betray us at your peril,” they said nearly in unison.
Two mornings later, Magni was descending the stairs from his quarters into the taproom to break his fast when Three-Thumbs waved him over to the bar.
“Your deal man will be here at sundown. Usual table.” Then the barman turned back to his chores.
Magni wondered as he breakfasted how to summon Ariastes for the occasion; the King of Thieves had vanished into the night after their initial meeting with the fence and left no indicator of his whereabouts. But that evening, at the first flare of twilight in the west, the smaller rogue strode in and took a seat opposite Magni at the corner table by the firepit.
The barbarian regarded the arrival with some irritation.
“Three-Thumbs serves as my relayer as well,” Ariastes said with a chuckle. “You would think, Prince of Thieves, that you were the only rogue in Ratswharf ever with precious cargo to unload.”
Magni relaxed then. Of course, the King of Thieves had his own network of contacts; it was the overlap that had prompted the barbarian’s ire. To say that he was warming to the little fellow was not inaccurate. But for the stoic Northman it was always a slow thaw.
At that moment Oringeld appeared from a patch of shadow and took his seat. He placed the satchel containing the Moongem on the table between the thieves.
“I have a buyer,” the fence said.
They both looked at him.
“There is but one snag, rather unusual.”
“Yes…?” both rogues prompted.
“The buyer wishes to meet the esteemed burglars before sealing the deal.”
“Well that rather defeats the purpose of a fence in the first place, wouldn’t you say?” Magni was looking hard at Oringeld.
“I surely hope you declined such an absurd request,” said Ariastes. “And found a more suitable buyer who respects the etiquette required in our business.”
Oringeld cleared his throat. “There are other buyers, gentlemen, but none are willing to pay what this one offers.”
“And how much, pray, is he offering?” said Magni.
“One million gold stirlings.”
The thieves gawked at each other across the table. It was an impossible sum.
“No one could afford such a sum, except for royalty,” Magni said.
“Surely no mere bitumen magnate,” Ariastes said.
“Something is amiss,” said the Northman.
“There is indeed one other point to consider, sirs,” said Oringeld. “The buyer is himself reputed to be something of a wizard.”
“Bloody hell,” said Magni.
“What’s your second choice offering?” said Ariastes.
“Two hundred thousand,” said the fence.
Again the rogues shared a look. Words were exchanged without speech.
“Like I said, gentlemen, there are very few souls who lightly interfere with the workings of wizards. And even fewer who have money. This particular soul seems to be a wizard with a great deal of money. In this fence’s humble opinion, it is well worth the risk.”
“Says the fence,” Magni scoffed.
“Whose fee would work out to be one hundred thousand stirlings, I believe?” said Ariastes.
“Aye,” said the Angel. “I’ll have early retirement if I wish it, but each of you could buy your own kingdom with the spoils of such a sale.”
The King and Prince of Thieves shared a final long look.
“Very well,” said Magni.
“Set the meeting,” said Ariastes.
If their potential buyer was a wealthy sorcerer, he went out of his way to conceal the fact. He made his abode on a blasted islet at the mouth of The Gizzard, marked by the oligarchs of the city as uninhabited. It was called Dead Isle since nothing seemed ever to grow on it.
Oringeld chartered a schooner at the harbor and the trio sailed out at midday to meet their eccentric customer. When they stepped from the skiff that had borne them to the beach, the reasoning behind the isle’s morbid appellation was immediately clear. Dunes of gray sand stretched before them to the tree line. Absent were the typical insectoid and crustaceous signs of life; no myrmidious ants, no sand crabs, no green flies, nor bitemes were present amongst the ashen grit.
As they hiked up the beach to the silent tree line, they truly learned the manner and magnitude of the quiet. Every pine, spruce, oak, and beech was a dry timber skeleton. There were deadfalls on top of deadfalls, a century of dead scrabble branches. Great silken webs glimmering with clinging ash spanned many of the broken boles, suggesting the residence at one time of arachnids of preternatural size. But those too must have gone the way of their woodland.
Magni quickly spotted a path through the deadfall. It had been cleared fastidiously, with a precision that unnerved. Pale green seashells were set at regular intervals along the path. In the trace gray sunlight that penetrated the cloud cover, the shells held an unsettling internal glamour that could not be called natural.
“Moonshells,” said Ariastes. “To light the way in the dark. A common cantrip among the wizarding class.”
Magni turned on Oringeld then: “How ever did you find this man?” The Northman’s hand was clenched tight on the obsidian hilt of his broadsword and the fence visibly gaped his unease.
“It was he who found me,” the fence admitted. “By reputation, I hope, rather than spidery scrying. As I said, mingling in the business of wizards is not a thing to be undertaken lightly.”
“Being here now, I would have preferred any gutter in Ratswharf as a meeting place,” said Ariastes.
“This is the only place he would agree to meet you,” said Oringeld. “But being here now, I agree. And I remember again why I retired from burglary to the quiet life of a trafficker.”
The deadfall path abruptly opened before them to reveal an unremarkable cottage of plain whitewashed wood at the center of a small clearing, its borders marked by the same pale green moonshells that had lighted their way through the dead forest. But within their glittering bounds the land was verdant. Alive. Wild thorny roses with petals the color of pomegranates flourished unchecked. The buzzing of honeybees filled their ears and hummingbirds flit amongst the engorged pollen tubes.
But it was a closed system, as though an invisible dome sequestered both cottage and yard from the dead world beyond, maintaining the life that flourished within at the expense of the withering rot without.
They stood staring, all three men, along the outer edge of this wonderland. When the front door of the cottage abruptly opened and a grandfatherly figure emerged. With the barest twinkle of a smile he beckoned them inside, where a hearth fire burned without smoke.
“What enchantment have you wrought here?” said Ariastes. “Why is the isle beyond the bounds of your dwelling desiccated and dead?”
“Ah,” said their host. “While the privacy it engendered has come to suit my purposes, it began as a curse. A hundred years ago or thereabouts, two lifetimes for most men but only two-thirds of one for any wizard worth his salt, my twin brother put a geas on me. At first, I believed it was pure malice that fed his hatred. But I soon learned it was nourished at the wellspring of jealousy. Of my talent. My burgeoning skill. For while he was well along the path of mastering the Black Arts and was a brilliant alchemist as well, in tapping the powers that fed the Way of White he was sorely deficient. He could not make life grow, as I could, where there was none before. Only exterminate it with dark fire and smoke. So he lured and imprisoned me here. In an invisible dungeon you cannot see. I cannot pass beyond the boundaries of the moonshells surrounding this house and those marking the path through the deadfall. My brother made the Dead Isle as you see it today. It is only by my own considerable potency that I have forged this verdant haven of life within my cell.”
“Hold a moment,” said Magni. “If that is true, how then did you communicate your desires to our esteemed fence?” The barbarian then favored Oringeld with his frozen gaze. But before the Angel could spring to his own defense, Ariastes cut in.
“More important than that, Wizard of White, where is the ungodly wealth you have promised in exchange for this?” Ariastes unslung the satchel from his hip and placed it on the hearthstone.
But the wizard raised a warning hand, cracked and yellowed with jaundiced age, and everyone quieted.
“The bees and the hummingbirds and even the crows serve my whims. They bring me news of all notable doings in the city. Your esteemed fence received a missive from the claws of my raven soon after I learned of the Moongem’s theft. Matters concerning my brother always receive the promptest attention,” said the wizard.
The nefarious trio silently shared this realization in the glimmer of the hearth light.
“Yes,” said the Wizard of White. “Garibane is my dark twin. My avian messengers whispered to me of the accident in the Midnight Tower and of the intrepid burglars who captured the jewel containing a piece of Luna Herself. At first, I could scarcely believe it. But I fervently hoped it were true.”
“You mentioned an accident,” Ariastes said.
“Yes. My brother, full of hubris for all his genius at transmuting worthless rock into gemstone, had reached a plateau. He had grown fabulously wealthy. But what other wonders might be wrought through his dark art? From a hunk of sandstone, he created a jewel of priceless beauty whose shape paid homage to celestial Luna. Then, on a night when Her crescent face shone brightest silver, he worked an incantation intended to capture a beam of living moonlight, a shard of Luna’s very soul, within the heart of the gem.
“And Garibane succeeded, but not without paying an awful toll. The Moon Goddess, it turned out, did not appreciate his arrogance. A mere mortal afterall, siphoning Her light. So She punished him, locking him in the heart of his own creation. She torments him still, whenever the crescent moon shines down on the facets of the gem.”
“An extraordinary tale,” said Magni.
“And why I never lightly engage in the business of wizards,” said Oringeld.
“So then. Here is our end,” said Ariastes. He untied the drawstrings of the satchel and brought forth the prize within. The Moongem glittered, all of its multitudinous facets drawing in the orange light of the hearth flames. For a moment they all gazed in wonder.
Finally, the fence spoke up: “Which begs a question, Wizard of White. Where is yours?”
“Surely you don’t keep a million gold stirlings in your kitchen cupboards,” said Magni.
“Ah yes. The promised price.” The wizard folded long fingers into the sleeves of his pale gray robes. His shrewd gaze swept over Magni and Ariastes in turn, his dark eyes hard and glittering.
“Recall you the tower you scaled to reach this bauble? It is not called the Midnight Tower by coincidence. It is comprised entirely of nycto star sapphire, exceedingly rare in nature. But in this case, simply transmuted by Garibane’s alchemy from ordinary granite. Did I promise one million gold stirlings? The gem value of the tower cannot be less than twenty times that. The only trick would be to cart it off before the rats of Ratswharf get wind.”
“Cart it off? It’s a bloody tower!” cried Oringeld, forgetting for a frustrated moment the danger in speaking to a wizard in such a manner.
The Wizard of White froze the Angel with a glance. And picked up the Moongem.
“When I smash this jewel tonight at the apex of the new moon, Garibane will be released from his prison, the Moon will reclaim Her soul sliver, and my brother and I will finish our fight. When he is dead enough to satisfy me, his tower of star sapphires will crumble. And the rogues first to the scene to haul away the remains will find themselves wealthier than all the god-kings of the Old Imperium.”
The King and Prince of Thieves rose then and bowed respectfully to the old man, with Oringeld the Angel following in his turn.
“Midnight, you said?” Magni inquired.
The Wizard of White nodded. He smiled a cryptic smile. And wished the intrepid trio safe passage back to Gizzard’s Gulf. And healthy and wealthy retirement from their disreputable professions.
©August 2022, David Starobin
David Starobin‘s work has appeared in Black Petals. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.