Wild Card Chapter One

The full, amalgamated first chapter. It'll be going up on Questionable Questing (due to graphic descriptions of violence that go beyond what SB allows) on Friday. You guys get it a few days early while I check it over for any last changes. Segments 1 through 4 entail the first chapter, segment 6 will be posted soon after I do a little polishing.

---

It was well after midnight, and a dense gray fog had crept in off the Cimmura river to mingle with the pervading woodsmoke from a thousand chimneys to blur the nearly deserted streets of the city. The Pandion Knight, Sir Sparhawk, nonetheless moved cautiously, keeping to the shadows whenever possible. The streets glistened with moisture, and pale, rainbow-colored hues surrounded the torches whose feeble light vainly attempted to illuminate streets into which no sane man ventured in these dark, early hours. The houses lining the street were little more than vague, looming shapes of shadow shrouded in the murk, and Sparhawk relied more on his ears than eyes to keep wary of any approaching dangers.

This was a poor time to be out. By day, Cimmura was no more dangerous than any other city. By night, it was a jungle where the strong preyed upon the weak and the unwary. Sparhawk was, however, neither of these. Beneath his nondescript cloak, he wore mail, and a heavy sword hung at his side. In addition, he carried a short-hafted, broad bladed battle spear loosely held in his left hand. He was trained, moreover, in levels of violence that no common footpad or cutpurse could match. His current mood was well suited to violence; bleakly, he hoped some fool might see him and attempt to attack. When provoked, Sparhawk was less than the most reasonable of men, and he had been of late severely and repeatedly provoked.

These urges were kept in check, albeit tenuously, by the urgency of his business. Much as he might have taken satisfaction in the rush and cut and slash of a meeting with unknown and unimportant assailants, he had responsibilities. His young queen hovered near death, and his duty demanded absolute fidelity from her champion. He would not betray her, and to die in some muddy gutter because a common thug got lucky in a meaningless encounter would ill serve the queen he was oath-bound to protect. And, so it was that he moved cautiously, his soft-booted feet as silent as those of any paid assassin.

Somewhere ahead, he saw the bobbing of hazy-looking torches and heard the measured tread of several men marching in unison. He muttered a curse and slipped sideways into the nearby, stinking alley, eyes half closed and ears perked to catch any further sounds.

A half-dozen men marched by, their red tunics dampened by the smoky fog. Long pikes leaned slantwise over their shoulders, bobbing in nigh unison as the men tromped blithely by. "It's that place on Rose Street," their officer was saying arrogantly, "where the Pandions try to hide their ungodly subterfuge. They know we're watching, of course, but our presence restricts their movements and leaves his Grace, the Primate, free from their interference."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but we know the reasons, Lieutenant," a bored-sounding corporal said in reply. "We've been doing this for over a year now."

"... Oh." The self-important, young lieutenant sounded a bit crestfallen - and inexperienced, to Sparhawk's ear. "I just wanted to be sure that we all understood, is all."

"Yes, sir," the corporal said tonelessly.

"Wait here, men," the lieutenant said, trying to make his boyish voice sound gruff. "I'll look on ahead." He marched on up the street, his heels smashing noisily on the fog-wet cobblestones.

"What a jackass," the corporal muttered to his companions.

"Grow up, Corporal," an old, gray-haired veteran said in an equally quiet tone. "We take the pay to obey their orders. Just do your job and leave opinions to the officers."

The Corporal grunted sourly. "Easy for you to say. I was at court yesterday. Primate Annias had summoned that ridiculous whelp up there, and the fool absolutely [i]had[/i] to have an escort. Would you believe the lieutenant was actually fawning over The Bastard?" His hushed tones managed to convey the capitalization of the title despite the lowered volume of his words.

"That's the nature of a lieutenant, Corporal. Born boot-lickers- and the 'bastard' IS Lycheas the Prince Regent, so mind your tongue even if it isn't alongside that of the lieutenant, lest you want it cut from your mouth. Lycheas isn't known for his sense of humor nor his merciful nature." The veteran paused before mirthfully adding, "I imagine none of that makes his boots taste any better, though."

The corporal snickered softly. "That's God's truth. Wouldn't the liuetenant be surprised, though, if the Queen recovered and he'd eaten all that boot polish for nothing?"

"Best hope she doesn't, Corporal," one of the other men said. "If she wakes up and takes back control of the royal treasury, Annias won't have the coin to pay us next month."

"He can always dip into the church coffers, can't he?"

"Not without an accounting, he can't. The Hierocracy in Chyrellos squeezes every penny of Church money til it squeaks."

"Alright, you men," the young officer called out of the fog. "The Pandion inn is just up ahead. I've relieved the soldiers who were on watch, so we'd better-"

Whatever might have been better was cut off as a great, flaring light shone out from the sky, casting sharp shadows even through the hazy murk of the night, and Sparhawk instinctively shrank into the darkest shade he could to remain hidden. The light rapidly drew closer, accompanied by an escalating roar of wind and flame, to end in a concussive crash like a collapsing hillside further up the street. The gaggle of soldiers were frozen in place, staring dumbstruck with mouths agape, as growing flames down the street cast the normally shadowy streets in flickering, brightening light. That light illuminated the prone body of the hapless lieutenant, a bloodied chunk of building masonry in a spreading pool of gore where his head should have been. One leg shuddered erratically, and a single, mangled hand groped weakly at empty air before a callous burst of wet flatulence accompanied the arm's collapse to the cobblestones as his body finally realized it was dead.

One of the younger soldiers of the group collapsed to his knees, noisily hurling the remnants of his last meal onto the street, while the veteran of the group snarled out, "Fire," before shouting louder at the top of his, lungs, "Alarum! Wake, wake! FIRE!"

Sparawk considered briefly the idea of slipping away - but if his guess was correct, the fire was probably coming from the vicinity of the aforementioned Pandion safehouse. A slight peek around the corner confirmed his suspicions - along with the sight in the glaring light of a figure unsteadily standing up from the crater in front of the inn. Flames roiled up the stone walls of the structure, and the thatch of it was already beginning to catch fire.

Then, Sparhawk uttered a curse as the figure began waving his hands in a series of gestures. The fog of the night began to lift, coalescing into a heavy, opaque mass of what, in the flickering light of the fire, seemed to be a stormcloud hovering over the inn. Within seconds, a dense, pounding rain fell from the sudden cloud to douse the inn and the street in a brief but torrential downpour. The glaring light was cut off like a torch thrown in a rainbarrel, steam rising like fog from the doused embers and cobbles.

The sudden loss of light left Sparhawk blinking furiously, trying to readjust to the darkness, and by the time he could see again, the soldiers too had recovered. The veteran of the group dislodged one of the street torches from its sconce and grabbed it up, examining the body of the unlucky lieutenant for a brief second, then gestured in the direction of the inn, explosion, and the mysterious figure. "Come on, lads! After him, before the Pandion bastard gets away!"

Sparhawk frowned. Whoever that man had been, he was no Pandion, Sparhawk would have bet his second best sword on it. No Pandion could call up a conflagration like that by himself, nor quench it so suddenly and dramatically, and Sparhawk would have laid even odds that even Sephrenia, the Styric mystic who instructed their order since time immemorial, would be hard pressed to match the feat.

On the one hand, their pursuit would make his life easier, distracting onlookers so that he could make his way out of the city. On the other... Sparhawk wanted to have a word with this magic user himself, preferably before the man was full of spear and sword holes. Men were harder to question when they were dead, Aldreas' ghost notwithstanding, and Sparhawk preferred a good, fresh, and - at least initially - healthy prisoner when he needed to ask hard questions. Which itself would mean either catching the man first or somehow liberating him from the custody of the soldiers and hoping they left the man intact enough for Sparhawk to question.

Neither was a prospect that Sparhawk gave much credibility to their likelihood. Still, needs must. The sudden appearance of another magic user, after the number of whom which had dogged his heels all across the continent in his quest to diagnose the poisoning of his Queen, almost demanded he track this one down and do so with immediacy. For all he knew, the blast at the Inn had been targeting Sparhawk - and he'd only been lucky that the magic user hadn't known Sparhawk wasn't there.

In the wake of the consternation, now, the streets were rapidly filling with onlookers, some of whom were carrying their own torches and milling about, trying to discern between them what the noise and light had been, where they had gone, and who was to blame for it between ghosts, witches, or acts of God. In the tumult, Sparhawk set off in pursuit of the running soldiers and their quarry, sticking to shadows and back alleys. These latter were utterly abandoned now; the usual denizens of the shadows and gutters having sought refuge in their hidey holes because of all the furor. It wasn't much of a blessing, but Sparhawk would take what he could get; anything would help at this point.

Sparhawk found himself shadowing more soldiers, who, on seeing their comrades run somewhere in a hurry in the wake of the disruption, assumed that they knew what was going on and where they all needed to be. He didn't much welcome this company, but he had little enough time or ability to do anything about it now; he'd keep hidden and deal with that lot when he came to it.

The shouts of the soldiers up ahead told the tale that the soldiers had lost sight of their target and were casting about looking for traces of him. Sparhawk and his impromptu retinue caught up readily. Among the newcomers, an officer stepped forward imperiously, one who seemed more experienced than the green lieutenant that the first group of church soldiers had been mocking behind his back. The officer looked around the cluster of more or less aimless soldiers before his eyes landed on the corporal. "You! Corporal, report. Where's the witch?" Sparhawk clenched his jaw as the officer uttered the Elenic slur for Styric magic users - a slur often accompanied by an eagerness to commit certain types of atrocity, given the opportunity - and made a mental note to do something unpleasant to the man if he got the chance.

"We lost sight of him, Captain," the Corporal answered unhelpfully.

"What did he look like?" the captain pressed, and Sparhawk listened intently so as to hear the conversation as clearly as possible.

"A bit shorter than an average man, something of a pot belly, black hair with balding pate and an almost white beard," one of the other soldiers answered. "Strange looking trousers and a fine, colored short tunic of some kind, never seen the likes of it before. His boots were shorter than most, not even covering his ankles, and strange cut and colors for leather, an almost cloud white and stormy gray together. Never seen the likes of it."

Sparhawk scowled as the officer looked about the cluster of soldiers and asked, "All of you get that?"

The soldiers, both the original group and the latecomers, murmured their assent.

"Pair up. Spread out wide, give out an alarum if you catch sight of him. You, you're with me," the Captain added, pointing at the man who'd given the description. "Search every alley. We meet back by the Pandion's Rose Street inn at fourth bell."

Sparhawk's instincts suddenly screamed at him, and he whirled, Aldreas' spear thrusting out behind himself towards the face of a startled looking, middle-aged man - one who was balding, with a bushy white beard, and odd clothes.

---

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I'm something of a bibliophile. With the arrival of my forty-eighth birthday, therefore, the arrival of a thick, leatherbound book the size of an almanac wrapped neatly in cloth, packed in padded cardboard with no return address, wasn't exactly unheard of. I've received bizarre or obscure books anonymously in the past, usually as gag gifts. And as a sort of passive-aggressive retaliation I've always made sure to read them thoroughly and then drop commentary in future conversations to try and figure out who sent it, and once successful I will never let them forget it. This is why, among other things, I've ensured my best friend Richard always hears a random My Little Pony factoid whenever we hang out, my baby sister hears something related to refrigerator compressors when we talk on the phone, and my wife gets a note about the history of ambergris in perfume and cologne manufacture at least once a week.

As such, tonight, as I would ordinarily get ready to write, I instead sit at my desk and open up my new leatherbound tome.

I feel an alien sensation come over me, and my hands feel buzzily numb. My head becomes floaty, and a feeling of serene calm comes over me, one that a distant corner of my mind screams is not right. That corner of my mind tries to force my hands to open, to let go of either cover - but like a remote with a dead battery, no response from the operating equipment comes. Instead, as pages slowly, then more quickly, begin to turn before my eyes, strange thoughts and icons pass through my mind's eye. A lexicon, a catalog of symbology as interconnected as mathematics overcomes me, and the panicked corner of my mind begins to relax as I lose myself in what feels like an ocean of knowledge welling up from unknown and unknowable shores. Ways of thought completely foreign are introduced to me, and an instinct, an inner sense, for mysterious, eldritch energies takes shape in my thoughts. Deeper, even, to the point of burying themselves in and etching onto my very soul.

Some greater part of me floats over waves and troughs, examining the surface of new, arcane esoterica, occasionally delving deeper in narrow places. Some few parts disinterest me, and I avoid them; others induce in me disgust, and I shun them. Still others I examine more closely, more intricately, learning the shapes and shortcuts to their weaving, the ability to mold and reforge objects like clay, to generate wealth from personal suffering, to control fire and water and create food, to act swiftly, to hide. To change my body as easily as changing my expression, and more.

I barely notice the first shackles settling onto my will until the second aligns into place beside it, and the panic from the alert and aware corner of my mind takes hold again, its gibbering panic brushing away the lassitude that had paralyzed me. My hands were my own again, and I note dimly that my living room is aswirl in a vortex of wind. I stagger to my feet, and with the greatest exercise of will I have ever managed, pull my right hand away from the back cover.

The wind seizes the book, shredding its pages and intensifying, pulling me closer to the center of the whirlwind. Above the howl of the living room storm I can hear my wife's panicked shouts from upstairs, her opening the bedroom door to watch me vanish being the last I see of her as I reach the glowing epicenter of the cyclone. Then, sight and sound go away for a brief moment.

The book is gone; my living room too is gone, and I can distantly feel myself in freefall. Fire surrounds me, and I can't help but freak out even more as the fire roars, wind howls, and below me, I can see a poorly lit series of uneven streets populated by stone and thatch housing. It's not a particularly large settlement, no more than a couple thousand buildings at most, and the part of my mind not focused on my impending death from terminal velocity reflects on the absurdity of how very far I must have gone that I can't see any city lights or their secondary glow on any horizon.

Then, with a thunderous crash, my freefall comes to a painless but calamitous end, as fire and stone and gravel sprays out in all directions from my impact site. For a moment, I lay there, expecting the shock to wear off and the pain to hit, but it never comes. After a few seconds, I get my adrenaline-wobbly legs under me to fine myself standing in a shallow crater at least twelve feet across.

Also, the large building in front of me is catching fire.

It's almost reflex, my mind assessing this and then my new knowledge replying, telling me the incantation needed, the forces to channel, and the motions of hands and fingers to direct it. There's plenty of nearby fog; I pull it above me and the building and condense it, the vapors forming dense clouds that further compact and a brief but intense downpour of water pours out like rain. The still smoldering thatch roofing is quickly snuffed, leaving me in wet darkness. Mostly.

I just did that. I did that? I just did that. That was magic. I cast a spell, an actual magic spell. What the hell was that book? And where did it come from?

There's still dim lights down either direction of the cobblestone street. Cobblestones? How ungodly far from Vegas did I go? The only place I can think of within three hundred miles of Vegas that has anything like cobblestones in the street is a small part of Henderson, and the utter lack of street lights or the dirty orange glow of light pollution tells me I'm nowhere near either.

Down the street a ways, as my eyes adjust to the dim lighting, I can make out a group of a dozen or so men carrying long spears and wearing crudely printed or patterned cloth over what looks like... is that armor? Actual, boiled leather cuirass and vambrace? Wait... Those are tabards?

Did I just get thrown into some kind of fantasy world by a whirlwind? Stupid fucking question. I land in a ball of fire from orbital skittish, come out unharmed, and put out the fire of my arrival with a spell that controls water. Of course I've landed in some kind of medieval fantasy world. What kind of Wizard of Oz bullshit is this?

On autopilot, like a reaction to my confusion and growing alarm, I feel magic churn, and speed settles over me. The world slows to a crawl, giving my befuddled mind more time to think. I take in the details of the men who, with an almost glacial slowness, are raising hands to point at me and hollering in slow syllables that I don't recognize. The rustic nature of these streets, the stonework construction, the actual, honest to god torches and torch sconces, piles of horse shit swept to the gutters, and the slowly dawning scent of woodsmoke and human habitation and shit but no car exhaust or buzz of power lines anywhere.

I'm not in Nevada anymore, Toto.

The shifting postures of the soldiers is moving at a snail's pace but there's no mistaking the fear and hostility. Even if I can't understand their words, those spears look long, sharp, and extremely bad for my health. As such, I turn and hustle away as quickly as my accelerated time frame and out of shape body will allow.

So that the book I received as my birthday present seems to have granted me the ability to use magic - and not just a little bit. Along with it, though, those shackles I felt are resting like a weight in the back of my mind. I can feel them, like a live wire feeding my newly gained magic, some of those shackles immutable, others fragile and promising dire consequences should I fail to adhere to them.

Speak no Lie. Obey my Handler. Adhere to a Neutral Good code of conduct. Neither wield nor use any tool or object that is not by my magic altered or crafted.

I feel like all of these things should be familiar to me but attempting to chase them down in my mind leads to dead ends, places in my mind and memory that seem to have been overwritten by my newfound knowledge and magic. Places I have a nagging feeling once led to memories and knowledge I ought to miss.

As I jog in my middle aged, out of shape way, looking for somewhere to lay low and get my bearings, part of my shackles inform me that I am, in fact, running the wrong way, and that my handler is behind me, either among those men with the sharp pointy sticks and medieval looking regard for my personal well being, or perhaps behind them. My speed - no, my Haste - is beginning to fade. I refresh it on the go, marveling at the experience. Magic. Real magic.

And real angry men coming along behind me with real dangerous weapons, I remind myself, taking a turn down a reeking alleyway and nearly stepping on a small, terrified animal in the process. Not enough time to think about that, hurry through lamplight, huh, people are yelling, forget it, go go go.

It quickly becomes apparent that, while my immediate pursuers are not my handler, someone following along behind them has to be. I can feel the direction to them, to him, and in my mind's eye I get the impression of hard muscles, hard eyes, and a long healed broken nose. A man whose orders I must follow until my geas completes, under penalty of my magic being partially stripped away and being compelled to follow ANYONE'S orders permanently thereafter. How long? A full year. Empty hands? A year. Neutral Good? Also a year. No lie pass my tongue? Six months. Why is that one different?

My handler. I explore that notion a bit more. Some actions I will be ordered to do may be distasteful to me, or humiliating, but his orders will not compel me to violate my other strictures, nor those that will directly harm me. And I'll know what he wants me to do regardless of whether we share a language, and no matter how far apart we are. Shit. There goes the avoidance idea.

But where all of this came from or where it's going? That information seems to have been overwritten, frustratingly. But I can manage. Just do whatever this guy needs me to do until the year has passed, and then I'm in the wind. How bad could it be?

Eight castings of Haste later, as I Blink down to alleyway level behind him, exhausted, my handler abruptly spins around and thrusts a spear at my face. It stops about an inch from my left eye.

I can feel the shackle in my mind lock down, and my timers starting on all my strictures. Lovely.

---

Sparhawk eyed the middle aged man dubiously. Part of him felt it was probably a good idea to just kill the man swiftly and silently and be done with it; he couldn't afford witnesses tonight of all nights while he made his escape from Cimmura. On the other hand, Sparhawk had wanted to interrogate the man, and now he had him.

"Who are you?" Sparhawk asked quietly. "And keep your voice down."

The words the man spoke in reply held no meaning for Sparhawk; a language that wasn't Elenic, Styric, or indeed any other he'd ever heard or, he suspected, heard of. The man's voice shook slightly, and Sparhawk got the feeling the man was possibly as bewildered as everyone else was at his arrival - which was an inconvenience.

Sparhawk didn't like inconveniences, especially not when he needed to escape. He kept the spear pointed at the man, looking back out to the street. When he looked back, rather than the middle-aged man who'd been there before, a dog sat, looking hungry, dirty, and tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. Sparhawk gaped, looking further down the alley, but the dog raised a paw in an awkward gesture and WINKED at him. Then, it turned and took a few steps deeper into the alleyway before looking over its shoulder at him expectantly.

For a moment, Sparhawk reflected on the possibility that he was hallucinating, that in his inattention, he'd been stabbed by a cutpurse and was now deliriously bleeding out on stinking cobbles somewhere. The dog's impatient stamp got him moving, however, and he followed the mutt in bemusement.

Sparhawk's ear told the tale of an approaching pair of soldiers, but the dog seemed unperturbed by this, leading him to the most deeply shadowed part of the alley. It leaned back on its haunches and made a few growled noises, paws waving in gentle gestures, before dropping back to all fours and pawing at the ground, to reveal a door that blended seamlessly into the cobbled alley beneath dirt and grime. Sparhawk hurried in behind the animal, and the door shut behind them both, leaving them in darkness.

Sparhawk's ears strained at the darkness, but it was silent, save for a few clipped words some ten or so feet ahead of him. Then, light shone out, slightly painful to his dark adjusted eyes, to reveal a low ceiling, wide room. A pair of stone frame beds, looking like they were carved from the rock of the room, rested against the far wall, with a trestle table and bench in the center of the room. These too seemed like they had been rough hewn from the stone of the room, and Sparhawk felt more than a little out of his depth. The dog was gone, and the potbellied man stood in its place.

The light made examining the man considerably easier. He stood perhaps a head shorter than Sparhawk, although he had broad shoulders, blunt fingers, and thick forearms. It was the body of a man who had once been well built but aged into fat. His hair was gray at the temples but darker near the back and thinned to wisps at his crown, while his beard was almost snowy white. Eyes dark enough to make it difficult to discern iris and pupil sat deep set behind crow's feet and beneath a lined forehead, while laugh lines peeked out from behind the edges of his poofy and partly unkempt beard. The fine, reddish brown shirt he wore seemed slightly oversized, like it was an attempt somehow to conceal that the man had gone to fat, with a buttoned collar and exceedingly well crafted, straight stitching, matched only by the intensely blue, more coarse and heavy pants he wore. Bare ankles could be seen past the cuffs of his pant legs but above the edge of his short, almost flat boots, bound up with white cords in a criss cross pattern across black fabric, with the toe and sole of the boots in startlingly white material that was plainly not leather.

The man looked towards the wall, fingers waving and mouth murmuring, then looked back at Sparhawk speculatively. "Can you understand me now?" he asked.

"I can," Sparhawk confirmed. "Now, who are you?"

The man sighed and answered, "My name is Anthony -" a bizarre sounding set of sounds, Sparhawk thought to himself - "and I am... Well, it appears that whatever force sent me here is charging me for the so-called service."

"Charging you?" Sparhawk asked, confused.

"Extracting payment," the man, Anthony, clarified. "And that payment is, among other things, a year of servitude."

"What do you serve, and how are you expected to serve it, then?" Sparhawk demanded, hand tensing on the haft of the spear.

"You misunderstand. I'm not bound to its service. I'm bound to yours." He frowned. "And I would greatly appreciate you not stabbing me with the sharp thing you're holding, thank you. I can't exactly follow orders efficiently when my guts are hanging out of my belly."

"You're not a Styric," Sparhawk announced flatly. "What are you?"

"I'm not precisely local, nor do I know what a 'Styric' is. I'm an American, caucasian, from a city called The Fertile Fields- Huh. It translated that from Spanish? Interesting. Which is its actual meaning, but we say it as 'Las Vegas'-"

"Shut up a moment." Sparhawk watched the man, his mind racing. After a few seconds, the man remaining strictly mute, Sparhawk said, "You said you're constrained to follow my orders."

Anthony nodded, taking a seat on the bench by the table with a tired grunt.

"What could you offer me, then?" Sparhawk demanded. "You seem to be able to turn to a dog, call up rain, and destroy with fire. What else can you do?"

"We literally don't have time to go over the full breadth of my abilities," the man said in a tone that was somewhere between boastful and almost embarrassed. "I'm required to put my abilities at your disposal, though, so maybe if you tell me what you want done, I can tell you how, or if I can do it."

"I need to be out of the city before dawn," Sparhawk answered. "And it needs to be done without me being seen."

The man grimaced slightly, thinking. "Those guards with the spears?"

"Soldiers, yes." Sparhawk didn't elaborate; he didn't trust the man, but he'd make use of Anthony if he could.

"I can probably get us to the gates, wherever those are, without us crossing streets. Is there a city wall?"

"You don't know?" Sparhawk asked incredulously.

Anthony looked back blandly. "I didn't have much time to map out the city as I was making an unplanned fall from midnight sky into an unfamiliar town," he commented drily. "Rude of me; next time I think I'm going to die from a sudden stop against the ground, I'll be certain to draw a map on the way down."

Sparhawk favored him with an unfriendly stare. "I still haven't decided if you're worth keeping alive yet," he pointed out.

"If you wanted me dead then you wouldn't have held back your spear when I accidentally surprised you," Anthony replied flatly. "And I have to do what you say, so you gain nothing and lose quite a lot by killing me now. Not the least of which is this hideaway here probably disappears and dumps you back in the alley we were in."

"So you didn't know of it before you opened it, then?" Sparhawk asked.

"I didn't know of it, I made it," Anthony confirmed. He made a quick gesture with his hands, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held himself very still. After a few seconds, a ghostly object formed in front of the man and began drifting towards and then through the shuttered door of their hideaway. Sparhawk frowned, waiting impatiently, although Anthony didn't keep him waiting long. After perhaps a minute, Anthony opened his eyes again. "The alley is empty, and it looks like the search has left the immediate area. Now's probably our best chance at getting out while the getting is good."

Sparhawk hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe you could be useful after all."

"Nothing's actually useless, it's just a matter of being clever enough to find a way to use it."

"A dead body makes a good distraction, you realize."

"Only the once." Anthony paused, then asked, "What was your name again?"

"Sparhawk."

---

It's official. Sparhawk is a dick.

Not that I can blame him, I suppose. The restrictions placed on me mean he's PROBABLY not evil, but he's certainly rude, mistrusting, and about as sociable as a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Plus, he's obviously under a lot of strain right now, judging by the dark bags under his eyes and the obvious tension in his temples and his jaw. "Hey," I ask softly. "When was the last time you ate?"

"It's the middle of the night," Sparhawk points out, "and typically I don't break my fast til dawn."

"We're probably closer to dawn than not, and you look like you're short on sleep. A little food will probably give you the extra lift that would make the difference between feeling a little worn and yawning at the wrong time."

He grunts, but doesn't disagree. "You have food on you, then?"

I shrug, and make a small series of gestures, focusing my attention on the spell. It takes a little time, but then I'm holding in my palm a pair of brown figs. Sparhawk's eyes light up a little as I hand him one. He pops the conjured Goodberry fruit into his mouth and chews with evident relish. I eat my own in two bites, looking out into the alleyway. Still clear. "Now's our chance," I say quietly. "Take my hand."

Sparhawk does so as I chant softly for several seconds, and the world blurs about us for a split second before we're both perched atop the neighboring roof. I clap my free hand over his mouth, needlessly as it turns out, given he doesn't make a sound, though he glares daggers at me.

"We're going rooftop to rooftop," I whisper. "Hold tight and don't make sudden moves." I pause, then add, "Ah, where's the wall of the city we need to get to?"

Sparhawk's grip tightens painfully on my hand as he slowly gestures with the spear in his free hand. I grimace, and nod.

Two more blinks gets us within a relatively short distance to the city wall, along with the men who patrol it at night. The flickering of patrolling lanterns helps me mentally define the crenelated parapet of the wall, and to my dismay the men walking it appear alert and on edge. Hardly a surprise given the ball of fire I arrived in, but I can't do a damn thing about that now and it wasn't really my doing to begin with. I look at Sparhawk, who doesn't seem remotely pleased about the method of travel. "Two more, and then we walk," I whisper. "We're going to do a little falling at the end of the second one, but we'll be falling like feathers, not like stones."

Sparhawk's unfriendly look in return promises violence if I don't deliver. I'd better be able to deliver, then, shouldn't I? I wait until the patrols walking in opposing directions get far enough past each other, then begin our first blink to a gable overlooking the top of the wall, then quickly give us both Feather Fall. Then, with a short chant, I Blink us as far out as I can manage over and past the wall, the gentle breeze of our descent quiet and easy for the six seconds it takes us to reach the ground. There's no sound of shouts or abrupt motion on the wall, still somewhat visible through the fog to our left, so I can only assume we weren't seen.

The ground beneath us is wet, and through my Converse flat tops I can feel the slight unevenness that comes of naturally growing grass and the soil that rises up around the tufts. In front of me, Spawhawk is a slightly darker shape on a black background, and I wouldn't be able to tell exactly where or even what he was if he wasn't still holding my hand in just shy of a death grip. "Now we move," he says quietly. "No more magic for now."

I sigh but don't complain. "How far?"

"Not far." Of course I should have expected a noncommittal answer. "Quiet."

Sparhawk lets go of me; I find I can again sense the direction to him as he murmurs a few words of his own. In the darkness I can barely make out the movement of his hands, but it does seem that he has magic of his own, even if I don't actually recognize it. His sudden sharp breath sets me on edge. I almost ask, but he DID give me an order, technically, so I keep my mouth shut.

"Ahead. Near the wall," he breathes softly. "Do you view it?"

It's a strange way to ask the question; it takes a moment before I realize he's deliberately avoiding any hissing consonents. "Yeah," I reply, doing likewise, released from the order of 'quiet' by his direct question.

A subtle glow unlike the light of the lanterns seems to be lurking about the wall of the city, perhaps eye level. It's very faint, but distinctly green. I find myself wishing I had my glasses so I could maybe see it more clearly; being nearsighted at night is the worst feeling in this kind of darkness. Wait, I'm being stupid. I can change my shape; I almost do so but grit my teeth as I remember Sparhawk instructed me to use no more magic. Dammit.

I always hated Simon Says. And this game of it has stakes I really don't want to invoke. "If I can't magic, I can't defend we," I point out to him softly, still avoiding any sibilant sounds. At his annoyed look in my direction - I'm assuming, since I can't see more than a darker silhouette of him over dark, foggy night - I clarify, "Your order of no magic earlier, until you tell me other."

He huffs and turns his attention back to the glow, which almost seems to be turning its attention in our direction. After several seconds of this, it turns, concealed by something, and vanishes from my ability to track it. Sparhawk sighs and seems to relax a little. "We need to move," he mumbles. "Follow."

He doesn't grab for my hand again, but then I suppose he doesn't actually need to. The glow, whatever it was, doesn't reappear, and Sparhawk angles away from the city wall as we walk.

He wasn't lying when he said it wasn't very far; by my guess, it's twenty minutes before our destination becomes visible through the gloom and fog. As an American who's never been to Europe, I'm not experienced with castles, but the dim light of the handful of torches out in front of the structure certainly calls the term to mind. Sturdy stone assembled fortification, drawbridge, and around it barely visible in the darkness spreads a dry-moat of sharpened, externally canted wooden stakes nearing to the edge of the walls. Charging towards them would be safer than falling off the wall onto them, but not by much.

Near the front gates, there's an encampment of men amongst piles of paving stones but Sparhawk steers us away from them, circling us around to the back wall instead. He gropes along a section of wall near a bush for a few moments, then tugs at what I belatedly recognize to be a rope. I sincerely hope it's only there for tonight and not a regular fixture of the castle because it feels like a terrible security risk.

Above us, the sound of metal scraping on stone as Sparhawk pulls, holding tension on it. "You follow me up after, and no magic," he reiterates, and I clench my teeth.

"Yeah, I got it already," I mutter.

Suddenly, above us a young voice calls out sharply. "Who's there?"

Sparhawk murmurs something about a horse's ass before calling back, "Leave it alone, Berit." He begins pulling himself up hand over hand.

I haven't climbed a rope in years. I feel a degree of tense uneasiness. "Uh, Sparhawk," I protest softly. "I'm not a young man anymore."

Sparhawk snaps down, "Fine. One spell, and only one."

I feel a stab of relief, and Blink myself to the top of the wall - only to be confronted by a shocked young man about the same size as Sparhawk, and decidedly less friendly given his sudden curse and immediate heft of a double bitted axe. I raise my hands in the air like someone's pointing a gun at me; he gets the message as the axe remains in a ready position but not actually coming at me.

"Berit, calm down, the old man is with me," Sparhawk calls up to us, and I feel a stab of annoyance at him. Forty-eight isn't THAT old. No matter what my beard thinks otherwise. Sparhawk continues, "He's been useful so far, but I couldn't exactly afford to leave him behind in Cimmura, so I brought him here with me until I can decide what to actually do with him."

"What to do with him?" Berit parrots, plainly dumbfounded as Sparhawk heaves himself up and over the stone crenelations of the castle wall. Even in the light of the torch I can see Sparhawk looks worn and sweaty from the climb; the rope was far enough out from the wall that he probably had to rely solely on his grip strength, confirming for me that yeah, I wouldn't have made it up that rope.

Sparhawk looks at me and firmly says, "Stay."

The humor in his eyes indicates that my unamused look in return has no power here. I'm starting to think shaping myself into a dog in that Cimmura city was probably setting myself up for shit like this.

---

Despite his jest towards Anthony, Sparhawk's mood wasn't entirely a light one. Looking past Berit, who still looked as though he was considering trimming Anthony's beard below the chin with his axe, Sparhawk got a good look down in the courtyard of the chapterhouse, where he could see Kalten and Kurik marching with purpose towards the stables, half armored and accompanied by several novitiates carrying lanterns. He was fairly certain that the pair of them were probably gearing up to go looking for him; best to forestall that. "Don't go away," he called down to them.

"Sparhawk?" asked Kalten, startled, looking up. "What are you doing up there?"

"I thought I'd take up burglary," Sparhawk replied drily. "Don't go anywhere, we're on our way down."

"We?" Kurik repeated, looking first at Kalten, then up at Sparhawk. "Who's 'we'?"

Sparhawk turned his head to briefly look back at the plainly annoyed, balding, pot bellied, middle aged man with the white beard. "I'll explain when we get down there. Anthony, come."

"The alleyway notwithstanding, I'm not a dog," Anthony said irritably, moving to follow Sparhawk. Behind him, Berit stayed a pace back with his axe over one shoulder - not quite in a striking pose, but he'd need very little time or effort to get there.

Sparhawk cleared his throat. "Berit? Can you fetch my hook and rope?"

"Ah..." Berit said hesitantly, eyeing Anthony with evident mistrust.

"Don't worry about it. I can take care of myself- and him, if need be."

"Still have to do as you ask, can't let you come to harm," Anthony said petulantly.

"Just follow me and stay quiet til I say otherwise," Sparhawk said. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the immediate silence that followed, but he needed the quiet to think. "Oh, and Berit? We'll send someone up to take your place, but we're going to need you downstairs after you finish coiling that. This is important."

Berit wordlessly nodded, faking the rope into a neat coil and binding it with a forearm length each of the tail and hook ends, knotting them securely. Sparhawk led them down the parapet to the steep stone stairs that pathed into the courtyard.

Kurik was waiting for him with a thunderous expression on his face. "Where have you been, Sparhawk?" his squire demanded, the tension in his bare, muscled arms and shoulders emphasizing his agitation. The black leather vest Kurik customarily wore wasn't entirely fastened yet, several of the frogs still dangling free. His tone, though forceful, was the hushed tone men typically used in the middle of the night.

"I had to go to the cathedral," Sparhawk explained. "There were... complications."

"Complications?" Kalten asked, sounding amused. The big blond knight wore common mail and had a heavy broadsword hastily buckled on his hip, the straps not yet adjusted for riding. "Had the impulse for a religious experience?"

Sparhawk shook his head grimly, recalling earlier in the night. "Not exactly. Tanis is dead."

"Tanis?" Kalten blurted out, suddenly stricken.

"He was one of the twelve knights with Sephrenia when she encased Ehlana in crystal," Sparhawk clarified. "His ghost told me to go to the crypt beneath the cathedral before it went to give up its sword to Sephrenia."

"And you went? At night?" Kurik asked.

"It was somewhat urgent," Sparhawk answered curtly.

"What did you do? Violate a few tombs? Is that how you got the spear?" Kalten interjected.

"Hardly. King Aldreas gave it to me. Or his ghost did, anyway. Aldreas' missing ring was hidden in the socket of the spearhead." Sparhawk glanced between Kurik and Kalten. "I take it you were getting ready to search for me?"

"Obviously," Kurik replied. "You were missing when I went to check on you at midnight."

Sparhawk blinked at him. "You checked on me at midnight?"

"I check on you every night. Three times, at least. Have since you were a boy," Kurik admitted. "I searched the chapterhouse for you and when it was plain that you were gone, I woke up Kalten." Kurik looked past him, and Sparhawk spared a glance of his own to note with amusement that Berit was a pace behind Anthony, axe still over his shoulder and still watching Anthony with a mistrust that hinted at impending violence.

"Who're you, anyway?" Kalten asked after a second, jutting his chin at Anthony, who tightened his lips and said nothing in response. Kalten's eyes narrowed. "I asked you a question," he said after a moment.

Anthony looked at Sparhawk, and for a brief moment Sparhawk entertained the notion of letting Anthony stew a bit, to see if he really WOULD stay silent until Sparhawk gave him permission to answer. But no; it would only provoke Kalten, and Sparhawk was forced to admit to himself that for all the man was strange, he HAD proved himself useful and had done as he was told so far. "Answer him," Sparhawk said.

"Name's Anthony," the man said shortly. "I got caught up in something unwillingly."

"Caught up in something?" Kurik said with a frown. "What manner of something?"

"Magic," Anthony replied. "A gift I received and read. It did... something to me. Gave me magic. Sent me here. Caused a big mess."

"A mess?" Kurik grunted questioningly, looking at Sparhawk. "How much trouble is this going to cause our order?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure," Sparhawk admitted. "The Rose Street inn was damaged and the road far moreso. At least one was killed by his arrival." Sparhawk shook his head. "Push comes to shove, we could hand him over to the Church ourselves."

Anthony looked first stunned, then affronted. "I beg your pardon?"

"You ARE the one who caused all that destruction," Sparhawk pointed out.

"That wasn't my doing!" Anthony protested. "That was inflicted ON me, not BY me!"

"Did you or did you not make a twelve foot hole in the street when you landed?" Sparhawk asked pointedly.

"I- well, yeah, but-" Anthony said weakly, then spit off to the side. "By Loki's forked tongue, you're an asshole. I had no control over that."

"You were able to slow our fall past the wall of the city," Sparhawk reminded him coolly.

"I'm still figuring out everything that damn book did to me!" Anthony snapped back. "It stuffed things inside my head, and as near as I can tell, it erased things to make room for it. Which worries the hell out of me," he added.

"So far, I only have your word of any of this, including the strange declaration that for the next year you have to obey my commands," Sparhawk retorted. "A single night is little proof of your words. You'll have to build trust and right now, the Order can't afford uncertainty."

Anthony sighed. "So what, then? We're at an impass? You're going to have me imprisoned, executed? Burned at the stake as a witch?"

The temperature in the courtyard cooled noticeably, as all three Pandion knights leveled dangerous glares at Anthony in response, and even Kurik looked scornful. "Watch your tongue," Sparhawk warned.

Anthony looked confused. "What?"

"Don't use the word 'witch'," Kurik advised. "It carries ugly connotations in Elenia, specifically concerning the treatment of Styrics."

"I don't know what Elenia or Styrics are," Anthony said. "But 'witch' is a term for practitioners of Wicca back where I'm from. And I am one- or was, at any rate." He fished around inside his shirt and pulled out a silver object, a star inside a circle, hung on a black cord. "Suppose on some level I still am."

Sparhawk wasn't entirely certain what to say on the matter, but asked, "And the burning?"

"Centuries past, the dominant religion in my homeland burned witches and suspected witches alive, demanding they repent," Anthony answered with a degree of resentment. "And that religion still denounces wiccans as servants of evil."

"Are you?" Kalten asked. At the incredulous looks given him by Kurik and Sparhawk, he shrugged. "It's a fair question," he protested.

"No." The tone in Anthony's voice was distinctly unfriendly, and Sparhawk felt something akin to sympathy, suddenly.

"... I apologize," Sparhawk said after a few terse, sullen moments. "These are dire times, and your arrival has introduced complications we can ill afford right now."

Anthony grunted, seemingly not willing to entirely let go of his resentment, but nodded, his white beard bobbing slightly. "Your ring, and your queen, was it?" he said.

"Best to have this discussion inside," Kurik suggested.

"Agreed. Oh, and Berit, tell the novitiates in the stables to replace you on the parapet," Sparhawk said. "This is going to take a while. Kurik, could you go wake the others?"

Kurik nodded. "Of course."