The dome containing the key fragment was sitting on the table next to Josh’s things, with the woman standing behind it. Josh hadn’t approached the key fragment too closely in the vault, but now that it was sitting only a few feet away he could feel a wash of icy cold numbing magic. It drowned out the quiet, subtle feeling of his own magic items, and even the stronger buzz of the magic sword and boots the green-eyed man wore.
“It seems there has been a theft at the library,” the man said, in a smugly jovial tone of voice. “An item of historical significance and astonishing power has been stolen by a thief. The vault lies wide open, and the dread guardian was slain. The librarians are beside themselves with worry, to have lost such a precious obligation. Happily, I have some influence with the Church, and rather than make the theft public, they have agreed to keep it secret whilst I track down the thief.”
Josh was running through a litany of swearwords in his head. He had been in the library. His captors had caught him climbing out of it, and it was only his word against theirs that he hadn’t taken anything. After kidnapping him, they must have broken in through the window he had left open, killed the wormspider and stolen the key fragment, just so they could accuse him of the theft.
The green-eyed man took a piece of paper out of his coat, unfolded it, and held it up. It had dense writing on it.
“Here is a confession,” he said. “By a young thief.” The man smiled. “All you need do is sign it with your name. Once you have done so, I will let you go free. However, if you do not complete your task by ensuring that Lady Alianne consumes the pearl and is afflicted by its effects, then I am afraid this confession will make its way into the hands of the Church.” He looked stern and serious. “They will have no mercy upon you. You must know the nature of the justice Church deals out to transgressors.” He paused, as if to let his words sink in, although Josh had no idea what Church did to its enemies. He decided he didn’t want to know.
“Once your task is complete,” the man went on, “I will give you the confession to destroy. And the Mistress Mage here will gladly take you on as an apprentice.”
The woman looked at Josh neutrally. She didn’t look as if she was particularly looking forward to the prospect.
“So,” the man said, placing the confession on the table. “Sign it. Serve me. And be rewarded.” He regarded Josh calmly. “Or be executed as a thief. Which is it to be?”
Josh said nothing, still frantically trying to think of a way out of the trap. The man didn’t seem surprised or disappointed by his silence.
“I will leave you to think about it,” he said.
The two burly men, the ones who had been standing behind Josh for the entire conversation, gathered up all Josh’s things, including the moth haunt bottle, the magic cloak, the magic shoes, and the miniature spell book. They left the lantern and the confession, along with a bottle of ink and a quill pen. Since they had neglected to untie Josh, it wasn’t as if he could sign it, or destroy it, or even scribble rude comments in the margins, so it was probably just there as a reminder.
His captors filed out of the cellar, leaving Josh alone.
He knew perfectly well that the moment he signed the confession he would have given them leverage over him, and they had no reason ever to let go of that. Poisoning Alianne—and he was fairly certain the pearl was something that would kill her, not just make her temporarily ill—was just the first step. Once she died, they would have even more to hold over him, and they would order him to do something else, something equally horrible, or worse.
He had to escape.
He hadn’t had much opportunity to study the cellar, but now he looked around him. It was timber-framed, but lined with brick, and had literally nothing in it except for the staircase, the chair Josh was tied to, and the table which held the lantern and the confession.
Could Josh shuffle the chair over to the table and burn the ropes off with the lantern?
He decided to start shuffling. It was very slow going, worse than inching across the floor of the library while hidden only by the invisibility cloak. Several times the chair rocked and teetered and nearly fell over, but he managed to retain his balance. Every second he waited with bated breath for the cellar door to jerk open again, and the green-eyed man to appear to make him sign the confession.
By the time he reached the table he was sweating from the effort, and he had a headache. He wasn’t sure how long he had been in the cellar, but it felt like it might late morning, or maybe early afternoon, and he‘d had nothing to eat or drink since yesterday, bar a few mouthfuls of water.
When he got closer to the lantern, his heart sank, because it had chains and a screw holding it shut. He had optimistically imagined he might be able to knock the chair against the table until it overbalanced into his hands or something and then somehow extract the candle and hold it against the rope. It had been a stupid, unrealistic idea from the start.
The only other thing he had were the individual spell papers hidden in his clothing. He had Hide and Chi Siphon tucked into his sleeve cuffs. They were the most readily available because he had judged them the most useful. He had Heat and Alarm tucked into his boots. Stone was tucked into the back of his belt.
He could cast Hide on himself, so that when his captors returned they might think he had escaped. But they wouldn’t see an abandoned chair or discarded rope, because those would get included in the Hide spell. Plus, maybe the mage would be able to cast some kind of Reveal spell. Also, Hide did obscure you from sight, but it usually left a lingering trace of enchantment in the area, which the mage would also probably detect. There was nothing magical about his bonds, so Chi Siphon was no help.
The only other spell he could easily reach was Stone. Heat, Chi Siphon and Alarm were area of effect spells. Stone and Hide, however, would focus an object and anything connected to it, although Josh was still working out the rules that governed what ‘connected’ actually meant.
What could he do with Stone? He glanced around the cellar. Casting it on his bonds would just make them harder to escape from. Likewise, it wouldn’t do anything useful to the table. That left the lantern, the ink bottle, the quill pen and the confession, none of which would … wait, what about the confession?
It was written on paper, and paper could cut. If he cast Stone on it, would it be stiff enough to cut through the bindings around his wrists?
He slowly shuffled the chair so that it was sideways to the table. If he leaned his head forward, he could just touch the paper with his forehead. He nudged it towards him until it was at the edge of the table. When it was sitting halfway off, he shuffled backwards and then turned the chair until his hands were below the table. Then he tipped the chair carefully forwards until he had raised his hands enough to grasp the paper.
It took him several tries, and for one heart-stopping second he thought the paper was going to fall onto the floor.
Finally, he was holding onto the confession. He kept hold of it with one hand, and used the other to retrieve the scrap of paper holding the Stone spell. He touched the spell paper to the confession, and pushed magic into it. He felt the paper stiffen in his hands as the Stone spell took effect.
It turned out that Stone-hardened paper was lethally sharp.
It took him back to the time he had cut through his bonds in Varian’s camp in the Whortleberry Woods, using a flint knife that Mistrz had given him. He had cut his fingers then too. He really needed to find a better way of escaping from being tied up, if this sort of thing was going to happen often.
The silk ropes which had been used to bind his wrists were much easier to cut through than the rope in Varian’s camp. It only took a few slices and he felt the bonds loosen and fall away.
After a bit of wriggling, and passing the paper from hand to hand, he managed to get himself into a position where he could saw at the thicker, tougher rope tying him to the chair.
A portion of the paper fragmented and fell off. It made sense that the paper would be brittle, since it was so thin. That still left three remaining edges that he could use to cut with, and soon enough the rope around his torso fell away too. He hastily untied his feet and tried to stand up.
Being tied to a chair for hours hadn’t done him any good. He staggered and winced as he massaged his thighs and calves, trying to get the pins and needles out of them. He felt as stiff as an old man, but he couldn’t delay.
He had to get out of the cellar.
He crept up to the cellar door and put his ear to it. At first he heard nothing, but then a woman’s voice rose sharply in tones of disgust. It sounded like she was in the room beyond the cellar.
Was that the mage? It was followed by the soothing murmur of the man with green eyes, his deeper voice rumbling. It sounded like he was placating her. After a moment Josh heard the sharp clack of heels and the sound of a door slamming. The man with the green eyes laughed, sounding closer now. Was he going to come into the cellar? Josh backed away from the door, his hard pounding. Should he use the Hide spell?
But the door stayed closed, and when the man's voice came again, it was further away.
Josh wouldn’t be able to get out that way if all his captors were sitting in front of the door. His only option was to use the Hide spell to make them think he had already escaped. He retreated back down the stairs, his mind spinning furiously. He had some preparations to make.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The confession had been written only on one side of the paper, giving him a blank sheet on the other side. His captors had helpfully left him a quill to enchant, which meant he could write himself more spells. It was lucky he had written the spells out so many times that he knew them by heart.
He scribbled out another copy of Stone, which he cast on his clothes, then wriggled out of them, leaving them puffed out stiffly in the shape of his body. He arranged the clothes and boots on the chair, and carefully draped the ropes around them, so that it looked as if he was still tied up. Of course, they were just empty clothes, and it was obvious there was no head or arms, so he had put the chair on its side, obscuring it with the table, so that the missing head and hands weren’t obvious. Now it looked as if the chair had fallen over while he was trying to escape.
To further obscure everything, he blew out the lantern, and tipped it over, so that it looked as if it had gone out accidentally.
The cellar stairs were wooden, and had a handrail on one side. Josh positioned himself at the top of the steps, on the wrong side of the handrail, directly behind the door. He was naked, aside from his underwear, but that was okay, because he then cast Hide on himself.
He didn’t have to wait long. The door swung open abruptly, and there was a grunt as the man in the lead realised there was no light. It was one of the burly thugs.
“He’s knocked out t’ lamp, little bugger. Pass me yon shiner, will yer?”
New lantern in hand, the thug tramped down the stairs. He stopped when he saw the overturned chair, supposedly with its kidnap victim still secured, then continued down. The second thug and the green-eyed man followed closely behind him, leaving Josh invisible at the top of the stairs.
Josh vaulted over the handrail, ran out of the cellar door, and slammed it shut. It had a bar on the outside to secure it, so he dropped it immediately, and looked around him.
He was in a kitchen with a wooden table in the centre, and a stove at one end. There was a door that must lead further into the house, and a back door that opened directly out onto the street. How convenient. His own belongings were scattered on the table, as if his captors had been pawing through everything. There was no sign of the mage, for which he was thankful.
Even as he scanned the room, a heavy body flung itself against the cellar door, which shuddered against the bar holding it. Josh ran around the other side of the kitchen table and pushed it against the door. It was solid wood and heavy. Hopefully that would delay them. He hastily grabbed all his things, stuffed them into his pack, flung it over his shoulder, and then sprinted to the back door.
There was a small window of diamond glass panes to the left of the door, and as he peered through, he saw the mage walking along the street, on her way back to the house.
Josh swore under his breath, even as the point of a sword came slicing through the wood of the cellar door as if it was made of butter. He flinched, and ran in the opposite direction, through the door that led deeper into the house.
The kitchen opened straight onto a front parlour containing dusty furniture, with a set of stairs going up and beyond that a front door, which had a bolt keeping it closed.
He unbolted it and flung it open, then hesitated on the doorstep. Josh had been right about the house being on the outskirts of Brackstone. It was on a rise, overlooking most of the town, at the opposite end from the library and the castle.
In front of him was row of cottages, divided by a street that was little more than a dirt track. It wasn’t the network of narrow streets and alley ways he was expecting. It was too open and spread out. Also, he didn’t want to start running about semi-naked, and there wasn’t time to put any clothes on.
He pushed the front door open as wide as it would go, to make it look as if he had run out that way, and then turned and ran lightly up the stairs, keeping his feet on the outside of the steps to prevent anything creaking.
At the top of the stairs was a small landing. He heard angry voices from the kitchen and knew he was running out of time. He tried the door directly ahead of him, which opened onto a bedroom.
This was where they had put the key fragment. It was sitting in the middle of the floor, with some kind of magic circle drawn around it in chalk, maybe to protect it. There was a bed in one corner, and a narrow chest of draws, but little else.
Josh scrambled under the bed, pulling his things in as tightly as he could, and backing up against the wall. The floorboards felt rough against his naked skin, and the skirting board was cool against his spine.
The numbing field the key fragment put out was strong, much stronger than the mild feeling of the cloak and the shoes and his own Hide spell, and would help disguise them, he hoped. Under the bed was a stupid place to hide, but it was only temporary.
From downstairs came the sound of footsteps and the mage shouting something. There were booted feet running out of the door. Yes, he thought. You run that way. But then he heard someone running up the stairs.
Whoever it was crashed into the room where Josh lay, then exhaled with a loud sigh of relief, presumably at the sight of the key fragment. Josh thought it was probably the mage. She must just have been checking that Josh hadn't taken it, because she immediately slammed the door shut and ran down the stairs.
Josh realised he hadn't been breathing for the last few second and sucked in a relieved lungful of air. He climbed out from under the bed and dressed in his spare set of clothes as quickly and quietly as he could.
There was a ewer and a jug of water on the dresser, and when he checked it the water seemed clear and smelled clean. He was so thirsty by this point he didn’t care if it made him sick. He forced himself to drink it as slowly as possible. He could feel the Hide spell on him, but it wasn’t affecting his clothes, so he would either need to recast it, or use the cloak of invisibility.
Should he hide under the bed again? Or should he find a better place to stay out of sight until the pursuit died down? Could he climb out the window? He stepped towards it, and then saw one of the thugs in the street. He was striding around with a stick in his hand, poking it at empty space all around him.
Trying to find an invisible person.
Josh looked around the room. There was nothing in it except the chest of drawers, the bed, and the key fragment in its circle. There was no attic, either. The roof was supported by two heavy cross beams, and the ceiling went up to the rafters.
If he hid under the bed they would be able to find him just by shoving a stick in there, like the thug was doing in the street. However, Josh could sit on the cross beams in his cloak of invisibility. Would the mage see him? Did she have a spell that revealed invisibility?
The cross beam was just low enough for him to reach up and balance his pack on the rafters. Josh jumped, caught the beam and hoisted himself onto it. It wasn’t until he was sitting there, with his pack on his lap and the cloak around his shoulders, that he realised just how easy it had been for him to climb up. He was much fitter than he had been when he had first started out.
He inched towards the edge of the magic circle, although he was careful not to cross it. The closer he was to the fragment, the more its strange numbing effect would cloak any magical effects he was giving out.
There seemed to be no sounds in the house, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t left one person on guard. Should he try to sneak out now? As soon as the street was clear, maybe he could get out of the window and onto the roof or something. But that would take him further away from the magic-numbing effect of the key fragment.
He couldn’t stay here forever.
His decision was made for him when he heard the clattering of boots and a murmur of voices from downstairs, as the search party returned. It was only now that they apparently thought to search the house, because he heard them tramping into the other rooms and the sounds of furniture being moved.
It sounded like they were being very thorough.
He huddled on the beam, which was rapidly beginning to become uncomfortable, but he didn’t dare move. The door to his room was opened, more cautiously this time. The green-eyed man was standing on the landing, along with the mage. The latter lifted a veil of fabric up to her eyes, and peered cautiously through it at the room.
She was staring right at Josh and he froze, the tension so thick in his throat he could almost taste it.
“I can’t sense anything," she said after a moment, "but the artefact makes it hard, and that cloak…”
“Yes, you said,” the man snapped. He stepped over the threshold, sword out and ready, as if Josh was going to jump him at any moment. That was the last thing on Josh’s mind right now.
The man walked cautiously around the magic circle, and Josh was glad he had moved from his initial hiding spot, because the first thing the man did was go to the bed and swipe the sword underneath it. He then checked all the corners, sweeping his sword through the air.
“You said the invisibility will break if he moves?” the green-eyed man asked.
“Yes!” The mage sounded impatient, as if she had already had to repeat that several times.
“Why can’t you sense it? I thought you mages can find anything that reeks of magic.”
“Normally yes, but it was a holy item, imbued by a high priestess. Once the effect is active it seems to hide him from different kinds of sight and magic sense...” Her voice trailed away in frustration, then she added, “Although I don’t know how he could even stand to put the horrible thing on. It had a strong keep-away on it.”
“He must have dispelled it,” the man snapped.
Neither of them had thought to look up yet. Josh concentrated on staying still, and breathing as quietly as possible.
“I told you, it was holy,” the mage said irritably. “Some kind of religious ceremonial regalia. The only way he would be able to use it was if he was an ordained priest, or chosen in some way.”
The man snorted.
“That doesn’t seem likely, unless it was a god of thieves.”
“It felt druidic to me.”
“The last druids were killed in the battle at Reldan’s Ford.”
“Yes, but their artefacts remain.”
The man finally sheathed his sword.
“He’s not here,” he said, his voice surly. “And I don’t have the manpower to scour the town for him, invisibility or no. We need to clear out.”
The mage frowned.
“He won’t go to the authorities, surely.”
“We can’t risk it. We have to assume this safe house is now compromised.” The man gestured to the key fragment. “Get that packed up.”
“But I only just put down the circle!” the mage protested. “Do you know how much—”
“And if it’s chucking out a field that even I can sense then you need to get a muffler on it.”
“I don’t have any spelled material for that, I told you, you need to warn me before—”
“You have your cloak,” the man interrupted. “You said that conceals magic. Use it for the key instead.”
The mage stared at him in outrage, then drew a deep breath, “That’s—” she began, but got no further before she was interrupted.
“Stop arguing and do as you’re told, or by the gods I will make you regret it!”
The green-eyed man walked out, brushing past the mage who remained standing by the door, flustered and furious.
After a while she compressed her mouth, then pulled a wand and an amulet from a pocket within her cloak. She proceeded to use a spell similar to Chi Siphon to pull charges from sections of the circle, although as far as Josh could see the Chi was being siphoned through the wand and into the amulet, not directly into the mage. Josh needed a wand and amulet like that! As the mage gradually dispelled the magic, sections of chalk puffed up and disintegrated, leaving coloured smears on the floorboards.
Josh couldn’t help watching in fascination, as each interlocking segment was revealed and dispensed with. He wished he could take notes.
Once the circle had been removed, the mage stared at the key fragment for several seconds with her hands clenched, and then reluctantly pulled off her cloak. The moment she bundled the cage containing the key fragment into the cloak, the numbing sensation it had been emanating was suddenly muted.
Josh’s heart sped up, as he waited for the woman to sense the effect of his own magic cloak, but she seemed oblivious. One of the burly thugs arrived at the door with a chest, which he dumped on the floor beside the mage.
The bundled-up cage containing the key fragment was carefully placed in the chest.
“You can tell him I want that cloak back at the end of this,” the mage snapped.
The burly man just shrugged.
“Well, what are you standing there for? I don’t need you. Get out!”
The thug went, and the mage crouched by the chest. It had a complex lock with a dial pointing to several arcane sigils, each one with a trail of magic leading from it, in a slender thread. The mage did something with her hands, and the threads twitched and moved towards her. She braided them into a sort of knot, one which had a clear order of precedence. Once she had finished braiding, she did something complex, and the knot of magic sank into the lock, where it suddenly vanished from Josh’s senses.
An arcane combination lock!
Then the mage rose and walked out of the room, leaving Josh alone with the chest.