And stopped.
Had she just heard . . . her name?
She cast glances into every corner of the room. Nobody.
Was her imagination playing tricks on her? Since she was barely a ghost, a thing artificial, a puff of magic herself, she had to wonder if she even had an imagination. And anyway, house maiden wasn’t technically her “name.”
She hovered, waiting to see if she heard it again.
“IN HERE, YOU stupid cow!” Broahm screamed.
His magically amplified voice shook the interior of the capture gem like an earthquake.
He jumped up and down, waved his arms, and tried to imagine how it must look inside his workshop. He could see the shimmering figure of the house maiden blurred through the quartz. “Pay attention, you dumb ghostly transparent bitch!”
Broahm had used both his remaining spells.
First, the light spell. He’d taken twenty steps back from the quartz wall and had jabbed his dagger into the ground among the blades of thick blue grass. Then he’d focused on the hilt, casting the light spell with all the intensity he could muster. When he was finished casting the light spell on the dagger, he couldn’t look at it, had to turn away. The blinding light scorched his eyes, and he’d turned back toward the quartz wall, hoping it would act as a lens and project his shadow where the house maiden could see it.
Then the voice spell. Broahm liked this spell a lot. It could do various things depending on how you cast it. It could make Broahm’s voice seem appealing to others, not a bad trick when trying to make an argument and convince someone. It could also throw his voice up to half a mile away, a magically charged ventriloquism. It this case, Broahm had simply gone for volume. The spell made his voice boom like a Titan’s, but though it was ear-shatteringly loud within the capture gem, Broahm could only hope it made it to the outside.
“House maiden! I’m trapped in the quartz! Damn it! HOUSE MAIDEN!”
It wasn’t working. A leaden feeling crept into Broahm’s gut. What if she couldn’t hear him? What if she wasn’t able to go for help? House maidens were the simplest sorts of servants, not terribly bright. She would simply go dormant until her master called for her. It might be weeks before anyone was curious enough to come looking for Broahm. Months? Years? Broahm did not like the idea of being trapped forever in the blue world.
A sudden panic gripped him. He shouted again, jumped, waved his arms. Damn it, she wasn’t hearing him.
Broahm screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.
SULTON ARRIVED AT the small cottage. It belonged to a journeyman wizard named Bortz. If all went well, he’d sell him on the usual package, and the usual scheme would unfold from there.
It had been two months since he’d sent Lorran to rob Broahm’s house and Lorran had vanished. Sulton wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. Either something had gone wrong, and Broahm had gotten the better of Lorran, or Lorran had stumbled upon something truly valuable in the wizard’s home and, not wanting to share it, had hoofed it into the night.
Either way, Sulton had lost a first-rate sneak thief, and it had taken weeks for him to find a suitable replacement.
Sulton was slowly but steadily getting rich. First, he robbed wizards’ households, the ones he suspected had poor security. As an accomplished wizard himself, he was able to circumvent most of the usual wards. Then he’d sell security systems to the victimized wizards. After that, when the time was ripe, he’d rob them again. More accurately, the thief he had on payroll would rob them again.
Sulton knocked on Bortz’s door.
A few seconds later a plump wizard in green robes opened the door and squinted at Sulton. He was short and innocuous.
“You must be Master Bortz. I’m Sulton from Wizard Home Security.”
“What?” The fat wizard blinked at him. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten you were coming. I was in the middle of a star chart . . . well, never mind. Come in. Come in.”
Sulton followed the wizard through a narrow entryway and into a small sitting room. He made mental notes of the dwelling’s interior. They’d come in handy later when he briefed his new sneak thief.
“You’ve contacted us at a good time,” Sulton said. “The Wizard’s Quarter has been ravaged by a rash of burglaries this past year. You can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your valuables. We can set you up with a system that will allow you to feel secure, knowing that your possessions—especially any rare magical items you might have—are safe and sound.”
Bortz snorted. “Guarding my knickknacks is the least of my worries. I want to make sure my throat isn’t cut in my sleep. Especially after the disappearance.”
Sulton raised an eyebrow. The disappearance? “Yes, well, your concern is . . . understandable.”
“I mean, wizards just vanishing? It’s enough to make you wonder. That fellow just recently, the mage who lived a few doors down. Broahm, I think his name was.” Bortz snapped his fingers. “Gone just like that. Not a note, not a word to anyone. Foul play wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
Come to think of it, Sulton had heard something about Broahm being gone. Sulton had been curious but didn’t ask anyone about the details for fear of raising suspicion.
In the meantime, Sulton intended to use the situation to his advantage. If Bortz truly feared for his life, then Sulton might be able to sell him an elaborate spell package for an inflated price.
“These are dangerous times,” Sulton said somberly. “What’s money compared to your life? We can spell your household in a way that guarantees your safety. The simple fact of the matter is that you can buy peace of mind. It’s not cheap, but you’ll sleep at night.”
Bortz was nodding. “Yes. That’s what I want. Okay, let’s talk.” Bortz gestured through a low, arched doorway. “I’ve just made a pot of tea in the kitchen. Come on. I’ll pour you a cup.”
Sulton stepped into the kitchen and—
Blue light flashed, blinded him, the world spinning.
Disoriented.
Sulton sat up, looked around, and saw that he was in a world entirely of blue.
BROAHM CAME DOWN the back stairs into Bortz’s small kitchen. “He’s in there?”
Bortz pointed to the blue quartz on the wooden table next to his teapot. “It worked just as you described. Has he really been ripping off wizards all over the Quarter?”
Broahm bent and squinted at the quartz, wondering if he could see a tiny Sulton in there. It had taken Broahm a little over two weeks to duplicate the capture gem spell and set it up in Bortz’s kitchen. A nice little bit of wizarding if Broahm said so himself. The real trick had been raising the slain burglar. You can’t interrogate a zombie. They just slobber and try to bite you. So Broahm had been a bit clever, combining the zombieraising spell and a mind-reading charm and tying them together in a way that allowed the zombie burglar to be questioned. Bortz had helped.
“The burglar told us everything,” Broahm reminded Bortz. “Sulton has been getting obscenely rich off his fellow wizards.”
“I must admit,” Bortz said, “when your house maiden woke me out of a sound sleep in the wee hours in the middle of a raging blizzard, well, it gave me quite a start.”
“I’m just glad she finally heard me and was able to fetch you,” Broahm said. The thought of being trapped forever in the blue quartz still gave him a little shiver.
“So now that you’ve caught him, what are you going to do with him?” Bortz asked.
“I don’t know.” Broahm grinned at the chunk of quartz in the middle of the table. “But I’m going to take my sweet time thinking about it.”
Gray
PATRICIA BRIGGS
It was raining, a desultory, reluctant angry rain forced unwillingly from the gray clouds overhead. It dribbled with the fiendish rhythm of a Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip.