"Sunbright, hurry!" called the thief.
Still weaving from being knocked out, Sunbright nevertheless had dumped crates, books, chairs, and a table against the door. Now he crawled upstairs for fear of pitching backward. Knucklebones watched Lady Bly while Sunbright peered at the scrying table. Blood dripped from an ear, splashed the black stone, and sank without trace.
As promised, the same scene appeared, the common house, but time had lapsed, and the dim room was empty except for an elderly couple who huddled by the fire and gazed into smoky depths.
"Iceborn and Tulipgrace! Oh, Mother Reindeer guide me! I need to see more!"
"Patience," gargled Bly. "The image grows."
As if the viewers were birds taking wing, the old couple grew smaller. The picture changed to a scabby rooftop made of brush. Sunbright saw that the ground around the common hut was oddly littered with bones and offal and trash. His tribe had always kept their camp neat. Higher rose the view, until they saw more huts of bark slabs and brush, or sunken homes of stone, haphazard and slovenly. He didn't have time to study the camp, for the scene shrank rapidly. Soon they were a bowshot in the air, and details were obscure. Across a broken plain of rocks he saw a village-no, a whole town! His people had never camped near towns before! Then a flash of silver. Sunbright recognized the salt waves of the Narrow Sea. He'd seen them a thousand times. His tribe was camped near the sea, and a town, in summer?
But that put them on the wrong side of the sea! Why…? He caught his breath as a trio of mountains swirled from the distance. "I know them!" he said. "The Channel Mountains! The last we call the Anchor! They're northwest… The town must be Scourge, and my people south of it! But why?"
He blinked as the image went black. Lady Bly had touched the tabletop and ended the scrying spell. Poised once more, she ignored the thief's blade and commanded, "You have it. Now leave."
"You can find them?" Knucklebones asked her lover.
"Aye, I can…" Lost in thought, the shaman barely heard himself say, "But why there?"
"We'll go ask them," Knucklebones snapped. The shattering vision had left Sunbright more stunned than any bang on the head, so she took charge. "Watch her a moment."
Jerking a leg from under her, the thief tumbled Lady Bly across her own magic table. The old woman squawked. Pinning her hands, Knucklebones tugged down twine used to bind herbs and lashed the woman's thumbs together, passed the twine under the table, and lashed it to her ankles. The archwizard cursed, but the thief conceded, "You won't lie here long. Your precious city guards-may the gods rot their livers-will come hunting us criminals. Rest easy, and be glad you survived trying to weasel out of a bargain. Come on, Sunbright!"
Knucklebones flew to the stairs and spiraled down. The barbarian clumped after, entered the cellar. The thief dumped their satchels and weapons onto the remaining flitter and lashed them tightly. "Open the doors!" she said.
"We're not flying again, are we? We've crashed twice!"
"We've had practice, then. Get the doors while I check these wires. The guards will break down her doors soon enough, so there's only one way out. Besides, your tribe's at the Narrow Sea, aren't they? We saw that from the air."
Sunbright was glad to be groggy, though the haze was hardening into a throbbing headache. Maybe he'd black out in flight. Shuffling, he pried open the doors, and felt his guts clench at the sight of the nothingness outside. Knucklebones yelled for him to climb in. A banging and clattering sounded from the stairwell, and an odd screeching like an animal in pain. "What's that?" he asked.
"We don't care! Pick up!"
Together, lugging the tubular frame and gossamer wings, they hopped forward toward the gaping hole crisscrossed by clouds. Wind blew in their faces, and Sunbright closed his eyes.
The cellar floor was suddenly gone, and the barbarian's boots dangled. Then they plunged nose-first into naked sky.
On the top floor, Lady Bly called for help, then stopped at the smashing and crashing downstairs. The guards had finally arrived. Good, except they should be gentler with her property. She'd sue the city for damages. And sue-someone-for the indignity of being trussed by a gutter rat in her own workshop. What did she pay taxes for? So the city could let thieves break into peoples' houses?
"Hurry up, you dimwitted nincompoops! Get up here and untie me! I command it!"
Silence below. No answer. Another crash, a chair tossed aside. Scuffling on the stairs. Odd sounds, scratchy and uneven, as if the walker limped. Bly had expected the tramp of boots. This animal skittering made her nerves crawl, as if rats came creeping…
No, something far more horrible. Too awful to look at. The thing topping the stairs was tall, misshapen, rail-thin, covered in a shimmering carapace of stone that glinted with minerals. Hands were hooked claws. The bald head had eyes a startling, staring blue, quite mad.
It rasped, "Where are my enemies? I smell them! Tell me!"
Bly the Seer had lived a long time. As a scryer, she'd spent decades hunched over her magic table, seen sights from around the world and beyond, but never, in all her visions, had she beheld a monster like this one. Trembling overtook her, and a low moan escaped her lips.
The monster scuffled to the black table and touched the midnight surface with a crooked claw. "My enemy was here. What does this do? It scries!" the fiend hissed, more to itself than to the trembling mage stretched across the table. "Show me!"
Shivering as if frozen, Bly pronounced the words that opened the vision. Bulging blue eyes watched the picture, and murmured, "The bright-haired one goes there. But far. Too far, too sunny, too open… But I have many enemies. You will find one. Polaris is its name. And another, a fat mage… Make magic!"
With a claw it severed the twine binding Bly. Numb with fear, the archwizard slipped off the table to the floor. Quickly the monster caught her hair and wrenched her upright, then banged her face on the table so blood spurted from her nose.
"Scry out my enemies!"
With no physical element, like the sage and the scent of the barbarian, and with Bly clumsy with fear, the scrying went badly, but finally the monster croaked, "Yes, yes! There is one I seek! I'll kill him, flay his flesh from his bones and suck the marrow! Yes, I go to kill, to avenge!"
Bly closed her eyes. She was banged up and near fainting, but if the monster left Suddenly her face was caught in obsidian claws that cut her cheeks and throat. She screamed, but claws strangled her. Helpless before the monster's crushing strength, Bly felt herself dragged into the air. Piercing, white-hot pain ripped through her hands and she swooned.
Slapping her face brought her around. Her hands felt afire. Glancing up, she saw the monster had bent open an iron hook that held herbs and-Scribe of the Doomed!-impaled her hands over the hook before crushing it shut! Writhing only ripped flesh and ground the bones, so she hung still. Her world was pain.
The monster rasped, "You aided my enemy, so you become one! All my enemies must die!"
Stepping back, the monster extended both craggy claws. Fire flickered from their tips and washed over the room. Herbs, books, papers, paint, walls, and Bly's gown all crackled with eldritch energy. And burned.
Bly screamed long and hard before smoke choked her. Then she fell limp, and never felt the flames around her legs. The monster disappeared, hissing of revenge. The black table went with it.
Chapter 8
Wind rushed in their faces until their cheeks were numb and their eyelids swollen. The breeze made them thirsty, and Sunbright was hungry, for Knucklebones hadn't let him eat before their aerial duel. The barbarian was cramped from sitting hunched in the wicker seat under tubes and wires, and he ached from crashing in the treetop. Yet there was one consolation to all this misery. Fatigue and battering had expunged his fear of flying. In the hours they'd banked and soared, Knucklebones had even let him steer. Later he'd even dozed off, exhausted, while Knucklebones wrestled the steering bars with one good and one lame arm.