The magic felt wonderful, even through the stone wall. A sigh of bliss escaped the dark-eyed girl, and she brushed her cheek against the wall like an affectionate cat might greet a favorite human.
They thought she didn’t know about the treasure trove, even though she’d helped them steal most of it. Certainly they’d never shown her the hiding place. Well, that was to be expected. Only a fool threw lamp oil into a bonfire or let an exiled fairy loose among too much magic.
Oh, yes. Exile.
The girl sighed again, this time in resignation, and reached for a yet another leather-bound
book. She cracked the new spine, dipped her quill in a freshly stolen bottle of ink, and wrote The Book of Vishni’s Exile at the top of the first page.
Long ago, in a land of nightmare and dreams, a fairy maiden committed an unspeakable crime. In her defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
She received the usual sentence: Exile to the mortal realm until she could record enough entertaining tales to balance the scales of fairy justice.
Her hand flew across the page, for she’d written this introduction many times before. Sometimes that puzzled her a little. Not every fairy returned from exile—which was to be expected, considering the number of things that could go wrong—but every rehabilitated exile Vishni knew had returned with a single book.
Alas, her arrival in the land called Sevrin came twenty years too late. Had she been caught in some earlier bit of mischief, she might have witnessed the fall of a powerful sorcerer lord in a summer of bloodshed, heroism, and, from all accounts, highly entertaining explosions.
To her dismay, the land into which she came bore little resemblance to the realms described in fairy tales of old.
Magic was dead, or so the adepts who now ruled Sevrin would have people believe. The old races had withdrawn deep into the forests, the seas, and the stone—so deep that many mortals believed them gone beyond recall.
And what did this reborn land offer in return?
Alchemy, an art that sought new names for things that always were and always would be.
The greatest of these alchemists, the adepts, did not stop at philosophy. They declared the gods dead and embarked upon their own frenzy of creation.
They created potions that healed or destroyed on a grand scale. They created new weapons, useful machines, clever toys, and wondrous metal creatures that owed their semblance of life to clockwork and alchemical mysteries.
These innovations brought wealth and fame to the adepts, who shared their fortune with those they ruled. As a result, the land was prosperous and peaceful, the people as complacent as cows.
In short, it was no fit place for a fairy.
Without conflict there can be no story. If the exile hoped to return to the fey realm, she would have to find trouble or create it.
“How many of those books do you plan to fill?”
Vishni glanced up into a hero’s face. It pleased her that Fox Winterborn, the leader of their little band of thieves, was a proper hero, being young and tall and handsome, as humans went. Perhaps his unruly waves of red hair were a little unconventional, but she’d found a way to work with that.
She rose to her feet, crossed her arms, and leaned against the wall. “I hear a band of gatherers came to town. I also hear that Rhendish bought a lot of stuff from them. The sort of stuff we usually steal.”
Fox shifted uneasily and tried not to glance at the hidden door. In fact, he tried so hard that he looked practically everywhere but. Vishni had learned that you could figure out many interesting things by watching what humans didn’t do.
“You don’t need to come this time, Vishni.”
“Oh, but I want to!” she said brightly. She patted the stone door affectionately. “And if I don’t go, how will you figure out where the magic things are?”
The look on Fox’s face combined enlightenment and horror in very satisfying fashion.
A deep male chuckle echoed through the tunnel. Delgar, who in Vishni’s opinion was too tall to be a dwarf and too sarcastic to be a hero, strode toward them, wearing his usual lop-sided grin and the vest and pantaloons of a Manishari sailor. He’d changed his colors, so that his short hair gleamed like a raven’s wing and his skin matched the sun-browned hue of humans from distant, southern lands. Dwarves could do that. They couldn’t cast illusions on themselves and others, like fairies could, but they could change their colors at will, like lizards. Delgar was especially fond of the Manishari sailor disguise.
A good choice, Vishni admitted. The Manishari were shorter and stockier than the men of Sevrin. During the summer, Sevrin did a brisk trade with Manishar and short, stocky, dark men roamed the port city in considerable numbers. If the young dwarf drew a second glance, it would be from an admiring woman.
Delgar clapped Fox on the shoulder. “No worries, lad. Every dwarf-crafted piece in the trove has a bit of iron worked into it. Every hammer and blade, every bit of armor, every fancy bauble—it’s all warded against the fey.”
“Dwarves,” Vishni said darkly, “are not very friendly.”
“Elves add iron, too, when they think of it. And humans can’t build a decent weapon without it. Even so,” he said in a more sober tone, “you shouldn’t spend too much time by the trove, Vishni. There’s magic enough in these tunnels to sustain you, but too much of it can—”
“I know what it can do.” She kicked The Book of Vishni’s Exile hard enough to send it skimming across the tunnel floor. “Let’s go steal something.”
The two males exchanged a glance and a shrug. Fox pulled a fisherman’s knit cap over his tell-tale hair. “We’ll meet you at the Cat and Cauldron.”
The dwarf nodded and headed off down a side tunnel. The warren of tunnels and stone chambers they’d come to call the Fox Den hid deep beneath the city, but many levels of tunnels lay beneath it. Delgar kept the knowledge of certain hidden doors and passages to himself, and no one begrudged him his secrets.
And least, most of the time they didn’t.
The tunnels between the Den and the Cat and Cauldron tavern led to a stone culvert once used for street run-off. The sewers had long since been diverted to modern lead pipes, but rats, who were notoriously averse to innovation, squeaked and scampered through the ancient culvert. Vishni was not fond of rats, nor did she like rolling out of a narrow stone opening into an unpleasant alley.
Fox rose and brushed cobwebs from his shirt. He jolted with surprise when he saw the
illusion Vishni wore: a girl of about fifteen winters with red hair falling in waves to her chin. Shadow-gray tunic and trousers clung to her slim form, and a collection of keys and lock picks, the tools of their trade, hung conspicuously from her belt.
“Vishni, what in name of a thousand tiny gods are you—”
“I’m a Vixen! There’s a lot of us.”
She took his arm and whirled him to face the street. Three girls stalked past the tavern and stopped to pose in a circle of lamplight. All three wore defiant stares, brightly dyed hair, and an unsubtle version of thieves’ garb.
Fox groaned. “Let me guess: Your stories about the City Fox?”
The fairy beamed and nodded. “You’re famous! Lots of people want to be you! Of course, I had to improve most of the stories, or they wouldn’t.”
He tugged a lock of her bright red hair. “This is not the way to avoid attention.”
“It’s exactly the way! Who’d expect the real City Fox to walk around with one of the Vixen?”
He looked surprised, but after a moment he nodded. “That’s . . .very sensible.”
A soft, hollow tapping came from the small ice house at the end of the alley. They hurried to the little building and slipped through the newly opened gap in the stone foundation.
Delgar had arranged blocks of ice into a convenient stair leading down into the cellar.
He tipped his head toward a second door near the floor. “This tunnel leads to Heartstone
Curiosities. You two go ahead; I’ll be along as soon as I put the stone back in place.”
The dwarf had made a lovely tunnel, tall enough for the fairy to walk through without stooping. Given the short distance between the icehouse and the cellar of Heartstone Curiosities, that seemed like a lot of work. Dwarves were like that.
Sevrin’s humans also had strange habits, but she was particularly amused by their preoccupation with Curiosities—old things of all kinds, shiny rocks, statues carved from stone or cast in bronze, and bits and pieces of once-living plants and creatures. This city had several such collections, some of them private and some, like the one scheduled for plunder, open to the public. Heartstone Curiosities was the largest collection on Heartstone, which was the largest island of Sevrin, so there would be many interesting things from which to choose. That they were owned by Rhendish, the adept who ruled, the island, pleased Vishni. Any evolving story needed narrative tension and an antagonist. Rhendish went to considerable effort to antagonize Fox.
They wriggled through a warm-air heating duct into an impressive grand hall filled with cabinets and shelves and tables, lit only by moonlight coming through narrow windows set high on thick stone walls. Fox moved quietly through the new collection, examining jeweled daggers and cunningly wrought filigree jewelry.
Finally he stopped before a free-standing glass and marble case. A chainmail vest,
fashioned from tiny links of some pale, shining metal, glimmered in the moonlight like a web of opals.
“This is new. It looks elf-made. Let’s take it.”
But Vishni’s attention had been seized by a collection of stone knives scattered carelessly
on a table. Simple, homely things, such as farmers occasionally turned up with the spring plowing.
Oh, but there was magic here, and lots of it. Not enough to push her over the edge, but
enough to make her feel pleasantly giddy.
“This one,” she said, pointing.
Fox trotted over and pocketed the knife. “We’ll need to take a few more things, or Rhendish will realize we have a way of knowing what’s magic and what isn’t. In fact,” he added as hebegan to scoop up the rest of the knives, “that’s probably why he left these out. We can’t take just the one. We should probably take a few more things, too.”
“The chainmail vest is the flashiest new piece. That’s what they’ll miss first,” Delgar said.
Fox nodded. “Do it.”
The dwarf placed both hands on the marble case and began the low, thrumming chant that spoke to stone and persuaded it to do convenient things. Useful magic, Vishni admitted, but louder than magic should be.
As if in answer to her thoughts, swift footsteps echoed through the front hall. “Guards!”
hissed Fox.
Delgar spun, a chunk of marble in one hand and the chainmail vest in the other. He tossed
the elfin armor to Fox. “Get in the tunnel. I’ll close up.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“And I’m not leaving the calling card of a stoneshifting dwarf,” Delgar said. He tipped his head toward a trio of stone statues. “Go. I’ll be in good company.”
Fox grinned and nodded. He dropped to his belly and wriggled, snake-like, into the small opening just above the floor. The fairy followed, but she stayed to watch as Delgar moved the heating grate and surrounding stone back into place and sealed it shut.
Any magic, even too-loud dwarf magic, felt wonderful.
She watched through the grate as Delgar restored the marble case. He hurried over to the statues and struck a pose, one booted foot resting on the pedestal on which stood a naked stone satyr.
The color faded from Delgar’s hair and skin, as quick as a blink, leaving him a uniform shade of pale gray. Vishni noted approvingly that his clothes were the same hue. He’d thought ahead. Dwarves were like that.
The footsteps were getting closer. As the guards burst into the room, Vishni had a wonderful thought. Wouldn’t it improve the story if Delgar, well, matched the satyr?
Casting the illusion was as easy as smiling. One moment Delgar wore the vest and pantaloons of a Manishari sailor, the next, he wore nothing at all.
A grimace crossed the dwarf’s face when he realized what Vishni had done. He made no other movement, but as luck would have it, one of guards happened to be looking his way.
“That statue moved!” he shouted, pointing.
The guards rushed Delgar as and more poured into the room. The fight that followed was less fun to watch than it might have been, had there been fewer guards and less concern about breakage. Apparently dwarves weren’t the only people who could plan ahead.
Fox flinched as Delgar went down under a dozen guards. The pile seethed and swayed
from the force of the dwarf’s struggles.
“Twenty against one,” the thief muttered. He seized the metal grate and shook it, but Delgar’s stoneshifting magic held firm. This was, in Vishni’s opinion, just as well.
Twenty against two did not strike her as much of an improvement.
“Twice as many guards as usual. I should have known Rhendish would set a trap.”
Vishni peeled his fingers away from the metal bars. “We’ll get Delgar out of it. Unless, of course, we get caught first.”
Guilt and helpless frustration twisted Fox’s face, emotions that Vishni had learned to recognize, even if she didn’t entirely understand them.
“I can’t just leave him!” he repeated.
“You don’t have to,” Vishni said. Two guards were rolling the unconscious dwarf into a Manishari carpet, a detail she noted and approved. They hoisted the burden to their shoulders and strode from the room. “He’s leaving us. Does that help?”
Fox turned a blank and disbelieving stare in her direction.
The fairy sighed. “I was hoping it would. That would have been a good way to end the first part of this tale.”
* * *
Rhendish hurried down the long corridor leading to the guard’s hall, his elation growing with every step. Finally, they’d caught one of the Fox’s inner circle!
According to the guard who’d come ahead to report, the thief could be none other. All the signs were the same, which was to say there were no signs. Fox managed to find his way into the most secure places and depart without leaving… well, much of anything.
Even now the thief had slipped away like a fistful of seawater, and he’d taken with him the most powerful magic item in the collection.
Not that there were, officially, any magical items in the collection.
Curiosities were simply that. The people of Sevrin gawked and marveled, but more importantly, they were reassured. Relics of a magical past served as reminders that the time of magic had, indeed, passed.
But it was not the stone knife that most concerned Rhendish. The sort of magic that would enable men to pass through solid stone was the fabric of legend. Every bit of evidence Rhendish possessed suggested that the gift of sorcery had bypassed the young thief. Yet for nearly seven years now, Fox had unerringly stolen magical items. Either he possessed latent magical ability, or he had a companion who could recognize magic.
Or possibly both.
Eight guards surrounded a rolled carpet. Judging from their disheveled uniforms and
bruised, swollen faces, their captive possessed a considerable amount of defensive magic, or at least an impressive right hook.
The guards snapped to attention as Rhendish entered the hall.
“What do we have, gentlemen?”
The tall, blond-bearded captain stepped forward. “A dwarf, my lord. Lucky thing we saw him. Canny bugger hid in plain view among the statues. Gray as stone, he was, and naked
as a boiled potato.”
A dwarf!
Excitement and consternation warred in the adept’s heart as he considered the
possibilities.
A dwarf, particularly a Carmite dwarf, was a considerable prize to an alchemist. From time to time gatherers managed to find one on the mainland, but no dwarf had been seen on the islands of Sevrin for centuries. A live dwarf represented a fortune in alchemical components. And if the legends of the Carmite’s stoneshifting magic were true, his presence on Heartstone would explain why the thieves could move through the city unseen.
Unfortunately, dwarves were like mice, in that there was never just one mouse. Rhendish and his fellow adepts had not wrested the islands of Sevrin from the sorcerer Eldreath, only to see them reclaimed by the dwarves.
“Let’s see him.”
The captain pointed to three of the guards. They stood on the edge of the carpet and each planted one booted foot on the wrapped dwarf. On the count of three, they kicked out hard. The carpet unrolled and a limp, battered form spilled onto the stone floor.
The dwarf was not at all what Rhendish might have expected. For one thing, he looked no older than the young thief. On his feet, he probably wouldn’t come to Rhendish’s shoulder, but he was tall enough to pass for human, and his face, minus the bruises, would probably be accounted handsome. His coloring was remarkable, for everything about him was pale gray.
But most notable, oddly enough, was the fact that he was fully clothed.
The guards exchanged looks of puzzlement and consternation, but Rhendish tapped his
chin thoughtfully. This suggested the sort of illusion that lay far beyond dwarven capabilities.
As valuable as a Carmite dwarf might be, it would appear that Fox had managed to find himself an even rarer and more valuable companion.
“I don’t suppose,” he said in a deceptively mild tone, “that you stopped along the way
to see to the dwarf’s wardrobe.”
The captain closed his slack jaw with an audible click. “No, my lord.”
“And you’re quite sure of what you saw?”
“I am, my lord. Hard to miss a naked dwarf.”
Rhendish thought this over. A dwarven presence in Sevrin was an enormous risk, one that
simply could not stand. He needed to know what was going on beneath his city. And he would be much better equipped to hold this city, this island, if he could lure the Fox’s other companion to his side.
As luck would have it, he had the means of accomplishing both. At great risk, certainly, but he considered it a gamble worth taking.
“Take the dwarf to the warehouse cellar.”
Puzzlement furrowed the captain’s brow. “I’ll do it, of course, but it’s my duty to point out that it’s not the most secure place for him.”
Rhendish sent him a small, cool smile. “A fact, I assure you, of which I am quite aware.”
END OF CHAPTER ONE
