The King's Thief

Chapter 6

Kaliss woke with a start. Feeling rested, though somewhat achy from the hard bed, he sat up and was forced to shield his eyes; bright sunlight shone through the tiny window, the bars casting a segmented shadow across the entire wall. A glance at the C-mag he still wore showed him that it was an hour past dawn, and as if to confirm that it was the breakfast hour, Kaliss’s stomach rumbled. He swung his legs off the bunk, marvelling that just twenty-four hours after breaking his leg he was able to stand at all. Then he strode across to the door and slapped the flat of his hand against it.

A small hatch in the door snapped open and a pair of angry eyes were revealed. The blond hair visible above the eyes was a dead giveaway, and Kaliss couldn’t resist a jibe. “Reduced to guard duty, Beck? Oh, how the mighty are fallen. You’ll have to get your legs under you to get ahead in the world…”
The hatch snapped shut again, and Kaliss instantly regretted his words; no food would be forthcoming now.
*    *    *

At about midday, the guard changed, and Beck left for other duties. Kaliss banged on the door again and, this time, was able to keep his tongue in check; when food arrived, a red-faced rectangular slab of muscle dressed as a guard delivered a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread. There was no question of resistance. Famished and somewhat resigned, Kaliss ate in silence. As he chewed, he paced around the cell. It was approximately twenty feet square, one wall being dominated by the wooden bunk bed, a second containing nothing but the heavy iron door; opposite the bunk there was a blank wall, though on closer inspection it turned out to be riddled with graffiti. The remaining wall held the tiny window high up. Four sturdy iron bars were the only decoration, although Kaliss discovered that he was able to jump up and hang from the window sill for a few seconds; the view from the window brought home the brutal truth of his situation, as all he could see was a parade ground, deserted but for a gibbet. Restlessly, the thief paced the small cell, wondering what his next move was.

*    *    *

Malketh sighed. It had been just over a day since his meeting with Kaliss, and he was beginning to worry. The agent he had spent several months inserting into the Sylvan Horde had gone silent, and none of his contact attempts had succeeded. Closing his eyes on the crowded splendour of his workroom, he pinched the bridge of his nose between two bony digits and ruminated for a moment. After over a year of planning, his finely-tuned scheme was starting to unravel. He could feel the irritation building up inside him, a coiling stress that refused to dissipate. Getting up in a swirl of robes and candlesmoke, Malketh walked over to one of the overloaded sets of shelves and began to collect the items necessary for one last try. From a crystal vase he took a bunch of dried herbs which seemed to have tiny skull-shaped flower on their ends; a short piece of rowanwood came from a set of drawers, each meticulously labelled; three small bones and a roughly-cut ruby came from an intricately sequinned bag; with his free hand Malketh snagged a small cage which contained a stoat.

Taking the items to his desk, the magician placed them to one side. Then, with a fingernail, he began to work a small hatch free of the desk. Setting the hatch aside, he pulled out the object secreted underneath, a vice. It was very small, no bigger than four inches across, and the inner surfaces were curved, as if it were designed to clamp a cylinder in place. Once he had adjusted it for size, Malketh moved the cage closer to the vice and looked dispassionately at the terrified animal inside. The entire top of the cage was hinged and as he opened it the stoat began to squeak in panic. Quick as a viper, his hand was inside and the stoat was caught. With a firm grip on it, he moved it to the table and held it down with one hand, while the other fumbled with the screw on the vice; it fit neatly around the stoat’s midriff, pinning it tightly above the table. In no rush, Malketh ignored the thrashing legs and began placing the items around it in a circle. The ruby went to the east, for the rising sun; at north, south and west he placed the tiny bones of uncertain origin. The herbs he crushed and sprinkled over the captured stoat, and finally he grasped the small spike of rowanwood in his right hand. Muttering under his breath he began to connect the bones and stone with his left hand, tracing a fine web of energy between them in a cross shape. The stoat fell silent as it gave in to ancient panic instincts, the blue sparkling energy reflected in its dark eyes. Then, as his utterance reached a crescendo Malketh suddenly lunged down with the rowanwood and drove it in to the animal fastened in the vice. It screeched once and then seemed to freeze in mid-motion. As the magician withdrew his hand, a dome of energy rose up from the loose circle of objects, with its pinnacle marked by the end of the wood. The half-sphere sparkled and flickered, blue then green, before turning a deep red and going opaque. Suddenly, the dome collapsed in to a tiny point of light, and was gone. The desk was deserted but for the small skull of a stoat, adorned with a ruby somehow set into the forehead. Picking the skull up, Malketh spoke directly to it.
“I, Malketh, call on you, Tristeth, agent of the crown. You are commanded to reply to this calling.”
Silence met his words. The call had been made and would be transmitted to the wearer of a specific C-mag at the press of a button. Then the tiny jawbone of the skull began to move up and down, and a light grew in the ruby. From the skull came a voice deep and ringing, but the language it spoke was not human, nor could the magician understand it. He tried again to communicate, interrupting the speaker.
“I, Malketh, your master, command and abjure you to respond to this call, for if you do not I will consider you to have breached the terms of our contract and will be forced to terminate you.”
A long pause greeted this instruction, then the jawbone began to flap again in what was unmistakably laughter. The voice rang out once again, mellifluous and rich, and then the laughter continued. In a sudden panic, Malketh reached out with his mind and sent the command along the channel which would ignite the small explosive fitted to the C-mag his agent carried, identical to the one Kaliss wore. The channel was suddenly cut off and the stoat’s skull crumbled to ash in his hands.
Malketh sat back and tried to breathe deeply, even as his heart beat fit to burst in his chest. His plan was in tatters; his agent had obviously been found out, and it was too much to hope that the small explosive C-mag had obliterated anyone important to the Sylva, for surely it was one of them which had answered.
Trembling, the magician tried to order his thoughts. He was in the process of concocting a new plan when a voice at the door to his chamber made him scramble to his feet.
“Still awake, oh great magician?”
“Your majesty! I was not aware you required me, sire, or I would have come to you” the man spluttered, bowing low.
“I could get used to this, surprising you, Malketh,” the King said, smoothing his beard with one hand. He began to stride around the room, picking various objects up and examining them. “What news on the prisoner? Have you been able to use him?”
Falling back on a pre-prepared lie, Malketh said “No, sire, he is useless. I had planned to perhaps use him in one of my experiments but it turns out his skills had been over-rated by witnesses. I have disposed of him in a manner befitting a thief.”
The King turned, holding a bundle of herbs, and sniffed them. Pulling a face, he said “A shame. Well, we can’t be lucky all the time, can we, man?”
“No, your highness. But may I ask, what service can I perform for you tonight? The hour is growing late, sire, and I must get some rest for my old bones.”
“I was bored, Malketh, and wanted to get away from being king for a while. It is most tiresome, you know. Maybe someday I will be able to lay aside my crown and do the things I want to do.”
The day the crown passes to another may be closer than you think, fool thought the magician, but he kept his face carefully neutral as he bowed and said “If that is all, then, your majesty, I will away to bed.”
The King absentmindedly flicked his fingers at Malketh. “Yes, yes, of course, of course…” he muttered, before turning and walking out of the room, tapping the bundle of herbs against his chin.
Pausing only to set the magical wards on his doorway, Malketh, too, left for his private chambers. He would have to keep Kaliss in his cell a while longer, at least a week, until a new plan could be considered, but there was no way the man would hang; he was too valuable to waste.

*    *    *

Something woke Kaliss and, checking his C-mag, he saw that he had been asleep for five hours at most, and the sun was due to rise in an hour. Each of the four days of his incarceration passed in much the same way; Kaliss would get up with the dawn, exercise, read the graffiti which was scratched into the plain wall of his cell, perhaps add to it a little, and after evening exercises he would sleep. There came a scraping noise from the wall, and Kaliss realised that this was what had woken him. Probably rats, thought the thief, before he went over to the door and banged on it. “Rats in here,” he called, but no answer was forthcoming. Perhaps that bastard Beck is on duty, he thought.
The scraping noise came again from the wall, and this time continued on, growing in volume and frequency. Kaliss knelt with his ear against the wall and listened as the sound suddenly reached a peak and stopped altogether. Then a voice shouted “Clear!” and there was a scuffle of feet. His eyes widened as the thief realised what was happening, and he leapt on to the bed, curling up tightly. There was an almighty explosion and Kaliss was blown against the wall by a huge gust of wind. It felt as though a giant hand was pressing him there. Suddenly it was over, and the thief shook his head before looking around the cell. The entire wall opposite the bunk had been demolished in the blast, and as the dust cleared, Kaliss could see a tall man standing alone. A dazzling light streamed through the hole in the wall, silhouetting the tall, muscular figure, but the bow in his hands, arrow nocked and ready to fire, spoke more than words could.
“The graffiti wasn’t that bad, was it?” asked the thief, trying to meet the figure’s eyes, but the strange light was completely blinding. The figure waved the bow, indicating that Kaliss should move, and reluctantly the thief left the cell at arrowpoint, walking in to the light.