Rescue from House Escrissar
This chapter is basically a heist movie set in a fantasy hellscape. Three guys with obsidian knives break into an interrogator’s fortified house to rescue one woman. It goes sideways almost immediately. They barely get out alive.
Breaking In
Pavek grew up in the templarate orphanage. Orphans dare each other to explore every hidden corner of Urik. So he knows about a passage beneath the northwest watchtower. The tunnel is narrow and twisting, and his biggest worry going in is bumping into a gang of kids doing the same thing he did twenty years ago.
Halfway through, they hit the sorcerer-king’s personal warding. A shimmering blue-green curtain that kills anyone not carrying templar authority. Pavek tells Ruari to go first because Ruari has his medallion hidden under his shirt. The kid turns gray in the eerie light and refuses to move. Yohan solves the problem by thumping Ruari between the shoulders and shoving him through. They rush after him before the sparking fades.
“What if I didn’t?” Ruari demands about the medallion, once they’re through.
“You’d be dead,” Pavek says. Keeps walking.
They come out near the orphanage inside the templar quarter. Ruari can’t tell one building from another. Can’t read the inscriptions. “How do you know where we’re going?” he whispers.
“Magic,” Pavek says. Then he lets Ruari close enough to punch his arm for the joke, because a little bit of contact settles the kid’s nerves. They blend in with foot traffic instead of hugging shadows. Smart. Two guys looking casual attract less attention than two guys trying to be invisible.
House Escrissar
The house looks like every other flat facade in the quarter. Three doors marked with interrogator’s glyphs. Pavek finds the midden shaft, the garbage chute that runs floor to roof. No wards visible. He bets there are none invisible either, because Escrissar would have needed to beg that spell from Hamanu, and Hamanu would have asked why.
Standing beside the shaft, reality hits Pavek like a fist. His pulse races. He shakes so bad he leans against the wall. This is it. He never expected to grow old. But he also never felt death waiting around the corner quite like this.
Yohan offers to go alone. Pavek presses his palms against the wall and feels something ancient. Urik itself. A guardian older than the sorcerer-kings, massive and powerful. It rises to meet him and he gets one clear answer.
“She is here.”
They climb the unfinished brick of the shaft to the roof. The courtyard below is dark, filled with fruit trees and quiet fountains. They swing down into the vine arbor and hear Escrissar’s voice drifting through the tracery: “Now or later, my dear lady, dead or alive. It makes no difference to me.”
Yohan nearly breaks cover. Pavek grabs him. “Do you want to die in front of her? Or do you want to get her out?”
They wait. Ruari strips himself down and scouts the window. Small room. One door. Akashia bound on a bench. Escrissar standing behind his black mask, clicking talons. A shorter masked figure in the shadows. Probably the halfling alchemist.
When Escrissar finally leaves, Ruari picks the lock. They open the door.
“Kashi?” Pavek whispers.
“Pavek!” comes the answer. But it’s not Akashia stepping out with a sword.
It’s Dovanne.
Dovanne
This fight is personal and ugly. Dovanne was Pavek’s friend once. They trained together. She has an iron short-sword with a curved blade. He has a long obsidian knife, razor-sharp on both edges. She’s smaller with a slight edge in the tight corridor. Otherwise they’re dead even.
She doesn’t call for help. She doesn’t care that Yohan and Ruari are rushing past her to rescue Akashia. She just wants Pavek dead before she deals with anything else.
They trade feints. Old sparring moves they both recognize. Behind them, Yohan scoops Akashia over his shoulder and heads for the door. Dovanne sees it. Gets desperate. If she takes Pavek down, she can handle the other two and come out a hero.
She feints high. He parries with the middle of his blade. She goes low, slashing upward. He’s already there with a thrust. The obsidian knife goes through her to the spine.
“Pavek….” She holds out her serpent-tattooed hand.
He knows the wound is mortal. She’s done. For the sake of their past, he kneels and takes her hand. She pulls herself up with a dying person’s strength. He starts to put his arm behind her neck for her last words.
She spits blood in his face. Then she goes limp.
That is going to stay with him forever. No forgiveness. No closure. One final act of contempt from a woman he used to know. I actually had to put the book down after that page.
Getting Akashia Out
Now the real problem starts. Akashia can barely stand. Her knees buckle. She buries her face against Pavek’s neck and trembles. She won’t respond to anyone. Her eyes stare past everything. She’s in there somewhere, but the lights are off.
Pavek fears that in her effort to protect Quraite’s secret, she sacrificed everything that made her human. Interrogators don’t need their hands to break people. They use the mind. And Escrissar is one of the best.
They can’t use the narrow passage they came through. Not with her like this. Dovanne’s face keeps looming behind Pavek’s eyes, twisted with pain and hate. He tries to think. Curfew is coming.
He remembers Zvain’s bolt-hole under Gold Street. They carry Akashia through the streets. In Urik, a man hauling a woman over his shoulder isn’t unusual. People avert their eyes. A few silver coins get them past the gate to the next quarter.
In the bolt-hole, Akashia sits on the bed knotting frayed linens. Won’t lie down. When Ruari waves bread in front of her, she takes tiny crumbs. No words. No recognition. Just blue-green eyes staring at nothing.
That night, Yohan whispers comfort to her in the dark. It works. She quiets down. And Pavek, listening from the doorway with Dovanne’s sword across his knees, realizes something. The simple act of consoling another person has never occurred to him. Kindness was never part of his life. It never seemed like a real loss before.
Until now.
Morning brings small progress. Her eyes track movement. Her hand reaches for Pavek’s fingers and falls. She is slowly coming back. They bribe the gate templars with silver and walk out like citizens going to visit a village. Tie Akashia behind Ruari on a kank. Ride west.
Telhami’s memory spell brings them home. A mirage of Quraite fills the dark hole in their heads. When they arrive, Telhami pours the guardian’s power through Ruari and into Akashia. It works. Kashi blinks. Says Yohan’s name. Takes his hand.
Then Telhami finds the cloth covering Akashia’s eyes. The cloth Zvain made. Soaked in halfling poisons.
And across the field, that dark-haired boy is on the ground with his arms outstretched, desperately trying to reach Escrissar with his mind. Trying to give away the one secret Akashia nearly died to protect.
Pavek is already running. But Telhami’s staff gets there first.
The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey. Dark Sun, Chronicles of Athas, Book One. ISBN 1-56076-872-X.