The City of Ravens (22 page)

With that the sage slammed his door so thunderously loudly that two more stones jutting out from the maimed wall of his home clattered down onto the rubble, and the door-latch flew from its place to land in the mud at Jack’s feet.

“That,” thought Jack, “was not the expected result of this conversation.”

He walked in a small circle, thinking hard. Ontrodes was clearly incensed—no, enraged—at him, but he still needed shelter and he did earnestly desire to understand exactly what he had done, other than waking the man in the middle of the night, that could possibly have earned him such vitriol. He wrapped his arms around his torso and stamped, growing chilled in the damp night air. The old dwarven bottle was round and warm in his coat pocket.

Gingerly, Jack stepped up and rapped his knuckle on the door. “Ontrodes!” he called softly. “I do not know how I have caused you such anger, but I would dearly like the opportunity to make amends. I have brought you a distillation concocted by old Cedrizarun himself, seized just yesterday from the jaws of a dragon in the Guilder’s Vault! Please, allow me to make a gift of it to you!”

The sage snuffled and grunted in his cottage, but remained silent for a long time. Jack began to fear that he might not reply at all, but finally the door creaked open again.

“I do not believe you,” the sage said through an inch-wide gap, “and there is no liquor on the face of the world

that could possibly atone for the wrong you have done, but, just for the sake of curiosity—show me.”

Jack withdrew the dark bottle from his coat and held it up for the sage to see. “I found it in Cedrizarun’s tomb,” he said quietly. “Look at the bottle. It matches precisely the bottle Zandria showed you, does it not?”

“You probably stole it from her, poured out the contents in ignorance, and filled it with swill,” Ontrodes said, “but the bottle itself may be valuable. Give it to me!”

“First, wise Ontrodes, noble Ontrodes, I wish to know: Why are you angry with me?”

The sage’s face reddened, but with the prize suspended before his eyes, he managed to retain a deadly calm. He waved one hand at the wreckage of his tower. “Is it not obvious?”

“You believe that I caused the collapse of your tower?” Jack snorted in amazement. “Ontrodes, the tower was decrepit. It might have fallen for any number of reasons. I certainly had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh? I thought that the magical blasts you used to destroy the beams holding up the second floor hastened my tower’s demise considerably!” Ontrodes snapped. “How can you stand there pretending innocence, when not six hours past you were dancing around my crumbling home, singing those inane, insulting limericks and hurling blast after fiery blast into my very home! Why, if I hadn’t thrown myself out the window of the study, I would have been killed!”

“I have no memory—” Jack began, and then he halted. Of course he didn’t have any memory of wrecking the sage’s tower, because he did not do it. But was it not possible, perhaps even likely, that his shadow had been here instead? “Ontrodes, believe this or not, but it is the truth: Two days past I discovered that I have a sinister and malicious copy at large in the city, a spiteful fellow

who wears my likeness and apparently delights in tormenting my friends and acquaintances. My doppelganger wrought the ruin of your tower.”

The sage merely blinked at him. “You expect me to believe that? What an incredibly convenient explanation!”

“I had thought I might call on you and ask for shelter for the night,” Jack continued, stroking his beard, “but now I see that I have need of your professional services too. Here, I freely offer you this rare and exceedingly valuable dwarven brandy by way of apologizing for my counterfeit’s uncouth actions.” He handed the sage the bottle from the Guilder’s Vault and then stepped inside, easily avoiding the old man’s groggy attempt to impede him at the door. He would have gone straightaway to the sage’s study, but that of course no longer existed, so he turned instead into Ontrodes’s kitchen and drew up a chair by the hearth. “Now what are the means by which some villain might copy one’s appearance or create an evil duplicate of a person?”

The sage stood by the doorway, bottle in hand, still grappling with the fact that Jack had eluded him and was now ensconced in his kitchen. “Come back tomorrow with one hundred pieces of gold, and I’ll consider your question. Until then, Jack, I want nothing to do with you.”

“Sample the brandy, then. It is Cedrizarun’s work. A chance to savor it should be worth a thousand gold crowns, let alone a hundred.”

“I expect that you have simply poured more Sembian horse piss into this noble vessel, hoping to deceive me in that manner,” Ontrodes rumbled, but he complied.

He took a pair of sturdy tongs from a hook on the wall and carefully broke the seal of the bottle, removing the cork with surprising deftness and care. Then he held the bottle to his nose and inhaled.

Ontrodes’s bloodshot eyes flew open wide, and his

mouth fell open. He stared down at the bottle in frank amazement and then inhaled again.

“I do not know if this is Cedrizarun’s work or not,” he whispered, “but it is surely an old, mature, exquisite and potent dwarven brandy. There can be no doubt of that! Jack, I might almost find it in my heart to forgive you the destruction of my home.” He hurried to find a suitable glass.

Jack smiled. “As I said before, what are the means by which a person might copy someone’s appearance or create a duplicate of the target for nefarious ends?”

Ontrodes poured a dram of the golden liquid into a fine tall glass on the sideboard. Jack used a minor cantrip to do the same for himself, bringing his glass dancing through the air to his hand. The sage glared at him, but Jack had been careful to help himself to the merest portion.

“I am not an expert in these matters,” the sage said. “My learning lies—”

“I know, I know, Ontrodes. Liqueurs, cordials, wines, and brandies. I seek your advice in this matter fully cognizant of your limitations.”

“Fine, then. I can think of five principal methods on first examination: spells of illusion, spells of transformation, magical items permitting the same, the natural abilities of certain monsters such as doppelgangers or demons, and simulacra or clones. There may of course be other means.”

“Could we narrow the field by limiting the means to those that would copy abilities other than sheer physical characteristics? For example, personal knowledge or magical ability?”

That is easily done. Illusions and transmutations do not generally confer any special knowledge or magical ability upon the person changed, nor do magical devices duplicating their effects.” Caught by the question, Ontrodes thought for a long moment. “I have heard of

doppelgangers that could copy such things, but only by slaying the target and devouring his brain.”

“We can rule out that one, thank the gods,” Jack said.

“Then I imagine that you are left with two likely explanations: a simulacrum of some kind or one of the more mundane means employed by a mage who has carefully researched the target.”

The second made sense—any competent mage could work the magic that Jack had seen his shadowy twin employ, and any competent cutthroat could have observed his comings and goings to learn of his association with Illyth, but the first confused him.

“The latter seems more likely, but I do not rule out the former. What is a simulacrum?”

“A magical construct or creature built from snow, or mud, or something similar and then infused with a kind of pseudo-life. It is perfectly accurate to casual observation, but its abilities are only a pale mirror of the person it is built to resemble. A clone, on the other hand, is a real, living person magically grown from some tiny part of its model. Both of these things are, of course, exceedingly rare and powerful magics, Jack.” The sage narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re not thinking of trying to copy somebody, are you?”

“Ontrodes, have you heard nothing I have said? It seems that somebody has copied me,” Jack said glumly. “Two days past I encountered a rather gray-faced fellow who looked like me, fought as I fight, and even seemed to know some of the magics I know. I cut him once, but he didn’t bleed normally. His blood was dark and seemed to vanish after a moment on the ground.”

“That is very odd,” murmured the sage. “Gray faced, you say? Did he have a different appearance when he stood in shadow and when he stood in sunlight?”

“It would be hard to—wait, no, I think he did. Yes, definitely he did. It struck me as very peculiar.”

“Doubly odd,” Ontrodes said. With trembling hands he raised the glass to his lips and tried one tentative sip, swilling the liquor in his mouth, an expression of purest bliss etched on his coarse features. “Exquisite, exquisite! Remarkable! Be careful with your taste, my boy, this is potent stuff!”

Jack tried his. The taste was extraordinary, a glimpse of pure fire captured in a stream of gold. The fumes seemed to burn delightfully all the way through his skull, yet the taste was sweet and strong, indescribably so. He grinned in delight, then turned back to the issue at hand.

“What was doubly odd about that?”

“What? Oh, the shadow. You see, that is a characteristic usually observed in a shade.”

“A shade?” Jack leaned forward, interested. “Now, what in Faerűn is a shade?”

“Not from Faerűn at all, dear boy, but the plane of shadow. Another rare and difficult process, in which a person exchanges his own life-force for the stuff of shadow.”

“So a mage hostile to me has made himself a shade, studied my habits and appearance, and worked a simple illusion to borrow my appearance?” Jack shook his head. “That seems far-fetched.”

“The other possibility is that a mage has found a way to create simulacra using shadow stuff as the working material, so to speak. I suppose it could be done.”

“Who would go to that much trouble to discomfit me?” Jack wondered aloud.

Tiger and Mantis were still his first guess, but who else might be responsible? Iphegor the Black certainly had the motive, but he had already demonstrated an interest in a much more direct sort of retribution. Morgath and Saerk almost certainly lacked the magical skills to do such a thing. Marcus and Ashwillow would never move against a noble of the city in order to get at a common thief, and besides, they probably lacked the magical skill as well. Zandria had the skill, but it was not clear why she would strike at Illyth. Of course, there was Elana, who knew people who had the skill, and who might be sufficiently ruthless to order Illyth’s abduction.

It didn’t make sense. As far as he knew, no mage he’d ever heard of might be a shade. That left the other possibility, that some wizard hostile to him had learned how to I make shadow-simulacra.

The Sarkonagael: Secrets of the Shadewrights.

He’d delivered it to Elana, allowed her to reveal her true identity, and then refused her. She might not be a wizard herself, but Yu Wei was in her employ, along with others perhaps. Could Elana have ordered Jack’s elimination by means of a spell from the book he’d stolen for her?

“Damn,” he muttered. “I’m going to have to track her down, and I’ll have to find out if she is really behind this or not.”

“Track who down, Jack?” asked Ontrodes.

“Noble Ontrodes, I hesitate to say more lest I endanger you as well,” Jack replied. “You are better off ignorant of my affairs.”

“That’s hardly fair. Knowledge is my livelihood, and you certainly owe me an explanation. When can I learn more?” the sage demanded. Jack stood suddenly and drained the rest of his brandy. His head reeled pleasantly, despite the fact he’d had only a swallow. “Strong stuff, indeed,” Jack said. I

“With luck, I may be able to explain more in a day or three. But first, I have a shadow to catch.” He let himself out into the night and stood outside Ontrodes’s ruined tower, thinking about where to spend the night.

Rooming with Ontrodes was clearly out. The sage had

formerly commanded room to spare in his tower, but that was clearly no longer an option. Jack was hesitant to return to his apartment. Fortunately, he’d made plans for an emergency of this nature. Despite the late hour, he retraced his steps westwards on Riverview to Sindle, cut north one block to Thawerdasz, and followed the road to the point across from the Ladyrock. There he hired a boatman waiting on late fares to ferry him over to the island-neighborhood for the exorbitant price of two silver talons. After a short scull of perhaps two hundred yards, he climbed out of the ferry onto the wharves of the Ladyrock in the middle of the river mouth.

Several months ago Jack had discovered that one of the smugglers living on the island was dead, and that no one else was likely to know that he was dead, and that no one in particular was likely even to miss the departed. He left a cottage of three rooms, sited very near a small paper mill that created a perpetual miasma of stench in this portion of the islet. The cottage itself was not in particularly good condition, with walls that didn’t run true and a roof covered in wooden shakes that curled up at the edges like dried old leaves, admitting an unfortunate amount of weather and vermin into the place, but it was otherwise a good place for Jack Ravenwild to drop out of sight for a time. He made up the bed, trying not to pay attention to the heavy scent of mildew from the straw-stuffed mattress, and built a small fire in the hearth to warm the place and dry it out a bit. Then he stretched out on the damp, cold pallet and drifted off to blissful sleep.

S—

The next day, the beginning of Tarsakh, was windy and bright, although the cool, damp air of spring still left an

unpleasant chill in the shade. Jack stocked his new residence with nonperishable hardtack, dried sausage, cheeses, and jerky, just in case he might have to stay out of sight for a few days. Then he dressed as an adventuring swordsman in a shirt of fine mail and spent most of the afternoon making inquiries across the city regarding the whereabouts of a short, wiry fellow dressed in black with an impudent manner and a marked predilection toward chaos, mayhem, and murder. He spoke to innkeepers by the score, tavernmasters restaurateurs, fences and (carefully) city watchmen, harlots, strumpets and fishwives. He soon discovered that while a person answering to that general description had been seen in half a dozen places throughout the city, no one knew the dastard’s whereabouts. So Jack’s investigations were checked for the day. As the sun vanished behind the late afternoon fog banks rolling in from the Inner Sea, he returned to the Ladyrock in order to prepare for the Green Lord’s banquet.