The Gift of Talismans let Charissa plunder the magic of a supernatural creature by taking a part of its body and binding that magic to it. In this case she had stripped the goblin cat’s corpse of its fur and had Sophia spin it into a sheet of invisible cloth, which not only hid itself from view but anything wrapped up within it. The cloth was the advantage they’d been missing up until that point. It was big enough that it could hide two of them at a time, so they quickly worked out a plan.
The keep’s courtyard was big but it wasn’t huge. Better yet, the hedge maze that stood in one corner was close to the wine cellar, provided plenty of places to hide and wasn’t that far away. So Ragi quickly wrapped his wife in the cloth and they vanished. A few minutes later he came back for Bella, Sophia and finally Andre, escorting them one by one to the maze. Andre found the experience a bit surreal. He could see their surroundings clearly and it was a bit terrifying to watch a guard walk past, eyes pointed in their direction, yet never take notice of them. Eventually they were all hunkered down in the bushes.
“Which way should we go?” Charissa asked, peering around at the maze with naked curiosity.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Andre admitted. “I recall we passed a lot of mulberry bushes on the way here, so hopefully we can follow them back but let me know if you see a statue of the King of Dreams or Stars.”
“Why’s that?” Ragi asked. “Do they mean something?”
“They mean we’ve gone the wrong way. I didn’t see either on the path I took last time.”
The problem was Andre hadn’t payed as much attention as he thought his first trip through the maze. There were more mulberry bushes than he remembered and often they grew in places he didn’t expect to find them. As a result his first attempt to navigate the hedges brought them to a statue of the King of Dreams in a dead end clearing. As Andre tried to figure out the way back to something he remembered he heard a voice whisper, “Ragi!”
The older man pivoted to look towards the statue and hissed. Andre followed his gaze to a man crouched by the statue who turned and scampered off into the darkness. Ragi dashed after him. A moment later he cursed in surprise. As the others rushed to catch up to him the figure appeared by the statue again and whispered, “Ragi!”
The man looked to be about thirty five to forty years old, a bit stooped and dressed in worn, dirty clothes. Andre thought he looked vaguely familiar. When he reached out to grab the man Andre’s hand passed through his arm.
“What is that?” Sophia asked, looking horrified. “A ghost?”
“An echo,” Andre replied. After Doors and Inexorables he felt a moment of satisfaction to recognize a Gift that the others didn’t. The Gift of Echoes wasn’t exactly rare but most of them didn’t live lives of risk or adventure, they tended to wind up in much more mundane roles. Singers or actors, as often as not.
When the echo turned and scampered into the dark he followed it, nearly tripping over Ragi in the process. The echo got down on hands and knees and passed into a large rock in the base of the hedge. With a quick motion Andre signaled Ragi and the two of them worked to roll the thing to one side, though it took considerably less effort than one might have expected. He wondered if it was a clever fake.
Because the rock hid a small tunnel through the hedge into another clearing, this one more familiar, with a bench in it. As he had last time, Massimo sat on the bench, whittling. This time his father, the prototype for the echo they had followed, was there as well.
Ragi emerged from the tunnel right after Andre and he immediately drew his sword, saying, “Hannibal and Lum.”
“Scars and stars,” Massimo’s father replied. “Are you coming or going, Signore Corragio?”
“We are ready to leave,” Ragi said, slipping his weapon away as quickly as he drew it. The two men briefly shook hands, confirming Andre’s suspicion that this was the friend he had inside the keep. “Our plan is to leave through the wine cellar bolt hole, making a raft out of a few barrels.”
“A good plan.” The other man handed Ragi a small hatchet, saying, “This will help you empty a barrel a little easier than that sword of yours. Come, there’s a faster way out of here the gardeners use when we’re tending to the hedges.”
As they turned to go Andre leaned towards Massimo and whispered, “Were you here waiting for me this afternoon?”
“I was waiting for him,” the other boy replied, pointing towards Ragi. “But father said he might use the name Ragi instead of his real name so I wondered if you’d forgotten the pass phrase.”
“Are you leaving with us?” Andre asked.
“Not right away,” his father answered. “There are things we have to finish in the next few days. We’ll slip out of town and try to meet your ship at Ansio.”
“Don’t delay long,” Ragi said. “The Magistrate will not be happy once this is all said and done and he will try very hard to learn if there are any traitors in his midst.”
“It’s not treason to choose our own Prince over agents of a trumped up merchant in Renicie,” the other man said. “But your point is taken.”
It turned out there were a lot of those fake rocks hidden throughout the hedge maze, all of them designed to easily roll aside and allow access to shortcuts. In less than five minutes they were back by the exit that led to the wine cellar. “Have care,” Massimo’s father said as he and his son started back into the maze, “word has spread that saboteurs are about. There may be guards posted at this bolt hole of yours by now.”
It was a much shorter trip from the hedge maze to the wine cellar than their trip from the wall to the maze but they still made it under the folds of the invisible sheet. The cellar itself was locked but Ragi broke that lock as easily as he had the one on Charissa’s door. With the hatchet the gardener had gifted them, breaking the lids open on half a dozen wine barrels was simplicity itself.
The wine was dumped and each of them took one, except for Ragi who put one on each shoulder with terrifying ease. Although it was a bit of work to fit them through the narrow hidden door in the corner of the cellar they made it through and Andre began to think they would get away easily.
His optimism was misplaced.
Massimo’s father turned out to be only partially correct when he said the Magistrate might have posted guards. There were no guards in the small grotto wearing the Magistrate’s colors. Instead, a small fishing ship drifted in the middle of the water, its single sail gathered on its mast, its anchor dropped and its crew waiting on the shore line.
Said crew consisted of two soldiers in unfamiliar colors and a tall, thin man who wore no armor. Behind them, the Blind Man leaned on his cane, smiling slightly. It was this sinister man who turned his face towards them when they came to a stop at the top of the long, steep trail leading down to the water.
“Belladonna Vinoverde and her loyal dogs, the family of Rhodes along with…” He frowned, canting his head to one side as if confused. “What is that?”
Andre, who had been expecting this reaction, said, “I am the Blacklight.” Trying to pose as one of the Fair Folk hadn’t worked on Captain Phillipe and he suspected it wouldn’t work on this man, either. “Who are you?”
“Your humble servant, Fabian Sensate.” The Blind Man spread his hands and sketched a half bow, keeping his body pointed towards them with eerie precision for one with covered eyes. “Lady Belladonna, Lord Rhodes, Signore Blacklight, I ask that you surrender yourselves peaceably. I offer you the guarantee of Grigori Borgia that none of you will be mistreated, molested or maledicted should you place yourselves in our power.”
“And why should we do that?” Ragi asked. “There are more of us than you.”
“For the moment, for the moment,” Fabian replied, nodding his understanding of this tactical weakness. “However there are enough people here on our side of things to bring you to heel eventually. You could test your luck, of course, see which of us prevails in the contest. But your family is here, signore, and they are precious to you, are they not? Why run the risk?”
“Because it is his duty,” Bella replied. “Just as I cannot yield to you, as a Vinoverde or as one pledged to Lucas del Torrence.”
The corners of Fabian’s lips quirked downwards for a single moment then he shrugged and said, “If these things mean so much to you then so be it. Erasmus, the hard way.”
The skinny man twitched his head to one side, shook out his shoulders and nodded, starting up the winding path towards them at a rapid walk. Ragi, who had set his two barrels down during their exchange, picked one up and hurled it at Erasmus. At that moment Andre felt a strange prickling sensation and every hair on his body stood on end. Ragi pivoted on his heel, yelling something. Then the thin man vanished in a blinding flash of light and reappeared with a deafening crack after colliding with a bolt of lightning from Ragi’s hand.
In the enclosed space the thunderclap was more than a sound. It was a physical impact that shook Andre down to his boots and he dropped his barrel.
His hands crackling with lightning, Ragi grabbed for Erasmus but the skinny fellow danced back a few steps. A crankbow bolt clattered to the ground a few steps in front of him and Erasmus immediately hopped forward, landing on it. As soon as his boot made contact he vanished again.
This time Andre caught more of what happened, seeing the man’s thin body turn into a lighting bolt and fly along the thin metal cable back to the crankbow sitting on the ground. Erasmus reappeared there with another thunderclap while the weapon vanished. A second later, one of the two armored men flanking Fabian conjured the exact same weapon into his hands once more. The other man carried an identical crankbow.
Erasmus hopped back and forth on the balls of his feet while Fabian casually drew a clay bottle from a pouch on his belt asking, “Should I help?”
The thin man shook his head. “One more.”
Ragi cursed and shoved Bella at his wife. “Take her and hide.”
That was all he had time to say before Andre felt the prickling sensation pass over his body and Erasmus transformed into a lightning bolt streaking towards them once more.
