The Sable City, Book I of the Norothian Cycle

The Sable City, Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

It all happened so fast that Phin’s life had not even had time to flash in front of his eyes. He was still a toddler playing on the shore of Loch Hwloor with his sisters, when his head exploded and he saw only cobblestones rushing up to greet him. He wondered for a moment if his head was still attached to the rest of him or if it was tumbling through the air on its own. Then there was a meaty sound of impact and he wondered no more for a goodly while.

Phin awoke in agony, little pleased to find that he still seemed to be alive. His jaw and head throbbed and his body was curled up with weights pressing him down. He tried to move his limbs more to see if they were still there than with any thought of rising.

Muffled voices were faintly audible and the whole world shook jarringly, knocking Phin’s shoulder and aching head against hard wood. A particularly rough blow made him groan and he realized there was a leather strap across his mouth, and rough cloth against his face. Phin was reasonably sure he had not in fact been decapitated, but the sense that his head was in a burlap sack was not reassuring.

The bumping became worse for a few moments before it thankfully stopped. There was a babble of voices and the weights started to come off of Phin bit by bit. He found at least he could breathe better but then lost the ability as hands seized his shoulders and hauled him up. He fell forward in darkness with his head swimming, then crashed to damp ground. Not a stone street, but what felt like short, wet grass. His hands were bound tightly in front of him.

“Phinneas Phoarty,” a voice said. “Give us a groan if you have your wits about you.”

Phin was on all fours with a leather strap in his mouth and a burlap sack that smelled faintly of cheese over his head. It took little effort to produce the requested sound.

“He is conscious,” the voice said. There was something vaguely familiar about it but Phin’s present circumstances were not conducive to concentration. Other voices spoke but Phin could not follow the words as they were not in Codian, Tholish, nor of course in the Old Tullish language of instruction at Abverwar. Someone put a hand on Phin’s shoulder and he flinched.

“Phinneas,” the first voice said. “I am going to uncover your face. It is very important that you make no move that could be mistaken for the beginning of a spell. Understand?”

With his head throbbing Phin doubted he could manage a spell even if he wanted to do so. Besides that all he had memorized were some low-grade scrying dweomers. He nodded his head and the sack was removed with a shake and a jerk.

Phin blinked in gray light, the sky above a jumble of dark clouds that looked ready to resume raining at any time. He was in a grassy field beside the raised surface of the Imperial Post Road, somewhere in the countryside by the look of it. He was next to a cart or wheelbarrow out of which he had obviously just been hauled, and a goblin stood in front of him with its needle-teeth bared in a grin. Phin looked into the creature’s gleaming bronze eyes and recognized it as the same one that he had paid a couple coppers to carry his bags and row him across the harbor to the Circle Wizard compound on Again Island, on the day more than five months ago when he had first arrived in Souterm.

“Th-Thideways?” Phin managed against the strap across his mouth.

“Edgewise,” the goblin muttered, tossing aside the sack it had pulled from Phin’s head. It pushed the knobby pads of two long fingers against the side of Phin’s skull and he recoiled, more from the rubbery texture than from pain.

“It is not so bad,” Edgewise said to someone behind Phin. “Just a bruised jaw and a goose egg on the temple. He’ll be fine.”

“Shall I tend his wounds?” a female voice asked from behind Phin, speaking Codian with an accent he could not place. He made no move to turn around. There had been four people in the courtyard when Phin had activated the staff and for all he knew they were all standing back there, including the big fellow with the shining white sword. Phin maintained a baleful stare at the goblin as it shook its head.