The Sword Of Bayne Omnibus Page 5

  “Ah.” The man’s smile broadened. He gave a curt bow.“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Algr Tessenan. My patrons generally refer to meas Algr.”

  Bayne nodded.“Greetings.”

  “As I was saying,” Algr went on, “whenever there is a break in protocol, I myself on rare occasions have to --”

  Bayne shook his head.“Algr, I still do not understand. You say this is a place for knowledge, yet I see no scrolls nor scribes.”

  It did not seem possible, but the tavern keeper’s grin grew wider, nearly from ear to ear.“This is a place of magic, sir.”

  “Magic?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bayne nodded.“Then a man I pursue possibly stopped here.”

  “Many stop here, sir.”

  “Wore all black,” Bayne said. “Rode a black horse. Long dark hair with a stripe of white running through.”

  The light of recognition glistened in Algr’s eyes.“Ah, yes, that would have been three days ago.”

  “I’ve lost a day on him,”Bayne muttered more to himself than the tavern keeper.“That village held me too long.”

  “He promised riches to anyone who would slay the man following him,” Algr said.

  Bayne’s eyes hardened as he dug his thumbs into his belt.“And would you try to collect, Algr?”

  “Goodness, no,” the man said with a bark of laughter. “I’m no warrior. And a man would have to be a fool to try to take on the formidable Bayne kul Kanon. Your repute is known wide and far, good sir, as well as the recent events further down the mountainside.”

  “How would you know such?” Bayne asked. “I have but arrived from the village, and there were no riders or other travelers who passed me.”

  “As I said,” Algr said, waving a hand to point out the surroundings, “this is a place of knowledge and communication. It is a simple task to learn of recent events anywhere throughout the world.”

  Bayne grimaced, seeming unconvinced.

  “If you wish, I can show you how to use our apparatus,” Algr offered.

  “What good would this do me?”

  “You could look in on the doings of the one you follow.”

  Bayne allowed this to sink in. Verkanus was now three days ahead of him, ever climbing upward on the mountain path. Verkanus was also horsed. Bayne had little chance of catching up to the mage and former emperor unless he could find a more direct path through the peaks. Knowledge could also warn Bayne of snares and hindrances Verkanus might lay upon the road.

  “ Does one need to be a wizard?” Bayne asked.

  “Ah, no.”

  The muscled warrior nodded.“Very well, Algr. Show me your tricks and I will see what I will see.”

  The tavern owner turned, motioning Bayne to follow, then lead the way deeper into the shadows of The Knotted Mesh. They moved quietly through the gloom, past tables of bleary-eyed youth staring endlessly into the floating, colored rocks that danced above tables. It seemed to Bayne they walked for some good while, passing table after table, with the bar continuously extending along the left wall. The mirror behind the bar also extended, apparently infinitely, following the big man and the smaller man and reflecting their dim images back at them. Every so often a mug or glass, sometimes empty and sometimes not, rested atop the bar though there were never any patrons at hand to partake. There also appeared to be no one behind the bar, as if Algr ran the place on his own.

  Finally the man in silk came to a halt. He stood next to the only table Bayne had witnessed that did not have someone seated before it. Resting on the center of the round wooden table, and noticeably not hanging in the air above, was a yellow crystal the size of a fist.

  Bayne stopped and stared down at Algr’s offering.“How does this work?”

  Algr motioned toward a chair next to the table.“Be seated and grasp the gem in both hands.”

  Bayne’s brow rose in skepticism.

  “Your mind will be free to travel wherever you wish,” Algr said in way of further explanation. “It will happen in an instance. You will be transported to another place of your own choosing. From there, you may see and learn whatever you wish.”

  Bayne glanced up and down the long room, his eyes lingering on the dulled faces of those at other tables.

  Algr noticed the glance.“The experience can be quite intoxicating. There are many who spend their free moments abandoning the outer world for that of the inner.”

  Bayne sat, the wooden chair creaking beneath his heavy weight. He stared at the yellow orb on the table.“How do I return?”

  “Ah. Simply wish it, and it will happen.”

  Hard eyes glared up at the tavern owner.“If this should be some trick --”

  Algr laughed.“Nothing of the sorts, good sir. What would I have to gain?”

  “A bag of gold,” Bayne said. Then his hands clasped the yellow gem.

  An explosion of light poured over the big man as a brightness that hurt the eyes and came in streaks like arrows flying past. Bayne felt as if catapulted, his body soaring higher and higher through nothingness, the darkness and depths of The Knotted Mesh and its dreary denizens left far behind and him on the wing as fast as a comet racing toward the sun. He blinked though it did little good; the illumination raining around him was much too prevailing for mere eyelids to shield.

  Bayne imagined it must be like a form of madness. He saw nothing but a billion stars zipping past. He felt nothing but a slight chill to the skin. He could smell nothing, nor hear anything.

  Until… there was a roar not unlike that of thousands upon thousands cheering their displeasure in a coliseum. The thousands upon thousands witnessing a bloody spectacle, a duel to the death.

  But it was all in the hearing. There was still no vision, no sight of anything but the light and the light and more of the light.

  It came to a standstill.

  Bayne was no longer racing through unknown heavens. He found himself standing in the middle of a cobbled road in a city. Past him brushed and nudged crowds upon crowds. There must have been a million people, all hurrying past him, working and snaking their ways across the gray brick street. No one stared at Bayne. All rushed on as if seeking someone or something of true import.

  The warrior glanced up to find a blazing sun directly overhead. To his sides were tall walls the color of stone. Those walls rose four stories and were peppered with open windows. Even there, in and atop the building, there were people and more people. Some were hanging out windows. Others were busily walking the rooftops.

  And all the chatter. Everyone was talking. Seemingly to no one or to themselves. Men swept past Bayne, their lips moving and words flying forth though there seemed no one to whom they spoke. Women and children and elderly and folks of all colors and races and cultures and sizes and shapes flowed along the wide road. All were speaking. Most muttered, some even whispered, a few spoke out loud. Every few seconds one would shout or cry out, more often in anger or confusion than in true alarm.

  The din was terrible to the ears. Bayne raised his hands and cupped them around the sides of his bald head to shield himself from the audible blows.

  Still, the assault to his eyes was near as harsh as that of his travels through the never-ending rays of light. Bright silks of all colors flowed around, streaming and hanging and dancing from the shoulders and hips and legs and arms of the multitudes crowding around the warrior. Some wore simple garb, garments taken from sheared beasts or cut from animal flesh or pulled from plants, but many were outfitted in the most intense of dyes, colors that hurt the eyes to stare upon.

  Bayne threw back his head to belt out his confusion, roaring to that bright sun above, .

  When his lungs held no more air, he breathed in, ready for another bellow.

  But there was silence. Nothing came to his ears.

  He lowered his hands to his sides and glanced about.

  The crowd had come to a standstill. All eyes were upon him. The millions upon millions glared at him, their gazes filled with
little love but much envy and scorn.

  “You!” The shouter was an old man wearing a dirty turban and little more than rags, his clothing pale, soiled strips of linen. He pointed an angled, gray finger at Bayne.

  The swordsman suddenly found other fingers jammed in his face. Others beyond and above were pointing as well. A man little more than a boy wearing a striped night robe. A woman in a red tunic and a child on one arm. A man of skin the color of the morning sun, his teeth missing between a beard of black above a shirt of rough wool. All pointing.

  “You!” another screamed.

  “You!

  “You!”

  Everyone was shouting and hollering and directing fingers. The voices grew and grew, not in unison but in a mixed discordant jumble of the single word, overlapping one another in different tones and inflections and accents. Never had been heard such a simple, single word said in so many different ways. Some even managed to include more than one syllable. Others barely got the entire word out at all.

  But everywhere everyone was pointing and in tumult and their focus was upon the big man in the chain shirt, the heavy sword on his back.

  The crowd closed in, nearer and nearer, their sweat and stink and flesh pressing up against Bayne. Fingers were in his face, jabbing at his arms, poking his legs. The voices grew louder and louder until he thought his ears might burst.

  Bayne could take no more. His sword came out, gripped in a mighty hand. He swung. The blade bit … nothing.

  The weighty, bright steel had slashed into one man, a feeble wizardly fellow pointing and screaming with cracked lips, but it had been as if the blade had touched only air.

  Bayne marveled, but then he stabbed with his sword. The point appeared to enter another man’s stomach, but there was no impression, no cut, no blood. The end of the blade merely disappeared into the man’s shirt as if passing into a shadow, a mirage.

  “Algr!” Bayne screamed, his head tossed back to the sky once more. Then he was veering his sword to left and right, in front and behind. Jabbing, stabbing, stroking, cutting, chopping. All to no end. The weapon might as well have been striking ghosts.

  The throng continued its pointing and shouting. Now they switched to his name. Louder and louder. “Bayne! Bayne! BAYNE!” Pointing and pointing and pointing.

  Bayne stopped. He closed his eyes, catching his breath and allowing his sword to hang from his hand, the point of the weapon nearly touching the ground. Around him pressed these strange people, their fingers clawing over him and rubbing against him and picking at his chain shirt.

  He needed to think. His mind shut out the tumult as much as possible as he delved deep within himself. Algr had told him he could go where he wished at will, that he could even return at will. It was simply a matter of thought, of control.

  Bayne opened his eyes.

  The roar of the crowd had dissipated. The city street was gone. Only the bright sun above remained of the scene before.

  Bayne found himself standing on a cliff aside a mountain, perhaps the very mountain he had been climbing all along. Dark, ruddy rock was beneath his boots and a gentle, calming breeze rolled across his sweating skin. He breathed in the mountain air, finding it more pleasing than the sweltering stench of the packed streets he had just fled.

  A cackle above him, a laugh not of mirth.

  Bayne glanced up, higher along the side of the mountain.

  A dark figure was there, cloaked in black, too high to see properly but outlined by the sun. It was a tall figure with long, murky hair.

  “Verkanus!” Bayne shouted, pointing with his sword.

  But the figure only continued it’s dark laughter.

  Bayne looked about, studying his surroundings further.

  There was no trail. He was not upon the road that wrapped the mountain, but stranded on a flat island along a vertical wall of rock.

  There was nothing to do but climb.

  He slid his sword back into its sheath and reached up, grabbing at a protruding stone. Planting a booted foot against the wall, he pulled himself up mere inches.

  “You will never catch me this way, Bayne kul Kanon,” said the form of the emperor above. “You must go back, back to the shadows of the tavern.”

  Did the figure speak truth? Could it be? Bayne did not know, but what he did know was that the man he sought was within sight though a hundred yards or more away. Bayne would not give up so easily with his prey before him.

  He pushed and he pulled and climbed a little ways further.

  The mountain disappeared beneath him and Bayne was falling, plummeting into the nothingness of gray clouds appearing below. He shouted out in surprise, his weight pulling him down seemingly faster and faster. He was not flying, but coasting along currents, not rising and falling but simply falling.

  What to do? The yellow gem came to mind. He had grasped it and been transported to

  that city of the callous and agitating. Perhaps the gem was the key. Bayne focused on it, imagined it in his mind between his grasping hands. He imagined pulling back, away from the glowing stone, his fingers letting loose of it. But his fingers seemed as if fastened. No matter how hard he thought of dropping the gem, his fingers would not lose their bond.

  But then they did.

  Air rushed into the big warrior’s lungs. He sat back in his chair, gasping and pulling air into his lungs. Sweat was rushing down his face in rivulets, dripping from the ends of his nose and chin. It was as if he had been held under boiling water. His body was hot and steam rose from his muscled arms and legs. His chain shirt scorched where it rubbed against skin.

  Algr stood over him, staring down with what appeared to be an amused grin. “Ah, you have returned.”

  “You!” Bayne shot out of his chair and grabbed the proprietor by his shirt collar. “Scoundrel! You attempted to snare me!”

  The tavern keeper continued to grin. He held out his hands as if apologizing for something. “My regrets, good sir, if you have --”

  “Hush!” Bayne shouted. “Your words are lies! Tricks to perplex!”

  Algr continued to smile, his hands out flat before him. He opened his mouth to speak once more, but Bayne shoved him to the floor where he landed on his end. A cry of surprise and pain escaped the tavern keeper’s mouth.

  “Stay, if you value your life,” the warrior said, pointing to Algr.

  Then Bayne surveyed his surroundings. He was still in The Knotted Mesh, standing next to his table and chair. The yellow gem no longer emitted light, but rested in the center of the table. Darkness still played about the establishment, and hundreds upon hundreds of slack faces continued to stare down upon glowing rocks in the grasp of their hands, one face and pair of hands per each of the seemingly hundreds upon hundreds of tables in the place.

  There seemed no immediate threat. No one was approaching. No one other than Algr seemed to have noticed the agitated warrior in their midst.

  Bayne caught the face of a fellow several tables away. It was another face with limp features. Sagging eyes were enthralled by a cobalt shine in the hands before them. Those eyes. They were familiar. Bayne had seen them before.

  In the city.

  The old man, the one who had first yelled at him. The one with the dirty turban and the gray skin and the strips of linen for attire.

  “Treachery!” Bayne reached low and once more grabbed Algr by his collar, lifting the much smaller man until his soft leather boots no longer touched the floor.

  Algr threw up his hands as a defense, but Bayne shook him. The tavern keeper rattled and bobbed left and right, his head swirling about and about as if his neck would surely snap.

  “Your lies were a ruse meant to trap me,” Bayne shouted in the bobbling face. “You are as the others, looking to gain gold at my expense!”

  Then he tossed the proprietor, sending Algr sailing across the very table where Bayne had sat. Algr smashed into the wall and crumpled to the ground where with a shriek he landed on his rear once more.

  B
ayne shoved his table aside, the yellow gem and chair flying off into shadows.

  “No!” shouted Algr, his eyes following the gem as it disappeared into darkness, his hands clutching out as if to save the bauble.

  Bayne stopped. He stared from the grasping, beaten Algr to the spot along the wall where the gem had gone missing.

  Then he unsheathed his sword, raking steel against the wooden scabbard as a furor escaped his lips not unlike the roar of a jungle cat. The sword went high, over the muscled man’s head, the weapon’s grip clenched in two bulking hands.

  “No!” Algr repeated.

  The sword lashed out to Bayne’s right.

  Where it connected with another gem, this one glowing green in the hands of a young man with nearly-closed eyes. Sparks flew as the orb exploded, sending shards of jade needles in all directions. A screech as of metal on metal filled the air and Bayne threw up an arm to shield his eyes.

  The youth who had held the gem shouted in surprise and anguish as the blooming green light burst before his eyes and the tiny javelins nailed themselves into his hands and face. He fell back from his table, grabbing at his face while flailing to the floor, toppling his chair with him.

  From his spot on the ground, Algr reached out to Bayne. “Madness!”

  No other in The Knotted Mesh seemed aware of the events. Stoned faces were still enthralled by the worlds they found with their shimmering baubles. Table after table and chair after chair carried silence. There were no witnesses other than Algr and Bayne himself. Even the youth on the floor was busy crying and wiping bloody streaks from his face.

  The big warrior bound to the next table. He swung his blade again. Another gem shattered, this one a deep azure. A familiar howl from the once-entranced figure at the table greeted Bayne, then died away to moans and cries. More sparks expanded and more glass-like darts flew.

  Bayne spun for the next table. He swung and slashed and lanced with his blade, sometimes sending the gems hurtling against the wall to smash but most often breaking the orbs with his own blows. Embers and flickers and glints of light illuminated the darkness of the tavern briefly before dying in a hail of glass splinters and crying persons with hazed eyes.