“I’m sure he’s a regular plum pudding.” The Nub backed away, nodding, smiling, and scanning the alleyway. “Thanks for the help.”
Fingit pointed up at the window. “Look! The Farmer is turning the corner!”
“Do you see? Everything will transpire as I foretold it.” Sakaj wheezed and panted.
The Farmer paused behind the Nub, cocked his head at the young man, and then kicked the Nub’s legs out from under him. A moment later, the Nub’s enemy had dragged him up by the collar and slipped a dagger from his belt.
Fingit held his breath. The Nub hung almost limp, writhing no more effectively than a baby. The Farmer raised the dagger and smacked the Nub on the back of the neck with its round pommel. The Nub fell to the ground.
“Perfection!” Sakaj wiggled her head with joy. “Just as I planned.”
The Farmer directed some other men to carry the Nub away.
Sakaj grinned. “I’m sure the torturing will begin soon.”
Fingit thought Sakaj might have been rubbing her hands together, if she still had hands to speak of. “It does seem to have worked out pretty well.”
“Now for the river spirit.” The Goddess of the Unknowable shifted the window back into the mountains where the river spirit paced back and forth in a manner most unlike a supernatural being. “Spirit, attend me. You are called by She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” Sakaj’s words flowed from her thoughts, clear and resonant.
The blue spirit, in the perfect form of a woman, appeared without delay. “Yes, Mighty Goddess?” Water dripped from her, and her hair floated above her shoulders. As her breath came quicker, the water droplets fell slower and slower until they hung in midair.
“Your little sorcerer boy is about to be tortured to death in that city.”
The spirit paled two shades of blue.
Sakaj said, “I will help you save him if you perform a service for me. Two hundred miles from here, at the headwaters of the Fead River, two boys are lost in the woods. When I give you leave, you must kill them. Make it brutal. Wait until I give you a signal. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the spirit said in a calm voice, but her hands were shaking.
“You may go.”
The spirit left so quickly she almost seemed to disappear.
“Now I shall present these facts to the Freak and strike a deal with her.” Sakaj closed her eyes, tried to take a breath, and gagged when her half-inch-thick lungs refused. She wheezed a curse and gazed upward. The window in the sky above her swirled and swept for nearly a minute. Then it settled on a rude camp in the lee of a brilliant stand of maple trees. A tall, rangy woman with deep-black skin handed two dead rabbits to a bald, fat man and then squatted beside a campfire.
Sakaj said in a nurturing voice, “Daughter.”
The Freak sat up like a prairie dog. She flipped back her dark-brown braid and gazed around. She was a beautiful woman, not yet middle-aged. “No. Leave me alone. I have nothing for you. No deals.”
Sakaj grinned and whispered, “She’s resisting me. I forgot how cute she can be sometimes.” Sakaj closed her eyes. Several seconds went by as her grin devolved into a grimace. At last, she snapped, “You come here right now, young lady!”
The Freak formed from a bank of darkness. She stood a head taller than most men in this part of the world. “What?”
Sakaj wiggled her shoulders lovingly. “Is that any way to greet your mother?”
“You are not my mother. That is a game you play. You do not call me Daughter—you call me Freak.”
Sakaj poured love into her voice. “But you are my daughter. My favorite daughter.” She winked at Fingit.
The Freak laughed, but it was as humorous as a slap in the face. “You called for me, so say what you want. I was about to pick my nose on the other side. I don’t want to wait, since that is infinitely more important than this.”
Fingit whispered, “Why do you let her talk to you that way? You’re as bad as Harik.”
Sakaj ignored him and spoke out loud to the Freak. “Fine. Now that our reunion is past, I must bring a distressing issue to your attention. Your little friends—your brother’s boys—have become lost and will be murdered before the day ends.”
The Freak blinked twice. “I find that unlikely.”
“Because your father attends them? Because he carries a bone enchanted by Fingit? You know how Fingit is. He builds flying chariots that crash; he makes impervious armor that causes impotence. Failure is inevitable.”
Fingit whispered, “That’s not fair at all! That armor wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know the steel had been mined in the Harpy Mountains!”
Sakaj showed Fingit her teeth. “Hush. It’s a bargaining tactic. You mewl like an infant sometimes.”
The Freak almost smiled. “Failure or success. They mean nothing to me. Kill them or not.”
Sakaj whispered, “Shit.”
“What? What?” Fingit dropped to his knees in front of her.
“Nothing! I just cleared my throat,” Sakaj whispered. Then she spoke to the Freak. “Well, dear, perhaps you don’t care at all about those children. But another boy will soon be tortured, and that boy knows my name. He will talk. One cannot doubt that.”
Fingit glared at Sakaj. Speaking the Goddess of the Unknowable’s name ranked as the second worst thing a sorcerer could do. Such an act invited Sakaj into the world of man. During her visits, Sakaj always killed at least ten thousand people, and no visitation could be complete without destroying a major city or two. She sometimes left behind poisoned or haunted places that continued to kill and maim once she had departed.
The worst thing a sorcerer could do was put a magical object inside a magical creature in a magical location—also known as the “Stuff a
