The Clandestine Circle Read online

  A pleased nicker greeted Lynn as she opened the stall door. Windcatcher, a powerful bay mare, pranced excitedly in place while Lynn buckled the bridle on her shapely head. The woman ran a hand down the horse’s silky neck.

  Keeping a horse in Sanction on a guard’s meager pay was an expensive luxury. Prices were high, hay and oats were often hard to come by, and it was difficult to find time around her new duties to exercise a horse every day. Lynn, however, considered her mare not only a pleasurable indulgence, but also, in her line of work, a necessity.

  She had been living in Sanction for almost eight years and was well known to many people there as a cutthroat alley-basher named Lynn of Gateway, who managed to worm her way into the City Guards and put her skills to a more legitimate use. Only a few people, a very few, knew the redheaded, freckle-faced alley cat with a temper was more than she seemed, and if anyone outside of that small circle learned her true identity, Lynn knew a fast horse could be her only chance of survival. So she scrimped and saved to keep Windcatcher fit and well housed, and she silently prayed that the day she had to flee Sanction would never come. In the meantime, the mare had proved useful for other tasks as well, and this morning, unknowingly, she had helped obtain Lynn’s first chance to meet Lord Governor Hogan Bight himself.

  Humming to herself, Lynn eyed her saddle, then decided against it. The day, newly begun, was rapidly losing any hint of the night’s cooler temperatures. She tossed a light blanket over Windcatcher’s withers instead and sprang to the bay’s broad back.

  The mare danced in anticipation, but she was too well trained to bolt. At Lynn’s signal, she bounced out of the stable and into the traffic on the busy streets. The sergeant had said Lord Bight was somewhere in the fortifications on the eastern side of Sanction, the opposite side of the city from the harbor, so Lynn guided her horse toward Shipmaker’s Road, the main east-west thoroughfare that bisected Sanction, and nudged her into a comfortable jog trot. It was impossible to travel faster than that. Although it was early morning, the streets were full of carts, wagons, and pedestrians, and the shops were already bustling with people trying to do a day’s work before the heat became unbearable.

  This summer in Sanction was the hottest in memory since the Chaos War over thirty years ago, and one of the driest. It had altered the routines of daily life in the city by making early risers out of everyone and virtually closing down the town by noon. Only dogs, kender, gully dwarves, and the City Guard could be found moving about outside in the middle of the afternoon. By evening, the intense heat relaxed its grip just enough to give some relief and bring the city back to life.

  In the lower end of Sanction, where the taverns, inns, offices, and warehouses jostled for space along the waterfront, most of the people Linsha saw on the streets were connected with the city’s burgeoning sea trade: sailors, sail makers, carpenters, rope makers, caulkers, oar makers, and blacksmiths. There were minotaurs, dwarves, humans, and elves all working together to load and unload cargo, refit ships, repair sails, and build new businesses. Only the taverns were quiet at this time of day, until the heat drove everyone indoors or to the nearest shade and a cool drink.

  As Windcatcher drew closer to the upper city and the massive walls of Sanction’s inner fortifications, the character of the streets changed from docks, taverns, and mercantile offices to new apartments, shops, and tall, narrow houses clustered along cobbled streets. Here were many of the service industries such as laundries, bakehouses, bathhouses, massage parlors, and herbal shops, all showing signs of prosperity and healthy business. Skilled artisans had many shops here, too, and painted their storefronts in bright colors to advertise their wares. Awnings shaded the wooden sidewalks, and scattered about were small gardens that added splashes of green to the timber and stone edifices.

  Above it all reared the tall towers and stone battlements of Sanction’s fortified walls. Here, facing the harbor and the threat of seaborne invasion, was the main western gate, where Shipmaker’s Road left the lower city and plunged into the heart of Sanction. The gateway was a massive doorway wide enough for two loaded wagons to pass side by side, and it was flanked by two round guard towers. The City Guard had its headquarters here and flew their scarlet flags emblazoned with a flaming sword for all to see.

  The wall was a fairly recent addition to Sanction’s defenses, built by the lord governor to protect the city from a long list of enemies. In the years before the Chaos War, Sanction had been under the control of the goddess, Queen Takhisis, and her Dark Knights. It had been an encampment for dragonarmies and a nest for piracy and slavery. All that changed, though, at the end of the war with the departure of the gods. The Dark Knights lost control of the city, and what was left of the slums and slave pens and temples was in danger of being buried under molten lava spewed out by the three volcanoes, the Lords of Doom. At some time, and no one could remember exactly when, a stranger named Hogan Bight had entered the city and proclaimed himself governor. Using a power beyond anyone’s understanding, he tamed the volcanoes and diverted the lava, ash, and smoke away from the city. He built a government where there was none, banished the slave trade, formed the powerful City Guard to keep the peace, and brought prosperity far beyond anything the inhabitants of Sanction had ever imagined.

  One of Lord Bight’s first major accomplishments had been the fortification of the city through a network of earthworks, stone walls, high towers, and most impressive of all, moats of lava created from the flow of the three giant volcanoes that hemmed in the city to the north, east, and south. The moats began at Mount Thunderhorn, the eastern volcano, and flowed in a horseshoe pattern around the city to Sanction Bay, encompassing the city, the harbor, and most of the wide valley.

  The defenses were impressive and, so far, successful. The Knights of Takhisis desperately wanted their city back, but moats of lava and the earthworks kept their land forces at bay to the north and east. The harbor defenses protected the port from pirates and the Dark Knights’ seaborne forces, and the great wall guarded the inner heart of the city. Unfortunately the fortifications were not enough to protect Sanction from all her enemies. There was something more at work in the city, something unseen and subtly powerful that kept even the great Dragon Lords at bay. Something that rested in the hands of the mysterious Hogan Bight.

  It was because of Lord Bight, this unknown man and his growing influence, that Lynn, known to her family as Linsha, had come to Sanction, sent by the Grand Master Liam Ehrling to serve the Solamnic Knighthood as an undercover agent in Sanction’s Clandestine Circle. To her, and to others like her, fell the task of learning all they could of this strange man and the forces that influenced the development of Sanction from a dying slave port to a boomtown. Linsha did not really like the subterfuge and devious dealings of the assignment, but she was good at it and she had grown to genuinely like the people of Sanction in the time she had lived there.

  As she saluted the guards at the West Gate and rode through, she felt her pulse quicken at the prospect of meeting Lord Bight. She had joined the City Guard almost a year ago with the hope of working her way closer to his inner circle, but so far she had only managed to see him from a distance on the parade grounds at the guard camp and during official visits to the city council.

  The traffic became heavier on this section of the Shipmaker’s Road, and Linsha was forced to slow Windcatcher to a walk. This part of Sanction had once been an old slave market and slum until Lord Bight allowed a group of gnomes to experiment on some new construction techniques. Of course, the foul tenements burned to the ground, allowing Lord Bight to rebuild the entire area. The land was divided into orderly lots and streets and portioned out to new owners, guilds, and businesses. The sound of construction was everywhere as new houses, shops, guildhalls, and craftsman shops filled in the vacant lots. Near the center of the city, a huge area had been set aside for an open-air market called the Souk Bazaar, where farmers from Sanction Vale brought their produce, livestock, and goods, and merchants from
as far away as Palanthas sold their wares in rows of stalls, booths, and carts.

  When Linsha approached the bazaar, she took an appreciative sniff of the smells wafting from the vendors’ carts. Her stomach reminded her she hadn’t had breakfast yet, so she kneed Windcatcher close to an old man selling cheese turnovers and pasties.

  “Morning, Calzon,” she greeted him.

  The old man’s face cracked a black-toothed grin. “Lynn, you gorgeous thing. Get off that bag of worthless bones and give us a kiss!”

  She chuckled. “Sorry. I want to keep my breakfast down. Just give me a turnover. One of your good ones. Not the ones you’ve shorted the cheese with extra flour.” She flipped him a coin.

  Cackling to himself, Calzon caught the coin and handed her a warm turnover from his cart. Before she could move out of his reach, he ran his hand down her knee. “One of these days, Lynn, you’ll see the error of your ways. Marry me and I’ll make an honest woman out ye.”

  “When gully dwarves rule in Sanction, I’ll think about it,” she replied, well used to his banter.

  “So where’re you off to this fine morning? Shouldn’t you be off duty? Looking for a little action?” He cracked the knuckles on his fingers to add emphasis to his words and topped them off with a suggestive leer.

  Linsha deliberately took a large bite of her turnover and buried any chance of a reply in a mouthful of pastry and cheese. With a gentle nudge, she urged Windcatcher back on the road, leaving Calzon to his customers and his speculations.

  Calzon had been her first lesson in looking behind the masks people wear, for beneath the ragged gray hair, tattered clothes, and lecherous leer was a very talented member of the Legion of Steel, whose mission in Sanction was much like hers. Although Linsha had known Xavier Kross, the leader of the Legion, when she arrived, Calzon and many of the other Legionnaires had not known about her. It had taken her several months to gain his cautious confidence. He did not know her real name and rank any more than she knew his. All they could ever know was their mutual membership in the thriving underground of spies in Sanction. They traded bits of news once in a while and acted as liaisons between their respective leaders, but because the Knights of Solamnia and the Legion of Steel did not trust each other’s motives, they were not allowed the opportunity to work together.

  Linsha thought that was inefficient and a shame. She had spent many visits with her grandparents in Solace, where the Legion had its first headquarters. She still harbored the respect she learned for the secretive organization, whose sole purpose was to serve justice and help where they were needed. With better communication and less self-serving motives, she felt the Knights of Solamnia and the Legion could make formidable allies against the Knights of Takhisis. Unfortunately the last time they tried to work together in Sanction, their incautious zeal allowed the Knights of Takhisis to wipe them out and caused Lord Bight to ban both groups from the city forever. Another union did not seem promising.

  Eating as she rode, Linsha guided her horse around the market grounds and toward the East Gate that led out of the city to the guard camp, the outer fortifications, and the roads into the Khalkist Mountains. To her left sat a low range of hills skirted by imposing residential homes. The nearest hill was crowned by the newly built luxurious palace of the lord governor, while its neighbor bore the Temple of Huerzyd, an old relic of the departed gods now renovated and refurbished for the mystics from Goldmoon’s Citadel of Light in Schallsea. The city wall curled around the hills and ran for some distance beside the lava moat as it cut through the flank of the northernmost volcano, Mount Grishnor, the first of the three Lords of Doom. From there the wall continued east to Mount Thunderhorn, then curved south toward the third of the active volcanoes, Mount Ashkir.

  Not far from the gate, the road rose over an old stone bridge that once spanned a glowing river of lava. Now the lava lay hard and cold, and its old course served as a foundation for a new aqueduct that Hogan Bight planned to carry water from the mountains’ geysers and springs into the city. The aqueduct had been completed from the reservoir between Mount Grishnor and Mount Thunderhorn to the edge of the city wall. All that remained was the distance from the wall to the public cisterns near the Souk Bazaar and the difficult section needed to cross the lava moat. Dwarf engineers were already hard at work at the city site, building the scaffolding and chiseling blocks of local red granite to construct the next span of supporting arches.

  Saluting the guards at the East Gate, Linsha rode through and quickly approached the edge of the sprawling guard camp. A sentry immediately stopped her.

  As soon as she stated her rank and business, he pointed to the peak of the second Lord of Doom. “See the smoke on Mount Thunderhorn? The governor and his men are up on the northeast observation tower studying the volcano. Rumor says its going to blow again,” he added with the stoical resignation of a man born and raised in Sanction.

  On a clear day, with wind from the west, the volcanoes and the Khalkist peaks that barricaded Sanction were visible with startling clarity. Their stark red peaks, many topped with a mantel of snow, formed a palisade that helped protect the city from many of her hostile neighbors. The active peaks also provided their own form of trouble, and this morning Mount Thunderhorn brooded under a new nimbus of smoke and steam, spewing from a tremendous lava dome that had appeared near the summit only a few days before.

  Linsha waved her thanks and nudged Windcatcher into a trot along the outskirts of the camp, past neat rows of tents, horse pens, and practice fields. The first training period of the day had just commenced, and groups of guards and recruits marched, drilled, and practiced swordplay. Linsha paid scant heed. Her eyes were focused on the distant tower perched on the great earthen wall.

  Four stone towers had been built along the eastern siege works to stand guard not only over the eruptions from the volcanoes but also the forces of the Knights of Takhisis, who remained poised on the two roads through the Khalkist Mountains. Armies sent by Governor-General Abrena watched from their positions in the northern and eastern passes for any sign of weakness. Lord Bight made sure there were none.

  At the base of the northeast tower, a sentry took Linsha’s reins and pointed to the top of the tower, where flew the pennant of the City Guard, flaunting the emblem of the flaming sword in the eyes of enemy observers. She bent her neck to look up, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and began to climb up the long flight of steps inside the round tower. By the time she reached the top, she was dripping with sweat again from the exertion and the building heat.

  Five men leaned over the parapet, gazing toward the smoking mountain. Two wore the scarlet tunics and black boots of guard officers, two were dressed in elegant official’s robes, and one was garbed in a simple gold tunic and pale leather pants that fit him like custom-made gloves. Four of the five appeared to be engaged in an animated conversation, while the fifth man, in the gold tunic, remained silent. His gaze was fastened on the far volcano, which loomed steep and red against the hazy summer sky.

  Linsha paused, intrigued by the tableau in front of her. She did not want to interrupt the conversation, so she stood at attention and waited for the men to notice her, giving herself a few moments to catch her breath and to study the interaction of these five.

  “I’m telling you, I’ve seen these things before. That dome is going to blow any minute,” one of the officials said forcefully. “And if that lava follows the easiest course, it will burn right through those eroded sections in the moat and ruin three of the finest farms in Sanction Vale.”

  That man, Linsha knew, was the elected leader of the newly formed Farmers’ Guild, a group dedicated to helping the farmers in the reclaimed lands outside the city.

  Until the Chaos War and the coming of Hogan Bight, there had been no farmers anywhere near Sanction. The region had been constantly besieged by lava, ash, and occasional pyroclastic flows from all three of the volcanoes. Once Lord Bight had tamed the Lords of Doom, the results had been miraculous. Free o
f ash and the danger from lava, people had spread out into the fertile valley and up the mountain slopes and turned the land into small productive farms that specialized in dairy cattle, wine, and wool.

  The second official, a portly man who served as head of the city council, vehemently waved a thick hand at the volcano. “Chan Dar, I doubt the lava will endanger your farms. I’ve already sent professionals to study the possible paths of flow from the dome. It is their considered opinion that the lava will come south down into the guard camp and overwhelm the breastworks. If that happens, we could lose part of the city wall and the guild district. You, as a guild master, should be concerned—”

  Chan Dar snorted and interrupted his esteemed colleague. “I hardly think one dwarf and an overbearing draconian constitute a professional opinion.”

  “And what makes you think your opinions are any better?” Lutran the Elder said heatedly. “At least they have experience working in the mountains.”

  “Gentlemen,” soothed a tall man in one of the scarlet uniforms. “Farm or city, we are all part of Sanction, and wherever the lava goes, we will be there to fight it.”

  Chan Dar refused to be placated. “But it’s going to explode any minute. We need to evacuate—”

  “It’s not going to blow for at least a week or two, you idiot. There’s plenty of time to …” began Lutran, clearly exasperated.

  “Says who? Your so-called experts?” said Chan Dar scathingly. He suddenly turned to the man in gold. “Lord Bight, you must do something immediately.”

  Lord Bight stirred slightly, as if drawn from a deep meditation. He turned his head, and Linsha caught her breath at the sight of his profile silhouetted against the backdrop of the smoking volcano. Hogan Bight was a tall, powerfully built man, with chiseled features that stood out sharp and elegant against the red of the volcano and the blue of the sky. His hair and beard, both golden brown, were closely trimmed, and his eyes, framed by curved brows, glowed like sunlight through amber.