The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (2 page)

Several minutes later they walked along the curb of another dirty drainage ditch and came to a dark cubby in the back walls of the Chapel of the Living Flower, a great building that had been constructed around an ancient tree that always had bright yellow blossoms which were always open year round.  The tree was a one-of-a-kind oddity, a tree that had no other example, produced no seeds to be replanted, and from which no cuttings had ever been successfully propagated.  The chapel had developed a reputation for romance, and many tourist weddings were held there, while the streets nearby had a surfeit of low cost inns and hotels.

The two petty criminals found the cubby empty, much to their disappointment, and they settled in to wait for their ring leader.

“Where do you suppose he is?”  Grange asked.  “Do you think they might have nabbed him?”  Hockis was supremely talented, and Grange had never considered the possibility that the crime ring leader might actually get caught, but he had never failed to reach the second meeting place.

“Hockis is too good to go to jail,” Garrel said dismissively.

They waited for two minutes in silence.  “Did you see the girl from Skote?” Garrel asked.  “She was gorgeous!”

How could I see her from the back of the crowd?” Grange asked rhetorically.

“Oh, true, all you see is the back of their skirts and pants, isn’t it?” Garrel snickered, satisfied that his jibe had struck home.

“Well, should we go to the orphanage gate?” Grange asked minutes later.

“We should, if you don’t mind,” Garrel agreed.  “We can wait for him there, before we decide…” he left unspoken what they might have to decide, and Grange didn’t ask.

The two walked through another portion of the city, again staying on less-traveled paths, along ways that tourists and visitors, and the patrolmen who followed them, seldom saw.  Minutes later, they arrived at the address of the Orphanage, and stood in a doorway across the street from the ornate limestone gate that pierced the walls surrounding the institution where scores of orphans were housed – including Grange.

“I’ll go stand over there,” Garrel nodded towards the gate, sympathetic to Grange’s desire not to be seen idly standing about by orphanage staff members.  “When Hockis arrives, we’ll come back here,” he indicated the empty space that was deep in the shadows surrounding the doorway they were standing in.

Grange nodded, and Garrel crossed the street, dodging wagons and horses and men hauling goods.  He reached the street front side of the orphanage gate, then turned and leaned casually against the square stone column, awaiting the arrival of his partner.  The two stood on either side of the road, anxiously looking up and down at the flow of traffic, and at each other, waiting to see when Hockis would arrive, or when the other would concede that he wasn’t going to arrive.

Grange was on the verge of concession, when he saw Garrel’s hand raise slightly in a signal, while the boy looked to the left, studying the traffic.  Grange looked, and spotted the familiar figure of Hockis approaching.  Grange immediately nodded his head to the left, strolled out of his doorway shadow, went to the left, then entered the first alleyway, where he established a position midway back between the two cross streets.

Half a minute later, Garrel entered the alley, and several seconds afterwards, Hockis entered separately.  The two companions strolled back to Grange’s location, and the two boys looked at their mentor closely, glad to see him arrive.

“Where have you been?” Garrel immediately asked.

“What happened to your face?” Grange asked instead.  He was looking at a mouse beneath Hockis’s left eye, a discolored, large swollen mass.

“I ran into a door,” Hockis said immediately.  “When I was running away.  That’s what slowed me down – I knocked myself out for I don’t know how long.

“So, what did we take?” he immediately got down to the business of the day, and Grange began to immediately empty his collection of purses into Hockis’s waiting hands.

The magician watched as Grange dropped item after item into his hands, then considered the heap of heavy cloth and leather bags he held.

“You did well for so little time,” he praised Grange.  “Here, this is your bonus for success,” he flipped one small bag back to Grange.  “And this one’s for you,” he dropped another into Garrel’s hands.  “Now, let’s split the rest.”

He squatted over the filthy alley paving stones and emptied the purses’ contents into a small heap of silver, gold, and brass coins, then began sorting them into three piles.  His own pile was traditionally larger than the other two equal piles, and he split the proceeds in the same fashion, then looked down at the small collection of riches when the job was complete.

“That should be enough to last us for what, three or four days each?” he looked at each of his apprentices, who nodded their heads.

“Let’s plan the next performance at noon, in front of the Chapel of the Living Flower,” he proposed.

“That road’s kind of narrow for making a quick getaway if we need to,” Garrel spoke up dubiously.

“Nothing to worry about.  I saw the way you boys got free today.  We’ll make it a short job – there are lots of careless lovers at the Chapel, and I’ll pull the flower trick and the jewel trick to appeal to them, and get them really engrossed while our agile-fingered friend does his work,” Hockis dismissed the concern immediately.  He picked up his pile of coins and stuffed them in his own pouch.  “It’s always a pleasure to work with you two,” he said as he stood.  He reached down and tousled the hair on each of their heads, with a momentarily wistful expression, then turned and left the alley, as the two boys scooped up their own winnings.

“See you in a couple of days,” Garrel told Grange.  “Don’t do anything stupid.  Don’t chase the wrong girls,” he grinned as he picked up his last coin, then made his exit.  It was his standard parting line, spoken with a pretend worldliness that Grange doubted the older boy really had.

It was also obviously facetious.  Grange’s foreign appearance – not to mention his standing as a penniless orphan – brought few girls within his range to chase.  And his current happy-go-lucky life did not suffer from the state of affairs.

He grinned at his companion, then stood up as well, and walked across the street and back to his home in the orphanage.

Chapter 2

Grange stopped when he reached the gateway to the orphanage.  He needed a moment to re-adjust himself to the domestic atmosphere, and resume his identity as one of the harmless residents of the institutional home.  He plucked at his clothes for a moment as he made the necessary mental reorientation, then moved forward.

His first stop was the office of the head mother, the woman who ran the orphanage.  Lady Serap was a worldly figure, a woman who seldom actually visited the orphanage to sit in her office; the ordinary staff ran the place, while the Lady mere gathered the accolades for her selflessness in accepting the appointment by the Tyrant of Verdant as the orphanage leader.  She did no good, nor did she do any harm – she was simply a name.

But the stressed and stretched staff of dedicated women and men who did run the orphanage were in the building every day, and Grange appreciated most of them.  Many were genuinely concerned about raising the children as safely as possible, and giving them at least one good meal every day, as the limited resources allowed. 

Grange had vague memories of being held at times as a toddler, given moments of comfort and affection, moments that were hard to capture in a home where scores of other children were similarly in dire need and felt desire for such affection from a staff that was far too small to provide all the love that was desired.  He wished he could have known the feeling of being held and loved by parents, but knew it hadn’t been his fate, and he went on after that moment of wistfulness.

He walked through the bare garden space in the front of the building, then entered the main doors under the watchful eyes of the proctor.

“How much longer until you turn seventeen?” the man at the door idly asked.  “You’re getting pretty big to stay here.”

“Not too much longer,” Grange admitted.

“Not soon enough,” the watchman said.  He was casually unpleasant to everyone, so that Grange took no offense, but walked on by.

Grange turned a corner and climbed a set of stairs, then entered the administrative offices of the orphanage.

“My lady, here are my earnings,” he told the careworn woman who worked in the office.  Her name was Constance, though the orphans all called her ‘My lady’ or less charitably, the cat lady, because she carried a faint odor of felines.

Grange found her to be a timid, kind lady, one who always used a soft voice and a kind word, and so he refused to join in the mocking by the others.  As one of the oldest children in the building, as he would be for a few more months, he even discouraged the younger ones from saying anything untoward about her.

“Gracious Grange, that’s quite a bit of money,” the woman’s voice rose an octave as he poured out nearly  the entire collection of coins he had received, reserving only a few small coins for his personal use.

“I’ve been saving it up for the past few days,” he explained, as he did every time he turned over most of his profits to the orphanage.

“You’ve been working again, at the?” she left the question open.

“At the barrel factory,” he provided the ready answer, the same one he always gave.  “I’ve been working at the barrel factory across town.”

“Well, they certainly do pay you well,” she remarked.  “And it certainly helps us quite a bit.  We wouldn’t have any meat for next week if this hadn’t turned up like this.  Praise the gods,” she murmured.

Grange silently felt that he deserved the praise, not the gods, but he kept silent, gave a slight smile, and turned away,

“You are a good boy.  Thank you,” Constance’s voice followed him out the doorway.

Grange smiled at the comment as he turned a corner.  He wanted to think he was a good boy, even if he was a thief.   He gave his profits to the orphanage, he reminded himself, as he patted at the lump in his clothes that felt funny, then discovered that the lump was the small purse Hockis had gifted to him, the elaborately embroidered small purse that he had not opened, the one that he remembered lifting from its owner.  She had been an older woman, yet had been surprisingly sensitive enough to notice Grange’s light touch amidst the jostling and bumping of the viewers of the magic show on the plaza.

The woman had turned and glanced at him.  Their eyes had made contact, and Grange remembered clearly the expression in those gray eyes – it was not surprise, or fear, or confusion.  Instead, she had looked at him with a cool, calculating glance that almost seemed to hold amusement, but not amusement due to Hockis’s magic tricks, he had felt.

He pulled the purse out of his pocket as he started to climb the stairs, keeping the artifact hidden in the palm of his hand while he passed an unruly group of younger children descending the steps.  He turned into a closet, climbed through the break in the plaster at the bottom of the back wall, and emerged in the sunny attic that sat atop the dining hall.  It was his place, a place that no other student would dare to enter, and one that none of the staff members knew about.

Grange sat atop one of the beams, opened the purse to see what was inside, then poured the contents into his hand.

It was nothing like what he had expected.  He felt disappointed for the first heartbeat.  There was no cash at all.  No coins jingled out.  The purse had not been used to carry cash; it had been used to carry a collection of knickknacks.  He found a folded up piece of paper, a note it appeared.  There was a locket which he opened; inside was a miniature painting of a pretty girl.  There was a bird’s feather, a soft rubber ball – the likes of which he had never seen, and a pencil stub.  The woman had carried an odd collection of mementos in the attractive little purse.

He turned his body to allow more light to fall on the locket, so that he could examine the portrait of the girl inside.  As he looked, his eyes widened in astonishment, and he unconsciously held his breath when he realized what he was seeing.  The girl had the same features he had – high cheekbones, pale skin, hair that was virtually white.  Hers was a long face, with an upturned nose and a small mouth, a long chin, yet the girl was a pretty one, and the artist had given her a smile and a spark of humor in her eyes that made Grange long to meet her in person.

He snapped the locket shut, and made an impulsive decision.  He would return to the square, look for the old woman, and return the locket – and he would find out about the girl, if he could.  He crawled out of the attic and ran down the stairs.  The woman had been in front of the mountain temple, and the grand display of the relics would still be going on; that was the show the temple put on every afternoon for the tourists, drawing them into the sanctum, then raising the objects high where the sunlight streamed down through a series of small holes in the roof and walls, the light collected and focused by a series of clever pieces of glass Grange did not understand, so that it shone on the holy objects in a way that made them seem to glow for the tourists.

His street acquaintance Carnle claimed that the artifacts were buffed and shined regularly, and that the collections from the tourist showing were the most profitable source of revenues for the temple, but Grange didn’t know if Carnle knew what was true or just hearsay.  And it didn’t matter to him at that moment, as Grange trotted down the stairs, then back out of the orphanage and towards the plaza, where there was a very small chance he might happen to find the woman he was in search of.

Minutes later he found that the south side of the plaza was sparsely attended by only a few visitors, but the north side had a heavy crowd, as was typical for that time of day.   The tourists would provide many tempting sources of new funds, Grange thought, but it was only a detached observation that idly crossed the back of his mind.   He noticed the mountains that rose north of the city to provide the splendid, scenic background behind the temple.   They usually were only the background to him, taken for granted and unappreciated, but on that late afternoon they stood out, grabbing his attention the way they attracted the tourists.   They were lovely, and he wondered why he didn’t look at them more often.

He started stalking towards the crowd of tourists, then stopped suddenly.  From his peripheral vision he caught a glance of something small and dark scuttling across the pavement.  He momentarily saw the dark spot as it disappeared and reappeared among the legs of the pedestrians who were walking across the square.  He turned to look at the dog, as he suspected it was, then stared harder at it, for the moving creature appeared to be no dog.

Grange caught one more glimpse, and then it was gone, but the memory of it remained.  It had long hind legs, short front legs, and seemed to walk like it was falling forward.  The head seemed oddly shaped for a dog, and he didn’t think there was a tail.  But it was gone, and he wondered if his vision and his memory were simply playing tricks on him.

He stood in place, pondering the distracting creature, then concluded it didn’t truly matter.  With the sun starting to set, he needed to search among the tourists as quickly as possible to find the stately lady whose purse he held.

He moved forward, and started examining tourists as he reached the crowded portion of the plaza, closer to the temple, and he began cursory examinations, as he hurriedly moved through the crowd, weaving in and out among those who stood waiting to see the presentation of the artifacts.  He’d never actually watched the spectacle himself, and he didn’t intend to do so that evening either; instead he let his eyes rove up and down the female figures he saw, trying to find those with the same dark clothing that his victim had worn.

He worked his way towards the front of the crowd, so that he could scan people from the front.  As he reached his position, he started cruising to his right, looking about, not finding the woman, and growing concerned, regretful that he had apparently missed her.

There was a sudden lifting of the faces of the people he was examining, and a collective murmur, as they all looked at something happening behind him.  He turned around so that he too could see what the new attraction was.

The head priest from the temple was standing on the high balcony that protruded from the front of the building.  Two acolytes stood with him, one on either side of him as he faced out towards the crowd.  He wore long robes that had wide stripes running up and down.  Carnle from the street had told Grange about the stripes, and about the ceremony to come.  The stripes were supposed to make the priest look tall; the man was actually rather short, so short that he also stood on a hidden riser that added height to his appearance.

The priest was strangely lit, with bright light that struck him from below and each side, making the man seem to virtually glow in the approaching gloom of the sunset.  Grange found the appearance impressive, even though Carnle had explained to him that there was a complex network of white tubes and mirrors that captured the sunlight in the rear of the temple, then secretly carried it to the balcony, where it was all focused to illuminate the priest and his performance.

“We thank you for your glorious presence, Great Goddess Shaine,” the priest spoke loudly, though not so loudly that Grange believed the viewers in the back of the crowd were likely to hear his pronouncement.

“You forcefully move through our lives, watching us and correcting us,” the priest intoned.  Shaine was the goddess of punishment, and Grange always took a small amount of perverse pride in plucking away the funds he occasionally took from her followers, who he considered to be dour and gloomy.  But the artistry of the priest’s show was captivating nonetheless.

“We call upon you to give us a sign of your presence, a testament to your ongoing, eternal duty of watching over us, and bringing justice to those who deserve to be punished,” the priest beseeched his goddess.  He plucked something off the railing in front of him, something that hadn’t been visible until the priest raised it – mirrors hid the glass bowl while it sat on the shelf, Carnle had explained.  Knowing the trickery behind the illusions only made them more fascinating for Grange to watch, he found.

The priest raised the glass bowl as he spoke, and suddenly the bowl burst into flame.  Or at least it seemed to.  It suddenly glowed with a malignant red color, a bright red that flickered actively.  The crowd screeched in astonishment at the sight.  Grange was impressed, though he knew that the light that came through the tubes and mirrors also came through a red filter and the blades of a slowly revolving fan gave the illusion of flickering movement.

“We thank you for your power and justice, and we give you our gifts in appreciation,” the priest spoke, telling the crowd that the temple was ready to accept their contributions, as he lowered the bowl out of the focus of the red light beams.

“You’re not one to appreciate Shaine’s gifts, are you?” a sharp voice whispered in low tones in his ear, making him jump in surprise. He whirled around to find his eyes locked onto another pair of eyes only inches away from his, the eyes of the woman he had come in search of.

One of her hands reached up and seized his shoulder, locking the two of them together.

“You don’t fancy feeling Shaine’s justice, do you?” the woman asked again.  Her lips were curved in a mirthless grin.

Grange was frightened.  The woman scared him.

“You came back.  That’s good.  You passed the test – and so it begins,” her words were only a murmur.