by Eve Forward
“Sir Pryse!”
“Correct!” shouted the Hero-turned-villain. His voice was deep and powerful, his eyes flashed around the battered multitude, and suddenly glittered in fury as he noticed the stunned Arch-Mage. “I watched what you led the land into, Mizzamir! The land I nearly died for! Light is a choice, you old fool, not something that you must force on all those you do not approve of! Everywhere, hundreds of thousands of men and women have been brought by your magic into near-mindless slavery, and creatures who did none any harm were slain without mercy. When my own brother turned to darkness, and you went after him, I begged you spare his life and soul. In your mercy, you turned him into a warhorse! Perhaps you thought that funny, Mizzamir. But even I, once a paladin, would never stoop to such self-righteous tyranny.” He paused a moment. “These villains you pursue are the world’s last hope of salvation, and I am with them!” He roared an ancient battle-cry and swung his great black sword back into the fray as the combatants suddenly remembered where they were.
Sam, meanwhile, had undergone a resurrection, scarcely noticing the unmasking of the knight. Sheer glory and power lifted him off his feet, drove the pain away, snapped the world back into perfect perspective.
Mizzamir. The Key.
A single motion drew and flung a dagger with lightning speed and perfect precision, without the burden of thought, only the being-ness of weapon and target.
The blade flew, spinning, and struck Mizzamir in the chest. The mage gasped and gripped at the dagger, blood staining white robes. Sam, having now bought some time, gripped the Key in his free hand and scrambled up the archway.
Fenwick’s archers cursed and swore as their light armor was invaded by swarms of stinging, clinging ants that rushed up their boots and into their breeches. Valerie fired spell after spell, her amulet burning cold against her skin as she strove to draw enough of its power to survive.
The burning light of an over-illuminated world singed her skin and blinded her.
Arcie crashed into her, knocking her aside to safety as one of Towser’s fireballs smashed into the place where she had stood. Arcie jumped up, flailing about in pain as his clothing burned yet again.
Robin, almost purple from blood on his gray hide, panted and gasped in exhaustion. His ears were pinned back in fighting fury, and a bleeding stub of a tail lashed; the long gray plume, severed by a blow from Tasmene’s sword, lay trampled in the bloody dirt and stone.
Sam slid down the needle and held fast as he tried to maneuver the Key into its slot without falling into the shimmering pit of the Darkgate and its silvery Lock field. Someone would have to get thrown in there for the Lock to open, but Sam didn’t feel like volunteering.
Just then that Sir Fenwick looked up, saw what Sam was doing, saw the staggering form of Mizzamir trying to wrest the dagger free. With a howl of pure rage Sir Fenwick threw at Sam the first thing he had to hand; the magical sword Truelight Slayer of Darkness.
A longsword was certainly not meant to be hurled, but Fenwick was driven by anger and power, and the magical sword knew to speed to its target like a bolt of vengeance.
Sam saw the spinning weapon, ducked his head behind the pillar, but misjudged, and there was a stab of pain and his grip fumbled. He wrapped his arms and legs as tight as he could around the end of the pillar. His left biceps seemed to have been chopped clean through, and blood was starting to fountain. The sword was stuck into a crack in the stone, humming in anger because it had not killed him.
He clutched the Key against his chest, and he clamped his gory arm into a fold of his tunic to keep the blood from spoiling his grip. He looked up to see Arch-Mage Mizzamir set down a bottle of magical healing potion and face him.
“Get down from there,” said the mage gently but firmly.
“Go to the Abyss,” hissed Sam, trying to work his way downward to where he could install the Key. The magical sword spat a shower of sparks down at the assassin.
“You are a brave man,” Mizzamir said. “Come down from there. Come join the Light. Goodness is the only path to happiness.”
Sam could hear Blackmail-or Sir Pryse the Hero- roaring in the background. The stalactite was already getting slippery, and the arteries and veins in his arm were spurting blood.
“Please, come over to the Light side,” urged the wizard, stealthily drawing forth spell components. “I don’t want you to get hurt ... Join the side of good and live in happiness..”
“Give it up, Mizzamir!” shouted Sir Pryse, hurling a Verdant warrior away with a slap of his magical shield.
“He’s stubborn, just like his father. Yes, just like you.”
“What did you say?” gasped the Arch-Mage in shock.
Even Sam looked up, wide-eyed, from his bloodstained perch.
“I should have thought it would be obvious,” growled the knight, never pausing in his relentless battle. He knew he had only a short while before the powerful enchantments woven into his armor gave out. “Look at him. Your hair, before it silvered from the War. Your eyes, your Elven blood refining human features. Your inherent magical ability. You know me, Mizzamir, as I know you, and what you’ve done. You know I’m not lying.”
Sam felt his jaw drop. The image of his mother’s dying face swam before him, her mind suddenly clear in approaching death, her eyes showing sanity and remembrance before they dimmed and dulled. Remembering pains and humiliation endured long in the past, that had left her confused and broken, trying to raise a bastard son in a cold world. Saw in that son’s features, even then, the face that had set her on the road to despair and death.
“But I ...” stammered Mizzamir, shocked. “She was ... No! Impossible!”
“And you confused her mind with your magic, so she wouldn’t spoil your reputation,” scoffed Sir Pryse. “That was all that ever mattered to you-your glory, your power, your image. And when you suffered a moment of weakness, you refused to pay the price for it.”
Mizzamir stared at Sam, and Sam stared back. Each now saw the truth behind the strange unease they felt when facing each other; the face that looked back was like a distorting mirror, each showing what the other wished never to be, but over the same blood and bone.
And Sam’s eyes widened. In the chaos of battle and the removal of Sam’s thrown dagger, the Arch-Mage’s white robes had gone somewhat askew, pulling down slightly from the left shoulder. Nestled against the pale almondcolored Elven skin, in the fragile hollow between neck and collarbone, was a familiar, pale brown, asymmetrical starburst birthmark.
-The voice of Sir Pryse the Hero boomed in the background.
“Almost a hundred and fifty years in a suit of magical darkened-armor gives a fellow plenty of time for thought, and I saw your features in that assassin’s face the moment I saw him. You gave him a life he didn’t ask for but with your blood he’s got the power to kill even you.”
Sam lunged suddenly, tearing his gaze away from the eyes of the mage, and shoved the Key into the hole in the rock. Anger over thirty years old burned in his soul, but he remembered his mission, and the quest he and his friends had risked their lives for.
The huge gemstone Key flashed in brilliant light, sending sparks coruscating along the Lock. There was a creaking, grating noise, as of magic under great stress.
All the Lock needed now was a life to open it, the ultimate sacrifice that would fulfil the conditions of the magic. Sam was convenient... but he had other business first.
“No!” shouted Mizzamir. He was a kindly wizard of Light, but he knew destiny when he saw it flashing in the eyes of a trained assassin hanging in front of him. Sam no longer looked foolish in his rainbow garb; his eyes burned with a light that was pure shadow.
Panicked, Mizzamir shouted a spell, fired. A lightning bolt tore through the air and crashed into the assassin, burning skin, boiling blood, searing flesh. Sam ignored it.
In chess, someone has to take the black pieces, he thought. Checkmate.
With his free hand, Sam wrenched the magical sword fr
ee of the stone above him. It burned in his grasp, searing his flesh in its anger at being touched, but he only held it an instant, then threw. And he had learned how to properly throw a weapon of that sort. It flashed in a shining, spinning arc. A blade, even a magical blade, is designed to kill. That is its ultimate function, for good or evil, it kills whom it is wielded against... like an assassin.
It scythed through the air, and struck, thrown harder and faster than any blade should have been, strong enough to slay even a Hero.
The Arch-Mage Mizzamir’s head flew off his staggering body, and rolled across the ground to come to a halt near Arcie’s feet. The Barigan gasped in shock as the dead face of the Hero gazed up at him in a twisted leer, blood drizzling.
Sam sagged, pain ripping through his body from the hole torn in his torso by Mizzamir’s lightning bolt. He was dying. His grip was slipping. Mizzamir was gone, Sam’s last job was finished. He felt himself pulling away from the needle of stone.
Sir Pryse saw Mizzamir fall, saw Sam sliding helplessly. He shook his noble head.
“The world has had enough of Heroes,” he said softly to himself. “I will not continue as the last.”
The tall armored knight rushed forward and threw himself headlong into the crackling light of the Lock, even as Sam’s grip failed. The knight reached the mesh of light an instant before the assassin, and the glowing screen burst into sparks that vanished, destroying themselves and the Hero with them. Sam shouted aloud as he fell, what he chose as his dying words, the last thing he had to say. Sparks flashed around him.
“Kaylana. I love you!”
The words struck like arrows into the Druid’s heart; she felt the truth of them as clearly as she felt the sudden snapping of the tension of the Balance, and the Dark Gate opened.
Sam was suddenly falling into darkness, wonderful, cool, deliciously dangerous darkness, darker than night, than death, blackness so deep it was full of shadows thick as cotton. So thick, so deep, like a great ocean of liquid onyx power that reached up a whirlwind of slashing claws. It turned his clothes back to their jet darkness and made his skin shiver. Darkness and dark magic ... The shadows were like cool water, diving into cool water. The darkness was full of rising shapes that grabbed for his falling body to rend and tear in the wild rush of freedom and didn’t even notice as they passed instead through dark empty air.
An explosion of night burst from the Darkgate, a rushing torrent of shadows and blackness and half-seen nightmare shapes. A burst of icy force sent the combatants tumbling like autumn leaves. The air was rent by the shrieking of a thousand fiends as they shot from their prison and dissipated in the light of the goodness-filled air. With them came the dark power, and the fabric of the world creaked and trembled as the pressure of light began to ease.
Shadows returned to perspective in a rush, and the sun fled from its out-of-place position in the night sky. Evil and darkness flowed into the world like fresh water. The plummet of the world into Light was halted, turned.
Slowly, the effects of evil power began to return. And still the flood of darkness continued.
Slowly, undead in the vaults of Putak-Azum and a thousand other crypts of legend raised their bony heads once more. The fox stalked in the woods, and killed, and the falcon dropped from the sky, and killed.
In the towns, men and women suddenly saw with eyes of reality, and some men would soon think ill of their fellows, fight in anger, or squabble, or take wealth for themselves, in accordance with human nature. Noblemen, suddenly shocked into realizing how lazy their soldiers had become, would soon begin stockpiling weapons against what the neighboring lords might be doing, and heroes suddenly looked up from their lazy retirement to think perhaps they were needed once more. Conflict, the driving, pounding force of life, whirred into action and existence once more.
As the world tilted slowly back to normal, the shapes flying out of the Darkgate kept their forms in shadowy substance as they fled back to their lairs. Shaggy, red-eyed werewolves, snapping kobolds, floating gomabar, snakefiends, shouting bandits and hobgoblins and strangeshaped creatures from the depths of night whirled in hideous shapes against the sky. A rush of wind sent thirteen huge dark dragons wheeling into the night on vast wings, and Lumathix spun away in terror, but the beasts merely turned and fled to the corners of the lands to spread themselves out once again in a balanced play of life and death, good and evil.
The warriors in the battle for the Darkgate fell down the smooth, vast slope of the roof of the still-dissolving Labyrinth, rolling and stumbling. Kaylana grabbed the Barigan and Robin scooped up Valerie, and they jumped onto the smooth plain of the roof on the opposite side and began to slide down at rapid speed. The Frozen Waste, Uttered with dead flowers, rushed up to meet them.
They hit the ground heavily and rolled to their feet.
Kaylana gripped her staff and once more transformed into a chestnut horse, while Robin hoisted a bleeding and exhausted Arcie onto his back. Valerie, at a nudge from the mare, climbed onto Kaylana’s back, and they galloped away from the white marble of the Labyrinth as it began to crash and crumble.
Fenwick and his men, landing on the other side, didn’t see them go. They rolled in the cracking of dying flowers, looked up into a night sky at the towering smoky column of released fiends. They panted, staggered to their feet, and muttered among themselves.
“Damn,” cursed Fenwick. He got to his feet, and looked around for his hat, his eyes stinging with rage. A gentle hand was laid on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Lord Tasmene standing nearby. Behind the warrior’s head, stars flickered with the drifting passage of evil beasts.
“You did the best you could, Fenny,” said the big warrior gently. “No one can say that isn’t good enough.”
Tasmene looked out across the land. It was dark now, but the stars were out, and a moon almost full. He knew dawn would come in due time, that despite the horror of the things they had seen, the battle was far from lost.
“I’m not happy about this either, but we did have over a century of purification of the world before this happened. It will be many, many years until darkness can threaten us as it did in the War. In the meantime ...” Fenwick looked up at his friend, and the big warrior smiled.
“Look on the bright side. At least we still have jobs. This world needs heroes again ... the minstrels will soon be singing your praises as never before.”
“And what of those villains? They must have escaped,” muttered the ranger, still not quite comforted.
“Our children’s children will curse their names,” said Tasmene cheerfully, “for bringing the darkness back. But in the meantime, let’s leave this part of my realm, before it becomes too bare to support us. We shall return to my castle, for a fine meal and singing.”
“You are right, old friend,” nodded Fenwick. He went to gather his troops for departure, his mind already working out plans to track down and destroy the creatures of evil that had been released. A good hunt, like he hadn’t had in a long time ... he’d need a new suit, and maybe a new hunting horn as well ... Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. A pity about the sword, though ... and Mizzamir ...
In a sparsely wooded valley in the foothills at the southeastern edge of the Waste, a small band of renegades, minus two, collapsed in the green cover and watched the dawn rise over the hills in gentle harmony with the night.
Arcie, his wounds healed by Kaylana’s strengthened magic, looked at the sun in silence, tears running down his small face. Poor old Sam. And all that time they’d been traveling with a Hero ... He’d never really known the knight, and still couldn’t believe what had happened, but the death of his lanky, insane friend hurt him deeply.
Sam had never asked for anything more than to live the way he was born to, in a world where he was needed.
Now that things were back in balance, there would be evil men as well as good men, darkness as well as light, and a whole variety of color and shades of person that he still couldn’t fit into Mizzami
r’s theory of good and evil.
In a way, Sam had been like the clothes he’d worn; all one color on the surface, pure evil at first glance ... but that shadow was supported and held together by a thousand other patches that made him what he was, more than an assassin, more than a man, but a sentient being, with opinions, desires, laughter and tears, three-dimensional and multicolored, a thousand shades of gray and a cluster of patches of rainbow covered unfairly by the blanket definition of evil.
Robin was stroking his harp gently. There were a lot of words to write ... maybe Fenwick and company would try to hunt him down, but he had lived through the salvation of a world, and he was going to tell his stories as he’d lived them. He looked back at the bandaged stub of his tail, the gray waterfall that had once been his pride and joy, gone. A good thing no other centaurs were here to see him like this. And there was still that strange song from the tree in his dream, going through his head. I would write and play music like that, he thought. I will.
Valerie looked up at the leaves on the tree, her hood pulled over her face once more in the dawning sunlight.
But there would be night again, blessed coolness. Someday, perhaps, revenge ... when she was stronger, and Fenwick weaker. She could wait. For now, imagining his anguish at the return of evil was enough. She had used her magic to color her robes and hair black once more.
Nightshade, glossy jet again, perched on a stump nearby and preened solemnly.
Far away, the last trickling scraps of darkness needed for the balancing flew free, and the Darkgate stilled in its silent, salt-wind-scoured hilltop. Then, suddenly, it vanished, rock and all. For like the Labyrinth and the Light Gate, the Darkgate was everywhere and nowhere, a common thread through all existence that now at last could run along correctly over the mesh of reality, adding its own steady balance to the force of the Lightgate. The last few grains of white marble from the Labyrinth vanished, and the great magical construction of the gods was no more.
Unseen, as the pressure eased, a million tiny holes appeared in the fabric of the universe, falling to earth like onyx gems of many sizes, gently sprinkling negative energy of darkness and evil, a slow welling that began throughout the world, countering the influx of Light from the Lightportals scattered across the lands. The balance stabilized as the new Darkportals glittered, in seas, in deserts, in fanners’ fields and mountain caves. Some would be found by young wizards, seeking a way of power without the scruples of the white robes; some would lie undiscovered, keeping the balance, weaving darkness as their diametric oppositions poured light.