Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  Candlemas tore his eyes away, grabbed his ladylove’s hand. “It’s nothing! A storm, an illusion!” He didn’t believe it himself, so barked louder, “Let’s go! We need to find your cousin before the mob does!”

  No one argued, but they had to tear Aquesita from staring at the sky, at the death knell of her beloved empire. Stumbling, running uphill, they fought the bucking earth and crashing debris to get to Karsus and his star chamber.

  * * * * *

  The quartet found paths that were clear, dodged fallen cornices and fences and statues and trees, and managed to scramble up polished stone steps by clinging to handholds and helping one another. The rioters were far behind, but still coming. The city tilted ever steeper. If it continued to turn at this rate, they’d be crawling on all fours.

  But the worst problem came because Karsus had outsmarted himself again.

  Their first inkling of trouble was a maid and butler screaming past them, bloody from scratches and slashes on heads and arms. Taking the lead, clinging to a wall, Sunbright slung Knucklebones behind to drag Harvester from its sheath, ready to battle whatever terrified the servants.

  What erupted around a paneled corner was a female apprentice no higher than Sunbright’s breastbone. The woman sported blood on her chin where she’d bitten her tongue and lips, other peoples’ blood on her fingernails hooked like claws. Her clothing was torn where she’d shredded it herself, and her eyes were wild, inhuman. She screamed like a cougar when she saw Sunbright, and raced to tear him apart with her bare hands.

  The barbarian acted instinctively and stabbed straight to keep her back. The madwoman ran her stomach onto his blade. If Sunbright hadn’t twisted the blade to hook deep in her liver, she would have slid along it and gouged out his eyes. As it was, she was champing bloodstained teeth and slashing with fingernails when the light faded from her glazed eyes. She fell heavily, and Sunbright had to stamp on her breast to rip Harvester loose. Blood gushed over his boot and ran in a river down the sloping floor.

  The barbarian’s voice shook as he asked, “What is this?”

  “Berserker spell,” echoed Candlemas. “Karsus said once that he’d always be protected by those who loved him best. I thought he was just airing his tongue, or joking. But he meant it. He must have enchanted all his mages so that if Karsus were attacked from any direction, they’d go fighting mad, assault whatever they saw until Karsus was safe again.”

  Sunbright wiped his forehead. He’d hated to kill the woman, innocent and deadly as a rabid rabbit.

  “But who attacks Karsus?”

  Candlemas glanced over his shoulder at the gray, roiling sky. The sky woman’s monumental features were hardening, growing more defined, despite a hearty wind kicking up. “Magic attacks him, for he’s taken on too much. That and, I suspect, a goddess.”

  They saved their breath for running. In the lead, Sunbright had to cut down half a dozen apprentices raving under the influence of the berserker spell. Killing them was no harder than cutting daisies, but it sickened the barbarian, so he found himself hesitating. Yet they were mad dog wild, and so they died, not knowing that Karsus, their beloved master, had betrayed them, used them as pawns.

  On they traveled, down sloping corridors, past smashed furniture that had staved in entire walls. Litter and glass splinters and wreckage rattled everywhere, some forming waist high barriers. They helped one another, watched out, and Sunbright killed another dozen apprentices until he was spattered with blood like smallpox.

  “How many damned apprentices did Karsus have?”

  “Ninety! Or nine hundred!” called back Candlemas.

  They knew the star chamber was near because of the heat.

  Waves gushed from the room, eye and mouth-drying heat like a blast furnace, until Sunbright felt he’d stumbled into another pocket of hell. But he didn’t understand the source until he saw what transpired within.

  Karsus was lit like a bonfire.

  Caught in some state between man and god, Karsus hung suspended above their heads. He’d grown perhaps twelve feet tall, but looked wider because his hair stuck straight out and his arms and legs were outflung. Skin, eyes, feet, robe, all shone white and silver like an illuminated mirror. He burned with an internal flame that would have melted lead.

  The workshop was a madhouse. The stone floor, scorched black in spots, tilted even worse here than the rest of the building, so steeply the heroes couldn’t have stood on it. Everything loose soared and whirled and spiraled around the room, including several mages killed by the sheer fury of the magic unleashed. A whistling roar drowned out sounds as jars, chairs, and tables, all ducked and wove in the air in some insane dance. Whirling books and objects and corpses caught fire if they spun too close to Karsus.

  But Karsus would soon be a corpse himself, it was obvious, for he burned his life away. The massive infusion of super heavy star magic raged inside him as if he’d swallowed molten gold. His eyes bugged, his tongue protruded, his cheeks were sunken, his fingers clawed the air, his toes curled, but he still fought for control. He shouted chant after chant, a rapid, arcane babble unlike anything they’d ever heard.

  Sunbright hung onto the doorjamb, took one look, and let Candlemas pass. “This task falls to you!” he shouted.

  The pudgy mage stared, said, “I don’t know what to do!”

  “What is Karry doing?” Aquesita sobbed, clinging to Candlemas’s sleeve. “What’s happening to him?”

  “I don’t know!” the mage hollered. “He’s sucked up immeasurable power, not only from the star but from the mythallars too! That’s why the city tilts! The magic generators that keep it aloft are robbed of energy! But he’s internalized all that magic and—I just don’t know! Is he trying to dispel it without losing all of it, so we won’t fall? Or return it to the star? Or is he forging ahead, trying to tame it and become a god?”

  “He can’t become a god!” Aquesita countered. “The gods wouldn’t allow it! Lady Mystryl herself fills the sky and frowns on us!”

  Candlemas scrubbed his bald head with a singed hand. He poured sweat that was instantly whisked away by searing heat. Desperately he tried to think what to do—if anything. Perhaps Karsus could dispel the power, channel it elsewhere, save enough to right the city. But if he opposed the gods, spat in Mystryl’s eye and demanded the room for a newcomer, who knew how the gods might retaliate?

  In the corridor, Knucklebones gave a yell and whipped out her elven knife. Another berserk apprentice raced around the corner, then tumbled in his stupefied, zombiefied trance. He rolled, bouncing painfully but not feeling it, then fetched up against a wall. Ignoring blood running into his eyes from a scalp wound, he snarled and swiped for Knucklebones. Latching onto Sunbright’s belt with one hand, the thief neatly speared the mad apprentice’s throat. He fell and tumbled on down the slanted flagstones like a discarded doll.

  But the barbarian barked an alert, for more crazed mages charged, a dozen or more, hands like claws and jaws champing. Shifting Harvester, he tried to find a foothold. Fighting madmen in a tilting city was something new, but maybe mountain fighting tactics would work. He shunted Knucklebones aside so he could block the doorway with his greater bulk. The more nimble thief had to move out into the corridor and cling to flagstones with bare toes as best she could. Over his shoulder Sunbright bellowed, “Candlemas, do something!”

  Candlemas and Aquesita watched Karsus burn like a flare while shouting defiance into the teeth of the wind. They were boxed behind, yet to enter the room would crisp them like stepping into a blast furnace. Candlemas croaked, “I don’t know—Sita, I’m sorry.”

  A whirling parchment caught Candlemas’s eye, and he stabbed for it. He smoothed the wrinkled folds. It was his scroll, the time travel spell, dropped as litter when he pushed Karsus aside. That event seemed to have happened ages ago.

  A blessing, for he finally knew what to do. “Sita! This scroll! I fashioned it! It can return us—Sunbright and I—to our own time! I can take you too, if you
want to go!”

  The plump woman stared, and Candlemas’s heart plunged into his stomach. Clearly the concept was alien to her. To leave the empire, family and friends, journey to another time and place with a man she barely knew. But he saw the noble lines in her face tighten as she debated, sifted the notion in her mind. Despairing, he guessed her answer before she asked, “What about Karsus?”

  “I can’t take him with us.” Candlemas had to shout above the whistling roar, but his voice sounded like a mouse squeak. “Just you.”

  “Candy …” said the woman. “I … I love you. Truly. But I have obligations. To my family … and the empire.”

  “The empire is going to die!” Candlemas shouted in desperation. “This is the end of the end! You said so yourself!”

  “Not if Karsus succeeds!” She gazed at her cousin, who shouted threats at the ceiling as he floated higher. “He will ascend to godhood and save the city! Save the empire! He’s the greatest mage …”

  Candlemas only stared, unsure if his lover was trying to convince him, or herself. Then her words were lost as the building’s ceiling blew off.

  Tons of stone, slate, timber beams, granite, carved cornices, and other elements exploded upward like wheat chaff. Not a speck of dust rained in the roofless room. High up, yet almost close enough to touch, frowned the cloud face of Lady Mystryl, Controller of the Weave, the stuff of all magics. And facing her, still shouting, was the presumptuous mage who would steal her power, usurp her place, walk into the firmament and take the throne of the gods themselves.

  The cloud face was not pleased.

  The corridor had become a slaughterhouse. Seconds before, Sunbright had killed three berserkers in quick succession. With one hip propped on the door jamb, he stabbed the first one straight through the belly, didn’t even hurl the body aside before twisting his thick wrists and jabbing a madwoman from behind to pierce her liver. Despite the sword protruding through his guts, the mage in his face still clawed feebly. The barbarian had to risk his footing by stamping a boot against the man’s thigh and wrenching Harvester free. He only slid the gory blade loose a second before yet another apprentice charged from the side, and died with a sidelong hurl of Harvester’s heavy tip.

  Knucklebones had it easier, for the ensorcelled apprentices mindlessly sought to protect Karsus. More kept rushing into the corridor from all over the castle, drawn by their master’s will. And all of them charged Sunbright, who stood between them and their master. Passed by, the thief could slash her elven knife across hamstrings and drop berserkers like puppets. Yet once she attacked them, they retaliated, and she was forced to slice their throats as they grabbed wildly for her. One dying berserker clutched at her naked blade, and it fetched up in bone, so she resorted to battering with her brass knuckles. A wallop to the forehead would knock them back and down, or else a smash to the bridge of the nose set them gargling blood, drowning as it filled their lungs. Yet more and more arrived, until she and Sunbright were surrounded by a sea of waving arms and clashing teeth, as if they’d fallen into a snake pit.

  Then the ceiling had blown off. Plaster exploded in clouds, lathes and splinters whirled like jagged knives, a beam thundered down and crushed five mages like mice. Knucklebones could barely see for blood and dust, but she heard Sunbright calling her name, clearly worried. That he cared sent an odd thrill through her bosom, even though she was so tired she could have collapsed and slept on the debris and bodies.

  With gods about to clash overhead, this place was doomed. Candlemas knew they must go. With only one way out, with no time for arguing, he yelled, “Sita, you’ll have to go with us! Sunbright, grab Knucklebones and hang close! I’ll read!”

  Hurriedly, Candlemas looked over the smeary lines to familiarize himself with the spell, for he’d only get one chance to read it aloud. The lines would disappear as pronounced, and botching it, or halting halfway, would halt the spell, with no second chance. He couldn’t get any closer to the star, thirty feet away, without shriveling. He only hoped the crazy magic washing the room didn’t disrupt his spell.

  Glancing back at Sunbright, yelling for Knucklebones, and sucking a deep breath, he grabbed Aquesita’s hand. But the noblewoman jerked away. “You can’t enchant here! Not now! You’ll steal the power Karry needs! You can’t—Wait! There! Feel it?”

  They’d braced their backs in the doorway to keep from tumbling into the hot, whirling room, but now, slowly, like a whale surfacing under a boat, the floor tilted and came upright. Within a minute, the room had stabilized, no longer shuddering.

  Sunbright spat dust and blood, slung his sword one more time to behead a mad apprentice, called again for Knucklebones. Bodies writhed all around, some trapped under debris, some crawling to reach him. Blood powdered white ran across the floor under his moosehide boots, making the tilted footing even more treacherous. Bracing his back on the doorway, he planted a boot against the beam to shift it lest it roll back on him. Knucklebones, dirty as an alley rat, watched both ways to see if more berserkers came running. Then, flicking her hair from her face, snorting dust, she clambered over the wreckage and grabbed Sunbright’s brawny hand.

  “I don’t know if more will come!”

  The barbarian glanced into the room over a cowering Candlemas and Aquesita.

  “They won’t have anyone to protect in a moment!” Sunbright yelled, “Look!”

  Chanting, Karsus floated higher, grew larger, until he hovered above the high, sundered walls. He was almost a god. With a few more steps he’d leave humanity behind.

  Karsus, and the star behind him, began to pulse with white-hot light. Lightning sizzled and crackled around his frame, and he grew bigger than ever, until he was three times the height of a man, so bloated with magic he must have weighed thousands of pounds. His voice was no longer a wheezy whine, but a resounding boom like rolling thunder. He drew magic from the star until even his toes sparkled, and he seemed to stand on a cloud of his own making, a cloud of star energy.

  Above, the cloud face of Lady Mystryl retreated. Even she couldn’t withstand the driving force of the star power Karsus controlled. He flared like a sun of blistering magic, and Mystryl faded back, withdrew, like thunderclouds pushed by a hurricane. Along the horizon, sunlight leaked and cast long shadows across her cloudy face. Karsus controlled the sky, moved the elements, stole the power of a weather god, like Selûne, or Shar, or the Earthmother—or Mystryl herself

  “See!” Aquesita’s cheeks were wet as she cried out, “See? He’s saved the city! Everything will be all right! You needn’t leave us, Candlemas!”

  The pudgy mage doubted that. A world ruled by a god like Karsus would be a dangerous, messy place to live. The new god’s capricious whims would make puppets and playthings of people, turn the world into a toy. Secretly, Candlemas sided with Mystryl, but even the Mother of All Magic had retreated before the former human, Karsus the Mighty, the All-High. Karsus the God.

  And who knew but that this god, mounting into the sky, wouldn’t let his former city drop away from his feet?

  Then he jerked, for Aquesita screamed.

  The room suddenly swarmed with tornados.

  In an eyeblink, as if a nest of giant wasps had been smashed, tornado beings spun around the room, a dozen or more. They were impossible to see clearly, for they rotated like buzzing tops, spinning cones of gray stone except for diamond-tipped tails that winked with a thousand facets in the meager daylight.

  The mad scene grew crazier as the tornados bobbed and weaved and spun. Then, before the watchers’ eyes had barely focused, the Phaerimm bounced into the air and converged on Karsus.

  The huge glowing mage shrieked once, a word Candlemas and Sunbright and Knucklebones and Aquesita finally understood: “My enemies!”

  Chapter 22

  Shrieking, Karsus flung out his arms and fired spells at random to protect himself. Black bolts blew holes in the walls. Frost seared floating corpses and extinguished flaming books. Pulses of rainbow light threw wild col
ors over spinning splinters of wood. Water jets filled the air with steam and rain.

  At the same time, wrenched apart by the planar stress of passing from their dimension into the dimension of humans, four of the twelve Phaerimm exploded. Tremendous, punishing blasts, and chunks of rock-like bodies gouged craters in the stone floors, ripped holes in walls, and shattered the furniture that still whirled and fluttered around the room like demented birds.

  Candlemas stood dry-mouthed, unable to believe the raw power he saw displayed. Karsus was close to becoming a god, and not a minor deity, either, but a god who could rule a world for millennia. Yet this ongoing, disastrous battle between godling, goddess, and ancient evil couldn’t last. Someone had to win, and live, and someone to lose, and die.

  Whatever the outcome, it was no safe place for mortals.

  Candlemas barely ducked before a hunk of rocky flesh slammed the corridor wall, shattering plaster into crumbles and dust. Wildly, the mage grabbed Aquesita, Sunbright, and Knucklebones and pulled them close. The fighters had staved off the berserkers, now reduced to a gory pile in the hallway. They hunkered close to the mage, the source of their only salvation. For with the Phaerimm attack, Karsus had been distracted, and the city’s floor was tilting once more.

  Candlemas yelled, “Hang on to me! I’ll only have one chance to read this spell!”

  Aquesita stared into the room at her battling cousin, the almost god. “I don’t—”

  “You must!” The mage screamed and clutched her hand. In a loud, clear, shaking voice, he began to read, enchanted words vanishing as he passed them by, magic crackling in the wrinkled paper. “Realms of fire! Clouds of air! Help us mount the silver stair!”

  Despite the blistering defense, the animate tornados crashed into Karsus from all sides. Magical beings themselves, they easily penetrated his personal shields, and stone-like bodies brutally crushed his bones and smashed flesh. Flailing, Karsus fell heavily, half on, half off a workshop table. The Phaerimm kept after him, driving close to sting with their tails, batter with spinning bodies, and bite with granite-edged mouths.