by Ron Collins
Garrick stood straight to catch his breath.
He glanced at the city ahead. He was close enough to see it was made of crystalline structures and awkward architectures that were like no city he had ever seen before. Then he looked at the corpse below, and finally at the garish purple and green sky above.
What was this place?
He withdrew the blade from the creature and felt the weapon sing. Power surged inside it. The blade twisted and twined as magic healed the wound at his side. He gritted his teeth until the pain faded, then he examined the sword. Though he still could not read them, the runes felt familiar.
It was Braxidane’s blade.
That much was certain. And it was somehow tied to the plane of magic. He held the sword and set a gate that fell into place.
Yes.
He was right.
This plane was somehow blocked from Talin’s flow, but the sword bypassed that and gave him a link. Garrick knew Braxidane better than to assume he would play fair and proper, though. The question now was to determine what game the planewalker was playing.
“What have you done, Braxidane?” he said to the wind. “Where have you taken me?”
The column of smoke still rose over the city.
A streak of lighting flashed from within, and a beacon of light encircled him with a mustard-yellow intensity. Ghostly shapes appeared on the surrounding rocks, solidifying to beings that looked like over-large men, each similarly dressed in cross-banded pants and billowing shirts of purple and brown. Garrick’s hunger rose then, firm and strong, and he knew without counting that they numbered twenty.
“Who are you?” the man closest to Garrick said.
He was a giant figure, maybe half again taller than Garrick, and seeming taller still as he stood on a boulder that was already above Garrick’s eye level. A ragged cape of animal hide draped over his shoulder and whumped like a sail in the breeze. He wore a helmet made of curved bone. But what struck Garrick most was that the man had three eyes, set in a triangle on his forehead, the pupils glittering like amethyst.
“My name is Garrick.”
“You’re a wizard.”
“What of it?”
The man waved a hand, and each of the twenty spoke magic.
Garrick pulled life force up in response.
Clouds of black and crimson closed in from above.
Garrick reached to his hunger and took a life.
The voices of the remaining mages combined, their magic stronger together than it had been apart. The air turned sour. He reached out to harvest more life force, grasping his sword and feeling the heat of runes flaring as he set gates and funneled bursts of magic into the fray.
Mages died.
Blackness swirled inside him. But it was not enough. His magic was slow here, and he couldn’t stop the combined power of the three-eyed mages.
The air thickened with their presence, and Garrick fell to his knees under the onslaught, feeling the pressure of their sorcery with a weight like molten steel.
The last thing he remembered was the ground rushing at him.
Chapter 11
Chains bit into Garrick’s wrists. His knees were pressed into the floor, and hard stone dug into the small of his back. His elbows were hyperextended and stiff from having hung unconscious for an excruciatingly long time.
His head lolled forward, his shoulders twisted back. His feet were bare and numb, and his shirt had been removed, allowing the sweat to trickle down his back and chest in tingling rivulets of torture. His hair hung over his face like a veil, dirty and matted. A trail of spittle dribbled from his slack jaw.
As he came to his senses, Garrick tried to understand what was happening. He peered through blurred vision and dim lighting to see a hall that was vast and vaguely rectangular. People milled around him as if he was at a bazaar. The air was stifling with the heat of human bodies.
What was Braxidane doing? Why was he meddling again?
He twisted in his shackles, and his hunger gave a sluggish churn, its movement labored like a fish swimming through stew. He looked for his sword.
“T’aint here.”
The huge, three-eyed man he had met in the field of boulders sat on a stool a distance away, a block of wood in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
“What’s that?” Garrick said.
“Your weapon. T’aint here.”
Garrick flexed his muscles, but chains still held his hands above his head. He could not bring his ankles together. He could stand, though. The chains clanked as he did so. The rush of blood made his feet feel like he was standing on briars.
“Where am I?” Garrick finally said.
The big man chuckled. The eye in the middle of his forehead glanced out over the crowd.
Garrick now recognized this massive hall of chaos for the marketplace it most certainly was.
Buyers milled about, examining men and women—prisoners chained to the wall or suspended from the ceiling in iron cages. Some of them slept. Others yelled, cursed, or groaned in various stages of lucidity. Their voices knit themselves into a steady blanket of noise that echoed across the expanse.
“This one is interesting,” a female voice said, stopping before him.
She was smaller than the giant, and she had only two eyes, both of which were brown and both of which sized him up as if he were a cabbage.
“He’s too small,” said her partner, another woman, younger. “Won’t last a cycle in the field.”
The woman gave a snort and laid her hand on Garrick’s wiry bicep. “I wasn’t thinking about using him in the field.”
“You’re disgusting, Matla.”
“He’s not for sale, anyway,” the three-eyed mage said. “I brought him here specifically for Lord Karasacti.”
The woman frowned, but moved on.
A new buzz came from the floor, and Garrick’s hunger twisted like a netted shark. A curtain of people parted, leaving a clear view of a man in blue robes being escorted by two others—a man and a woman in robes of lighter blue. A metallic jangle accompanied their stride, growing sharper as they came nearer. The heavy smell of burnt clove rolled over Garrick when they stopped before him.
Garrick’s captor stood.
“It is good to see you, again, Lord Karasacti,” he said.
“Is this the one?” the man replied.
“It is.”
The lord stepped forward, all three of his gray eyes scrutinizing Garrick. He was not as large as Garrick’s captor, but was obviously of similar species.
From this close, the man’s robe seemed to move of its own accord, shimmering with light, streaks of darkness floating in its weave. An invisible fist seemed to reach out from the robe, as if to wrap its fingers around Garrick’s heart, but it retreated before making contact, sliding back into the fabric as if it were pulled by the tides.
The man wrinkled his nose.
“He smells something awful.”
“No worse than when I captured him, Lord.”
The man grunted.
“Who are you?” Lord Karasacti asked Garrick.
“What does it matter?” Garrick replied.
The back of Karasacti’s hand hit Garrick’s jaw before he saw it. The power of the blow sent him crashing to the wall, chains rattling. The smell of cloves grew to a gagging force, and the movement of colors in the robe melded themselves into a single pattern that drew the darkness inside Garrick.
“I asked you a question,” the man said.
“Garrick,” he muttered, checking for broken teeth. “My name is Garrick.”
“This is a safe place to live, Garrick. Do you understand?”
“So far, I would argue with that claim.”
He had just enough time to set his jaw before the next blow exploded inside his head and a bloody taste filled his mouth.
The odor of burning cloves intensified. He recognized it as the smell of the lord’s magic, like the citric lemon of a Lectodinian’s spell or the blood-ta
int of a Koradictine’s.
Garrick reached for his own link, but again found nothing. He sensed this mage before him, though. He felt his block and realized at the same time that Karasacti had also sensed his quest for a link.
The back of the mage’s hand crashed against his head once again. Garrick’s vision swam.
“Lord Karasacti!” the man who had captured him said.
The Lord whirled. “No one casts magic on this plane without my consent.”
The hall grew quiet.
Karasacti turned back to Garrick, strolling the perimeter of his vision like a gladiator circling his opponent.
“How?” was all Garrick could manage.
“I own all the links,” Karasacti said.
His robe pulsed with color.
“This man’s magic killed eight men, sir,” the captor said. “I don’t understand how he could do so without—”
Karasacti twisted his hand, and the words died wetly in the man’s throat.
“I said, no one casts magic on this plane without my consent.”
Karasacti dropped his hand and returned to face Garrick. The captor drew a deep, gasping breath as he receded into the background.
“The punishment for unapproved use is quite specific.”
The gathering pressed inward. Garrick could taste their interest. Life force swirled within him. He sensed constraint from Karasacti, felt boundaries that held lives in check. The man told the truth. This plane was safe, as long as the citizens played by his rule. But Garrick’s dark energy felt more than that. He felt a young boy somewhere in their audience, watching with expectation, full of fear inside a tough outer shell—would the lord discover his tryst with ReAnne, the love of his heart who had been promised to another? An older man steeled himself from reacting. His son had been killed for something Karasacti had claimed was a crime. A woman held her daughter in her arms. Another cradled a still unborn baby in her womb.
Garrick sensed it all, each piece falling into its place. Karasacti held the plans for each of them, and each of them would live according to his plans.
The force inside him wanted to reach out, wanted to fill each ache with its healing.
Why was he here?
Braxidane had placed him in this desolate plane and given him a sword that was a sure mark of magic, certain to draw the lord’s attention. Had it been merely a beacon to call Karasacti to him? Did Braxidane intend him to meet his doom here on this desolate plane?
The woman who escorted Karasacti gazed at Garrick, her brow knitting.
It was her unborn child Garrick felt.
Though she did not yet show it, she knew she carried the lord’s babe. She was consumed with a bittersweet worry that the child be perfect and beautiful and free to live its own life, and she held a deep fear caused by the violent edge of Karasacti’s demeanor.
Garrick’s hand moved toward her, his fingers cupping themselves. His chain clanked when his arm reached the length of its slack. His life force pooled in his hand, feeling for her child. It was a girl, a strong girl. Garrick looked at her and smiled. This is why Braxidane had put him here. The child. Garrick could feel her unborn god-touch already.
“It will be all right,” he said to the woman.
All three of her eyes opened wider.
“Stop it!” Karasacti spread his arms and spoke a language Garrick had never heard. The aura of magic rose. The odor of cloves became cloying.
Garrick gathered the life force that remained inside him as Karasacti finished his chant.
“No!” The woman screamed as she raced toward Karasacti, magic of her own flickering its green fire between her fingers.
It was not her magic she wielded, though. The source of her power lay instead in the child she carried.
She crashed into Karasacti, fouling the lord’s spell.
He turned to her, rage etched in his cheeks.
“This man can help us,” she whimpered.
Karasacti’s spell was a black bolt that burned a tight hole high through the woman’s chest, continuing through her and into the crowd, cutting men and women down everywhere it touched.
The woman fell to the floor, writhing in pain, two of her eyes clenched shut, the third wide with panic. “Help me,” she moaned, turning that third eye to gaze at Garrick.
Garrick cast his own bolt of what little life force he had left, but Karasacti brushed it away to explode in a shower of sparks against the far wall. Emptied, Garrick’s hunger felt every soul in the marketplace.
The life forces of the dead hung ghostlike in the air.
Lord Karasacti’s eyes blazed. He opened a link to the plane of magic, and Garrick felt energy channel through him.
Garrick hated this man, he realized.
Karasacti was a wizard who bought and traded people without care, a man who pressed his will throughout a plane at any cost. Garrick had known men like this as he grew up, barons and dukes and men who ran businesses as if they were somehow above the common weal. It was this kind of man who had worn his mother down to the ragged woman she became. It was this kind of man who had left him unbound and drifting until Alistair had made him a home.
Garrick would destroy this man.
So resolved, he stood firmly, chained to the wall with his arms outstretched and his feet planted. He let go his restraint, and he called forth a frothing river of every ounce of life force he had left in him, every scrap, every ort and speck and nit and pinch and peck until there was nothing left but vacuum, and then he found more. It poured from his fingertips in a single torrent, flowing toward Lord Karasacti in a brilliant burst of pure power.
Karasacti cast black flames at Garrick, and the two magics crashed like rams, exploding in a blinding flash that froze the room.
A scream filled the hall, and voices rose.
Then it was over.
Karasacti stood, panting with his exertion, his robe now disheveled, dirty and lined with grime, its pattern dull and languid. But he was alive and still strong. He ran a hand over his brow, and gave Garrick a smug smile of satisfaction.
“Is that all you have?”
Garrick hung limp and lifeless from his restraints, his life force expended, his head lolling forward, his eyes bloated and bloodshot. “No,” Garrick said, bringing his hunger forward. “That is not all I have.”
Disgust rose through the depths of his consciousness, a cold snake of mist and smoke. It was a dagger, a stiletto, a chilled, poisonous cloud of desire that Garrick let loose to wind its way through the hall, stretching, yearning, and wrapping itself around men and women, looping its foggy fingers around their necks and draining vapor into their mouths and through their noses and down, down, deep into the very beings of their lives.
A woman cursed.
A man screamed.
And, as Garrick breathed their energy in, he stood strong in his chains, pulling lives from their shells, grabbing power and funneling it into the limitless pit of his hunger. He pulled on his chains and ripped the cleats from their moorings, the shackles hanging from his wrists and ankles to clang on the rough stone floor as he strode forward.
Karasacti cowered now, his robe pulsing crimson in tandem with the rise of Garrick’s hunger.
Garrick felt the robe as it fought to clamp his power, and suddenly he realized this robe was what gave Karasacti control of all magic across the plane.
“Who are you?” Karasacti said, holding his hand up against Garrick’s progress.
“Braxidane placed me here.”
“I should have known.”
The robe flared with a prismatic river of colors that whirled as if they had been suddenly freed.
Garrick’s hunger became a thing of its own then, drinking more lives and flowing their power into his being. Karasacti groaned, seeing his doom. Garrick nearly broke, then. He nearly pulled back to spare this man who may well have done nothing wrong beyond becoming corrupted by a power born for the sole purpose of corruption itself.
And he could
have done it, too.
He had controlled this magic before.
But the voice of the woman came to him, whimpering. She was still alive. The baby inside her still grew. Garrick saw the charred hole glistening from high up in her chest and he felt the need for justice stronger than he felt Karasacti’s pain.
His hunger rose with self-righteous conviction. He reached out a hand, and Karasacti’s body disintegrated into a pile of blackened mire, only his robe remaining behind, lying in a mound of the dead man’s ash. With a final breath, Garrick added the mage’s life force to those that already filled him, then he braced himself and brought his hunger into control.
He had succeeded.
Karasacti’s magic was his to own.
Garrick watched the bedlam that reigned before him. Men and women screamed and raced to get out of the hall. Powerful smells of magic mixed themselves into the sickening mass. The people here would revolt soon. They would learn Karasacti was dead, and then things would change in ways he could not predict.
His gaze finally took in the woman, lying on her back, her eyes wide, her breathing coming in panicked gasps. Her skin was clammy and slick with sweat.
“My baby,” she whispered to no one. “My baby.”
Life force roiled within him, and Garrick smiled.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said as he put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right.”
Chapter 12
“With all due respect, Lord Ellesadil,” Darien said. “Garrick has gone missing and you’re seriously considering the idea of granting a conference to the High Superior of the Koradictine order?”
Ellesadil, Lord of Dorfort, looked up from his desk with his quill in mid-air. The letter he had been composing—a response to the Koradictine proposal received earlier that morning—was unfinished on the desk top. A large opal gleamed from one finger, and a gold ring with the seal of the city embossed upon it glittered from another. Ellesadil was just past the midpoint of his life, yet his body was still trim, his hair just now streaking gray, and his eyes still full of youthful energy. He wore a white silk shirt from the southern marshlands that made his skin appear even more hale.