The Last of the Renshai

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “I thought you were going to kill Rache.” Carcophan did not sit, preferring a position of superiority to his champion.

  Siderin did not move. “I commanded this thing.”

  “And?”

  “And I thought my assassins had killed him.”

  “He killed your assassins.”

  Siderin frowned. “He’s crippled.”

  “A crippled Renshai is still a Renshai.”

  Siderin’s features tightened into a scowl, but he did not look away. “He’s reckless, overconfident, and lame. He’ll die in the war.”

  Carcophan’s grimace matched his champion’s, and he continued to stare. “If you couldn’t kill him before the war, what makes you so sure you can do it when you have soldiers on both sides distracting you?”

  Siderin rose, using the movement as an excuse to break the gaze-lock. He met the Southern Wizard’s question with one equally snide. “If you find this task so important, why did you wait eight months to tell me my assassins had failed?”

  Carcophan relished his tiny triumph of will. “I’m a Wizard, not your nanny. Eight months to me is the time between sunset and midnight. I have other, more important duties than worrying about whether your scouts are doing their jobs.” Even as he spoke the words, Carcophan realized how unfair they were. Likely, the delay did not come of shirking, but of good intention and geographical difficulties. News between the East and West traveled slowly, if at all, and the sending of messages might lose the Eastern army the surprise it required for certain victory. No doubt, the cultists had either withheld information, hoping to correct their mistake before reporting back to Siderin, or lost their messenger en route.

  Siderin drew his sword into his lap, tracing the shiny tapering near the edge with a finger. “The Leukenyans were trained as priests and spies, not soldiers. Those few well-skilled in assassination may have underestimated Rache. But I won’t. And I’ll see to it my warriors don’t either.” He waved at the masses of campsites surrounding his own, nearly ten thousand men in all.

  Carcophan frowned, unsatisfied. So far, the Western Wizard had taken no hand in fulfilling his own prophecy or opposing Carcophan’s plans. Yet the Southern Wizard dared not simply ignore the fact that, despite all likelihood, Rache still lived. “Rache may be able to best even your skill.”

  Siderin snorted. “I doubt it.” He balanced the sword on his thighs but kept his hands on its grip as he brazenly met Carcophan’s stare again. “If you’re so concerned, do something. Surely, a Wizard could find a magical object to more than equal the odds between me and a legless Renshai. If, as you claim, the Southern Wizards have plotted this war for millennia, I should think you would want to help.”

  Though phrased as a statement, Siderin’s request came through clearly. Magical powders, gems, and weapons were the realm of quackery; the Cardinal Wizards used magic in the form of spells, rarely daring to endow items with power. Even in its simplest form, magic was savagely unpredictable, the stuff of demons. To infuse it into an inanimate object always cost the Wizard dearly in strength, pain, and power. Once created, the piece rarely worked within the intentions and control of the Wizard. Except for the Swords of Power.

  Carcophan plucked at his chin, again trapped into a course of action he had considered and rejected several times before. At the beginning of time, after Odin had created the Wizards, he gave the Northern and Southern Wizards the knowledge to magic one Power Sword apiece and the Eastern and Western Wizards to craft one Sword between them. It was not until after Ristoril the White and Morshoch the Black were fashioned and in the hands of their respective good and evil champions that the Western Wizard uncovered and announced his prophecy:

  “A Sword of Gray, a Sword of White,

  A Sword of Black and chill as night.

  Each one forged, its craftsman a mage;

  The three blades together shall close the age.

  When their oath of peace the Wizards forsake,

  Their own destruction they undertake

  Only these Swords, their craftsmen can slay.

  Each Sword shall be blooded the same rueful day.

  When that fateful time comes, the Wolf’s Age has begun:

  Hati swallows the moon, and Skoll tears up the sun.”

  Translated and appropriately embellished, the prophecy indicated that when all three swords existed in the world of men, wielded simultaneously by Wizards’ champions, the destruction of the world, including men, the Wizards, and all but a handful of the gods would ensue. For the sake of safety, the White and Black Swords had been banished to the Chaos-world of demons. In the past, Southern and Northern Wizards had recalled their weapons for various champions; with the Gray Sword still not forged, the danger seemed minimal. But with the Westlands menaced, the Eastern and Western Wizards might believe their situation desperate enough to craft the sword that would be called Harval.

  Even so, Carcophan knew the danger was limited. Currently unmenaced, the Northern Sorceress, Trilless, had no reason to call for the White Sword. Still, there was no way for Carcophan to be certain. Their purposes at odds, the Wizards did not socialize; even the Eastern and Western Wizards, who shared the burden of keeping morality balanced, worked mostly independently. The Wizards would read one another’s minds, but such an intrusion without an invitation went against all propriety as well as their vows.

  Carcophan studied his champion in the eerie, flickering shadows cast by the campfire. Siderin’s craggy features revealed nothing, not even curiosity at Carcophan’s delay. The king’s flat, dark eyes watched him without a sparkle, like one of the reptiles that were Carcophan’s minions in the same way land creatures bonded with the Eastern Wizard, birds with the Western Wizard, and sea creatures followed Trilless. The Swords of Power can injure and kill even the Cardinal Wizards. Siderin is difficult enough to control. To put such a weapon in his hands would be foolish.

  Accustomed to Carcophan’s manner, Siderin lapsed into his own thoughts, eyes distant and chin cupped in his hands.

  As he had so many times before, Carcophan discarded the idea of retrieving Morshoch for Siderin. Seeking a substitute, he pressed a hand into his pocket, and his fingers brushed a vial he had nearly forgotten. “I do have something that might help.” He retrieved the object. Warm from his body heat, the rounded surface fit easily into the curvature of his fingers. Opening his hand, he displayed the vial.

  Siderin’s glance came up slowly. He regarded the vial but made no move to take it. “What’s this?”

  “Poison.” Carcophan rested a foot on Siderin’s log seat. “Extracted from the most deadly serpent in existence, a colorful ribbon from the forests on the northern part of the Western Plains. A few drops in the blood is all it would take.”

  Siderin’s lips twitched into a crooked frown.

  Carcophan guessed Siderin’s thoughts. Poisoned weapons could prove as dangerous to a general’s own troops as the enemy’s; accidental spills, vials crushed during battle, and wild sweeps that nicked the wielder or his companions could result in more casualties for Siderin than the enemy. And the time spent picking even the abundant mushrooms that dotted Eastern fields would offset any advantage their toxin could give his soldiers in battle. But this was a single container in the general’s own possession. “It’s effective, but slow and excruciatingly painful. It destroys the body not the mind.”

  Siderin’s lopsided expression turned into a grin. He pinched the vial between his thumb and forefinger, but Carcophan closed his hand around the base before Siderin pulled it free.

  “Be careful with it. It’s deadly but not magical. It doesn’t know Renshai blood from anyone else’s. Use it wisely.” Carcophan released his hold.

  The vial seemed to disappear into Siderin’s powerful fist. “I’ll take care of Rache.”

  Carcophan nodded agreement. His time to leave had come, but he hesitated, aware this might be his last chance to speak with his champion before the end of the war. There was nothing left to say. A t
housand times, Wizard and man had traced the route around the Great Frenum Mountains to the sandy wasteland of the Western Plains and through the passes of the Southern Weathered chain. With any luck at all, they would hit the Trading City of Pudar by surprise, while the Eastern army was at its strongest. Without the Western Wizard to warn and muster a defense, the battle would take place at the city gates of Pudar. Once the largest city of the West fell, the remainder of the Westlands would put up little resistance.

  Still, the significance of prophecies struck too hard for Carcophan to banish his concerns about the last full-blooded Renshai. “Poison or not, it would still be better to destroy Rache before the war.” Almost as soon as he spoke the words, Carcophan realized his mistake. To antagonize his general just before taking his leave might not be prudent.

  But, perhaps mellowed by the thought of launching the war, Siderin took Carcophan’s advice in stride. “Didn’t you say some time ago that Rache was committed to rescuing some girl?”

  “Santagithi’s daughter, Mitrian. Yes.” Carcophan did not follow the sudden turn in the conversation.

  “So if she was menaced, Rache would be obligated to rescue her, even if it meant missing the war or placing himself in an enemy’s temple.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Siderin’s grin broadened. “I’ll take care of Rache,” he repeated with such conviction that Carcophan lost all doubt about Siderin’s commitment.

  “Yes,” the Wizard said. “I believe you will.”

  * * *

  The human scurry and bustle perpetually surrounding Pudar in daylight came into view long before the stone walls and bronze gates that had become so familiar to Arduwyn. At the edge of the forest, he drew his donkey to a stop, waiting for his companions to catch up, not wanting to take the final step from the safety of the trees to the field between it and the city gates. The urge to see Bel again was strong; the necessities and emotions that might accompany that meeting frightened him. What if Bel told Kantar about our affair, and he’s spending his last months in misery? What if the sight of me sends him into a rage . . . or kills him? What if Bel never wants to see me again?

  Arduwyn shivered as his companions drew up beside him. He knew he could handle Kantar. The two men had been friends too long and gone through too much together for Kantar not to forgive. Emotional ties and depth of feeling only slightly curbed Arduwyn’s verbal agility. But Bel was another matter. During the last eight months spent hunting and tracking Rache through the woodlands, Arduwyn had mourned his best friend’s imminent death and slowly came to terms with it. Yet, in the same way he used the forest sojourn as time to meditate over Kantar, he had used its distractions to avoid the topic of Bel. For reasons Arduwyn could not explain, her reaction to him meant more than anything else ever had. He had traveled all the way across the Westlands to arrive at Pudar. Now, a few dozen strides from the gates, he stood at edge of the woodlands unable to take to those final steps.

  Apparently recognizing Arduwyn’s need for hesitation, Colbey turned the focus of the party to himself. “This is where I leave.” He gestured vaguely northward, toward the pointed, gray blur of the Weathered Mountains.

  “I need you,” Mitrian said. Her tone implied she had already lost the argument but felt the need for one last, half-hearted protest.

  Colbey placed a callused hand on Mitrian’s shoulder. “I’ve taught you all you need to know. The rest comes from practice and experience. If anything, you should be harder on yourself than I was on you.”

  Though fixed on his own dilemma, Arduwyn winced at Colbey’s words. He had caught glimpses of the Renshai’s practices now and again. Colbey’s methods included a relentless demand for perfection and humility rarely tempered by praise. Arduwyn recalled his own lessons on bow shooting and forest lore. Gentle in tone and manner, his father had shaped Arduwyn’s personality and abilities with compassion. I can’t compare Mitrian’s sword skills to my knowledge of longbow, but I do know few hunters could best me. It might do well for Mitrian to stay away from Colbey for a while.

  Mitrian lowered her head, and Arduwyn could tell something more important than Colbey’s departure bothered her.

  “Pudar is the securest city in the Westlands, probably in the world. It’s a fine place to bear and raise a child.” Arduwyn tried to comfort her, but Mitrian’s demeanor scarcely changed. The little redhead knew his reassurance had missed the mark. Before he could guess what matter besides the baby might be bothering Mitrian, Colbey addressed what could only have been her thoughts.

  “You already made your choices, Mitrian. There’s nothing left but to live with the consequences, good and bad. The world’s not as big as it seems. Likely, you’ll see the people and places you miss again, but it can’t ever be the same. Nor should it.”

  Mitrian said nothing, but her stricken look made it clear that Colbey’s words had hit far closer to the problem. Sterrane kept his gaze locked on the activity near the city walls. Garn frowned, as if trying to make sense of Colbey’s explanation, certain he would not care for the meaning once he discovered it.

  Colbey removed his hand from Mitrian’s shoulder and accepted the horse’s lead from Garn. “The Great War has almost become a cliché, but powers are shifting. I have a feeling it’s closer than any of us realizes.” He twisted the end of the rope around the saddle, controlling the horse by the side of its bridle. “War will bring all of us back together.” He addressed Mitrian, but his stare turned to Arduwyn. “United against a common enemy and death, the changes in your life and the differences between people may not seem so large.”

  A shiver traversed Arduwyn. In the wake of Colbey’s warning, his concerns about Bel seemed insignificant.

  Colbey sprang into his place in the saddle without using a stirrup. “If not sooner, I’ll return in a year or so to start the boy’s training.”

  Colbey’s promise slipped by Arduwyn as he relived the Renshai’s perfect mounting in his mind. No doubt Colbey had dedicated a staggering amount of time to horsemanship as well as to his sword work. The awe that always gripped Arduwyn in Colbey’s presence strengthened. He watched as the horse broke into a trot, then a gallop, the Renshai’s gold and silver hair visible long after crags and distance obliterated other details.

  Gone. Arduwyn knew Colbey’s departure should fill him with joy, but he could not shake a deep, hollow feeling of loss. Though as unpredictable and dangerous as a mother grizzly, Colbey’s presence had seemed too grand for his absence to go unnoticed. Colbey said he was bound for the Western Wizard’s cave. Why? Arduwyn shook his head, unable to imagine the power of the old Renshai and that of the timeless Wizard in one location. Until eight months ago, Arduwyn would have believed anything a Renshai did would be solely for the sake of violence. Colbey’s quiet travel through the Western farm towns had convinced Arduwyn otherwise; Colbey had kept his promise not to reveal himself as Renshai to anyone and had even made some friends along the way. If the Cardinal Wizards really held the amount of power and immortality legend granted them, the Western Wizard was unquestionably the stronger of the two. But Arduwyn also knew the lore of the Wizards was older than that of the Renshai, and so was even more prone to building exaggeration. These days few common men believed in the Wizards and their prophecies as anything but ancient myth. Yet nearly everyone had lost a parent or grandparent to the Renshai’s invasion.

  Arduwyn had little tolerance for the quacks and magicians who lined their Pudarian stands with cure-alls, powders, and potions, but he believed in the Cardinal Wizards with the same stoic faith as he believed in the gods. He had felt less certain of the Great War. With the passage of time, the prediction of an immense conflict between the Eastlands and Westlands had become a fixture, more like a mother’s story than true future history. Undoubtedly, Colbey’s assurance of the War’s imminence was his reason for addressing the Western Wizard. But the Renshai’s certainty also served to reestablish Arduwyn’s belief in the Great War because he could not discard any notion Colbey c
lung to so staunchly. It gave Arduwyn a cause that made every other in his life seem trivial. What difference did his love for Bel make if the Easterners held them both as slaves? What good were forests desecrated by the fires of war or the casual cruelty of the Easterners’ evil?

  Pictures paraded through Arduwyn’s imagination: woodlands hacked and burned away to make room for bawdy houses and bars while the established Western towns crumbled into ruin; his brothers crawling beneath the Easterners’ whips, crying for freedom with their final, gasping breaths; his sisters raped until, all youth and beauty stripped from them, they lived out their years cleansing Easterners’ filth.

  The images drove a shiver through Arduwyn. Recognizing his concern, if not its cause, Sterrane seized the hunter’s arm in a huge, gentle hand.

  Grounded back in reality, Arduwyn gripped Stubs’ halter tighter and took that final step from the forest to the open field. No longer veiled by overhanging leaves, sunlight blinded Arduwyn. He shielded his eyes with an arm looped across his forehead, jarring loose Sterrane’s hold in the process. They crossed the plowed earth without conversation as the noise outside the city gates rose from a distant buzz to a roar. Cottages dotted the grounds, farmers’ dwellings built near their fields for convenience and close to the city for protection. Children with parents too poor to afford a stand in the market hawked fruits, vegetables, and handmade crafts outside granite walls striped with shadows. Individuals and groups pleaded their various causes to the citizens and visitors as they came and went through the open bronze double gates. A sentry stood before each panel, watching the clamor through half-closed eyes. A third threaded through the masses, occasionally breaking groups apart when a salesman raised his voice in anger or a beggar became too aggressive in his appeals.

  Apparently unused to the flurry of a trading city, Mitrian and Garn drifted, trancelike, toward the gates. Sterrane, too, seemed too far out of his element. His head swiveled as he tried to take in everything at once. Arduwyn knew the big man’s unworldly antics would attract every seller and panhandler in the area like a beacon, but he did not trouble himself about his large and quiet companion. Soon enough, the predators would discover that Sterrane carried no money and would leave him in peace. More familiar with the inescapable corruption that accompanied the benefits of city living, Arduwyn had remembered to tuck away the garnet and the coinage he had acquired selling the extra meat from his hunts. Though the topic had never been broached, Arduwyn felt that some of the money belonged to his hunting partner, Sterrane. But, for now, Arduwyn felt safer holding it.