Black Wizards

by Douglas Niles

  Suddenly he felt that same menacing presence that had awakened him—and this time it was very close. He knew that his former master was about to act. But where?

  Alexei whirled, in time to see Cyndre materialize a scant twenty feet away. The master of the council drew back his hood enough for Alexei to see those pale blue eyes, icy as death. Alexei unconsciously stumbled backward. Face to face with Cyndre, he suddenly felt grave doubts as to his own powers. Desperately, he groped for a spell, an act, with which he might stave off his doom.

  “Stupakh!” sneered Cyndre, and in that one word Alexei saw disaster.

  A stunning shockwave of magic slammed into him, knocking the wind from his lungs and smashing him to the ground. He lay, flat on his back, unable to move a muscle—but his eyes and ears functioned perfectly, and he could do nothing but stare at Cyndre’s slow approach.

  Alexei understood what had happened. His mentor had used one of the words of power—a word that stunned do listener into paralysis. Completely helpless, he wondered why Cyndre had not used the power word that would have killed him on the spot. But the black wizard answered his unspoken question as he stopped above Alexei’s motionless body, looking down to gloat.

  “Well, my pupil, I see you have studied your lessons well.” Cyndre absently prodded Alexei’s side with a soft-toed boot. “You have caused me much trouble in the past days—and you have slain people who were close to me, who counted upon my protection.

  “For this you will inevitably die. But your death, in itself, will not atone for these crimes. It is fitting that you should first witness the elimination of the rebel army—these pathetic fools whom you sought to aid against me! Then, you will be taken, alive, to Callidyrr. Only when the altar of Bhaal is ready to receive you will the lifeblood be drawn ever so slowly from your heart.

  “Until that time, you will be secured—this time, with no hope of escape.” Cyndre smiled coolly. Alexei could look into his eyes from his position on the ground, but he could do little else.

  The black wizard began to cast a spell of doom. Each word struck Alexei like a physical attack. It was made more horrible by the fact that he recognized the spell—he knew what would happen.

  When Cyndre uttered the last word to the spell, his soul would be torn brutally from his body, condemned to an imprisonment of infinite suffering, until the sorcerer decided to release him by granting him his death.

  Robyn held tightly to the runestick. She had used three of its elements—wind, fire, and earth—the three she understood. The fourth, water, remained, but the young druid did not know what would happen when she called upon it, and so she held the stick as a talisman and little else.

  Unafraid but practical, she stayed back from the melee with the ogres—her club would be little threat to the brutes, while one solid hit from an ogre could kill her.

  She held Fiona’s arm to prevent the lass from charging into the melee. “That sword will only make an ogre mad,” she pointed out. She was surprised when Fiona listened to her and paused in her headlong charge.

  “If you want to fight,” suggested Robyn, “take that blade and stand with those who will meet the sahuagin—we are thin there, and could use you.”

  “I will!” declared the red-haired girl, eager to accept the assignment. She climbed up the broken hillside to join the men who were now lighting brands and torches in anticipation of the fish-men’s onslaught.

  Robyn stepped carefully backward across the churned ground, moving up the slope. A panorama slowly appeared. Right before her eyes, the Prince of Corwell wielded his sword in a glittering pattern of swirling steel. He danced this way and ducked back, all the while turning to keep the enemy from his back. And one after another, mighty ogres fell, slain by a single lightning thrust.

  She reached the top of the knoll, moving as if in a daze. All around her, the madness of the battle swirled. Humans of the Scarlet Guard fought to gain the crest on the east. Dark dwarves and the horrible dead creatures of the sea were slowly pushed back to the south. And the ogres and sahuagin pressed against men and dwarves to the north. She saw the fish-creatures pushing through the line. One slipped toward her, its jaws gaping, its dull eyes somehow looking both passionless and consumed by bloodlust. And then a man of Doncastle stabbed the thing and it fell, twitching and gasping like a fish on a hook.

  She saw a lone figure atop the rise on the promontory—Alexei! The wizard fell suddenly, disappearing behind the crest, and she felt sudden fear. Her numbness vanished, and she raced across the neck of land, up the gentle slope to the top of the peninsula.

  She froze in shock as she reached the crest of the rise. She saw Alexei, sprawled flat on his back. She instantly realized that the black robed figure leaning over him must be Cyndre. Gasping for breath, she called upon her druid magic.

  She stopped and spread her arms, speaking to the grass and the air. “Thesallest yu, rotherca—to me!”

  The droning and buzzing of tiny wings instantly surrounded her. Robyn swung her arms together, pointing to the sorcerers, and the swarm of wasps, mosquitoes, bees, and biting flies snarled as a single entity in the direction of her command.

  Cyndre, locked into the meditation of a casting, did not sense the approaching swarm until hot stingers pierced his skin in a dozen places. With a scream, the black wizard recoiled, flailing about himself and staggering back.

  Robyn ran forward, pointing the insects away from Alexei as Cyndre tried to break free of the cloud. She had to keep him from casting his spell!

  She stopped suddenly again to kneel on the grass. “Mother, your children are born. Give them growth!”

  Instantly, snakelike weeds and stout saplings erupted from the ground around the wizard. He screamed again, struggling to break free of the entwining vegetation, but the plants held him fast. The spell had done what she commanded—it had immobilized the wizard momentarily while she searched for an idea.

  Suddenly, she felt a tremor beneath her feet. The hilltop shook slightly, and she stumbled. The ground moved again, and she fell to her hands and knees. It seemed as if the earth was stretching.

  A shock wave lifted her off the ground and she thumped onto her back. She saw only sky, but she heard a ripping sound, like a sheet being torn in two. Quickly she rolled, remaining on all fours.

  A jagged fissure raced across the hilltop, tearing open the sod to reveal a chasm of unfathomable depth. Cyndre saw the fissure too, and the wizard screamed with a shriek of unnatural horror.

  For the fissure was racing directly toward him.

  Like the gaping maw of an unimaginably huge monster, the earth split across the entire hilltop. The last spot in the tear was the center, where the clump of vegetation held Cyndre firmly. Alexei lay pale and paralyzed beside it. Finally, the thicket ripped in half as the ground tore open. Cyndre, still bound, kicked and struggled as the bushes and saplings slowly leaned into the crevice. Clumps of dirt broke and fell, and slowly the roots of the weeds broke free. For a breathtaking moment the plants hung by a few, frail tendrils—and then those broke free as well.

  The wizard reached desperately, grabbing a corner of Alexei’s robe. The paralyzed wizard’s eyes bulged as he felt himself dragged toward the crevice with his former master. Robyn dove for Alexei’s hand, but could not reach him before he disappeared into the yawning chasm.

  Cyndre’s scream rose from the fissure like the cry of a demon, chopped short as the opening slowly closed.

  Suddenly, Robyn had an idea. She lay with her face pressed against the earth, uncertain if the inspiration was her own or had emerged from the ground itself. Quickly, she sat up and pulled the runestick from her pouch. The fissure had almost closed, but a split in the earth still gaped nearby. She threw the runestick and held her breath as she saw it fall into the hole. Then the fissure snapped shut.

  Slowly, Robyn climbed to her feet. She walked gingerly toward the place where the earth had opened, but there was no sign of the fissure in the grassy turf. Cyndre, Alexei, and the
thicket of plants that had trapped the sorcerer were gone.

  Then she felt a deeper, more frightening rumble—a fundamental distress in the body of the goddess. Awed and frightened, she dropped to her knees and prayed.

  Across the battlefield, the frenzy of the combatants died away as the ground shook. Fighters near the sheer cliffs were thrown to their deaths like drops of water shaken from the back of a dog. Everywhere, ogres, humans, dwarves, and sahuagin fell to their hands and knees, hugging the ground for support. Only the undead, mindlessly attacking, stayed upright—and the rumbling earth sent the entire mass of them tumbling down the slope.

  The sea raged against the cliffs below the battle. Gray mountains of water rose to smash the rock, tearing it away. And still the waves rose higher, lashed against the land by an unseen force. The ground convulsed again, and a great slab of cliff broke away, carrying a hundred sahuagin back to the sea. Another tremor shook the neck of land where the prince had held the line. Slabs of earth broke away from both sides of the bridge, cutting its width in half and carrying dozens of screaming ogres, guardsmen, and duergar to their deaths.

  “Back!” cried Tristan, sensing the imminent danger. Daryth and Pawldo sprang away from the line of bodies that marked their battle, dragging the prince with them. Canthus, too, leaped back from the collapsing ground. In seconds, the men of Doncastle fled toward the safety of the promontory, tripping and stumbling in their effort to run across the shaking ground.

  As the mountainous waves crashed against both sides of the neck, the land bridge collapsed, leaving the Ffolk of Tristan’s force atop a small island that had been a peninsula just moments before. The gray water roared through the gap, still striking at the shore of the mainland.

  The Prince of Corwell stood in awe, ignoring the pitching ground. The only sound was the deep, supernatural rumbling of the earth and sea. Even the duergar had ceased their howling.

  The rumbling grew more pronounced, and Tristan watched as the enemy troops began to sidle away from the cliff, at first hesitantly, but then furiously. Ogres, dark dwarves, humans, and sahuagin all turned in panic and fled.

  But they were too slow.

  The sea water pounded relentlessly against the base of the cliff, and suddenly great chunks of the rock face began to fall away. With a rumble that drove the prince to his knees, the rocky knoll collapsed into the sea. Tons of earth, rock, and bodies fell headlong into the churning surf. And still the earthquake pounded the land.

  The sahuagin clung to the trembling rocks only briefly, slipping and scrambling down the bluff. Many scaly bodies broke upon the jagged rocks, but many others sprang into the air and hit the water in smooth dives. The fish-men that survived the fall swam frantically away from the crashing cliff, seeking the safety of the deep sea.

  Next, the land beneath the ogres gave way. The huge creatures clawed and scratched to reach solid ground, but more and more of the cliff gave way, dragging the entire ogre brigade to its doom. Ogre bodies plummeted into space, bouncing and spinning lazily through the air on the long fall to the water. Each ogre crashed into the foaming surf with enough force to smash any vestiges of life that still lingered in its body after the crushing slide from the bluff.

  The dark dwarves scattered like rats, fleeing in every direction—but the ground in every direction gave way beneath them. Hundreds of the little figures clung desperately to the lip of the land, only to be shaken loose by another tremor. The dark dwarves fell like tumbling stones, howling all the way to the water. Even their hoarse shrieks could not be heard above the rumbling of the land.

  The human mercenaries of the Scarlet Guard clung to their formations, retreating in blocks of humanity, spears and swords bristling against the ogres and dark dwarves that tried to run them down in their own panic.

  But even this discipline could not save them. The land gave way under a huge block of men. The entire formation slid from the lip of the precipice, down the muddy side, and vanished into the churning surf. More mud and rock broke above them, burying the mercenaries completely. One by one, the other companies of red-cloaked men fell, until the last of them broke and ran in panic away from the sea.

  Even this escape was too late, as the water raged against the dwindling hilltop, chewing away the remaining clumps of high ground. The land collapsed and fell faster than the men could run, and the last of them tumbled to his doom in a maelstrom of water, dirt, and rock.

  Fissures snaked into the land, and the slopes of the knoll followed the crest into the sea. Greedily, the devouring waves churned deeper inland, taking still more of the land, until the collapsing earth outdistanced the fleeing remnants of Cyndre’s army, carrying them all into the gray, devouring waters.

  At last, as the earth’s violence abated, only one element of the king’s army remained: a black, shiny coach with red satin curtains and a team of nervous, prancing horses. A sheet of cliff fell away, leaving the carriage standing at the brink of a vast bay that had suddenly eaten into the coast. The horses, staked in place, whinnied and bucked in panic. The carriage swayed alarmingly, and then a wheel slid from the brink. Another soon followed, and then the coach pitched headlong, pulling the helpless horses with it. The vehicle tumbled and spun through the air, until it too crashed into the water and disappeared.

  Finally, the land ceased its heaving. The men of Doncastle stood upon a small island, surrounded by sheer cliffs. Fully a half mile of open water separated them from the newly defined shore, Where the rocky knoll had been, there was now a wide bay. The mountainous waves sank quickly, until the sea was an expanse of rolling gray swells—placid on the surface, but in constant motion.

  And eternal power.

  “Did you guys see that?” Newt blurted. “Boy, it was really something. I hope you were looking, ’cause you’ll probably never get a chance to see anything like that again!”

  “I hope we never do,” said the prince simply. He sat on the ground—not trusting that it was entirely solid—with Robyn and Canthus. Daryth, Pawldo, Fiona and Finellen had gone to take stock of their situation. Pontswain, too, had survived the battle. Now he sat, alone and brooding, on the edge of the cliff, as if annoyed that his predictions of disaster had been wrong.

  Newt and Yazilliclick suddenly popped into sight beside them. The dragon hovered while the wood sprite landed beside Robyn, his antennae twitching nervously as he stared at the prince.

  “Don’t worry,” soothed the druid. “He’s a friend.”

  “I-I know! I fought for him—for him! But he looks so scary—scary!”

  Tristan laughed, and the tension flowed from his body. “Thanks, little one—your arrows really kept those ogres wondering!”

  Daryth, Pawldo, and Finellen rejoined the group sitting on the grass. Fiona came up to sit in silence. For the first time, Tristan thought the lass looked tired. Her hair hung in tangles about her face. She wore a bloody bandage about her wrist, and the skin of her legs and face was chafed and bruised. Still, her eyes retained that fiery spark.

  Pontswain, too, joined them, though he avoided meeting the prince’s gaze. He stared around the battlefield and the vast, blue bay where the enemy army had once stood. His expression passed between disbelief and sullen brooding.

  “The cliff is steep, but we can get down it in a couple of places,” Daryth said. “More serious is the water—but there are a few strong swimmers among the men. If we can’t attract a fishing boat or something, we can send them to the mainland to get a boat or two.”

  “How many men do we have left?” asked the prince.

  “About three hundred,” said the Calishite. Tristan felt a wave of sadness for the deaths. He remembered O’Roarke’s sacrifice with a particular pang.

  “And seventy-nine of my dwarves,” said Finellen, staring at the ground. She looked up with an expression of fierce determination. “But that’s more than I ever thought would live through this fight. My lad, you’ve got some very powerful friends.”

  The prince looked at Robyn
and took her hand. She slid to his side and leaned against him. They drew strength from each other.

  “The prophecy,” she said softly. “Do you remember what you told me?” Tristan shook his head. “I haven’t given it a thought.”

  “ ‘Wind and fire, earth and sea, all shall fight for him, when it is time for him to claim his throne.’ ”

  He sat up straight, remembering the magic of Robyn’s runestick. “The wind drove the gas away, in Doncastle. And the fire—that routed the Scarlet Guard at Hickorydale.”

  “And I saw those earth-guys come out of the ground and pound on the ogres!” said Newt. “They were really something, too—but not like the earthquake! Did you see that? Boy, you should have if you missed it!”

  “And the earthquake,” finished Robyn, “was the sea pounding against the cliffs, carrying away the land!”

  Tristan still shook his head. “It’s an amazing coincidence, but it can’t be me! Remember, the prophecy starts out: ‘His name shall be Cymrych.’ ”

  Finellen snorted in amusement. “Have you ever heard of anybody named Cymrych?” she asked.

  “Not in my lifetime, no.”

  “Well, neither have I—in your lifetime, that is. Now, I don’t mix with humans much—nothing personal, you understand—but one thing that comes from living four centuries is a little bit of knowledge.”

  Tristan was surprised to learn the dwarf’s age.

  “Used to be, when I was a youngster, half the humans around Gwynneth were named Cymrych—all after Cymrych Hugh, of course. Got so you couldn’t tell the western Cymrychs from the southern Cymrychs from the—well, you get the picture.

  “From what I gather, the names were changed—altered slightly so that you could tell which branch of the family you were talkin’ about.”