by David Weber
Wulfra’s eyes closed as the colors coalesced into a single sheet of star-shot flame. Her wand lifted, and her lips moved silently as it sought her foe. It pointed at Wencit like a slender sword, and a deep, resonant hum filled Kenhodan’s ears, whetted with a snarling edge of hunger, as her grip went white-knuckled.
And then the wand spat black fire.
Banners of midnight flared in the cavern’s power-boned air, but Wencit made no gesture of avoidance, and they exploded silently against him. He vanished into the vortex of her attack, and the wizard light of the sword’s wards dimmed as negation gouged power from them to fuel the fury hurled against the wild wizard. It crashed over him like a tidal bore, and he stood motionless as it snatched him into its maw, so enshrouded in darkness only his raised left hand and unwavering life force could be seen.
Wulfra laughed—a wild, incredulous bark as if unlooked for victory lay within her grasp—and Kenhodan groaned. Was this the task Wencit had warned him of? To break Wulfra’s spell? But how?! He gripped the gryphon so tightly its carven wings drew blood, but no answer came.
Yet Wencit didn’t fall. Wulfra’s red-veined glow of life brightened, and her mouth twisted in a new incantation, its words lost in the subaural beat of sorcery as her power flailed at Wencit with fists of destruction. But Wencit’s multi-hued fire strengthened, burning ever brighter, and Wulfra’s jaws ridged as his resistance asserted itself. Kenhodan felt her rage as she urged the blackness to victory, driving it with every ounce of mind, skill, and unquenchable will. Her wand whipped in patterns of subtly diseased geometry which knotted his belly, but though the blackness strengthened, Wencit’s fire-streaming hand remained inviolate.
Wulfra’s knees sagged and tension blistered Kenhodan’s mind. A silent roar battered him as the wild magic blazed suddenly, its brilliance searing out from Wencit to demolish the sorceress’ spell with ponderous inevitability.
Stone groaned as power grappled power. Stalactites and stalagmites shuddered, shedding chips like sparks struck from a forge by wizard fire. Rock shards glared like stars and pattered into dark pools, their tiny splashes loud in the titanic silence of the wizards’ battle. Stone dust flecked Kenhodan’s hair, and he was driven to his knees by eddies of power as Wencit’s fire blazed and the dark pools became miniature suns, flaming with inner hearts of deadly light and winged with steam.
Wulfra shouted a word that crackled in Kenhodan’s brain, and fist-sized lumps cracked from the roof like hail. The cavern heaved, stone moaning, solid rock popping like ship timbers, and the blackness stiffened.
A moment it stood, dense and dark about a furnace of wild magic. Wencit’s light dimmed, but it never faltered, and the blackness hissed and evaporated at its heart even as Wulfra threw more and more power into the attack. And then, suddenly, the wild magic flared like a silent volcano, and the blackness exploded away from Wencit like a forgotten dream.
Wulfra fell to her knees and tormented stone sighed with relief as it settled. Wencit stood motionless. Only the flame of his eyes moved.
“So.”
Wulfra’s exhausted voice was a whisper of lost hope, but she forced herself painfully back up. She stood with squared shoulders, and her eyes were proud, devoid of hope or appeal.
“So,” Wencit echoed, and his soft voice was a sentence of death.
“I think, perhaps, the Council is in for a surprise.” Wulfra managed a smile. “I’d hoped to bargain for my life, but it seems you know everything.” She shrugged minutely. “Your sanctimony sickens me, but you may yet avenge me. Either he’ll destroy you, or you’ll destroy him—it hardly matters which. I won’t wish you good fortune, but I’ll be content with whatever fate befalls you. And—” her smile broadened almost wistfully “—at least the wild magic is swift. Strike your blow, Wizard.”
Wencit eyed her silently, then touched his forehead with his free hand and bent his head. Her eyes widened in surprise at the gesture, and he spoke.
“Thine art is an abomination, Wulfra, Baroness of Torfo, but thou dost face death as befits thine house. Defend thyself as thou wilt, Lady.”
And he struck.
Fire sheeted from his eyes, crashing out in a flat than that devoured the very air in its path. Kenhodan staggered back from its power, but Wulfra faced it motionlessly. The flood of flame halted momentarily, inches from her, as if against an invisible wall. But the pause was brief. Isolated flames licked through her wall, breaching it in a score of places.
She pressed her wand across her forehead, and her chant was lost in the crackling sibilance of Wencit’s attack as she fought to hold her defenses. For a second, perhaps two, she held…but the wild magic surpassed her.
Fire smashed her frail wall. It hurled the wand from her, and it curved outward, striking the stone with a dry rattle and rolling to Wencit’s feet. Flame seized the sorceress, engulfing her in jagged splendor, and she convulsed. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and the brilliance collapsed, pinwheeling in upon itself with a fury that shocked the stone anew. The light snatched her away, whirling her into vast depths and distance. And then the conflagration died with the quiet snap and Wulfra of Torfo was no more. Her red life force pulsed once, twice, and vanished.
Wencit lowered his raised hand slowly. Calm hovered in the cavern as if frightened of itself, and his shoulders sagged as if in sorrow.
He bent and lifted the bone wand. Its gold glittered as he raised it before his eyes and knitted his brows with power. His eyes flamed once more, consuming the wand to flaky ash that filled his palm, and he blew gently. The ash drifted away, a wispy cloud that settled silently over a pool. It scummed the dim reflection until the next uncaring drop of water broke the surface tension and the pool swallowed its memory.
“Wencit?” Kenhodan said softly, and the wizard turned slowly to face him.
“She was right, you know.” His voice was even softer than Kenhodan’s had been. “The Strictures are based on power, not morality.” He smiled bitterly. “It was never morality—only ethics. Ottovar and Gwynytha believed in a world in which those who didn’t possess power wouldn’t be possessed by it. That was morality, if you like, and they built the Strictures to support that way of life with a fist of power. But they were only a code, shaped to a specific end, not an end in their own right. The Carnadosans have never understood that. They can imagine no objective other than the use of power, while the Strictures renounce certain uses of power. So they’ve never understood that when the true end is threatened, a wise man seeks another path to it.”
He sighed.
“I told Wulfra, but she couldn’t hear me. Intent separates black sorcery from white, and that consideration supports all the Strictures, not just the first. Power carries a double responsibility: to renounce it to protect others, and to judge for one’s self when the law’s letter must be broken to preserve its spirit. That’s the heart of morality, Kenhodan.
“But I’m rambling!” He shook himself and spoke more briskly. “Come! Let’s finish what we came to do.”
His hand was warm on Kenhodan’s shoulder as he turned back to the blue-hazed stone block. The wards confused the eye, but the sword’s sinister beauty transcended sight. Its graceful menace burned into the soul, and Kenhodan’s heart thudded. His maimed memory shuddered, fighting against the blankness of his past, yet it couldn’t quite break free. He felt history race past him, just beyond his touch—like water trapped under ice—as he bent above the wards, not daring to thrust his hand into that humming core of power however powerfully the sword called to him, however terribly his fingers ached for it.
The lean blade cried out for release. He tasted the years of its bondage like pain, and his eyes caressed its hard, keen edge. Even through the wards he saw the fine, rippled patterns of the patient hammer, furring the steel with lines of burnished light that danced under the glow of sorcery which imprisoned it.
He couldn’t imagine a more beautiful weapon, and he was wrung with need, like a man addicted. Yet he feared an
d hated it, as well. Its lethality repelled him even as the warrior in him cried out to possess it. It was too deadly dangerous, too killingly beautiful, to be carried by a man. It was a tool of legendry, and any man foolish enough to touch it sealed himself inescapably into its legend forever.
“By…the…gods.…” he whispered, and sank to his knees while tears stung his eyes. Hunger choked him, overbearing distrust, and he couldn’t help himself. If it were offered, he would seize it avidly, daring even the curse of immortality to possess it. His palm pressed the wards and power pressed back, fluttering against his skin. A spatter of fine sparks danced above his hand, yet he knew he could reach through the wards…if he dared.
“Gently, Kenhodan,” Wencit murmured, and pulled him back. The wizard’s burning eyes mirrored the blue flicker of the sword, running and flashing through Kenhodan’s tears. The dance and wash of their light mesmerized him, and his own thoughts spun away into the silence of forgotten years.
“It’s for me, isn’t it?” His whisper was half-protest and half-plea.
“It is.”
“Who am I, Wencit? Kenhodan’s fingers locked on the wizard’s arm, shaking him roughly. “What am I?”
“You’re the bearer of this sword. I can say no more, and that may be too much.”
“What sword is it?” Kenhodan whispered.
“I can’t tell you that, either—not yet.” Compassion blurred the wizard’s voice. “But it’s served many masters, all well…and it’s waited centuries for this moment.”
“This moment?” Kenhodan’s mind was weary of implications that muttered just beyond his grasp. “For me?”
“Not for you alone,” Wencit sighed. “A certain…conjunction of events was needed.”
“Conjunction?” Kenhodan was baffled, and the welter of his emotions—the strain of not quite understanding—touched the imperiousness at his core with fear…and anger. He tried to strangle the emotions, but they died hard.
“Yes.” Wencit’s voice hardened, as if he sensed the anger in the younger man. “The sword is from Kontovar. It was broken in the Fall, and I’ve waited thirteen centuries to restore it. But you must do the restoring. I can’t, because the attempt will trigger a spell which would destroy me.”
“What?!” Kenhodan jerked away from him. “If it can destroy you, how am I supposed to survive it?”
“You may not,” Wencit said harshly, weariness and something else hardening his expression. “But you have to try. You’re the only one with any chance of surviving.”
“Damn it, Wencit! I—”
“Be silent!” For the first time in all their weeks together, Wencit’s voice crackled with anger, and Kenhodan fell back from his whiplash rage. Yet his own anger didn’t abate; it grew.
“Do you think you’re the only one who’s paid a price?” Wencit demanded harshly. “What about the blood on my hands? I watched an emperor ride off into a battle he couldn’t win—a battle against his own brother. Against a man I loved, Kenhodan! He was evil—so evil he’d sold his own name—and still I loved him!” Wencit’s face was clenched, and his flaming eyes were portholes to hell. “I watched women and children I loved more than life itself die, and I let them die when I might have saved them—because I…had…no…choice!”
Kenhodan had seen the pain of Wencit’s memories; only now did he see the rage. Yet his own fury answered, burning all the hotter because he knew the old wizard was right, that others had paid as much as he. But it was his life they were discussing, and his smoldering resentment of his helpless ignorance shattered the internal adjustment he’d made. That fury within him blazed back to towering life, and he opened his mouth, but Wencit cut him off ruthlessly.
“You’re a key I’ve waited over thirteen hundred years to turn.” His voice was deadly flat. “You’re the one man who can touch that sword with a chance of living, and too much is at stake for you to refuse. Of course it may kill you! But that’s a risk I—we—have to take!”
“Damn you!” Kenhodan reared to his feet, every muscle quivering in undiluted rage. “What do I know about the prices you’ve paid?! What about the price you demand of me?! The life I’ve found these past months is all I have—all you’ve allowed me to have—and you’re asking me to throw it away! I’ll be damned if I will!”
“You’ll die if you don’t,” Wencit said icily, his coldness all the more cutting on the heels of Kenhodan’s bellow. “Are you so blind you can’t see that we stand in the heart of a spider’s web? Wulfra’s dead, but the spells she set can still kill us, still undo all we came here to do—everything I’ve lived my life to accomplish, that gives any hope of saving Norfressa from the ruin of Kontovar. If you leave that sword lying, you doom us all. Is your life so precious that you’ll abandon a world to save it?”
The last question was a sneer, and Kenhodan felt physically sickened by the fury that consumed him. So this was a white wizard’s friendship! Betrayal. Not treachery born of expedience, but something worse. A deadly entrapment in the name of a soulless cause. Betrayal of the very trust that wizard had demanded of him, and which he’d given. Betrayal all the more bitter because it was inevitable, and because—all the gods help him!—he’d let himself love the wizard who saw him only as a tool, an expendable extension of his own long, corrosive vendetta.
And bitterest, most vitriolic of all, he knew Wencit was right. His life was less precious than an entire world’s and he had no right to save it at such a price. He was trapped, compelled by his own morality as much as the wizard’s implacable will, into a risk not of his own choosing, and his soul writhed like white iron in the furnace of his fury as he realized it.
“All right!” he hissed. “I’ll do it—and may Phrobus damn your soul to Krahana’s darkest hell!”
His green eyes flamed like ice, but Wencit merely shrugged and sank back on his heels. Kenhodan’s rage redoubled at his self-assured expression and he turned his back with a snarl and reached for the sword.
The world exploded.
The magic laced about the sword—layer upon layer of arcane weaving: Wulfra’s spells, the cat-eyed wizard’s spells, the ancient wards, and the deathless wild magic-heart of the sword itself—erupted into Kenhodan with the fury of an avalanche. His brain became a conduit for unbearable power, and his thoughts smoked with shadow and nightmare, gibbering as horror dug fangs of ice into their fragile web. He reeled back—the sword in one hand, the forgotten gryphon in the other, rage in his heart—and coiled power looped about him and clubbed him to his knees. He crashed to the floor, and the sword’s tip rang on stone. Sparks sputtered as rock and steel met, and the blade burned inches deep into that unyielding surface. Lightning crackled about his wrist and arm in a tracery of fury, and his head bounced back, hair flying, throat muscles corded like cables. His teeth snapped shot and bloody froth pearled his lips and trickled down his chin.
To merely mortal eyes, he was gripped by a seizure, but Wencit’s eyes saw the truth, and he paled, all pretense of unconcern abandoned, as he watched Kenhodan fight for his life. For Wencit could see the purple brilliant cocoon lapped about him, could see it become an eye-searing violet-green that wrenched at the mind like pincers. The stomach-churning glare brightened as the cat-eyed wizard’s spell replaced the last of Wulfra’s trap and the nature of Kenhodan’s peril stood revealed, stark and terrible.
A fanged head topped the savage cloud of power, grinning like what it was—the entire essence of the demon, condensed and refined, sealed into a tiny pocket of space and time to claim the soul of whoever released it. The spell had hidden the demon’s nature, its presence, even from Bahzell Bahnakson, and the concentrated savagery—focused and directed by that same spell—might have destroyed even a champion of Tomanāk as powerful as him in its sudden onslaught. No lesser strength stood any chance at all against it, and Wencit sat motionless, taloned fingers clutching his knees, as demon laughter roared.
Tension surged like banefire and Kenhodan began to moan—a high keening tha
t tore through his locked teeth, sharp and growing higher, edging into a shriek of agony as clumsy fingers clawed at his soul. The demon compressed itself around his thought centers, driving spikes of power through him to destroy him, and his torment howled through the cabin.
Yet even as he screamed, the final magic—the deepest magic of all—awoke, and his left hand began to move. Slowly, jerkily, every inch an agony, his left fist crept towards his right. Ruby brilliance showered from the gryphon, and power pulsed in its heart. Red flashes throbbed in time with his flickering life, and Wencit watched the slow, painful progress of that clenched hand with a face as cold as time.
No one could have guessed from the ancient wizard’ expression how many thousands of years depended upon that hand’s movement, or that he’d deliberately goaded Kenhodan into fury. But he had, and for one purpose—to bury conscious thought in a haze of anger which, however briefly, walled his inner awareness away from the demon that ached to devour him.
Demon tendrils sank deeper into Kenhodan’s brain. Anger made him easier to possess, but it hid his innermost thoughts—the thoughts even he didn’t know were his. The very ease with which the creature had seized his outer mind fooled it. It underestimated him as it tightened the gibbering stress, drove him into convulsions, so confident it didn’t sense the heart of sorcery that moved that slowly creeping left hand.
Ruby fire licked the broken hilt. Time and space hummed in monumental stress, drawn to the breaking point by exquisitely counterpoised forces beyond the ken of nature. And then the gemstone touched the sword.
Kenhodan moaned and his blind fingers rotated the gryphon. Its shattered base moved, pressing against the ancient fracture lines. Ruby grated on clinging bits of ruby, and—at last—the demon sensed danger.
Its rage howled, battering Wencit with the power rebounding from Kenhodan. Fury raved up Kenhodan’s arms, driven by demon fear and demon hunger. Energy glared about him, sparks falling like stars, hissing into the stone floor while rock streamed up in stinking steam.