Sorcerers' Isle

by D. P. Prior

  A moment’s hesitation, then the axemen charged. Hélumite soldiers flowed around each side of Imtep Khopeth to meet them, shields locked, shortswords poking through the gaps. Axe heads clanged against metal. Shields buckled, but then the Hélumite blades thrust in unison before the axemen could reset. Warriors fell. Swords were ripped free. Blood spurted. Not wasting the advantage, the Hélumites pressed forward, slamming their shields into the High King’s men. The swords struck again, and that was all it took. Merciless. Brutal. Efficient. Even suspended in mid-air, the flesh of his belly gouged and bleeding, Snaith couldn’t help but marvel at the way these soldiers worked as one. At how easily they put down the best Branikdür had to offer.

  Then he caught sight of Anathoth Xolor, vulnerable now without the protection of the axe-circle. But the Archmage had done nothing. Hadn’t lifted a finger against the Hélumites. All those craftings, all that power, and the man was too craven to act. Either that, or his loyalties to the Hélumites outweighed those to the High King and the clans. That would make him as much a turncoat as the Lakelings, who had seemed to serve him on the Wakeful Isle. Was no one to be trusted? No one the length and breadth of Branikdür?

  Tey stood beside the Archmage, taloned foot protruding from the hem of her dress, knee bent as if preparing to pounce. As if she were going to attack Imtep Khopeth. She’d said she would protect Snaith, but if she acted now, she would die.

  Snaith tried to call out “No!” but he lacked the spit for words.

  Imtep Khopeth made a sweeping motion, and Snaith pitched to the beach, grunting at the impact. He curled onto his side and pressed his clawed hand over the gash in his belly. Slowly, so as not to draw attention, he inched the fingers of the other hand inside his shirt, where Theurig’s pendant hung against his chest.

  Imtep Khopeth turned his back on Snaith and faced the clan sorcerers once more. Bodies littered the ground around him—the High King’s axemen. Drulk Skanfok himself remained kneeling, ashen-faced. His eyes, though, were hard and glittering, and they never wavered from the Legate.

  “What we seek is at Malogoi,” Imtep Khopeth told the sorcerers. He sounded like a kindly teacher patiently explaining the most rudimentary lesson to a bunch of idiot students. Actually, he sounded a lot like Theurig back at the schoolhouse. “We now know this, thanks to your Archmage here.”

  Anathoth Xolor frowned his incomprehension. And then it sunk in. His face contorted into a mask of complex emotions. He’d made a mistake. He should never have tried to set Theurig up. Should never have mentioned Malogoi. At the same time, Imtep Khopeth had revealed something he might not have intended to. The fact that he had relied on the Archmage’s slip concerning the location of the artifact meant that the Hélumites had not known before. They had detected something when Tey and Snaith had found the Hand, something on Branikdür, but had been unable to pinpoint exactly where it was. It was a small comfort to know the warlocks had their limitations, but it was something Snaith didn’t plan to forget.

  He closed his fist around Theurig’s pendant, pulled, and felt the chain snap. He could still recall the nausea the first time he’d used it, the breach that had opened within. He’d lost something to the conflagration that had killed Theurig. The action had diminished him in some way. The last thing he wanted to do was risk using the pendant again, but it was looking increasingly like he might not have a choice. He rolled to his knees and got a leg under him, pushed himself to his feet.

  “Does anyone among you know the precise location in Malogoi?” Imtep Khopeth asked the sorcerers, the crimson glow of his eye-slit roving over them.

  Shrugs and shaken heads. They genuinely didn’t know. If he were alive, Theurig would have known. After all, he’d seen evidence of the digging at the tumulus. But out of the living, besides Snaith and Tey, only Anathoth Xolor knew about Coldman’s Copse, and he was saying nothing. Snaith had the sense Imtep Khopeth knew that the Archmage knew, and that his questioning of the others was mere theater. The toying of a cat with its prey.

  Imtep Khopeth turned back to Snaith. “Do you know?”

  Snaith glowered from beneath his hood.

  Then the Legate angled his eye-slit at Tey. “Do you?”

  To Snaith’s astonishment, Tey smiled. Wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.

  Imtep Khopeth lifted one hand from his sword pommel. Tendrils of fuligin wafted from his fingers, crossing the distance between him and Tey.

  “I know!” the High King yelled, standing from kneeling, swaying for balance.

  The black tendrils approaching Tey dissipated.

  “You know?” Imtep Khopeth began a circle of the High King.

  But Drulk Skanfok didn’t know. Couldn’t. Unless the Archmage had said something to him. Snaith started to protest, but the High King glanced at him askance.

  Of course. Drulk Skanfok was doomed already, the way things were playing out. And more than that, he’d been on borrowed time since his coronation. A man of duty, whose chief concern was the safety of his people. A great man, Snaith realized. Presumably why the sorcerers, the Archmage, the Seven of Hélum, or whoever it was that set the rules of Branikdür, decreed that the span of a High King’s reign be ten years and no more. A man with the qualities of Drulk Skanfok, a man who could unite the clans in times of war, was a man who might win the love of the people were he to rule too long. That could prove troublesome.

  Anathoth Xolor’s face had grown deathly pale. He knew they had reached the moment of truth. What happened next was likely to seal all their fates, his own included.

  “Theurig Locanter spoke of it to me,” the High King said. He spat out a wad of phlegm, as if the bitterness of lying were too much for him.

  The Archmage almost visibly sighed with relief.

  “If you will permit it, I will lead you there,” the High King said.

  That was his plan? To buy the rest of them time? But he’d be killed upon arrival at Malogoi, once they realized he didn’t have a clue where the artifact was.

  “Where, precisely?” Imtep Khopeth said, ending his predatory circling in front of Drulk Skanfok and hefting the greatsword to his shoulder.

  Clever. This legate is no fool.

  Snaith’s heart began to pound as he tried to think of some way he could save the High King from having the truth tortured from him—a truth he did not possess. Drulk Skanfok was a man Snaith could look up to, a measure of how far he had fallen since the bear had changed the course of his life.

  “An ancient burial site known as Coldman’s Copse,” the High King said.

  He knows? But how—

  Tey glanced at Snaith. Shrugged. Without her, she believed, no one could enter the tumulus.

  The Archmage tried his best to look surprised. “Theurig told you this, and you didn’t tell me?”

  The High King nodded, though Snaith was convinced he was still lying. They both were. If anyone had told Drulk Skanfok about the Copse, it had to have been the Archmage himself, in the time between the Conclave and their arrival at Gosynag Bay.

  “And Theurig Locanter told you what it was, this artifact he found at Coldman’s Copse?” Imtep Khopeth asked.

  The High King shook his head. “He did not.”

  “And you still deny all knowledge of it?” Imtep Khopeth asked the Archmage.

  A slight hesitation, before Anathoth Xolor said, “I’ve already told you all I know.”

  Imtep Khopeth appeared satisfied. “Very well, High King Skanfok, you will guide us on the morrow, once our supplies have been brought ashore, our defenses erected—just in case any of your island folk are foolish enough to stand in our way. But let’s not suppose for one minute this Theurig Locanter would have left something so valuable where he found it.” He caught Snaith by surprise when he spun round and said, “Where would your old master have hidden it, do you think? In his house? A secret place in or around the village?”

  “I was not long apprenticed,” Snaith said with a shrug.

  “Yes, of course.
And then you killed him. A pity. If you had known, it might have saved us some time. And your clan a good deal of suffering. If it’s not at this Copse when your High King leads us there, we may have to raze the village to find what we are looking for.”

  Tey flashed a look at Snaith, warning him not to cave to threats. Without her blood, they would never get the Hand. But why was the Hand of Vilchus so important to her? Why was it worth more than the lives of their people? Maybe even she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if Tey had been close to anyone back home, and with what she’d revealed to him—her scars—with what she had become, how could he trust her judgment?

  Then again, how could he betray her? Anything more he told Imtep Khopeth would lead to questions about how they had gained entrance to the burial chamber. It was the clan’s blood or Tey’s, and he couldn’t make the choice. Or maybe she wouldn’t let him. You are in me now, she had said at the Copse, as she lapped him from her fingers. Husband. And since that moment, he’d scarcely slept at night without her visiting his dreams. How much of her was in him?

  “By the way,” Imtep Khopeth said, switching his attention to Anathoth Xolor, “one of your sorcerers is missing.”

  Again, the Archmage made a show of looking surprised. He ran his gaze over the sorcerers, bobbing his head as if counting. “Pheklus the Clincherman!” he said. “I warned him not to miss this.”

  “He will be found,” Imtep Khopeth said. He swung round to address the Lakelings surrounding the clan sorcerers. “These others are of no further use. Kill them.”

  “What?” the Archmage cried. “No!”

  Imtep Khopeth waved the massed Hélumite soldiers forward. “Him too. Everyone save for the High King.”

  “No!” Drulk Skanfok cried, dipping his head and barreling at the Legate.

  Even with one arm, still a fighter. See, I was right. I can be more than Theurig ever was. More than any of these weakling sorcerers.

  Imtep Khopeth flicked his fingers, and a viscous web of goo smothered the High King, pinning him to the beach.

  Lakelings unleashed their bows on the penned sorcerers. Cries. Blood. Crumpling bodies. A few sorcerers made warding gestures and dropped into menacing crouches, curses dripping from their lips. But that only made it easier for them to be gutted with spear thrusts.

  Smoke and mirrors. It worked well enough on the clans, but not here. Not amid the wet and meaty slaughter.

  The Wolvers’ shaman leapt for a Lakeling throat, sunk her teeth in beneath the rim of the bird mask. Another Lakeling stepped in and ran her through with a spear.

  Calzod Murcifer turned a slow circle, a radiant crystal held aloft in one hand, every facet ablaze with scintillant patterns. Streamers of white brilliance burst from it, and where they touched, Lakelings dropped in their dozens. No sign of nausea for Calzod. If anything, he seemed to grow in stature. But then the blood drained from his face as four warlocks stepped from between the advancing ranks of Hélumite soldiers and strode toward him. The air shimmered, and translucent bubbles sparkling with multicolored motes sprang up around them.

  “I am loyal!” the Archmage cried above the carnage. “I can only report what I know!”

  The Hélumite phalanx began to broaden as men moved up to the sides from the back ranks.

  “You knew more than you were willing to say,” Imtep Khopeth said.

  “I was confused!”

  The front presented by the wall of shields spread, until it formed a shallow curve that extended to the ocean on one side, and onto the incline the other. With breathtaking discipline, the soldiers had altered their formation to shore up any remaining avenues of escape.

  “You manufactured a scapegoat,” Imtep Khopeth said. “Theurig. A man with his eyes set on your position. A dead man who could not deny your allegations.”

  One of the warlocks sent a fizzing fist of energy into Calzod. Black smoke roiled where it struck, and when it cleared, Calzod was a smoldering corpse.

  The Archmage’s voice went up a notch. “But it’s true, I tell you. Only Theurig could have known.”

  “Oh, Anathoth,” Imtep Khopeth said. “Anything the sorcerers under your control know, I expect you to know.” He raised the greatsword overhead.

  With a popping sound, a prismatic bubble of force appeared around the Archmage.

  “The Seven expect you to know!”

  The sword swept down. Anathoth Xolor screamed. Where blade struck bubble, there was a shuddering boom. The sword cleaved straight through the sorcerous shield and split the Archmage in two from head to sternum.

  Movement from the corner of his eye made Snaith turn. The Lakelings who had survived Calzod’s attack had finished with the sorcerers and were coming toward him and Tey. Feathered cloaks billowed. Amber eyes glinted from beaked masks.

  A Lakeling thrust a spear at Snaith. He swayed aside, stepped in, and swung his bad arm, smashing the man to his back. Another jabbed at his guts. Snaith grabbed the spear shaft and kicked her in the liver. He spun an elbow in another’s masked face, snapping off the beak. Then they were all around him, stabbing, kicking, punching. Snaith saw each strike coming before it was committed to. Danced and leapt to avoid them. Bobbed and weaved. A spear tip grazed his bad arm. Another ripped through his cloak. From behind, he could feel the swell of Hélumite soldiers closing the trap.

  Tey!

  Where was Tey?

  He spun away from the Lakelings. A shortsword came at his face—

  Before it struck, the hand holding it went limp, and the blade dropped with a clatter. The Hélumite soldier staggered back into his comrades, ashen-faced, weakening with every step. A thread of wrongness connected with his chest, an insubstantial tendril that pulsed hungrily.

  And there stood Tey Moonshine, one hand extended toward the Hélumites, the other facing the Lakelings. Dozens of threads like fishing line extended from her fingertips, each attached to an assailant. Her black dress was ablaze with the brilliant pattern of her scars ghosting through the fabric. With each pulse of her sorcerous threads the victims visibly wilted, and Tey swelled with exultation.

  She was bright-faced. Incandescent. Her eyes swallowed by dark pits of fury. Her mouth open in a shrieking howl of ecstasy. Hair a tousled corona fanned by an unnatural wind.

  The clouds responded with lightning that sizzled as it struck the sea. Thunder rocked the beach a second later, and the heavens opened.

  Lakelings and soldiers snagged by Tey’s sorcery dropped to their knees then pitched to their faces, hollow-cheeked and wasted, barely breathing. The tendrils recoiled then cast for new victims. Tey’s scars swelled with coruscating light that flared to encompass her. She was lost behind its scintillant shell. Her tendrils throbbed as they leached life from their victims. Another wave of the fallen. Another casting of the strands.

  And then the conflagration surrounding Tey went out. She stumbled. The sorcerous wind dispersed, leaving her hair lank around her shoulders.

  Imtep Khopeth stepped over the writhing body of a Lakeling, black blade held out before him. He uttered a single barbarous syllable, and Tey’s back arched violently. A dirty yellow vapor burst from her belly and streamed into the warlock’s sword. For long moments, Tey hung there, visibly weakening, hollowing out from the inside. With a rush and a pop the tainted flow ceased, and she dropped to a crouch on the beach, spitting and cursing. Lightning lit up the sky, and she was scaled all over, eyes violet pinpricks. Snaith blinked away the flash-blindness, and she was Tey once more.

  Imtep Khopeth strode toward her. Raised his sword to strike.

  And Snaith forced himself to think of his parents butchered in the glade. Of Theurig. Of Tey’s touch. Of their plans to be together. Of what they had both become.

  A ball of fire blasted forth from Theurig’s pendant, expanding alarmingly as it shot straight at Imtep Khopeth—

  Then snuffed out before it reached him.

  Snaith doubled up, retching. Icy shivers racked his frame. Pressure within his skull. Darkness, clo
sing in to a point.

  With a wrench of invisible force he was on his feet, face to face with Imtep Khopeth. The Legate’s eye-slit bored into him, hot and searing. Left Snaith exposed. Readable. As if every memory were being drawn from him, sneered at, and discarded. As if he were nothing to this Hélumite. Nothing but a joke.

  Unseen hands once more held Snaith rigid and trembling as Imtep Khopeth reached out and took the pendant from his grasp. No matter how hard he willed it, his body refused to move. What defiance he could muster, he channeled through his eyes. Let the Hélumite bastard see the hatred. The promise of revenge.

  Imtep Khopeth chuckled from within his conical helm. With a dismissive shake of his head, he tossed the pendant to one of his warlocks as if it were worthless, then hefted the black sword for the killing blow.

  And hesitated.

  “What is this?”

  The red glare from the eye-slit spilled onto Snaith’s belly, where the black sword had ripped his shirt. With excruciating effort, he angled his eyes downward to see what the Legate was looking at.

  Beneath the stain of blood, a spiny tail. A glimpse of talons. The tattered edge of a leathery wing.

  The tattoo Theurig had inked him with.

  Imtep Khopeth clenched and released his fingers, and Snaith could move again. He stumbled and almost fell. Refused to. His hands went to his belly wound. Blood still oozed, but much of it was sticky, already starting to clot. Not deep enough to be mortal. Unless the vile got in.

  “Take off your shirt,” the Legate commanded.

  Snaith’s clawed hand was stiff once more, prickling with pins and needles. With his other, he took a grip close to the rent and ripped the shirt away, leaving him bare-chested beneath his cloak.