The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

  A faint, emerald glimmer surrounded the mythal at a range of twenty feet or so, rising in delicate sheets like a mirror maze made of green diamond dust suspended in the air. Jack stood just inside the outer barrier. Tharzon scrambled to his feet only an arm’s length on the other side. The dwarf tried to step through, but the magical field repelled him again.

  “Damnation! I can’t move through!” Tharzon cursed in anger.

  “It seems that I can,” Jack replied. “You help the others. I’ll see what I can do about Jelan.” He turned back to the Warlord.

  Jelan carefully approached the stone itself, glancing over her shoulder to keep an eye on the battle. She spotted him and smiled in a warlike fashion.

  “Stand back,” she commanded. “I bear you no particular malice, Jack, but I will not tolerate interference!”

  Jack frowned. Jelan was a very skilled swordswoman, and he was hesitant to resort to force. But no one else in his party would be able to come to his aid for some time yet; the skirmish still raged outside the emerald field.

  “If you’ll tell me what you are doing, I might decide that I have no reason to obstruct you!” he called, hoping to distract her.

  “Ending a curse,” she replied, “and mastering this stone.”

  The former didn’t seem too bad, but Jack didn’t like the implications of the latter. He steeled himself for a fight and stepped toward her.

  “Not if I can help it, dear Elana,” Jack said. He summoned up a green spiral of energy, vibrant and powerful, and lashed out at her.

  The bolt crackled across her torso and did not affect her in the least. Jelan smiled sweetly.

  “Magic cannot touch me, Jack. You’ll have to do better than that!” Then she danced away around the stone, circling away from him. The shimmering energy seemed denser, more substantial, the closer he moved to the stone pillar. Clearly, it wasn’t a matter of walking up and manipulating the device; one had to carefully negotiate the fields of chaotic energy wreathing the wild mythal.

  “What happens when she reaches the stone?” Jack muttered to himself.

  He had a suspicion that he did not want to find out. He resumed his pursuit, slipping toward the stone as fast as he could while trying to keep Jelan in sight.

  Outside, the impetus of his companions’ attack had stalled. Anders and Marcus were matched by swordsmen every bit as skillful as they were, if not more so. Zandria and Illyth struggled against Kel Kelek. Ashwillow worked spell and blade against three of Jelan’s picked swordsmen, determined fighters who sought to corner her and cut her down. She halted two of them with a spell that rooted them to the spot, holding them in place through the force of her will, but the third swordsman reached her and slashed her across the torso. Ashwillow cried out and fell, curled around her wound, as the swordsman looked around for his next opponent.

  Tharzon crashed into the man who’d struck down Ashwillow and knocked him to the floor. With one hand he slapped the swordsman’s helmet from his head, and with the other he split the fellow’s skull with his axe. The dwarf picked himself up, just as Hathmar wounded Anders and drove the barbarian to one knee with a series of blinding slashes.

  “Hold on, Anders! I am coming!” Tharzon called.

  Jack returned his attention to Jelan and moved closer, completing a circuit of the mythal stone three and a half laps behind Jelan. He turned the corner and suddenly found that she had halted, facing a smooth flat patch that marked one side of the stone. She’d reached the center, and he was only ten or twelve feet behind her. Jack circled carefully, warily, nearer. He was almost in sword reach, and it wouldn’t help anything if he allowed her to gut him just as he caught her. I need to distract her, he decided.

  “Jelan! Your lieutenants and swordsmen are defeated! You have no hope of victory. I call on you to surrender!”

  Jelan glanced over her shoulder at him, measured the distance from the mythal face to the spot he currently occupied, and smiled. “Your friends have the upper hand,” she admitted, “but my soldiers are still fighting. I see no need to give in yet.” She turned back to the mythal.

  Jack scowled. He plucked the poignard from his belt and threw it at her, but the repelling force that protected the mythal from his approach also defeated missiles. The dagger clattered to the ground only a foot from where it had left his hand. Jelan did not even take notice. Instead, she faced the stone and seemed to raise her hands in supplication, closing her eyes and stretching as if she could embrace the colossal pillar if she tried hard enough.

  “Whatever it is you’re attempting to do, you are out of time,” Jack promised darkly.

  He spared the battle outside another look. With Tharzon’s aid Anders fought his way to his feet again, blood streaming from several wounds. The powerful Northman beat aside the drow captain’s attack and rammed forward breast-to-breast with the mercenary, shoving Hathmar back toward the wall of water surrounding the stone. Feathers of white water streaked away from the drow as he breached the barrier, and then Anders hammered him all the way through, losing his balance as the maelstrom swept away Hathmar. He drifted back into the black depths of the lake, caught in the current and swept back from air and life. Helplessly, the drow vanished into the dark depths.

  Anders spotted Jack and Jelan and dashed straight at them, only to encounter the same barrier that restricted Jack. He rebounded and went down hard.

  “I have an argument with you, Warlord!” he cried.

  “So?” Jelan laughed. “You, too, are not in time.” She completed whatever ritual or preparation she had performed, and then slashed open the palm of her left hand with a dagger. Then she pressed her bloody hand to the cold, dark stone.

  With a detonation that tossed Jack, Blacktree, and everyone else nearby to the ground, the wild mythal exploded with emerald energy. Whips of green power flailed against the water, the stone, the darkness above with the fury of wildcats, sizzling and snapping. The maelstrom’s eye blasted apart in a spray of cold water and reformed fifty yards wider than it had been, hammered backward by the power pouring from the mythal stone. And in the center of it all, Jelan arched and screamed with ecstasy and delight as the energy poured into her body, filling her, dancing across her skin like fire.

  “I have done it!” she cried.

  Done what? Jack wondered as he picked himself up and staggered to his feet. The magic streamed into Jelan as if she were a bottomless well, drinking and drinking without reaching satiation. Dully he noticed that the tile paths were now marked by walls of emerald force, the invisible barrier now visible and unbreakable, completely encapsulating him with the Warlord and the wild mythal. Magic now ran from his body to the stone, draining from his soul as blood might drain from slashed wrists. Moment by moment he felt it slipping away from him.

  “Elana,” he coughed. “What have you done?”

  “For ten generations my family has suffered,” she cried triumphantly. “Once we were mighty sorcerers, born to wield magic, the most powerful of all Kara-Tur. Then our magic was stripped from us by a divine curse! Now, at last, I have undone that wrong! We will be sorcerers again, one with the Weave, strong in the Art! It is in my blood!”

  “You wrecked Raven’s Bluff for this?” Jack asked in amazement.

  Magic buffeted him, ruffled his hair and clothing, howled around him like a demon, but he could not sense it. He only felt its effects, and the ache in his heart, the sense of something missing, was unbearable.

  “This is my restitution,” she shouted. Energy wreathed her dark hair like a crown of emeralds. “My penance! And my triumph! I have freed my bloodline of the antimagic curse, and I have claimed the first city of my empire. I am bound no longer!”

  “What of the mythal?” Jack cried. “You are destroying it!”

  “I am taming it,” Jelan replied. “Within its domain, I am the arbiter of all magic, I am magic. My kingdom will be unassailable!”

  “Who gave you the right?” Jack demanded. “We have no need of an overlord. We do not
desire a tyrant to decide who may use magic and who may not. You broke your curse—good! You have righted an ancient wrong, but you have no legitimacy here, no claim to rule Raven’s Bluff!”

  Jelan met his eyes evenly. “I do not ask for the right, Jack Ravenwild. I take it! I once offered you a chance to serve me. This is your last opportunity to reconsider your answer. Will you swear allegiance to me, serve me as one of the rulers of this city? Or would you rather remain a street rat for the rest of your days?”

  Jack studied her face. He could see death waiting in her eyes if he answered wrong. He glanced behind him, where Illyth, Anders, Tharzon, and Zandria waited and watched, hemmed out by the green fields of magic. All of Jelan’s lieutenants and swordsmen were down, as were the Hawk Knights. I didn’t even see the end of the battle, Jack thought to himself. What happened?

  “Well?” Jelan demanded.

  Jack’s allies were silent. Perhaps they’d already tried to make themselves heard through the wall of power surrounding the stone and failed; they simply watched him now, their expressions unreadable. Hope, despair, anger, compassion—it didn’t matter what they wanted. It was up to him. He turned back to Jelan and smiled.

  “I decline,” he said.

  Jelan raised her hand and struck him with a bolt of icy green lightning. Jack howled in pain and collapsed in a seizure of pain, arms and legs flailing against the stone. He bit his tongue hard. Blood filled his mouth. After an eternity of pain, the seizure relaxed, and he moaned aloud. Awkwardly, he turned himself over and levered himself to his hands and knees.

  “Your spells lack subtlety,” he gasped, pushing to his feet. He picked up his rapier and advanced on her.

  The Warlord stepped away from the stone and drew her own sword. “Blades, then,” she said.

  Without hesitation she darted forward and slashed high at his head, a graceful and deadly arc that would have decapitated him with ease if he hadn’t thrown himself to the ground to duck beneath it. Jack managed to get the point of his rapier up fast enough to back her off a step when she moved to finish him on the ground. Then he scrambled sideways until he gained his feet again.

  The Warlord laughed and came at him again, offering him no chance to rest. She slashed and whirled like a dancer with a baton, impossibly swift and skillful. Jack deflected her blade from his heart by a lucky parry, blocked another by retreating behind a corner of the mythal stone, and then took a long, shallow cut along his ribs as he barely twisted away from a thrust that would have impaled him at the navel. He gasped in pain and backed away again. Already his limbs trembled with fatigue. I can’t beat her, he realized. In a minute, maybe two, I’ll slip or miss a parry and she’ll run me through, and that will be it.

  “You are not much of a swordsman, Jack,” Jelan said. “You might have been a good one, with some training. You’ve got good reflexes and an excellent eye, but you’re not there yet.”

  “I’ll work on that right after you kill me,” he snapped.

  Angrily, he called upon the power of the stone ring and felt new strength flood into his limbs, toughness imbue his flesh. Fueled by the ring’s power, he counterattacked with everything he had, thrusting and riposting and lunging. Jelan simply laughed again and danced back, using graceful turns of her blade to deflect his stone-strength attacks. Jack overextended, dropping to one knee to reach her, and she slapped the rapier out of his hand with a wicked cut that would have laid open his right forearm if not for the ring’s defensive enchantment. Jack cried out, stung, and staggered back.

  “You’ve made a lot of poor choices recently,” Jelan said. The smile faded from her face, replaced by something cold and deadly. “Time to face the consequences, Jack.” She stalked closer, the tip of her sword unwavering.

  Jack reached for his belt to draw his poignard, futile as it was. But he’d already thrown the weapon at her; the scabbard was empty. The dwarven knife! he remembered. As quick as thought, he stooped to his boot and threw the knife with a wicked underhanded motion using all his marvelous skill and the strength of the enchanted ring.

  Jelan almost dodged the throw, twisting her torso with speed a cat would have envied and raising her sword point to deflect the dark knife. She wasn’t quite fast enough. The dark blade took her on the left side of the torso, just under her breast, and pierced her fine armor as if it didn’t exist. Myrkyssa Jelan grunted in pain and surprise, shuddering, and reached up to grip the knife handle.

  “A treacherous blow,” she gasped. “Hard struck … but not enough, not now.”

  Blood running through her fingers turned to green fire as mythal magic played over her wound. Jelan’s mastery of the mythal permitted her to draw on the stone’s magic to seal her injury and preserve her life.

  “Mask’s eyes,” muttered Jack. “She’s unbeatable.” He had to do something unexpected, something extraordinary.

  Impelled by desperation, Jack took advantage of Jelan’s distraction and raised his left hand. The stone ring glowed with power as he willed it to life, this time calling on the impossible, seeking to shape the mythal itself. The mythal stone shrieked energy as the ring’s magic fought to change it. Jelan must have felt the change through her connection with the device. She whirled and stared at the stone, trying to gauge its effects on her sorcery.

  Jack threw himself forward and pushed her into the mythal stone. At the last moment Jelan sensed her danger and started to turn; cold steel kissed Jack’s ribs as she struck out at him. But his momentum was enough to carry him into her, and she staggered back into the wild mythal itself. He sprawled to the ground at the foot of the stone, as the Warlord vanished into the rune-carved rock like a drowning woman sinking beneath black water.

  Jack released the ring’s power and allowed the stone to heal itself around her.

  In an instant, the space Jelan occupied refilled with rock. He caught one last glimpse of Jelan as the stone walled shut, and then she was gone in a green flash of energy. Thunder shook the entire column, and the aurora scoured him like the blast of a furnace. The rings of energy barring access to the stone fell like curtains of water as Jack slumped to his knees, hand jammed against the cold dull ache under his rib cage. Then the maelstrom itself began to waver and collapse, the mythal’s magic no longer sufficient to sustain it.

  “Jack!” cried Illyth from a great distance. He turned to look behind him; the noblewoman and the others sprinted toward him, even as water began to cascade from above and darkness swirled up from below. He thought that Zandria was trying to work a spell—and then the dark waters swallowed him entirely.

  EPILOGUE

  White gauze danced over his head.

  He was lying in a soft bed, surrounded by a thin curtain of translucent white that shifted and sighed in a warm wind. He ached all over, but his pain seemed very distant.

  “Am I dying?” he wondered aloud.

  “Do you wish to die?”

  A dark-haired woman in blue sat beside him, her face impossibly beautiful. Wisdom gleamed in her eyes, and compassion, and strength, and a hundred things more that he couldn’t begin to describe. She was completely serious in her question, and somehow he knew that dying would not necessarily be a bad choice now.

  Since she asked in seriousness, he tried to answer her the same way. “Only if I have to,” he said. “I am not certain that I am done living yet.”

  “Good,” the lady in blue said. “I have something that I would like you to do for me, and it will be easier if you choose to live.”

  He looked at her again and tried to focus clearly on who he was, who she might be, but it was difficult. It seemed impossible that a lady such as she could have anything she needed anyone to do for her.

  “What is it, my lady?”

  “The wild mythal still exists, unbound, untamed,” she said. “I could rend the Weave to silence it, but if I did so, I fear that no magic would ever work there again, perhaps not anywhere within a hundred miles of the spot where it stands. The safest thing to do is to disperse i
ts power among a great number of people, as I have always done. In the hands of one person, a weapon may be dangerous. Break it into a thousand pieces and give it to a thousand people to carry, and it is much less threatening. I wish you to accept a greater portion of the load.”

  He simply stared at her. “Why?”

  “The wild mythal also needs a will to tame it, a spirit to guide its sentience. The Warlord’s will not suffice; you exiled her to a very distant plane when you expelled her from the stone. If you relinquish your bond, the mythal will select another, and its preference is likely to be dangerous. It has tasted of Jelan’s ambitions and hungers for more. With my help, you will check the mythal’s dangers.”

  “Am I to use it to help people?”

  “Use it as you see fit,” the lady replied. “It might be best if the wild mythal served no purpose, malign or benign, but it is a mortal magic and thus a mortal decision. I wish to make sure that the Weave remains whole. Fetter the stone for me, and that will be enough. Will you do this for me?”

  He thought for a moment, understanding that this also was a serious question. Then he nodded. “I will.”

  The lady smiled and said no more. She faded away, leaving him adrift in a white maze.

  Some time later, he awoke. To his surprise, the whiteness was still there. He rested in a white bed, in a white room with white curtains. And Illyth sat beside him, also dressed in white. She was reading a book, but she looked up at Jack when she felt his eyes on her.

  “You’re awake,” she said in surprise.

  “Did you see the lady?” Jack asked.

  “Lady? You must have seen me watching over you,” Illyth said. She smiled. “You’ve been unconscious for more than a week. We thought we would lose you.”

  Jack started to sit up, but the lightness in his head dissuaded him. He lay back down in the pillows. “A week? What happened?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “We were at the mythal stone. I used the ring of stone to shove Jelan into the mythal and then closed it on her. Then the water—”