Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  When Cugel had bowed his acknowledgment, the elder gathered all four of the intruders in his gaze. Long and long he whispered to them. The four interlopers received this intricate communication almost comprehendingly. When they saw the tremors of this host around them, the coruscations of their countless eyes like living gems, and felt the longing in this inhuman multitude, they thought they understood. This race had never been outside the Combs. Now that they were convinced there was an Outside, and that they must see it, it was their purpose to emerge…

  The three men and the jack—with gracious gestures—stood aside. The elder led the supple Slymires down, through the crystal sinus, down the drain-hole human enterprise had dug into their Comb, flooding over the gantry.

  “We are done, my friends,” said Bront. “Let’s after them.”

  Below in the adit, they found a few more lifeless forms than they had left there, for a resurgence of the miners—commencing with the ghost’s death—could now be heard fleeing before the Slymires’ onrush. Outcry and tumult echoed as the creatures swept onward, outward. Jacques in the van, the men ran after them.

  At length, the mine’s mouth opened before them, and the sky beyond where broken clouds, red-litten, drifted through a purple sky. Like a liquid, the Slymires’ legions flooded out, coursed through gullies, surged up bluffs, to fill, with their fluid concourse, a broad plateau dispread a little ways below the Combs.

  What a host they were, the Slymires crouched on this plain, their gorgeous eyes abrim with the never-known sky, and its never-known sun sinking swollen to the western horizon!

  “They’ve never even dreamed of it before…the sun,” murmured Hew. “I think there was a vague rumor of it, recorded in their runes. It seems, by augmenting these, that we have…awakened their minds.”

  “And how will this…” Bront’s voice trailed off, so strange the rapture of that monstrous throng, their fellows joining them in a steady stream still issuing out of the earth, all of them settling down into the same mute awe of the dying sun.

  “…how will this save this world?” finished Bront in Hew’s ear.

  “I have no idea,” said Hew.

  The Slymires sat under the darkening wine of the sky, feeling the breeze which they had never known, watching the sun’s carmine eye slowly lidded by the black horizon. Their own eyes were unearthly gems, entranced in wild surmise. Their foliate plumage bristled and stirred insatiably.

  The four stole away from that devout concourse with a courteous, embarrassed stealth, like that of folk who leave a church before the service ends. They picked their way back down to the lichened plain, just as dark began to settle down.

  “Gentlemen,” said Hew, “we must make north. I cannot express my gratitude for your stalwart spirits, for your help.”

  Cugel resettled his knapsack of crystal. “My friends. I can’t recall a more astonishing or more profitable venture than this we have just shared. I must ask you, without prying I hope, what you gain by what you’ve done. You’ve taken no crystal.”

  “Our aim was, ah, altruistic,” Hew answered. “It was, in some way we do not understand, to save this world.”

  “You quite astonish me!” said Cugel. “And yet perhaps I am not too amazed, for have not I gained a prize that works a great philanthropy? I bring more power to the Biblionites’ sun-cannons, and haste the selfish Guyal’s fall, and the Biblionites, when they have spread the museum’s gnomens far and wide, will have worked a great service to the world.”

  “If indeed they prove the pious altruists they claim to be,” rumbled Jacques.

  “Ah well!” Cugel smiled. “Who can see the future?” (Bront and Hew here exchanged a glance.) “I would like to stand you to a fine refreshment back in Minion, and perhaps a bracing little game of chance…but laden with wealth as I now am, night and haste must hide my passage from the common eye. Gentlemen, it has been a privilege, an honor, and an amazement to have made one with you!”

  Laden with their warm acknowledgments, Cugel turned away into the dark and made light-foot back toward Minion.

  Bront turned to Jacques. “Permit me to say, good sir…that you were worth every lictor of your hire.”

  The jack-haul laughed. “Dear Bront—I like you too, and I think you a most excellent fellow. Adieu.” The gloom concealed Bront’s blush, but he was not displeased by the jack-haul’s declaration. As Jacques moved off, Bront cleared his throat in some discomfort.

  “Esteemed Hew…”

  “Please, most excellent Bront. You are my friend, and I am yours. And I am now, and shall henceforward be, most delighted in our friendship.”

  Bront smiled gratefully. “Well then.”

  “Well then.”

  They turned northward, and at their second stride, found themselves standing on Kadaster’s balcony, the grand sharp peaks of the Siderions marching snow-capped past the edge of sight, splendid beneath a golden sun.

  Broadly smiling, Kadaster gestured them toward a table, whereon stood three goblets and a pitcher of wine, and beside which sat two obese pouches of gold specie.

  “Hew! Bront! You have done well! You have far exceeded my most sanguine hopes. Sit, and be refreshed!”

  “Then your aim has been fulfilled?” asked Hew.

  “Oh, yes indeed. Or, technically, it will be.”

  They drank, and rested for a space, though the expeditioners eyed the mage aslant, now and again. Bront, at last, could not forbear to ask, “May we know, Kadaster, just how we have helped to…”

  “How you have helped to save this world? Why, of course you may! How stupid of me not to explain it at once, now that its eventuation is assured! Now that you have assured it!

  “The Slymires, you see, will, not too long after you have visited them, build an array of huge reflecting mirrors of amplificatory crystal. With these they will return to the sun its own tremendously augmented light. I must spare you the rather intricate technical paradoxes—all of them mutually contradictory—involved in this transaction, but by so doing, they will rekindle it.”

  Hew blinked. “They will rekindle…the sun?”

  “Rekindle the sun. Just so! Another flagon, my dear friends?”

  * * *

  SCOTT LYNCH was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He worked a variety of jobs, including as a dishwasher, waiter, Web designer, freelance writer, and office manager, before publishing his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, in 2006. Part of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, concerned with the life of thief and con man Locke Lamora, and set in the world of the shattered Therin Throne Empire, the series is projected to run to seven books. In addition to being a 2007 John W. Campbell Award, William L. Crawford Award, and Locus Award finalist, Scott is a volunteer firefighter, certified in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in the city of New Richmond, Wisconsin.

  * * *

  IN THE STACKS

  Scott Lynch

  Laszlo Jazera, aspirant wizard of the High University of Hazar, spent a long hour on the morning of his fifth-year exam worming his way into an uncomfortable suit of leather armor. A late growth spurt had ambushed Laszlo that spring, and the cuirass, once form-fitted, was now tight across the shoulders despite every adjustment of the buckles and straps. As for the groin guard, well, the less said the better. Damn, but he’d been an idiot, putting off a test-fit of his old personal gear until it was much too late for a trip to the armory.

  “Still trying to suck it in?” Casimir Vrana, his chambers-mate, strolled in already fully armored, not merely with physical gear but with his usual air of total ease. In truth, he’d spent even less time in fighting leathers than Laszlo had in their half-decade at school together. He simply had the curious power of total, improbable deportment. Every inch the patrician, commanding and comely, he could have feigned relaxation even while standing in fire up to his privates. “You’re embarrassing me, Laszlo. And you with all your dueling society ribbons.”

  “We wear silks,” huffed Laszlo, buckling on h
is stiff leather neck-guard. “So we can damn well move when we have to. This creaking heap of boiled pigskin, I’ve hardly worn it since Archaic Homicide Theory—”

  “Forgot to go to the armory for a refit, eh?”

  “Well, I’ve been busy as all hells, hardly sleeping—”

  “A fifth-year aspirant, busy and confused at finals time? What an unprecedented misfortune. A unique tale of woe.” Casimir moved around Laszlo and began adjusting what he could. “Let’s skip our exam. You need warm milk and cuddles.”

  “I swear on my mother, Caz, I’ll set fire to your cryptomancy dissertation.”

  “Can’t. Turned it in two hours ago. And why are you still dicking around with purely physical means here?” Casimir muttered something, and Laszlo yelped in surprise as the heat of spontaneous magic ran up and down his back—but a moment later, the armor felt looser. Still not a good fit, but at least not tight enough to hobble his every movement. “Better?”

  “Moderately.”

  “I don’t mean to lecture, magician, but sooner or later you should probably start using, you know, magic to smooth out your little inconveniences.”

  “You’re a lot more confident with practical use than I am.”

  “Theory’s a wading pool, Laz. You’ve got to come out into deep water sooner or later.” Casimir grinned, and slapped Laszlo on the back. “You’re gonna see that today, I promise. Let’s get your kit together so they don’t start without us.”

  Laszlo pulled on a pair of fingerless leather gauntlets, the sort peculiar to the profession of magicians intending to go in harm’s way. With Casimir’s oversight, he filled the sheathes on his belt and boots with half a dozen stilettos, then strapped or tied on no fewer than fourteen auspicious charms and protective wards. Some of these he’d crafted himself; the rest had been begged or temporarily stolen from friends. His sable cloak and mantle, lined in aspirant gray, settled lastly and awkwardly over the creaking, clinking mass he’d become.

  “Oh damn,” Laszlo muttered after he’d adjusted his cloak, “where did I set my—”

  “Sword,” said Casimir, holding it out in both hands. Laszlo’s wire-hilted rapier was his pride and joy, an elegant old thing held together by mage-smithery through three centuries of duties not always ceremonial. It was an heirloom of his diminished family, the only valuable item his parents had been able to bequeath him when his mild sorcerous aptitude had won him a standard nine-year scholarship to the university. “Checked it myself.”

  Laszlo buckled the scabbard into his belt and covered it with his cloak. The armor still left him feeling vaguely ridiculous, but at least he trusted his steel. Thus protected, layered head-to-toe in leather, enchantments, and weapons, he was at last ready for the final challenge each fifth-year student faced if they wanted to return for a sixth.

  Today, Laszlo Jazera would return a library book.

  The Living Library of Hazar was visible from anywhere in the city, a vast onyx cube that hung in the sky like a square moon, directly over the towers of the university’s western campus. Laszlo and Casimir hurried out of their dorm and into the actual shadow of the library, a darkness that bisected Hazar as the sun rose toward noon and was eclipsed by the cube.

  There was no teleportation between campuses for students. Few creatures in the universe are lazier than magicians with studies to keep them busy indoors, and the masters of the university ensured that aspirants would preserve at least some measure of physical virtue by forcing them to scuttle around like ordinary folk. Scuttle was precisely what Laszlo and Casimir needed to do, in undignified haste, in order to reach the library for their noon appointment. Across the heart of Hazar they sped.

  Hazar! The City of Distractions, the most perfect mechanism ever evolved for snaring the attention of young people like the two cloaked aspirants! The High University, a power beyond governments, sat at the nexus of gates to fifty known worlds, and took in the students of eight thinking species. Hazar existed not just to serve the university’s practical needs, but to sift heroic quantities of valuables out of the student body by catering to its less practical desires.

  Laszlo and Casimir passed whorehouses, gambling dens, fighting pits, freak shows, pet shops, concert halls, and private clubs. There were restaurants serving a hundred cuisines, and bars serving a thousand liquors, teas, dusts, smokes, and spells. Bars more than anything—bars on top of bars, bars next to bars, bars within bars. A bar for every student, a different bar for every day of the nine years most would spend in Hazar, yet Laszlo and Casimir somehow managed to ignore them all. On any other day, that would have required heroic effort, but it was exams week, and the dread magic of the last minute was in the air.

  At the center of the eastern university campus, five hundred feet beneath the dark cube, was a tiny green bordered with waterfalls. No direct physical access to the Living Library was allowed, for several reasons. Instead, a single tall silver pillar stood in the middle of the grass. Without stopping to catch his breath after arrival, Laszlo placed the bare fingers of his right hand against the pillar and muttered, “Laszlo Jazera, fifth year, reporting to Master Molnar of the—”

  Between blinks it was done. The grass beneath his boots became hard tile, the waterfalls became dark wood paneling on high walls and ceilings. He was in a lobby the size of a manor house, and the cool, dry air was rich with the musty scent of library stacks. There was daylight shining in from above, but it was tamed by enchanted glass and fell on the hall with the gentle amber color of a good ale. Laszlo shook his head to clear a momentary sensation of vertigo, and an instant later Casimir appeared just beside him.

  “Ha! Not late yet,” said Casimir, pointing to a tasteful wall clock where tiny blue spheres of light floated over the symbols that indicated seven minutes to noon. “We won’t be early enough to shove our noses up old Molnar’s ass like eager little slaves, but we won’t technically be tardy. Come on. Which gate?”

  “Ahhh, Manticore.”

  Casimir all but dragged Laszlo to the right, down the long circular hallway that ringed the innards of the library. Past the Wyvern Gate they hurried, past the Chimaera Gate, past the reading rooms, past a steady stream of fellow aspirants, many of them armed and girded for the very same errand they were on. Laszlo picked up instantly on the general atmosphere of nervous tension, as sensitive as a prey animal in the middle of a spooked herd. Final exams were out there, prowling, waiting to tear the weak and sickly out of the mass.

  On the clock outside the gate to the Manticore Wing of the library, the little blue flame was just floating past the symbol for high noon when Laszlo and Casimir skidded to a halt before a single tall figure.

  “I see you two aspirants have chosen to favor us with a dramatic last-minute arrival,” said the man. “I was not aware this was to be a drama exam.”

  “Yes, Master Molnar. Apologies, Master Molnar,” said Laszlo and Casimir in unison.

  Hargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a face that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting their permanent scowls down across the centuries. Lean and sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the formal language of scholars, and they formed the motto of the Librarians:

  RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.

  “May I presume,” said Molnar, sparing neither aspirant the very excellent disdainful stare he’d cultivated over decades of practice, “that you have familiarized yourselves with the introductory materials that were provided to you last month?”

  “Yes, Master Molnar. Both of us,” said Casimir. Laszlo was pleased to see that Casimir’s swagger had prudently evaporated for the moment.

  “Good.” Molnar spread his fingers and words of white fire appeared in the air before him, neatly organized paragraphs floating vertically in the
space between Laszlo’s forehead and navel. “This is your Statement of Intent; namely, that you wish to enter the Living Library directly as part of an academic requirement. I’ll need your sorcerer’s marks here.”

  Laszlo reached out to touch the letters where Molnar indicated, feeling a warm tingle on his fingertips. He closed his eyes and visualized his First Secret Name, part of his private identity as a wizard, a word-symbol that could leave an indelible imprint of his personality without actually revealing itself to anyone else. This might seem like a neat trick, but when all was said and done, it was mostly used for occasional bits of magical paperwork and for bar tabs.

  “And here,” said Molnar, moving his own finger. “This is a Statement of Informed Acceptance of Risk…and here, this absolves the custodial staff of any liability should you injure yourself by being irretrievably stupid…and this one, which certifies that you are armed and equipped according to your own comfort.”

  Laszlo hesitated for a second, bit the inside of his left cheek, and gave his assent. When Casimir had done the same, Molnar snapped his fingers and the letters of fire vanished. At the same instant, the polished wooden doors of the Manticore Gate rumbled apart. Laszlo glanced at the inner edges of the doors and saw that, beneath the wooden veneer, each had a core of some dark metal a foot thick. He’d never once been past that gate, or any like it—aspirants were usually confined to the reading rooms, where their requests for materials were passed to the library staff.

  “Come then,” said Molnar, striding through the gate. “You’ll be going in with two other students, already waiting inside. Until I escort you back out this gate, you may consider your exam to be in progress.”