by Mark Acres
“Look to the horizon in the sky.”
The king’s head snapped back as he gazed into the far sky. Then his mouth dropped open in shock before his eyes glazed over a kind of ecstasy. “Oh! Oh, by the gods! Look at this, Culdus! Look!”
The soldier came to stand by his king and his tired eyes peered toward the far horizon. What he saw froze him with fear. Winging toward the palace-fortress, in numbers sufficient to blot out a good eighth of the sky, were the hideous flying lizards known as wyverns. The ugly beasts were twenty feet long—though half of that was tail—and they could kill a man with a nasty bite from their jaws, with swipes from their deadly claws, or with the poisonous sting of their serpentine tails. Mounted on each wyvern was either a wizard of the League of the Black Wing or an armored man-at-arms, complete with lance and great helm. Onward toward the palace the armada of airborne warriors flew, until they passed within a few feet of the king’s window.
“Wyvern riders, Your Majesty,” Valdaimon said. “Power from the skies to aid your conquering armies on the ground. At their mere appearance many foes will break and flee, for their appearance almost reminds one of the dragons of old legends—does it not?”
“Indeed, Valdaimon, indeed!” the king enthused. “How fitting, given our choice of heraldic crest—the black dragon...”
“I am glad Your Majesty is pleased.” Valdaimon smiled again, this time turning his full gaze on Culdus. “The riders are wizard members of the League and a few troops we have trained on our own. Their leaders will meet with you tomorrow to coordinate cooperative efforts on the field of battle. Agreed?”
Culdus was feeling trapped. How could he disagree? How could any commander turn down a force like this that would guarantee victory in the opening battles of the campaign? As for the long run, Culdus didn’t see how these things could overcome elven magic or the hordes of Parona, but... but what about the eggs?
“Agreed, friend Valdaimon.” Culdus returned the wizard’s smile. “But tell me, what have these wyvern riders to do with the Golden Eggs of Parona?”
“It is a magical link—a technical matter for wizards. Do not concern yourself too deeply. Only those trained for decades in the magic arts could appreciate the nature of the connection.”
“I see,” Culdus replied. And he did see. Valdaimon was up to something, and neither Culdus nor the king was to be allowed to know what it was. And, Culdus thought, the question of price had been neatly sidestepped altogether.
Far below the great hall from which Ruprecht watched the display of power he imagined to be his, a solitary elf hung crucified against the cold, slime-covered walls of a tiny dungeon cell. The elf’s hair shone in the darkness with a kind of silvery light of its own—a unique feature even among elves. Not that Ruprecht had noticed; this was the only elf the Black Prince had ever seen, and under Valdaimon’s tutelage Ruprecht believed that all mature elves appeared this way. But this was no ordinary elf. Only elves that attained to legendary age were gifted with the glowing silver hair, and only one such elf remained. He was commonly called Elrond. This Elrond Ruprecht had made prisoner at Valdaimon’s insistence and against the Covenant, but then this Covenant was not a matter that Ruprecht took seriously.
Elrond hung on the dungeon wall, his wrists and feet manacled to iron spikes driven deep into the stones. His near-naked body, withered with age, was a mass of bloody streaks and festering welts, the souvenirs of his periodic torture for the amusement of the Black Prince. Despite his wounds, Elrond at this moment felt no pain, for his mind, trained over five millennia in the arts of elven magic and elven mental discipline, was far from the dungeon.
He began his mental journey while the Black Prince still dined. First, his senses reached out to the creeping green slime that grew upon the wet stones of his cell, for slime, however disgusting to humans, is green and living, and wherever there are green and living plants, the mind and soul of an elf can dwell. Slowly, the consciousness that was Elrond made its way through the trail of the slime, inching over the cold stones, slipping between tiny niches and cracks the eye could never see, working its way upward and outward until, somewhere in the soil beyond the dungeon wall, it made contact with a tiny tendril of root sunk deep by an evergreen tree. From there, his mind flowed, faster now, with greater ease, upward, upward, upward with the running sap, until it broke above the surface of the earth and, in a thousand, thousand green needles felt the warmth of the last rays of the day’s pale spring sun.
Onward and outward the consciousness that was now Elrond and slime and root and tree and then forest raced and expanded like a great, empty balloon expanding and discovering the nature of the air inside itself. His mind touched creepers that led up the wall to the great hall, and he heard all that was said between Culdus, Valdaimon, and Ruprecht. At the same time his mind counted the numbers of blue jay nests in the forest conifers and discerned that the spring, though still cold, was far advanced. His mind felt the coldness of death of the branches of trees that would not be renewed and sensed the joy of spring birth in the tendrils of tiny plants that would soon be saplings reaching for the sun.
Onward and outward raced the mind of Elrond, now at an astonishing clip, until the ancient elf, with his five millennia of memories and knowledge and love was part of all the living green things in the southern part of the world, reaching almost to the boundaries of the Elven Preserve, seeking for... what? Whom?
Elrond searched his vast memory. He did not seek food, for his vast array of roots brought him food from the depths of the earth. Water, too, was provided in abundance. Warmth would be welcome, but Elrond knew that in time, just a little time, the warmth of the sky light would come again, as it always did. But there was something, someone....
Shulana! It required all the discipline of his millennia of training to snatch the name of a single, discrete being from the vast consciousness of half a world of living things. But when Elrond’s mind cried out the name of Shulana, the cry was so great that every tree, every budding flower, every blade of grass over a range of six hundred miles echoed that cry in the vibrations of their flowing sap. The cry, silent to human ears, leapt from the plants into the very air and was carried on the breeze until a little gust touched the fresh flowers in a vase on a table near a certain bedstead.
“Shulana!” The call of the most ancient of all elves roared in the mind of his stripling kinswoman. Shulana, who the instant before had felt the glow of triumph as she knew that Bagsby’s own greed and pride had won him to her cause, trembled in her innermost being. True, in elven communion she had before encountered the minds of other elves, melded with little patches of green nature. But never before had so powerful another consciousness, so vast in its scope and extent, ripped into her own mind without warning and so focused on her own identity that she felt naked and completely alone. The young elf’s hands trembled. Her eyes grew wide with terror and she gazed at the vase of flowers just in time to see it tumble to the floor and shatter.
“What was that?” Bagsby said, annoyed, glancing about. He saw the sheer terror in the elf’s eyes and leapt to his feet, grabbing his dagger. “What is it?” he called.
Shulana neither replied nor moved. She stood stone still while her mind became a receptacle into which was poured all Elrond’s knowledge of Ruprecht’s plans and the single command, “Hurry!” For as both elves knew, once the Eggs of Parona were in Valdaimon’s hands, the vile wizard would be unstoppable.
“Curse you, elf!” Bagsby complained, slinking around his own room in a crouch with the dagger held ready to strike at any shadow that moved. “I should have known you’d bring me danger!”
In a single instant, the mind of Elrond flowed back into the body of the frail elf in the dungeon of Ruprecht’s castle. Elrond groaned in pain. He was no longer part of the Earth. He was merely a very tired, very old, very tortured elf. Indeed, he was the oldest elf in the world and the one in the greatest physical pain.<
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“Be still, Bagsby,” Shulana replied. “You do not yet know what real danger is.” Shulana shuddered, and goose flesh rose along her arms and legs. The thought of the eggs in the hands of Valdaimon chilled her. So did the thought of the power of mind that Elrond must possess to cry out to her over a distance of hundreds of miles.... “But you will learn, Bagsby. You will learn.”
Ruprecht clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together in gleeful anticipation. So far, the evening had gone better than he had expected. The anticipation of victory was thrilling. The display of wyvern power that Valdaimon had showed him was elating. But now would come the best part of all. “Come, smelly old tutor of mine,” he said eagerly. “Show me, show me in your ball of crystal the victories that will be mine.”
Valdaimon smiled, his usual scraggly toothed, obsequious smile. His Majesty was in a fine form tonight, pleased and easily controlled. Even Culdus dared not cross the wizard now; the display of wyvern power had silenced him. The old mage’s long staff thudded on the stone floor of the great hall as he made his way back to his seat at the main table. Slowly, he eased himself into the chair. He breathed deeply, then began to wave his arms in broad circles over the crystal globe.
He would show the king victories, Valdaimon decided. He would even show the king something good about Culdus. This conference would end with hopes for victory high and the king with no doubts that his expectations would be fulfilled.
Slowly, Valdaimon spoke the words, handed from the earliest human mages who had mastered the arts of scrying and futuresight, that infused the crystal with their power. A tiny spark of green light appeared in the center of the clear ball. Gradually it grew, changing color to yellow, then red, then orange, then blue, then purple, then a blinding white. A great flash came from the ball, and then an image formed.
“Behold, Majesty, the scenes of victories to come,” the old wizard intoned.
Ruprecht stood and leaned forward eagerly, gazing into the depths of the ball. Culdus, too, stood and looked over the young king’s shoulder.
In the crystal, they saw the legions of Heilesheim marching forward against a foe already fleeing in terror, while wyvern riders swooped from the sky, laughing, killing at will with thrusts of their spears. In the far distance, great stone towers crumbled, and the king saw himself, mounted on a great black steed with its hooves raised to the heavens, crying out “Victory! Victory! On to another victory!”
“Valdaimon!” the young king exclaimed at length. “It is all as I had planned!”
“Yes, Majesty, truly your wildest dreams shall be fulfilled,” the wizard answered humbly.
“Yes, yes, I see...” The king’s voice broke off. A troubled frown passed over the face of Culdus. The crystal went suddenly dark.
“What was that, Valdaimon?” the old warrior asked.
“Yes, you saw that. What was that?” the pale youth demanded, grabbing the front of the old wizard’s robes. “What was that?”
“Nothing, Majesty,” Valdaimon replied. But the mage could not keep uncertainty from his voice. For he, too, had seen the momentary image—a short man with graying hair and a chubby square face, slinking about a great bedroom with a dagger in his hand. By itself, that could mean anything. But, as though in a dream, a second image shimmered behind the little man: the gem-studded, gleaming Golden Eggs of Parona. “It is nothing at all,” Valdaimon continued. He laughed, a kind of obscene, cackling laugh, to make light of the momentary vision that had deeply troubled him. “Perhaps,” he said, cackling louder as if sharing a great joke with friends, “we have scried the secret dreams of some little thief!”
Ruprecht joined Valdaimon’s laughter, clapping the decrepit wizard on the back. Culdus waited until his own eyes met the wizard’s across the table, then he smiled a small, dry smile.
First Blood
BIGSBY sat down again on the edge of the bed and eyed the elf carefully.
“This deal stinks,” he said at length. “I don’t know you. I don’t know that you can pay me. I expect that you won’t. And you want me to take on five hundred men in the pay of the Black Prince to steal a treasure that can’t be sold because everyone in the known world will recognize it and know that it’s stolen. Forget about Nebuchar’s assassins—they don’t scare me. Tell me again why I’m going to do this for you.”
Shulana’s thoughts were already far from Bagsby. So much had been implanted in her mind by her brief contact with Elrond that she needed time to think, time to sort it out, time to modify her own plans, if need be.
“What?” she responded, a little dazed.
“What?” Bagsby replied, mocking her. “What? I’ll tell you what. I think this deal stinks and I want to know why you think I’ll even consider stealing the Golden Eggs of Parona, that’s what.”
“Oh. That again.” Shulana’s fingers made nimble gestures in the air, and she muttered words that Bagsby could hear but not understand. In the next instant, he could see only her disembodied face.
“What’d you do?” he demanded incredulously.
“I must go,” Shulana said, turning to leave the room. Then she turned back, and for an instant the elven face reappeared in midair. “You’ll do it, Bagsby,” she said softly and seriously, “because you think you can do it.”
Bagsby glared at her, then slowly his face broke into a grin. “Well,” he admitted, “there is that.”
The face disappeared. The door to Bagsby’s chamber swung silently open, then silently shut. Bagsby was alone.
“Yes,” he said aloud to no one. “There is that. It would be the greatest theft of all time and I, the greatest thief.” Laughing, Bagsby bounced up from the bed and strode to the large shutters that guarded the great window of his room. He threw them open in time to see the first rays of dawn light the gray, overcast sky. Yes, he thought, the greatest of all time.
Bagsby took a deep breath of the chilly morning air, smiling with self-satisfaction. He gazed out on the neatly manicured gardens at the front of the viscount’s mansion, where the ranks of shrubs and carefully pruned low trees struggled to maintain their dark green coloration on a cold, gray day. He noticed the arrow just in time to do a back flip, the arrow whizzing past just beneath his short salt-and-pepper hair. He landed on his hands and, with a second flip, bounced to his feet, running toward the door. The second arrow thudded into the wood of the door about a half inch above his head.
He’s good, Bagsby thought, dropping to one knee while opening the door. He had to make that second shot on pure calculation; he could not have seen me this far inside the room. The short thief held his dagger at the ready in case a second foe was bold enough to rush in the open door. No—nothing happened. The second man could be waiting in the hallway for the easy shot when Bagsby came running out. Bagsby crouched behind the door, slammed it shut loudly to raise an alarm among the household, then sprang in one leap toward the bed. He landed short with a thud on the hard floor.
Cursing at the pain, Bagsby reached up with his left hand and grabbed at the bedclothes. He pulled down a wad of satin sheet—that would do. He crawled under the bed—no use leaving his back open just in case someone burst through the door. He tied one end of the satin sheet to a leg of the bed, and then made his way in a sideways crouch back toward the window. Chances were the archer in the garden was already in the house. Bagsby would risk the window.
The little thief tied a large double knot in the remaining end of the sheet. He stuck his dagger between his teeth. Grasping the sheet tightly just above the knot, he hurled his body through the open shutters into space. He plunged straight down six feet before the sheet’s length was run out; and the snap as the sheet unfolded to its full length brought him up short. His own weight pulled hard at his elbows and shoulders, but his vice-like grip held. It took him only three seconds to gain a foothold against the nearby wall, and three seconds later he was swinging, back and forth like a pe
ndulum along the front of the building. As his swing reached its highest point near a fig tree, he let go and somersaulted through the air, landing in the branches with only a slight bump on one shin.
“Curses!” Bagsby whispered to himself. “Getting clumsy in my old age.”
It took him five more seconds to scramble up the tree, climb onto a balcony, and position himself, dagger ready in his right hand, beside the large glass doors that led to the second-story hall. By now, Bagsby calculated, the assailant in the hall—for he was sure there was one—would be carefully making his way to the door to Bagsby’s chamber. Bagsby reached out with his left hand and opened the latch on the glass doors. Then, with one seamless motion, he threw open the door, whirled inside, and tossed his dagger, tumbling as it flew, straight at the back of the crossbow-armed figure in black who was creeping down the hall, just as Bagsby had assumed.
The short blade caught the man squarely between the shoulders, and the force of the throw pitched him face forward onto the thickly carpeted floor. Bagsby was on him in an instant. His right foot stamped on the man’s hand; his right hand grabbed the crossbow; his left hand retrieved his dagger. Then for an instant, Bagsby hesitated. An assassin taken alive would be worth a small fortune in ransom money from the Assassins of the Compact in Kala. They despised failure and would actually pay to get back one of their own who had failed, just so they could put the hapless would-be murderer to death themselves in their own inimitable style. Still, it would hardly do for the “elder son” of the honest and pure Count of Nordingham to know too much about the ways of assassins in a land so distant from his home.
“Too bad, oaf. At least you’ll have an easier death than your friends would have given you.” Without further thought Bagsby slit the squirming man’s throat. As the dying man’s blood gurgled and gushed onto the carpet, Bagsby whirled toward the glass doors he had just entered and discharged the crossbow. The bolt caught the second assassin, the one who had fired at him from the garden, squarely in the right knee.