Plague of Spells

by Bruce R Cordell

  “Indeed. A soul shard, naked in a shaft of sharp steel.”

  Raidon exclaimed, “Angul? They left the sword with you?”

  “Yes. A grand gift I treasure still.”

  “May we see it?” requested Cynosure, interrupting Raidon before he could demand the blade. “We’ve heard much of this storied sword and would look upon your great treasure.”

  “Treasures such as Angul should be displayed to admiring eyes,” agreed the Chalk Destrier.

  A grating vibration tried to knock the monk from his feet as the cliff face simply rotated upward. White dust plumed. The screech of stone on stone was like daggers in Raidon’s ears. When the face stopped its movement, a hollow was revealed. The gap opened onto a passage leading back into the cliff face. The white walls of the tunnel glimmered with the same moonlike radiance as the exterior.

  Raidon darted into the opening and down the smooth corridor beyond to get away from the dust. The air within was thankfully clear. The passage was slightly curved, so that even after only twenty paces, the entrance was obscured behind him.

  The passage deposited the monk into a great arched hall decorated like a mad king’s treasure vault. Giant shields, glowing swords, gem-crusted staves, sculptures of all shapes and materials, and panoplies of magical garb were displayed on both walls and suspended from the ceiling. A clear space ran down the center of the hall, some thirty feet wide. Raidon started down it.

  As he walked, he noted many of the shapes he had first thought to be sculptures were actually trophies of the hunt, stuffed or otherwise bodily preserved. He saw a tiger, an ettin, an amulet-wearing mummy, and other vanquished threats. He also saw a man in wizard’s robes, a woman garbed in formfitting leather wielding a glowing punch dagger, and other humanoids similarly preserved.

  The monk came to a wider space, circular, and fronted by several alabaster pillars. A creature claimed the opening’s center. It glowed with the familiar radiance of the cliff face. The creature’s shape was like a centaur, but sleeker. He had expected its skin to be stone, not flesh … though its surface was eerily milk white and fluid. Perhaps it was chalk of some enchanted variety after all.

  “Welcome to my fortress,” said the centaur-thing. “Would you look upon the soul shard?”

  “Yes,” replied Raidon, “but are you the Chalk Destrier? I at first thought the cliff we addressed answered to that name.”

  The centaur said, “What an impressive girth I could claim were that true, but no. I am as you see me.” It leaned in and confided, “I tell you that without expectation of a gift.”

  “You are most kind,” spoke the monk, though he wondered what kind of creature this Chalk Destrier was to expect payment for every exchange of words.

  “Now then, look upon the Blade Cerulean, Angul, which shelters a splinter of a human soul. Afterward, I shall claim my last gift from you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Raidon. He glanced at the stuffed trophies.

  The Chalk Destrier did not answer—it gestured with one milky palm. Light blazed like the rising sun, washing away Raidon’s visual perception of the chamber.

  Raidon blinked against the brilliance. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away and saw a boulder, nearly five feet in diameter, now lying on the floor in the space between the monk and the pearly hued centaur. A long sword was plunged tip first into the boulder. The weapon was unblemished, the lines utilitarian, but the hilt was set with a cerulean-hued stone. The faintest of glimmers sparkled in the stone’s depths.

  “Is the soul extinguished?” asked Raidon. The last time he’d seen the blade, in its owner’s hands some twenty years earlier, it had blazed with cerulean light and pulsed with righteous potency.

  “It sleeps, that is all,” replied the Chalk Destrier. It continued, “You have looked upon my treasure. Now I can claim my gift in return.”

  Even as the centaur spoke, the floor trembled. A sound identical to that which had accompanied the opening of the tunnel into the outer cliff face echoed in the chamber.

  “You are sealing the entrance?” Raidon asked. He doubted it was opening wider.

  “You are the gift,” the Chalk Destrier announced, moving forward. “I wouldn’t want you to scamper off.” The creature raised one of its hands. The digits melted and flowed, becoming a long, thin blade, a skinning blade. “Please stand still; I do not like to reconstruct my trophies.”

  The monk loosed his concerns, reached for his focus that allowed his body and mind to become one. He hurdled the boulder pinning Angul, spinning so he only touched the stone with his palms. His time perception slowed. As he topped the rock, he pushed off with all his strength and training, feet toward his foe. He hammered the Chalk Destrier high on its humanlike chest with his feet.

  The crack of contact jolted through Raidon’s soles, calves, and knees. A network of fine cracks bloomed at the point of impact. He kicked himself away from his foe in a spray of rock chips, somersaulting back through the air. He landed, out of reach of the oversized creature’s long arms, even the one that had become a blade.

  The creature’s milky pallor warmed until the Chalk Destrier was the color of freshly spilled blood. It leaped.

  Raidon dived, avoiding the flashing ruby hooves and at the same time ducking beneath the centaur’s slashing blade. As he dodged, he unleashed a punch of his own, striking the creature along its right flank. The impact punished his knuckles, and worse, seared him. The creature’s red color was not mere show—it was red hot!

  “Raidon, take the sword,” Cynosure’s voice urged.

  “Angul can’t help me against the Chalk Destrier,” Raidon breathed as he avoided another charge. “As odd and amoral as this creature seems, I detect no aberrant hint. My own Sign remains quiescent.”

  “You must take the sword soon, or I’ll not be able to extract you. The edifice in which you fight is receding, whether in space or time I can’t discern. My connection with you is stretching. In another few heartbeats, it will snap. You’ll be sealed in with the Chalk Destrier, perhaps forever, as one of its trophies.”

  The centaur reared, then fell forward, its front legs kicking. The monk sidestepped, but the handblade sliced across Raidon’s forearm. The creature was impossibly fast, hard as stone, and as hot as a forge fire. The monk flipped backward as if to flee, but it was a feint; while still standing on his hands, he heel-kicked, catching the creature in one flaring red eye as it leaned forward and down. A crunch like breaking crystal was music to Raidon’s ears.

  But the creature didn’t react like a living thing would. It bore down with one hand and one blade, and very nearly skewered the monk. He reversed the back flip he’d initiated to draw the creature in, and flashed past the creature, trying to get behind it. Back on his feet and another five feet behind Destrier—

  The centaur mule-kicked him. Years of rote training alone saved him then, so instead of staving in his head, the blow merely knocked stars into his vision and banging cymbals into his ears.

  He dropped to the ground, just avoiding a second rear-leg kick from the centaur. The floor was cold and gritty beneath his fingers.

  “The sword!” Cynosure urged again, his voice noticeably weaker, as if he were shouting from a great distance.

  Raidon didn’t waste breath explaining he’d been trying to follow the construct’s advice all along.

  “Now or never,” came the construct’s warning, half as loud.

  Raidon threw himself sideways, rolling toward the boulder, knowing he was opening himself up to an attack. The Chalk Destrier did not disappoint. It stomped him once before he stood, pulling himself up the side of the rock.

  As the cold pommel of Angul fell into Raidon’s grip, the centaur reared up again, kicking him in the shoulder and stomach with its front hooves. He curled and rolled backward. The weight of his falling body wrenched Angul from the stone.

  “Got you!” he heard Cynosure exclaim.

  A parabola of blue light spun out of nothing, engulfin
g him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars

  Anusha wondered what was happening back on the island. Anxiety prickled through her dream form.

  She pulled her travel chest out of the hallway onto the main deck. The Green Siren’s launch was gone, but two much smaller lifeboats remained. Lucky followed her, the dog’s chain severed by a single stroke of her dream sword. To the eyes of any watching pirate, it would seem as if the chest slid along the oiled planks of the deck of its own accord.

  “The ghost!”

  A dark-haired, scarred woman stood between her and the closest lifeboat, her eyes wide. It was the same pirate responsible for nearly revealing Anusha’s presence several days ago. The woman wasn’t looking at her, but at Anusha’s reflection in the dirty glass of a signal mirror mounted not three feet from the travel chest.

  Annoyance briefly eclipsed her worry about Japheth. How many reflective surfaces were there on this blasted ship?

  Anusha released the chest and summoned her dream sword. She smashed the signal mirror with the blade’s tip. From now on, she decided, she would smash every mirror she came upon.

  The pirate screamed, “Ghost attack!” and ran, diving into the open hold. Questioning cries and answering yells sprung up around the ship.

  “Brilliant,” commented Anusha as she relinquished her sword. It faded like a dream. She grabbed her travel chest and pulled in earnest, quickly towing it to the railing. The seamount of Taunissik, ringed in streamers of darkness, remained just visible as the day’s light began to fall to twilight.

  Anusha studied the mechanism securing the lifeboat. Some sort of pulley connected to a lot of thick ropes and knots. She briefly considered having at it with her sword. No, she should lower the boat first …

  Pirate calls of alarm went up across the craft, in response to the incessant screams of “Ghost!” down in the hold. Anusha found the latch securing the pulley. She got a good hold on the chest, then heaved her travel chest into the lifeboat. She couldn’t have accomplished that feat in the flesh, but even so, she nearly lost her concentration and dropped herself into the chop.

  Anusha jumped into the swaying launch and called Lucky to join her. The dog barked excitedly and bounded aboard. She released the latch controlling the pulley. The handle spun out, and the lifeboat dropped into the waves alongside the slimy bulk of the Green Siren. Safely down in the water, she severed the overhanging ropes with a couple of swipes of her shimmering dream blade, then grabbed the oars.

  Her plan nearly failed then. It was far easier to push, pull, slash, and heave things in her dream form than to hold and manipulate a discrete object over long periods, let alone two simultaneously. The oars kept slipping from her hands even as she tried to fit them to the oarlocks on each gunwale.

  Several heads poked over the railing above her, some pointing, all yelling. One man was yelling, “The ghost is stealing the captain’s dog!”

  Someone else yelled, “By Umberlee’s rusted trident, what’re you fools jabbering about! That’s not a ghost—we got us a thief with an invisibility spell!”

  Cries of disagreement, revelation, and surprise came back. A discussion broke out over whether wizards had relearned the art of magically tricking the eye.

  Anusha continued to struggle with the oars. Desperation was not helping her concentration. She recalled suddenly the effort it had taken her to learn cursive writing under the stern eye of her tutor. With a similar effort, she blocked out the pirate talk above and slowly, methodically, placed one oar in its lock, then the other. Once so placed, she discovered it was far easier to row.

  With swift strokes, the lifeboat nosed toward Taunissik. She left the pirate babble behind. Lucky positioned himself on the lifeboat’s prow, and for a short time, served as its figurehead.

  Halfway to the isle, the small dots trailing misty streamers of darkness resolved as squid-riding kuo-toa. Anusha suddenly recalled Nogah’s role the first time a landing party from the Green Siren came ashore. The ex-whip had chanted the entire time, to keep the attention of the sentinels and Gethshemeth elsewhere. Anusha ceased rowing and looked hard at the distant flyers. Their patterns didn’t seem any different. They hadn’t noticed her yet, down here on the darkening sea. Had Nogah been wrong? Considering the ambush the others had walked into, it seemed possible the ex-whip had accomplished exactly the opposite of her stated aim. Anusha resumed rowing.

  Her pace quickened, until she sawed at the oars like a madwoman. Why not? She didn’t need to pause for rest or breath. It wasn’t heavy work, just tedious. She sped across the water. In short order, she beached the lifeboat next to the first launch, in a thick tangle of mangrove roots. Nothing had found or disturbed the site, as far as she could determine.

  She wondered what had become of the rowers left by the first sortie. Nothing pleasant, she guessed.

  Anusha debated whether she should pull the travel chest completely ashore or leave it in the boat for a quick getaway later. She decided to leave it in the boat.

  She addressed the guard dog. “Lucky! Good boy! Good boy! Stay here, Lucky. Guard! Stay until I return, all right?” Lucky tried to lick her proffered hand and settled himself directly on top of the travel chest. What had she done to deserve the trust of such a loyal, innocent little creature? She patted him on the head, then turned toward the isle’s interior.

  Raidon hurtled through a gap between nothing and everything, through a space where people were not meant to go. Light speared his eyes and burned his face. His teeth rattled in his jaw. All the bones in his body tried to burrow out of their fleshy cocoon. His chest ached as he gasped over and over, trying to draw in another breath of air. But there was no air. A gray haze narrowed his vision smaller and smaller …

  A guttering blue parabola snatched him out of the no-space where he trespassed. Raidon and Angul fell ten feet onto a flagstone floor.

  He couldn’t suppress a long, hacking cough, even though his ribs seared with each contraction. He lay on his side in a half fetal position, riding out his body’s mutiny. When the coughing subsided, he rested.

  Where had Cynosure dropped him this time?

  The chamber was a great stone vault filled with hulking, dimly glowing rectangular objects. Most protruded from the floor, but some stuck out from the walls and several hung from the ceiling. Ancient, magical script glimmered on the blocks; the source of each object’s glow was this script-born light. Two walls were collapsed beneath rubble, and many of the blocks were sundered, their runes darkened.

  Slender tubes of dully pulsing light protruded from the stone blocks, one or two from each. The corralled light was gathered in thick bundles, suspended from the high ceiling by fancifully carved stone gargoyles. Many of the cords were frayed and snapped, their light dead, and others lay in snakelike disarray on the rubble-strewn floor.

  It was cold too. Raidon’s breath steamed, and his face and hands were already chilled.

  Other than the cold, nothing immediately threatened him except the wounds the Chalk Destrier had given him as their fight concluded.

  He closed his eyes, reaching for his focus. He visualized his chest and the bones that gave his torso shape as lines of energy. They were cracked and misshapen—a few were broken. Pulses of pain spiked out from them through the rest of his body. He imagined the spikes as real objects, then imagined their pointy ends eroding away. These sorts of visualization tricks aided his concentration. When the piercing pain receded enough for him to continue, he mentally grasped each broken and damaged bone, one after another, and straightened it. New spikes of agony shot through his body, ones he couldn’t dampen. But he did not stop until every bone was mended.

  Raidon finally released his focus. Stabbing pain had been replaced by a body-wide dull ache. He lay awhile longer in the winter-cold chamber of rubble and strange objects. Stray thoughts of his long-dead life intruded. He saw Ailyn playing in the courtyard of their ho
me in Nathlekh. She wore a yellow dress, and her face was grubby. She clutched a great mass of wild daffodils from the garden. He could smell them.

  The monk smiled. Ailyn returned the impish grin he knew so well. His heart clenched. “Hey, little girl,” he murmured to the phantom. His throat was tight. Ailyn laughed and skipped away.

  A new pain pulled him from waking reverie. Something hard and painful lay below his prostate form. He shifted and saw the object was Angul. He looked at its dull length for a few moments. His vision was blurred with unwept tears born of his daydream.

  The monk rubbed at his eyes until they were clear.

  He grabbed Angul’s cold hilt and stood. From this new vantage, he could see farther into the chamber. The lines of light that were not burned out seemed to lead to a nexus at the chamber’s heart. He walked toward that gathering point, favoring one foot slightly.

  At the center lay a crumpled, half buried shape, like the husk of some fantastically large spider’s recent meal. The shape was a humanoid figure forged of crystal, stone, iron, and more exotic components, but it had fallen over. Its surface was rusted, pitted, and cracked, and half of it was buried beneath a section of collapsed ceiling. A partially visible design winked from its dented metallic chest—the Cerulean Sign.

  “Cynosure?”

  The figure did not respond. Despite that, Raidon was certain he was in the presence of the artificial entity who once served as Stardeep’s warden.

  “Are you awake?”

  He bent, tapped the golem’s forehead. Was that a slight glimmer of light deep in the idol’s stony eyes? He couldn’t be sure.

  “Did you exhaust yourself pulling me from the Chalk Destrier’s domain?” he asked. “If so, thank you. I hope it does not prove your last act. I’m not worthy of such sacrifice.”

  He frowned. “You sacrificed yourself to save me, someone you hardly know.”

  His thoughts turned backward. He murmured, “Me, I left the heart of my life to die alone while I slept in safety.”