Carcophan laughed again. His receding, black-speckled hair lay brushed flat against his scalp, and his features appeared to be permanently sneering. “The man has a point, dear colleague. Had you gathered as much information as I did, you would have realized that my champion was going to come to me, without need for me to seek him. Had you watched for him to come to me, instead of assuming, you might have killed my champion rather than wasting your time and resources chasing down a colleague.”
The tactless coldness of Carcophan’s reference to Episte all but shattered Colbey’s already tenuous control. He called upon heroic depths of composure to keep from responding with violence he might regret.
Immediately, Trilless turned her attention from Colbey to Carcophan. “You poisonous snake. You creature of evil. I spent months in research, tracking down the tiniest footnote in a text so old it crumbled with every touch.”
Carcophan grinned. His tiny eyes glittered. “I read, too. Then I had the sense and the competence to use my skill to confirm what I found.”
Colbey remained silent, the Wizards’ bickering cutting through his rage, his point only half made.
Trilless tapped a fist on the tabletop. “Maybe I care enough about our world and its law not to risk summoning demons and their chaos just to clarify questions.”
“So, instead, you take a bigger risk and loose one to slaughter the Western Wizard.”
Incredulity replaced Colbey’s ire. He had wanted to agitate the Northern and Southern Wizards and to force them to face the consequences of their misconceptions. However, the two seemed quite capable of inciting one another without his help. On man’s world, each was charged with destroying the cause of the other. Colbey guessed they probably had spent their rare moments together through eternity baiting one another. He took his seat, suddenly enjoying the spat.
Trilless answered Carcophan’s accusation. “I constrained that demon. And I kept its task specific. It could have harmed no one else.”
“No one else but the Western Wizard. How clever.”
Trilless smoothed a hand through her hair, her placid demeanor unbroken despite the Southern Wizard’s sarcasm. “Who could have guessed Tokar would do something so stupid? Destroy his own apprentice. Make a Renshai a Wizard.” She lowered her hand, eyes flashing at the ludicrousness of Tokar’s actions. “And don’t tell me you knew Colbey was the Western Wizard. If you had, you would have also known that Harval would come into existence.” She made a vague gesture that came nowhere near its target, yet they all knew she indicated the Sword of Power at Colbey’s hip. “And you might have used what little judgment you have not to summon the Black Sword.”
As Colbey became more relaxed and less irritable, the knowledge gained during his years with General Santagithi allowed him to see that the Wizard-opposites’ quibbling went far beyond childish name-calling. They read one another’s strategies, ideologies, and methods in every phrase; and the seeds of future war were born from every gibe they traded.
“Three Swords, it took, not two.” Carcophan kept his voice low, pitched to provoke. “You called . . .”
Mar Lon strummed the lonriset’s strings harder, and a minor chord rang out over the argument. His crisp tenor rose over it in new song. “. . . the meeting began with great pomp and fanfare. Wizards squabbled like children where each sat in his chair . . .”
Trilless and Carcophan went suddenly quiet, and all eyes swiveled to the bard.
“. . . They argued of demons, each seething and blathering. Forgetting, in anger, the cause of their gathering.” Mar Lon looked up. He lowered the instrument with a brisk gesture that parodied embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Was I playing too loud?”
Colbey smiled. In the past, he and Mar Lon had had a relationship based on mutual suspicion. Colbey’s background and history unnerved the bard, especially when the Renshai came too close to King Sterrane. And Mar Lon’s mistrust had naturally made him unlikable to Colbey. Suddenly, Colbey developed a new respect for the bard’s style.
“You’d take about half a heartbeat to kill,” Carcophan said.
Even Colbey knew the threat was idle. To kill any mortal meant risking the possibility of jeopardizing future prophecies. The law allowed the Cardinal Wizards to drive mortals into killing one another. Rarely did those rules allow them to interfere more directly.
“Colbey, you have seven tests to complete.” Shadimar redirected the conversation by attending to the task at hand, too dignified to care that the diversion was shallow and obvious. The tonelessness of his voice suggested a standard speech given to all apprentices at this point in the proceedings. “Successful completion of each yields a ring of Wizardry. Once you have any given ring, the task is considered completed, and the next begins.”
Carcophan and Trilless regained appropriate decorum, abandoning their differences to fix their attention on Shadimar.
“When you pass the seventh and last of the tasks . . .” Shadimar glanced sharply at the other Wizards, as if to challenge either to turn his “when” to an “if.” “When you pass the last task, you may be offered an eighth. You must refuse it.”
Colbey raised his brows, intrigued. This was the first time anyone had mentioned this complication.
Again, Shadimar looked from Wizard to Wizard, his expression imploring. When no one else spoke, Shadimar leaned across the table, as if to whisper. His thoughts and manner struck Colbey first. The Eastern Wizard apparently struggled with a desperate concern he saw no way to defuse. A thought drifted from Shadimar to Colbey, obviously without intention. I know Colbey, and, in this, he is like a child. The more I forbid it, the more it will entice him. Yet to send him in unwarned and unprepared for the Guardian of the Task’s tactics will doom him for certain. “There is a guardian who will become insistent. He will offer ultimate power. You must resist him, though it is not my right to tell you why. Refuse repeatedly, and he will send you back to us, perhaps with some crucial information or advice that you or we can use to avert the Ragnarok. If you attempt the task, his advice will become forever lost. As will you.”
Colbey gleaned far more than just Shadimar’s words. The intensity of the Eastern Wizard’s thoughts sent them wafting clearly to Colbey. He understood that, over the millennia, no one who had survived to become a Cardinal Wizard had ever attempted the eighth task. He also learned Shadimar’s theory, nurtured by his collective consciousness. Shadimar believed that Odin had added the eighth task to protect the gods, the world, and the system of Wizardry. Anyone interested in ultimate power could not be trusted to obey the many laws that hemmed in and restricted the Wizards, and Shadimar guessed that the simple act of accepting the eighth task meant failing it. To his mind, the eighth task was, itself, the decision of whether or not to attempt an eighth task.
Colbey considered the possibility. It did seem exactly the sort of warped logic that the Cardinal Wizards used, to his continued annoyance. And Odin’s wisdom seemed to work in much the same way.
“There is no eighth task,” Carcophan added. “Better to think of it that way.”
Trilless nodded her support. Colbey hoped Mar Lon had captured the evil and good Wizards’ concurrence in song. Their agreement on any matter seemed like a grand event that should have documentation.
Though no one had actually asked a question, the three studied Colbey in silence, brows raised. He saw no reason to delay the inevitable. Every Wizard had far more patience than he did. “It doesn’t matter,” Colbey said, then explained. “Like all Renshai, I rely only on the strength of my own mind and body. These are eternal.” He raised his hands to indicate self-reliance. “Your powers are not your own. They come from the creatures you summon, your demons and your Power Swords.”
Mar Lon hunched over his instrument, stunned into motionlessness. A moment later, his lips moved furiously. He drew paper and a stylus from his tunic, as if to capture the many thoughts that came too quickly for his mind alone to retain.
Carcophan’s reply was abrupt and angry. “You
speak of eternity, yet how long do Renshai live? Mortal strength withers and dies.”
Shadimar remained leaning forward. His hands slipped from the table, and he rummaged for something in his pocket as he spoke. Knowing Colbey better, he chose a different tack. “These tasks won’t make you a Cardinal Wizard. You are already one, and there’s no place any more for personal grudges. You don’t have to like Carcophan or Trilless. In fact, you’ll work against them, and their successors, every moment for centuries. But if you refuse to take your title, the people who suffer will be those who follow neutrality. My people. And your own . . .” He pulled a huge, oval sapphire from his pocket, a gem Colbey recognized as the Pica Stone. Once it had belonged to the Renshai, a symbol of their greatness and durability. Before the Renshai had conquered it and taken the Pica, the town of Shadimar’s birth had kept it as their own talisman. After the destruction of the Renshai, Shadimar had engineered the gem back into his own hands. As a gesture of peace, Colbey had allowed the Eastern Wizard to keep the sapphire without fear of retaliation, and they had made their pact of brotherhood over it.
Colbey scowled, curious as to why Shadimar had chosen that moment to remind him of a blood-sworn relationship that Shadimar had broken.
Shadimar placed the Pica on the table. “. . . including the Renshai.” He paused for a moment, head lowered, as if in consideration. A strongly directed thought radiated from Shadimar, obscure in its translation and underlying intention. Surely, he had not meant it for Colbey.
Accustomed to accidentally reading private ideas and emotions from others, it occurred to Colbey too late that the thought seemed too deliberate to have wafted inadvertently from the Eastern Wizard. He didn’t mean it for me. But the others in the room are Cardinal Wizards as well, the only ones, besides me, with whom Shadimar could choose to communicate in this fashion. Colbey went wary. He glanced at Carcophan. The Evil One returned the look, his lips tight in a quiet smirk. His yellow-green eyes found and held the Northman’s blue-gray ones, and the gaze they exchanged held candor and danger.
Shadimar seemed oblivious. He stroked the Pica Stone with both hands, his fingers brushing and closing in grand gestures that reminded Colbey of swimming. “Carcophan’s Eastlanders may have lost the war, but they’ve destroyed their lands and will come again for ours. Trilless has infused her rigid goodness all through the northernmost parts of the Westlands. I am not strong enough to stand alone between good and evil. Neither of them has use for our people.”
Colbey turned his attention to Trilless. She had a coiled restlessness about her that Carcophan had lacked. Colbey wondered whether Shadimar’s message had gone only to her, or if both had received it. Carcophan’s war training would make him the better at hiding active intentions. Trusting that he could move faster than any other in the room, Colbey prepared for defense only mentally. And waited.
Shadimar’s voice dropped so low Colbey could no longer differentiate the syllables. Just as he began to question whether the Eastern Wizard spoke true words at all, Shadimar again became clearly audible. “Trilless will slay kindly. She’ll infuse the West with diseases that kill in sleep. Carcophan’s followers will capture our people, then slaughter them in agony and dance over their corpses. Either way, they won’t reach Valhalla.”
Rage again built in Colbey. He reassured himself with the knowledge that no one, Wizard-mediated or otherwise, could kill the Renshai without a fight.
Shadimar removed his hand from the Pica Stone. He stared at Colbey until the Renshai pulled his gaze from the Northern Sorceress to meet Shadimar’s stony, gray eyes. “You will learn that Wizardry encompasses far more than trickery and summonings. Though it is traditional, no one ever asked that you become a user of magics, only that you dedicate the skills you do possess to the cause of the world and to the true gods, the same gods you’ve worshiped all your life.” Shadimar looked quickly at each Cardinal Wizard in turn, excluding only Mar Lon. “The future lies in what you see in the Pica. Good luck, my friend.”
Colbey’s attention strayed naturally to the sapphire. Streaks and flecks of brown, green, and yellow obscured the blue. The colors swirled in a cryptic blotch, then settled into a pattern. Colbey squinted, attending closer to unite the sequence of lines and curves into a complete picture, much the way he would focus on the whole of an artist’s canvas rather than individual brush strokes. While his eyes picked out the image of a forest, he remained alert for movement. Still, the quiet, coordinated motions of the Cardinal Wizards did not seem bold enough for threat, and Colbey sensed no violence. The attack caught him only half prepared.
Something unseen struck Colbey from behind, hard enough to drive his gut into the edge of the table. Breath rushed from his lungs. Yet Colbey still had the wherewithal to rise and spin, whipping Harval from its sheath in a tiny fraction of an eye blink. His gaze and attack met nothing. The force had no form. It surged around him, its screams filling his ears, then whirled him into wild circles. The Meeting Isle’s room disappeared, replaced by an endless void, without sound, shape, or color.
Colbey fought for control, gaining it only for himself and his sword. His world still spun, but the movement came from without. He managed to maintain his equilibrium, keeping his focus fully internal, orienting himself and waiting for the world to re-form around him.
The spinning stopped abruptly. The instant it did, a new reality blinked to life around Colbey Calistinsson. He stood on solid ground, hard mud smothered beneath a carpet of ancient leaves. Towering elms surrounded him, a vast forest that seemed endless, with weeds, copses, and vines filling the spaces between the trunks. Sunlight sprinkled between the sparse upper branches, filtering down to the undergrowth.
Though Colbey had managed to brace his mind and body, his stomach lurched from the combined effects of the Cardinal Wizards’ magic. He controlled its heaving mentally, stroking absently at it through his shirt. Then, a rustle in the brush froze him. He levered backward, pressing his back against a trunk, and his right hand found the hilt of his other sword.
Suddenly, a creature stepped from a tangle of vines. It resembled a man, but it stood shorter, and its back hunched like an angry cat’s. Scrawny arms dangled to its knees, tapering to feline claws. Red hair sprouted in clumps from its oversized head. Two eyes, like heated coals, glared at the Renshai.
“Who are you?” Colbey asked, politely avoiding the more obvious questions of its parentage and right to existence. He kept the swords between it and himself, his stance wholly defensive. It was not Colbey’s way to initiate battles, only to finish them.
The beast made a noise deep in its throat that sounded like “quarack” to Colbey’s ears. He suspected that this was its cry, not its name, but he did not ponder. His mind told him two things at once. First, the creature had no intelligent thought wafting from it, only a promise of swift and sudden violence. It saw the old Renshai as prey. Second, movement thumped, brushed, and rattled through the forest for as far as Colbey could see, hear, or sense. This creature, whatever its name or origin, had hundreds or thousands of companions. And every one hungered for blood.
CHAPTER 4
The Tasks of Wizardry
Khitajrah Harrsha’s-widow padded along one of the straight mud pathways of Stalmize’s graveyard, pale mud sucking at her bare feet. The cemetery perched on a hill that had once stood far from the city, before the homes and shops had penetrated into the crippled farmland and forests. Now, it stood just beyond the last, sparse dwellings. Soon, Khitajrah guessed, the cemetery would become a part of the city. Stalmize would swallow the corpses of its citizens and move on, collecting ever more of the surrounding countryside, and the dead would become as forgotten as the central, older portions of the city.
Khitajrah had not entered the cemetery in the decade since her sons’ and husband’s ashes had found their final rests, beneath the scarlet shafts that marked them as heroes in Sheriva’s war. As she headed from the entrance toward the middle of the graveyard, she glanced over the rows o
f painted metal shafts that denoted the remains of each cremated corpse. Most of these were green, the color indicating a natural death, by illness, accident, or legal dispute. Those who had dedicated their lives to Sheriva, through his churches, lay beneath markers of royal blue. War heroes’ graves bore the blood-colored markers that drew the eye, and black shafts dishonored the criminals and cowards. Benches lined the walkway, becoming older and more ornate, though crumbling, the farther she went.
Khitajrah paused at the central mausoleum that honored Sheriva’s chosen, the dead kings, including the wild, granite horse that marked Siderin’s grave site. She hesitated, not to gawk but to think. From the center, eight pathways radiated, like spokes. The north and south pathways led to vaulted exits. The other six ended dead, against an enclosing stone wall. Her husband’s grave lay down one of these. Ordinarily, the position of the sun would have reminded her of his location. Now, dawn washed the darkened sky a uniform red, scarcely bearing enough light for her to see her way, let alone to determine it.
At length, Khitajrah recalled that the general-king’s horse faced the graves of his high lieutenants, and she headed in the indicated direction. It was not her husband’s tomb that she sought. She had laid him to rest too many years ago, and her memories had become as old and treasured as her attraction to the deeper parts of Stalmize. Women did not get grave sites or markers, but the diggers did try to keep sons and fathers in the same location. She had seen Bahmyr, still and bleeding, in the women’s court and believed him dead. Yet she needed to know for certain.
Although Khitajrah had had difficulty finding the correct path, once there she knew precisely when she had reached the familiar plot. The twin red markers of her oldest and youngest sons brought tears to her eyes, blurring the names inscribed. She pictured Nichus, the eldest, short and broad like his grandfather and always full of wit. She thought of the baby, Ellbaric, only twelve at his death. Paler than his brothers, he had sported brown hair instead of black and soft, doelike eyes. Always serious, he had penned poetry and joined a tiny group of young peace supporters led by a Western musician, until the war had claimed his loyalty and his life.
Child of Thunder (Renshai Trilogy) Page 7