Child of Thunder (Renshai Trilogy)

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Colbey’s concentration flickered dangerously. “Modi,” he whispered, the call providing only a glimmer of strength. Yet that proved enough. Before the other could retaliate, Colbey pulled his mental probe free. He collapsed, sword first, upon his double.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Black Door

  A steady glow issued from a high, semicircular fireplace, its strangely uniform light washing over a pile of blue shards on a table. Standing beside this single piece of furniture, Colbey could count every muscle in his body by the burning, throbbing, and sharp aches that defined them. Certain he was alone, he waved his left arm, testing the tendon that he believed he had lost during his last trial. It worked, but the movement sent tortured waves along his arm, like all motion did after an especially grueling workout. It was a discomfort to which Colbey had grown accustomed, and it always pleased as well as pained him, his reward for having forced himself to work. There can be no skill without pain.

  Colbey’s mind felt fuzzy as he regathered the energy he had hurled from it. As he slowly regained function, he began to notice more about his surroundings than just the absence of threat. The Seven Tasks of Wizardry seemed like a distant nightmare. Only one of the rings remained on his fingers, the gold one that the goddess had given him. The room seemed much like the one in which the Wizards had gathered before the tests began, except it lacked a door. Now, Colbey recognized the shards on the tabletop as remnants of the Pica Stone.

  “No!” Colbey stared in horror and revulsion at the symbol of his people, now reduced to ruin. He had taken a vow of brotherhood with Shadimar, one that was to have lasted as long as the Eastern Wizard kept the Pica Stone safe. The sapphire had stood as the symbol of a fellowship that the Wizard had already broken and the strength of a people, the Renshai, now devastated.

  Colbey hefted a sliver in the shape of a droplet, his revulsion turning to shaking rage. It lay, still and sterile, in his palm, not even a glimmer left to remind him of the power it had once held and the tribe it had once defined. I let you keep it, and you promised to safeguard it. Now, Wizard, all your conjured demons could not stay my wrath. He let the fragment slip through his fingers and click back onto the table. Carefully, he swept the shards into a pile, prepared to bury them and, with them, the memories of an empty brotherhood and a slaughtered tribe.

  “Kyndig!” The voice lashed, whiplike yet beautiful as the melody of a running stream.

  Colbey had not heard or sensed another’s entrance. He whirled to face a man in silk and fur, a Northman by the flaxen locks poking from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. His single eye glared, as piercing as Colbey’s own. The Renshai guessed he must have sacrificed caution to rage to get caught so off-guard. The lack of a door meant the man must have been in the room all along. “Who are you?”

  “The Keeper of the Eighth Task,” said the other. And his voice seemed more akin to wind. “It awaits you, Kyndig.”

  “There is no eighth task.” Colbey parroted Shadimar, still unnerved by his own lack of vigilance.

  “Ah, but there is. Even should you decline my offer, simply making the choice is a task. You see, Kyndig . . .” He stepped toward Colbey.

  The Renshai crouched, fingers locking on the hilts of his swords.

  Recklessly heedless of Colbey’s defensive stance, the Keeper continued without missing a beat, “. . . in a situation that demands action, a Wizard must believe himself capable of anything. But he must also know when not to attempt a thing he cannot achieve. A Wizard must be a leader. He has no right to involve his followers in matters in which they need take no part.”

  “I don’t like riddles. I don’t know magic. And I’m no Wizard.” Colbey felt discomforted by the Keeper. “It’s a title forced on me by fools. It is a thing they would believe and have me pretend to be.”

  “You are a Wizard, Kyndig.” The strange man’s voice cackled. “You can’t deny it any more than you can deny manhood. Regardless of his intentions, a man is exactly what others believe him to be. You are a deathseeker, a prince of demons, an evil-bringer, and the skilled one of legends. You are the Western Wizard, too.”

  Disinterested in mental warfare, Colbey scowled. “So what is this eighth task? And what bearing does it have on you or on me?” Angrily, he shrugged a cramp from his shoulder.

  “Me?” The fur-clad man laughed, the sound like thunder. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you try or not, nor if you live or die. But I will warn you of this. No one before you who chose to attempt the eighth task survived.” His face went grim and taut-lipped.

  Curiosity tweaked the edges of Colbey’s consciousness, and the challenge beckoned. “Would you answer questions about the task?”

  “Candidly.”

  “How many have attempted it?”

  The sun glinted on the shattered Pica, flinging blue highlights along the walls and ceiling. The glow grew most intense on the cruel-faced stranger, giving his pallid skin a gray cast. “Few,” the one-eyed Keeper admitted. “But you have to recall how few complete the first seven. Most are ready to take their title and ignore what I offer.”

  Colbey refused to accept vagaries. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  The man laughed. “Ten, Kyndig. And no man knows what became of them.”

  Colbey doubted that the being before him was a man. His single eye and commanding appearance fit the descriptions of Odin the AllFather, yet Colbey dared not believe he faced the gray god himself. “And what did become of them?”

  The other raised his shoulders noncommittally, though he did not deny the knowledge. “They died. That is certain. I won’t tell you the cause. I have to leave some secrets to those brave or foolish enough to try the eighth task.”

  Colbey wiped a damp palm on his breeks. Shadimar and Captain had told him that only the most competent were chosen to attempt the Seven Tasks of Wizardry, and even most of them did not make it through. The challenge flared to a jabbing need to know and understand. Yet the sincerity of Shadimar’s warning stayed him. He continued to delay. “Why does anyone try it?”

  The Keeper rolled his eye. “Insecurity, perhaps? I can only surmise. I am the Keeper of the Task, not the keeper of men. I believe they all tried to overcome their fears of death.”

  Colbey raised his head as proudly as the speaker. “Then I have no need of your task. I don’t fear death.”

  “Many men believe that.” The Keeper dismissed the statement as bluster.

  Colbey recalled his last encounter with death and the beautiful woman who had rescued him. “I’m as candid as you, Keeper. I know myself as no one else can. I don’t fear death.”

  “Ah! Very well, then.” The Keeper accepted the statement, though he did not seem convinced. “Then you may be the one who can succeed.” He yawned, bored with the questioning. “My time is not easily bought, Kyndig. You may ask one more.”

  Colbey did not ponder long. He stretched his stiff fingers. “Is there some purpose to this task? What reward were these dead Wizards seeking?”

  Surprise added color to the Keeper’s otherwise white features. “You don’t know? Why even the least capable had heard mention of the Staff of Law. You seem to prefer simple terms, Kyndig, so I’ll tell you in a word. Power. Ultimate power.”

  Colbey laughed, the fires of need receding. “I already have more than I ever wanted. It seems to find me.”

  “So you refuse the task?”

  Colbey opened his mouth to confirm. Even as he did, he made one of the split second decisions that had become his trademark on the battlefield. “No. I accept it.” His own words startled him, and he analyzed his reasons aloud. “In the future, if someone else asks why men choose to attempt the task, you can tell them that, for me, it was curiosity.”

  The expression on the One-Eyed One’s face never changed, but a strange, unreadable emotion wafted to Colbey. It seemed akin to distress, yet the Keeper’s confidence warped it to something else, a grim acceptance of an unknown that seemed inevitable. The Keeper turned to fac
e the back wall. He traced a rectangle across its surface with his fingers. The stone quivered beneath his touch, then darkened within the boundaries. A door took shape there, black as night, yet shimmering as if from the radiance of a moon on the opposite side. It looked hazy and unreal, as if it spanned worlds and time. “Then it’s time for you to determine your future, Kyndig. If you have one.” He gestured to the door. Its substance disappeared, replaced by an opening that seemed equally dense.

  Now, Colbey no longer doubted the identity of the being before him, certainly a god. The manifestation of the door was magic of a sure and true sort, unlike the petty illusions and the summonings that were all the sorcery he had ever seen performed by the Cardinal Wizards. His decision made, he did not hesitate. He approached the portal and passed through it.

  Once through the door frame, he entered a room without boundaries. It seemed more like a plain, for a room has walls and this had none. Yet, for reasons he did not ponder, Colbey clung to the image of enclosure. His mind seemed to become semisolid, folding across itself as if molded by a god’s hand. He grasped the concept of constraint more tightly, forming a barrier to contain the straying pieces of his mind. Multihued spots waltzed before his eyes, blocking his vision.

  Then, as suddenly, the spots dissolved; and a scene leapt to vivid clarity. There was light, but no sun. A ceiling hovered overhead, unsupported by walls. In the distance, Colbey saw an object too far off to identify, though it seemed large and significant. He headed toward it without any preconceived notions, finding it futile to try to imagine what had taken the lives of ten apprentice Wizards. Long ago, he had discovered that the things that induced panic in heroes seemed like simple annoyances to him. If the test could be won, Colbey would succeed. If not, he would join those before him.

  As the distance between the object and the Renshai narrowed, it resolved into the shape of a thick, straw ticking. A figure lay upon it, swaddled in blankets. With each step, the nauseating reek of illness grew stronger, and Colbey’s pace slowed. The odor of pestilence and death made him cringe in pity, and he harbored no wish to share whatever had withered the pathetic creature in the bed. Still, Colbey had learned the healing arts to rescue warriors from illness and to help them find honorable deaths in battle. During his travels, he had used the Renshai tribe’s herbal and rehabilitative knowledge to earn money for food and lodgings, and his conscience would not allow him to watch illness claim another without at least trying to give aid. He pushed on.

  At length, Colbey stood over the bed and stared. The blanket stirred, revealing two liquid eyes, deeply sunken into sharply angled, bony sockets. Parchment-thin skin stretched from bone to bone and sagged in ghostly pale wrinkles between them. The creature reached a trembling hand toward Colbey, and its green-crusted, toothless mouth opened to croak a warning.

  Colbey’s mind twisted free of his carefully-constructed barriers, detaching from self and control. It stuffed his thoughts into the body on the bed. Strength drained from him in an instant, leaving him frail, fever-ravaged, and aching in every part. Disease crawled over and through him, unresisted, like a creature that seemed more alive than the man it afflicted. Death hovered, a friend waiting for the signal to come and take the pain away.

  All of Colbey’s doubts assailed him then. He had become, in every way, the being on the bed. His own body disappeared, and his rheumy eyes saw nothing but a blurry plain and death’s promise. Regrets hemmed and hammered him. He recalled the young Renshai, called Episte, who had seemed more son than student to him. His mind conjured images of the child, grand and glorious, his potential with a sword so natural that dedication could have made it flawless. Yet Episte had shown more loyalty to people than to his swords; the Renshai maneuvers had seemed little more than duty and distraction. Over his fifteen years, he had sought Colbey’s love and approval, both of which he had won. Yet Colbey’s need to make the boy the best had driven the elder to goad and chastise. He would never forget that his last memory of the sane Episte was his own harsh words and a slap. His last vision of the Wizard-warped madman the boy had become was of his own mercy dagger, the nådenal, shoved through Episte’s back.

  Colbey felt the sting of rising tears that would not come. Heat and sickness had dehydrated the body he now occupied, the disease-wracked creature that had become himself. Yet though the bony arm moved as his own, Colbey forced himself to disbelieve. He would not complete the transformation for the Keeper of the Eighth Task. If death wanted him, it would not find him an easy victim, whether from illness, age, or battle. He walled off his mind from the body, drove agony away, and called war against the fantasies that assailed him. Enchantments bounced from his defenses, flashing colored streamers through his eye-closed world. Colbey threw off the restraining blankets and sprang from the bed. “Illness, you won’t have me. If I can’t defeat you, I can evade you. Now that we’ve met at last, you no longer daunt me.”

  A ball of light struck the floor and exploded into stunning whiteness. Abruptly, the being in silk and fur stood before Colbey again. “Ah, so it’s true. Nothing in the nine worlds frightens you. What a man must endure to pass this test is all that he fears. Since all mortals fear death and those things that can kill them, none but you survived. You feared only illness, and you conquered that fear. You were quite correct. You don’t fear death. If you did, you would have died, and from that trial, there is no escape.”

  Colbey scowled, believing he had sustained more than enough to prove what he had claimed from the start. “Of course, I was quite correct. I don’t lie. Not even to myself.”

  The one-eyed being frowned. “Don’t become arrogant. You will make me regret the power I offer. You do still fear one thing. And although you wouldn’t have any way to know it yet, that fear has been recognized. You will never reach Valhalla.”

  The pronouncement slammed into Colbey, rousing him instantly to rage. “You lie!” He crouched, drawing both swords.

  The Keeper smiled, heedless of the weapons and their deadly wielder. “Do I? You’re welcome to disbelieve. Or you can accept the truth.”

  Colbey remained in position, anger ebbing slowly.

  “I’m not obligated to explain further,” the Keeper continued. “But I now have a personal interest in your future.” He stepped aside to reveal a copper rack that his body had concealed. “It is time to meet your reward and another decision.”

  Carelessly, the Keeper turned his back. Still enraged, Colbey considered attacking just to discover whether skill or foolishness made the Keeper so indifferent to an armed Renshai. Guessing the futility, Colbey sought calm within himself. Curiosity helped to quench the fires.

  When the Keeper turned back, he held the two staves that had graced the rack, one in each hand. He gripped them in fists so tight his fingers blanched, and he chanted in a skjaldic rhythm:

  “In Odin’s day

  The world was fey,

  And we dwelt in the nether.

  Asgard was naught,

  With changes wrought

  As quickly as the weather.

  “The staff was made

  As Odin bade

  To hold the Chaos raging.

  A weapon new

  For Odin who

  A great war was a-waging.

  “To free the land

  From Chaos’ hand

  And make the young lands hale.

  Once beset,

  The Norns did fret,

  But Odin could not fail.

  “The Staff fared well

  As the bards now tell,

  The new world it a-forging.

  As Odin laughed

  And brandished Staff

  With battle lust a-gorging.

  “With Law’s reach long

  And new grip strong

  The world could little change.

  Is as it was

  Was as it is

  For none to rearrange.

  “But Odin’s hand

  Still ruled the land,

  Stron
g as the great wolf’s maw.

  The Gray One bade

  A new Staff made:

  Behold the Staff of Law.

  “With neither free

  The earth shall be

  Fit for man and beast.

  Till one great mage

  Shall close the age

  And lead Hati to feast.”

  A silence beyond life settled over the room. Colbey watched the one-eyed being. Finally, the Guardian of the Staves spoke again. “I leave you to your choice. But, before you decide, I have more for you to ponder. With this Staff . . .” He raised his right arm and the staff it held. “. . . I control all but have no rule. With this . . .” He raised the other, identical-appearing staff. “I control none, but my reign is sure and long. Which will you have? Make your choice well, Kyndig.”

  Colbey’s anger had faded during the poetry. Now faced with an unexpected decision, all traces disappeared, and he considered the Staves with the seriousness that the Keeper apparently expected. The earliest of the gods’ legends ran through his mind repeatedly, in an endless cycle. No doubt, the Keeper had spoken of creation, when the gods first came into existence and Odin had banished the Primordial Chaos to create a world existing entirely of Order. In the last two decades, Chaos had begun to touch the world again, apparently through cracks in the gray god’s defenses. Colbey saw its work in the form of mistruths and betrayals, swaying loyalties and thefts. Though he had never before recognized it consciously, the lapse had shaken even his fixed faith in the omnipotent AllFather of the gods.

  Yet in the moments since the Keeper’s chant, several answers avalanched into Colbey’s mind at once. Many times, he had questioned Shadimar about the need for four Wizards to champion only two forces, good and evil. Every time, the Eastern Wizard had insisted that neutrality, itself, was a concept so significant that it needed two guardians where the others needed only one apiece. Now, Colbey finally understood. The Eastern and Western Wizards had been created to champion law and chaos.

  Though Colbey felt certain of its truth, the conclusion confused as well as pained him. If the two were made to wield law and chaos, why have they not done so over the millennia? Why have the staves remained in the gods’ keeping? Many possibilities presented themselves then, but only one seemed plausible. All these years, Odin has waited. Waited for what? Colbey considered an instant longer. Waited for someone to complete the eighth task, someone who does not fear death, someone capable of wielding the Staff of . . . There, Colbey’s logic faltered. Law or Chaos? Which has he waited for? He felt sweat bead beneath his collar, suddenly aware of the significance of his choice. Colbey knew for certain that the fate of the world hung in the balance, waiting for him to make a single choice. His instincts told him to take the Staff of Law, to keep chaos from the world a bit longer. But, for once, Colbey did not follow his natural inclination. This decision required more thought and more information.