Sword Play

by Clayton Emery

  The globe flickered, revealing another magic source. Here was a field of rye, and above it, another portal. This one widened by hundreds of feet, then disgorged thousands of writhing maggots and grubs that spilled onto the field.

  Another flicker, and a ghoulish arm poked from a portal, only to be sheared off as the spasming orifice winked shut. Another flicker, and the sea boiled to steam as more hellfire appeared underwater. Then another, and another, and another.

  Never had Candlemas seen so much magic occur in so many different places at once. Toril—the whole world—had sprung hundreds of leaks.

  Leaks from the Nine Hells.

  Then a face materialized, a female mage whom Candlemas had met in the past, but whose name he’d forgotten. She shrilled, “If anyone can hear, in the name of the gods, send help! My caverns are overrun with trolls by the thousands! They’re—” Her face disappeared. Moments later, a lesser mage flickered in, yelled Candlemas’s name, and begged him to contact Lady Polaris and inform her that purple slime ran in rivers inside his manor, originating in his workshop.

  There were more reports crackling over the ether, more fiendish invasions, more eruptions in the fabric of magic. Some deaths, many losses, boundless destruction.

  “May the gods help us all,” Candlemas breathed. “Sysquemalyn’s cracked the wall to the Nine Hells. The fool, in her blind trifling she’s endangered Netheril itself!”

  A shriek interrupted his dread thoughts. Running to the door of his workshop, he shouted down a corridor, then froze. A gigantic black bat pursued a screaming maid. More spun up the stairwells, forcing him to slam the door shut. Dashing to the window, he saw thousands more fluttering around Delia, attacking anything that moved for its blood.

  The horror had come home.

  Candlemas beat his forehead in terror and frustration. Only the greatest archmages of Netheril had ever dared to challenge the Nine Hells, and most of them had never returned. Sysquemalyn had been sucked into its maw, and her and Candlemas’s home, indeed their entire world, was under attack. The high mages of the Netherese would come soon to investigate, and they would trace the trail to here.

  Their punishment for Sysquemalyn, and himself for not stopping her, was too awful to think about.

  He had only one choice.

  Standing still, he raised both hands over his head, first and fourth fingers extended.

  And raised a high, wailing keen.

  And disappeared.

  Chapter 13

  In growing dimness, Greenwillow sat on a stone wall and stared at the space where Sunbright had disappeared. Perhaps, wherever he’d gone, he’d find a way to escape and come back to her. She doubted it, but didn’t know what else to do.

  A cool evening wind swirled from the mountains and kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear seductively. Elves weren’t supposed to fall in love with humans, the message seemed to remind her. The two races stood apart for good reasons. And all along on this benighted quest, her doomed mission to deliver condemnation from a haughty elven council to an undead king, she’d fought to stay aloof, reserved, cool. She’d battled against love harder than any mortal enemy she’d ever fought. In vain. She Who Shapes All had laid the path before Greenwillow’s feet, and the half-elf could but walk it.

  Until now, when the one she loved had catapulted after a temptress, a trollop, a …

  Without any tickle to her keen elven senses, a man stood by her side.

  Instinctively she shot up, laid a hand to her sword’s pommel, and slid the weapon from its sheath a hair. Certainly there was magic about the human, for he hadn’t walked to this spot. That she knew But too, he looked vaguely familiar, was podgy, bald, and bearded, dressed in a plain linen smock. Then she recalled.

  “You … talked to Sunbright that day just before he joined our party of merchants. In the village of Augerbend, it was.”

  “Did I? Oh, yes, yes.” Candlemas was distracted. A lot had happened since then. He stepped across the road to where the portal had materialized.

  “But who are you?” demanded the elf. “Sunbright said you were steward of the castle, but that was untrue.”

  “Hmmm?” The mage studied the wreckage of Tinnainen, the gaps pounded in the walls, the trickles of smoke in a dozen places, the collapsed roofs and gutted palace. He shook his head in wonder at what he and Sysquemalyn had stirred up—all for a silly wager, or was it something more? Now the air reeked with the residue of mighty magics, of dragons and liches and others, power only a Neth could master. But at least that battle was over, the fires out, Wrathburn departed. Within days, Tinnainen would be a backwater again—unless the Nine Hells erupted nearby.

  He frowned at the sky. Was his eyesight fading? No, he’d just come so far east the sun had already set here. He felt old, was all. Constant intrigue and tension ground a body down.

  “I asked,” Greenwillow said, jerking her sword from its scabbard with a steel whisper, “who are you?”

  He turned to look at her. Despite smudges and nicks, she was more lovely in real life than when seen through a palantir. Always swayed by feminine beauty, the mage spoke formally. “I’m sorry, my dear. I am a steward, but of another castle, uh, higher up. I’m a friend.”

  Frowning again, the mage knelt stiffly and ran his fingers over the soil. Still warm. Then he flinched as something black fluttered near his face. But it was only the raven, which said nothing.

  Greenwillow did, though. “You’re a friend to the raven, too?”

  “Eh?” Candlemas craned to see her face. “Oh, ah … What do you know of the bird?”

  “That it talks. I followed Sunbright a few times, just to—” Now she hesitated, even blushed. “Just to watch him. He didn’t see me, but I saw him converse with the raven. Did you send it?”

  Candlemas nodded absently. Lifting his hand palm up, he felt for the exact spot where the portal had been. Waving his hand slowly, he traced the outline: the rift in the fabric of reality. “Good, good. Or very bad. For me anyway.”

  Rising, extending his hands with fingers spread, he keened again, a long, loud wail.

  The portal winked into being. Nothing showed inside it, just a view of the stone wall.

  With a cry, Greenwillow jumped up, slapped her sword home, and started to push past Candlemas. But the mage swept her back with a thick arm. “Stand back, young woman. There’s nothing you can do.”

  Sighing, he hiked his skirts and stepped through the portal. The golden shimmer tingled around his legs, then his body, as if he crept into lightning-charged water.

  The mage paid no notice to Greenwillow. For too long had Candlemas been steward of a castle, where his orders were obeyed immediately without question.

  Greenwillow didn’t question him either. She just shadowed the bulky man, hovering inches behind him, and held her breath.

  Seconds later, the portal winked out, and the road to Tinnainen stood empty.

  * * * * *

  Candlemas stepped onto a platform of black glass. Not much wider than a public fountain, it curved up all around, so he slid toward its center. The mage didn’t recognize the conveyance, but it resembled the bottom of a palantir, as if he stood inside. Perhaps he did.

  Around the platform was nothingness, a blank limbo like fog. Candlemas didn’t dare touch it.

  Sprawled like a rag doll on the glass platform lay Sunbright, his sword under him. The barbarian was dirty and scraped up, but alive and breathing. For now.

  A cry sounded. With mild annoyance, the mage found the half-elf Greenwillow had followed despite his orders. She stooped to gather Sunbright in her arms, smothering his face with fervent kisses. That brought the barbarian around better than a bucket of water.

  His first words were accusatory, aimed at the mage. “Chandler! What are you doing here?”

  Single-minded, barbarians were, Candlemas thought. If humans were dumb brutes, as Sysquemalyn argued, the tundra people were no smarter than their reindeer. This young hide-wearer leaped to battle instea
d of waging love on the elven beauty. The mage sighed, “I’m not a simple steward. I’m more than that.”

  Clutching his throbbing head, Sunbright clambered up from Greenwillow’s embrace. To her questions, he rasped, “That yellow fiend that grabbed Ruellana. It saw me following somehow, and crushed me with a hand like a hayrick. I don’t know where it went from there.”

  Still groggy, he slid a pace on the glass platform and almost pitched over the side—if there was a side. No noise or feel or smell came from the foggy limbo. They might have been bugs in a bottle, Candlemas thought, and perhaps were.

  Sunbright leveled a scarred arm and calloused finger at the older man. “You’re a filthy mage, aren’t you?”

  A tiny shrug. “A mage. My name isn’t Chandler, by the way. It’s Candlemas. A chandler makes candles, see?” His rueful smile was not returned.

  “So everything you told me was a lie?”

  “Not everything.” Candlemas scanned their surroundings, which were the blankest he’d ever seen. How could he entice the barbarian to penetrate the not-fog? “About half, well, much of what I said was true.”

  “You used me!” A finger stabbed downward. “Even that damned raven is yours, isn’t it?”

  Candlemas blinked at the platform and saw the raven. Funny, he hadn’t seen it enter the portal.

  The raven cocked its head as if also confused as to how it had gotten there. It croaked, “Sorry. That’s how the egg breaks.”

  “The raven is an avatar,” Candlemas explained. “A shade of mine sent to watch over you. Like a homunculus, only more reliable.”

  Sunbright rubbed his throbbing temples. He snarled, “I don’t want any more of your damned magic near me! Wait, you sent Ruellana, too, didn’t you?”

  “Ah, no.” The chunky mage cast about again, then settled creaking onto his hams, which slipped down the glass toward the middle where Sunbright stood. He had to drag his hands to stop his slide. “Ruellana is an avatar—no, a persona—of another mage named Sysquemalyn. She’s chamberlain while I’m steward of, uh, a castle. She got us into this current pickle. And I’d have to say that, while I’ve used you somewhat—but kept you from harm repeatedly—she’s used you worse and meant you harm. Of course, you probably don’t believe anything I say. I understand. But the latest round involved sending you after that book, and she arranged it! No doubt she whispered in the One King’s ear that he needed the book, so he dispatched the next able warrior who strode into his court to fetch it before—”

  The mage stopped himself, but Sunbright caught the implication. The barbarian’s eyes were as hard and cold as glacial ice. “Before you could send me, correct?”

  Candlemas shrugged. He hoped the young man wouldn’t attack him here. Magic shields would be dicey in a spot like this. They might do anything from protect Candlemas to crush him like a cockroach.

  But Sunbright’s native curiosity overcame his thirst for vengeance—for the moment. “So Ruellana is a lousy mage too. I should have suspected all along. I was too blind to see. But what was that thing that grabbed her, and where have they gone?”

  Candlemas bit his lip as he thought of the manner in which Sysquemalyn had left his workshop. “Good questions.”

  Sliding Harvester home in its scabbard, Sunbright suddenly whirled on Greenwillow. “And you? What are you, really? And who’s your master? And what do you get out of … attending me?”

  Shocked, the half-elf’s conflicting emotions warred on her expressive face. Combining sorrow and rage, she flared, “I’m not anything but what I appear to be! I’ve been your comrade and friend and … that’s all. I don’t want anything from you. You chose to accompany me to Tinnainen, remember?”

  “I know only that I’ve been used, prodded, steered, and cheated by everyone I’ve met since leaving the tundra!” roared Sunbright. “But no more! I’m stuffed to the eyes with lying lowlanders, and I’m going home as soon as I can. I’ll take my chances at being killed by friends and relatives over skulking, lying fiends the day long.”

  Greenwillow shrilled once, “Nooooo!”

  But Sunbright had hunched at the edge of the platform, stuck his head into the limbo-fog, then planted his hands on the surface and vaulted into the void. There was nothing left to indicate he’d ever stood on the black glass bowl.

  Greenwillow blazed hatred at the mage. “This is all your fault! Your backstabbing, traitorous, lying, sneaking, thieving magic ways! I hope you rot in the deepest pit of the Nine Hells until the sun falls from the sky!”

  So saying, she leaned over the platform, sprang outward, and was gone.

  “That’s the problem,” Candlemas sighed to the raven. “We just might.”

  The raven pecked at the black glass, hopped up and down, and clacked its beak at its master. “That’s the way the egg breaks.”

  It squawked as Candlemas booted it off the platform.

  Sighing, skidding to his feet, Candlemas leaned gingerly into the fog, then rolled over the edge as if tumbling from a boat.

  * * * * *

  Greenwillow ghosted through fog that was not solid under her feet, but neither did she plummet. If anything, she swam through the air in slow motion, but that didn’t describe it either. She tried to steer for the route Sunbright had taken, but had no real sense of direction.

  After a few seconds—or hours—her feet plunked on stone. Two steps broke her free of the fog, which clung in shreds that she brushed off like spiderwebs.

  Immediately, she called, “Sunbright?” There was no answer, and without thinking she drew her slim, elegant sword.

  She’d landed on flagstones the color of pale moss. Before her was a half-wall of the same material. Behind her was a taller, similar wall. Arching overhead, a bowshot high, was a distant ceiling of green flagstones as wide as rooftops. There were more low walls and tall ones, all marching into the distance. Even the light seemed green, though she couldn’t find a source.

  There was nothing else in sight.

  “Sunbright?”

  She’d expected her voice to echo in this cavern, but it seemed to travel a distance and then stop. Hesitant, she laid her hand on the low wall. The stones were as smooth as river rocks and were warm like the back of a lizard lying in the sun. The floor was also warm, despite the shadows.

  “Sunbright!”

  Movement behind her made her whirl, sword leveled.

  But what she saw was herself, reflected in stone.

  Wonderingly, she advanced. Her image crept toward her. It was fragmented by cracks and wavy from imperfections in the stone. And hardly natural. She could tell it was magic, for the stones couldn’t reflect like mirrors.

  And her face was ugly.

  Her brows were straight across, almost a bar, not arched like an elf’s. Her nose was wide, with flaring nostrils, and stippled with blemishes. Her mouth was fat-lipped and pendulous, her hair thatchy and uneven above rounded ears. Even her slim elven figure had coarsened to thick hips and fleshy arms and huge feet.

  With a shock, she realized she looked not like an elf, but like a human.

  Horror-stricken, Greenwillow ran her hands over her face, felt her nose and lips. But all were numb, and she couldn’t tell if the reflection were true or not.

  What was this? she wanted to cry. Had some curse turned her human? Was this a hell for elves, to be degraded to an inferior race? She looked down at her legs and feet, but a mist in her eyes—incipient human blindness?—clouded her vision. Even her hand before her eyes was a blur. Yet the reflection stayed as sharp as before.

  A trick, her mind replied calmly. A passing madness in this fragment of hell or whatever it was. Yet her eyes contradicted her thoughts, until she wanted to cry out and beat her brain into submission, or blind herself and spare the misery.

  Turning away with a gasp, she banged into the low wall, which had somehow crept up on her right. She hadn’t shifted, she was positive: the wall had. But perhaps it sought to engulf her, like a trapdoor spider. Whirling, she jumped
for the open space, stubbed her toes on a raised step that hadn’t been there just a moment ago.

  More flickers to her left. The reflection now had gray hair. The face was wrinkled, the scrawny arm too weak to hold up the sword.

  Age, she thought. Humans age too quickly and die, like dandelions living a single season. Was this happening to her? Desperately she ripped at her ponytail, dragged it before her, but the increasing self-blindness prevented her from seeing if her hair were black or gray.

  Blindly, she groped along the wall, but the image followed. Between two high walls she saw twin reflections, like ghosts who sought to drive her mad. Her reflected back was now hunched, her legs trembling.

  “Love of Mystryl,” she prayed, “if Sunbright saw me like this, he’d—”

  He’d what? Reject her? Never love her? He didn’t love her now, did he? Or she him?

  Suddenly she didn’t know anything. Could she love a human? A sweaty, garlic-stinking, sour half-beast that would age almost overnight into a decrepit wreck? Was this her curse, to feel affection for a human and so to become one? Many of her fellows would say loving a human was like marrying an animal. Humans were no better than orcs, equally without worth or honor or use, a plague loosed on the earth by malicious gods to chastise the true folk, the elves.

  “No!” she called aloud. Her reflection showed a caved-in mouth empty of teeth.

  Then two reflections. No, herself and …

  Sunbright, no longer human.

  His bright blond topknot was normal, and his rugged, tanned, lean face. But his light eyebrows pulled upward at the ends to almost touch his scalp, and his eyes were slanted, his ears pointed. He looked lean as a whippet, with thin but powerful arms. His tapering torso showed no chest hair.

  He was an elf!

  How had this transformation occurred? And why now, when she’d been made human … or had she? Did the gods hate them so much that now Sunbright would be acceptable to her people as a lover and husband, yet she’d been reduced to the gutter-level of faded, hairy, grotesque humans? Could any gods be so cruel?

  And how much of this was real? Was it her own guilt at loving a human that plagued her? Did she punish herself worst of all?