The Wizard's Heir

by J. A. V Henderson

  Ahead, the chief gazed stonily out on the guard room. Three jailers sat around a makeshift table on the other side of the room on the left. To the right two passages left the room, barred and unlit: prison blocks. The chief’s rat was sniffing confusedly in the middle of the floor. A pair of large dogs were chained to the wall behind the guards, unfed and unwatered, their barking ignored by all. Far more annoying and more savage was the thrashing of the sword chained to the wall.

  The sword—what kind of enchantment or curse could have caused that? The shards? The sword raged and rattled and twisted as though possessed, as though on fire from within, as though some monstrous spirit were imprisoned within its forged steel hand.

  “There,” said Flan. “Get the keys to that sword...that’s all we need.”

  The chief nodded and flicked his staff in a series of gestures toward the rat circling about the middle of the dungeon floor. At once the rat took off in a bolt for the guards’ table, then dropped back behind a pile of clothes and disappeared. The dogs had spotted it and turned their barking toward it, but all that this merited was an empty tin cup hurled in their direction.

  The rat reappeared with the keys, hauling them slowly, cautiously, across the grime-coated floor. It paused, darted a fearful glance up at the dogs, the guards...and then recommenced its labor. One of the guards rose suddenly, sending the rat scampering with the keys—but it was unnoticed: the guard stumbled over to an alcove, pulled out a new cup, and poured a shot. An acrid whiff of alcohol shot through the dank air. The second guard pushed his chair back also and leaned over to retrieve the cup he had thrown.

  The rat glanced nervously up the wall to where the sword was chained and glanced back toward its master. The chief waved his staff again. The helpless rat turned back toward the raging sword, hesitated for a crucial moment, and began dragging the keys up the wall. It slipped, tried again, then located a broken section of wall a little to one side that would afford an easier climb. It was up in a matter of moments.

  The two guards sat back down and resumed their game. The first guard was just settling down, grumbling over his cards, when he suddenly turned to hurl some curse at the sword and noticed the rat, poised there on the wall just above the sword with the heavy ring of keys dangling from its mouth. The sword had stopped its rattling and raging and was holding the lock steady for the key. “I’ll be...,” he muttered...but broke off, too stunned to realize what he would be. The second guard turned, his fingers automatically tightening on the dented tin cup in his hand...and the lock clicked.

  The sword hit the ground, sending a ring of steel on stone reverberating through the air like a knell. The rat fell, the keys remaining dangling from the chain. The sword flexed on its point, flipped back into the air, and held there as though frozen, moments longer than it possibly could have by any natural means. A dull, ageless, echoing steel roar seemed to seep through the air.

  Then the guards were in action. Chairs flew against opposite walls, whiskey overturned, and dogs burst into frenzied barking. The guards ran—the first two after the sword, the third out the door—but the sword moved faster. Its hilt melted into the fingers of a hand and dragged it wildly across the grimy floor, carving into the muck and sending up a grinding shriek. It scuttled straight under the prison block gate just as the guards crashed against the bars, shouting and cursing.

  Flan was out in no time and Piachras was beside him. Flan reached the two guards with a few pad-footed strides and the glint of a knife, and before the nearest guard saw him he spun and slammed his blow straight into the other’s chest. They fell together with no struggle. The second guard turned, horrified, only in time to hear Piachras’ shout, “Amrill! For the Ashen Hands!” and to see Piachras’ broad falchion swing straight for his head.

  Piachras stood before the gate. Flan did not rise. Alik and the Essaddenes, led by the chief, entered the dungeon.

  Flan was deathly pale and struggling to keep his head erect. “My lord...,” he called, “it is I...Flan...Carluin of the Fire and Mane and...your brother.”

  “Here?” asked Piachras. He retrieved the keys from the lock and chain on the wall and searched for the right one. He found one and tried it, but it failed and then he was distracted.

  In the darkness beyond the gate there was a rumbling, muffled purr and the squeal of a rusty hinge. Quiet steps shuffled in the dark. A pale, thin hand protruded through the bars, then a pale, thin face surfaced from the dark, then a second hand lifted the strange sword to the lock. The fingers melted into the keyhole, groped for a moment only, then clicked in the lock. A bolt of fear shot through Alik’s spine.

  “My lord,” groaned Flan; and with a quiet rasp, he breathed his last.

  Alik backed away. Even Piachras stepped back. The prison gate swung open and a pale man, once powerful by appearance but now stripped down to a rag, striped by old welts and new, covered in a layer of blackish dust and slime except a pale symbol like a dragon and sword engraved over his chest, his long black hair half-plastered back over his head by slime and blood, his eyes half-shut in the light of the torches.

  The man knelt—almost staggered to the ground—and felt Flan for pulse or breathing. “Oh, my brother, Flan,” came a faint whisper. The man rested his hand a moment on Flan’s closed eyes, saying a prayer. Then he turned to Alik, and wordlessly the hand that had been on the cold eyes now rested on his. Alik closed his eyes, trembling, and opened them again. That touch—only then did Alik remember him. It was the man who had cured his sight, who had nursed him to health, who had saved him from the drakes and Rifters in Anthirion: Xaeland, the Page Knight.

  Xaeland took his hand from Alik and laid it on Piachras’ hand with the keys. “Fourth cell, left,” he said simply. Piachras hurried past him into the dark, his eyes narrowing in determination against the cruelty that could create such a place.

  “I’ve dreamed of you,” Xaeland told Alik. “I’m glad you are alive.”

  “Te-iauhcava,” said Alik.

  Xaeland stood, recognizing the chief of Essadden quietly, and nodded. He strode weakly past the dead bodies of the guards to the heap of clothes they had seen earlier. He rummaged through them shortly, drew out a long black cloak, and swept the filthy table clean. The remains of some chicken or other fowl, picked nearly clean, flew to the dogs, who fell on them snarling with gratitude. He emptied a rough burlap sack smoothly onto the table, revealing a collection of strange metal or like-metal contraptions and artifacts that were totally alien to Alik. “Fools,” Xaeland muttered. He replaced the artifacts in the sack—all but one: a short, metallic cylinder ending in a cloth-wrapped handle. This he checked carefully, sighted, and stuffed into his belt.

  His head came around. Piachras reentered the chamber, accompanied by a huge man, hairless, livid-eyed, ashy pale, and wrinkled from head to foot (as much as could be seen) with ancient burns. Alik turned in amazement. It was the mute one, the senseless giant! He was also still alive! But he had thought the man had died!

  “There is nothing to eat here,” said Xaeland toward the giant. “This is Caelhuin, a knight of the Order of Pages for life. I am Xaeland, son of Lantarrav, son of Landrith, a servant of the Page’s Order, at your service.” With this the man knelt at Alik’s feet.

  Alik pulled him to his feet. “Te ceae-aeire.”

  “You know I will always help you.”

  “Hydris; isshtem,” Alik entreated, pointing upward.

  Xaeland’s sword growled hungrily. “I go before you,” he said. He donned his long black cloak, steadying himself against the table, and then took Alik’s hand. Piachras strode up after them, then the chief, calling out a rough, grunting noise to his followers. “Up!” shouted Xaeland, breaking through the dungeon doors. “To the heights!”

  “Sir,” said Piachras; “we have understood that they captured the shard—Generals Deran and Krythar, I believe—and have brought it to a wizard who lives in this tower, Thaurim.”

  Xaeland was perturbed for only a moment. “
Most likely,” he growled. “So be it.”

  With Alik and Xaeland in the lead they entered a tall, spiraling, torch-lit staircase. “Capture the torches,” Xaeland ordered. Alik and Piachras grabbed the first two torches, and after them, some of the Essaddenes took others. It became evident what the purpose of the torches would be almost at once, for no sooner had they taken four torches than the torch-light ended: torches still hung in the racks on the wall, but they were coated over with a slime that dripped from everything and could not be ignited. At the edges of the light, just around each turn of the spiraling stairs, the sounds of scampering things, things bred in darkness and unable to stand light, scattered in every direction. Passages, all of them decrepit, low, pitch-black, and filled with an ineffable malice, branched out in every direction like a maze. And as they climbed higher and higher, Xaeland’s demon sword began to glow: first pale like a reflection of the firelight, then deeper and deeper until it gleamed its own hungry, molten red light.

  Everything happened at once. Xaeland yanked Alik around to his back, shouting “Wolveroids!” and seized the torch Alik held. At the same time from every alcove and passageway and from the stairwell ahead and behind charged scores of hairy, striped, badger-faced monsters. Xaeland’s sword flashed across the passage with a crunching thud, and as a second beast fell onto him the torch came up sharply into its face, knocking it blindly back into its fellows. Caelhuin leapt past them up the stairs, tackling the stunned beasts and bringing down a landslide of claw and fur. Someone or something screamed. Then the battle ensued.

  Caelhuin’s battle filled the stairwell above. For several moments Alik could make out nothing of the brutal struggle, for there were four wolveroids on the giant man. He matched all four together with pure strength and speed, his hands flashing back and forth, catching now one and now another beast in a sure grasp while with his legs he delivered a barrage of crippling kicks that directed the movements of the remaining attackers into his own or Xaeland’s hands. And Xaeland stood in the hall, swinging his sword back and forth as though intuiting Caelhuin’s every movement.

  Behind, Piachras and the Essaddenes waged a more desperate battle. Piachras had been besieged by half a dozen wolveroids at once, and before he’d had time to react he had been pushed back from the tunnel out of which they poured, his limbs covered with blood and bruises. His sword flashed three times, bowling his enemies back toward their hole, and with a fourth kick he crushed another beast. In his eyes fire flashed, and yet the beasts came on more and more to the siege.

  Below, as far as the senses could reach, the shrieks and crashing of battle descended as though into the pit. Alik waited, his senses already overloaded but his eyes and ears still darting from one sound and vision to another, unable to get anywhere near the actual fighting nor, if he were able, able to contribute much at all.

  Then suddenly he sensed it: the malicious presence, high above, of crystal, driving, evil, intent on all invaders of its realm: a mind. A sense of paralysis shot through his mind; the knife jerked in his hand and he nearly lunged at Xaeland’s back. All things demanded it! It was intoxicating: the shard, Zoris.

  The battle around him blurred. He focused all the will and energy of the last months on the shard’s presence above in resistance. Then the paralysis was broken by a realization he had not expected: the shear evil the shards were capable of. He had known Hydris cared nothing save for its own ends, but this was different: Zoris was bent only on death, destruction, and twisting. “Vea savai’ia!” he moaned. His mind cleared completely. “Vea savai’ia!” he prayed, shutting his eyes and ears even tighter.

  There was a thundering crash coming from every direction. Dust spewed out of every side-passage all at once. The wolveroids ahead of them in the stairwell broke and fled in chaos. Xaeland looked around, vaguely confused until Piachras exclaimed, “The rock people! They’ve caved in the tunnels!”

  Xaeland glanced back and forth and finally shrugged. He murmured something under his breath, wavered as though about to faint, grabbed Alik’s hand, and continued up the steps.

  Smoldering torches began to appear in the stairwell now. Ahead and to either side the scampering of feet receded as they drew near. The side passages became wider and taller, and a few were lighted. At last Xaeland stopped at one of these and murmured something inaudible. Caelhuin stopped also. “Here, I think,” said Xaeland. His sword glowed hungrily as he pulled Alik after him.

  It was not a long passage, and he crept cautiously, shielding his sword beneath his cloak. At the end of the passage there was a wide room filled with various worm-like mutations: all hairless, pale, and naked, some chinless, some armless with tails to balance, some with spines or horns or digging claws. Before them they had drug piles of unidentifiable meat: the sole sustenance of life on Labrion Plateau.

  “We’re not going to be able to get past these ones without a fight,” Piachras whispered to Xaeland.

  “We’re not trying to get past them,” Xaeland returned. He flashed him a grin. Piachras was about to ask what he did intend, but before he could both Xaeland and Caelhuin charged into the room like mad bulls, Xaeland brandishing his roaring sword and letting out a terrifying war-cry. The creatures of Labrion looked up. A few of them hissed or snarled and formed a defensive ring about their feast while the rest scattered in terror. The few that remained were no match for the page knights.

  “What the blazes is this all about? Are you trying to bring down the whole palace on us?” Piachras demanded, storming in with Alik and the lead Essaddenes. Xaeland picked a torch off the wall and began roasting a leg of something he hoped was cow. “Is this snack time?” Piachras asked in disbelief.

  “Listen,” Xaeland replied carelessly, “I’ve eaten nothing but raw rat for weeks, and that only when lucky. I’m going to fall over if I don’t eat something now. So help yourself; we’re safe enough.”

  “Safe? With those things crawling around everywhere and reporting to their friends?”

  “This isn’t Ristoria, elf—or even the North,” Xaeland replied. “You’ll find things a little looser.”

  “Looser perhaps, but there will be guards coming still.”

  “There are no guards,” Xaeland said.

  Piachras huffed.

  “Thaurim surrounds himself with the beasts he creates with his bloody shard,” Xaeland explained. “There is nothing more human than what you’ve just met, and they are more animal than anything. And he doesn’t even trust them much; as you go higher up and nearer the tower room, things lose even that much semblance of life.”

  With that, Xaeland went silent and would answer Piachras not another word, grouse as he might, until he finished his meal. This, however, was not nearly as long as Piachras’ pacing would have implied. In ten minutes they were off again to everyone’s relief.

  The staircase led only a few stories upward from there before it threw itself up, exhausted and unceremonious, into the huge but decrepit main hall of Labrion Palace.

  The main hall towered high into the air, dark and dusty though lit from several tiers by hordes of burning wicks protruding from centuries-old conglomerations of wax drippings. Bats and things not at all like bats—tri-winged, fluttering in spirals with a blind, tentacular maw jutting from their fronts—and millions of desperate moths filled the air.

  Xaeland stopped inside the doorway and turned to Piachras. “Ever met a gargoyle?” he whispered.

  “What manner of beast is that?” sniffed Piachras.

  “You’ll know it,” Xaeland said. “Don’t bother with your sword; they’re harder than granite.”

  Piachras smiled incredulously, but before he could respond both Xaeland (with Alik) and Caelhuin stormed out into the hall. No sooner had they emerged into the high main hall than Xaeland seized Caelhuin’s shoulder, freezing in place. Across the hall five other figures turned in mirror astonishment—two half-breed Narrissoreans, two silver-clad Rifters with ashy-black skin, and a small girl.

  “Zaris!”
cursed Xaeland. The girl’s black hair cocked toward them. She was dressed all in black hunter’s leather with half a dozen knives tucked under her belt. The moment she saw them a black arc swung over her shoulder, Xaeland leapt back under cover with Alik, and a black-fletched arrow whizzed through the air. “No one touch it! It’s poisoned!” Xaeland shouted. He pulled the strange metallic tube from the pocket of his cloak and pointed it toward Zaris. It clicked. He looked over it in confusion. “Not again,” he groaned. “I’ll have to ask Nessak about that.” His sword leapt to the ready in his hand and he charged out into the hall after Caelhuin.

  From the opposite side of the hall, the Narrissoreans and Rifters charged in return. The hall echoed a terrifying synthesis of war-cries. From the rafters above the closing warriors the shadows sprang to life. Xaeland’s sword rang heavily against the Rifters’ axe-heads, cleaving the first with a molten roar and flinging the second, with its wielder, ten feet across the floor. Caelhuin crashed into the Narrissoreans at the same time, taking first blood to his senseless skin but capturing both elves in a crushing grasp. Alik dashed after Xaeland followed by Piachras, but no sooner had he left the safety of the stairwell than he was dive-bombed by a volley of spinning, tentacle-mouthed vampires. He slipped and rolled out of the way in time to see Piachras’ mighty form rushing through the air with sword and torch. The room reeled above him; all the candles flickered in a wave, throwing a whirling shadow across the floor. Against that backdrop the rumbling bass roar of the mutated elven chieftain could be clearly heard: “Essadden! A’ Caimbrian!” And then the remnant legion of Essadden poured out into the hall.

  Xaeland’s disarmed opponent zig-zagged for the walls of the great hall, where amongst the scattered piles of bones and armor fragments lay the weapons of many valiant questers and knights long gone. His second opponent, who had by some miracle managed to maintain his grasp on his weapon while being thrown down, had not half a moment to collect himself or even stand before Xaeland’s sword was flashing at him again. He rolled aside, but in his fear of losing his weapon he would not let it go—and Xaeland’s sword cleft through its handle, leaving him with but half a wooden shaft. This he swung furiously at Xaeland’s back hard enough to topple him, but he did not count on Xaeland’s extra dexterity. The black-cloaked man swung back his sword, and the sword loosened its fingers about his and stretched backward to catch the makeshift club by its edge. The body of one of Caelhuin’s rock elves skidded into his path, and Xaeland just managed a somersault over it while his opponent was thrown back. Then, still crouched from his maneuver, Xaeland swung his sword once more—almost seemed to hurl it away, it so barely clung to his fingertips—and his opponent jerked back, dead.