Pick a door, any door!
With no idea where he might be going, the mage did just that, flying into one of the dark openings. He clattered into a rack of weapons, spilling them over the floor, and staggered back into the main area, feeling like an idiot.
"A great move from the new boy! He's totalled a whole row of spears! What a result!"
"I will kill you, Keller!” Grimm snarled, without conviction, hearing his weak, unconvincing voice booming over the arena.
"Don't bet on it, amateur!"
As his eyes began to adapt to the dim light, Grimm saw that some of the rectangular orifices looked a little darker than others; perhaps they were the true passageways. Which one should he take? Which corridors might already be filling with bloodthirsty warriors, hungry for his life?
Perhaps Thribble can help...
The minuscule demon had proved himself a resourceful investigator on many occasions. The mage patted a pocket and felt no resistance.
"Thribble!"
Grimm heard no response, and he began to flap at his robe pockets; the demon was quite absent.
Recognising the fingers of incipient terror tickling at his stem-brain, he clamped down on his rampant emotions as he had been taught at the Scholasticate. He was alone; Thribble had deserted him, and he had to deal with that.
Just move, Afelnor!
The mental imperative drove him into one of the dark openings. He ran past rows of empty bunks, into a closed, square area of metal lockers. Hearing angry voices behind him, he launched a mighty spell of Dissolution into the wall opposite him.
The lockers exploded into hot, orange shards that scored and burnt his face, but a brick wall stood behind. There was no time to think, as the voices grew louder. Another spell; the brickwork sundered into dust. Instead of open sky, all the magic-user saw was a dirty expanse of rock.
Grimm spun around, to see the first few fighters coming down the corridor. Unthinking, acting only on his reflexes, he sent a powerful fireball down the passageway, gratified to hear a few, brief screams before the spell died. He slumped as the energy left his body; he had all too little left to give.
"Only forty-three to go, Questor!" called the hated, metallic voice of the Pit-master, from his unseen eyrie. "I'm only sorry we didn't have an audience to appreciate this! You've done the Pit proud, young feller."
Keller seemed to have eyes everywhere!
"Damn you, Keller!” shouted the mage. “I'll tear your guts out through your mouth, you bastard!"
"If I had a penny for every time someone had wished that, I'd be a rich man, Guild scum! I saw your grandfather, Loras, destroy this town, and I always swore to get him back some day. Now, I have."
Grimm started at the mention of Loras.
"What do you know about my grandfather?” he screamed into the void, as gleaming, muscular bodies strode into the long corridor. “What do you know about him? You're not fit to speak his name!"
As the fighters grew closer, Grimm launched another spell into the mass of muscle. He knew he had little energy to spare; the next assault would surely drain him dry. Although the voice above him was hateful to him, he found himself yearning to hear its next, theatrical announcement.
"Just what do you know about Loras Afelnor?” he screamed, as oiled, gleaming men climbed over their fallen comrades. This might be the last chance he had to discover something important, something glorious about his beloved grandfather.
"Loras won here, many years ago, but now he's lost," the amplified voice roared. "Prioress Lizaveta could tell you more than I can, mage, but you'll never live to hear her speak.
"Goodbye; last bets, please, ladies and gentlemen. Our challenger is in a blind end, facing thirty-six challengers; who'll give me ten thousand to one? Anybody? No?"
Grimm felt an icy shock running through him at the mention of his grandfather and Lizaveta in two connected sentences. This confirmed his unproven doubts and fears, but he might have no time to enjoy this long-suspected evidence of Geomantic treachery.
The mage drew his power into his mind for another blast. As he released it, he saw the pasty, tormented face of Tordun and skewed the blast to one side, wasting it on the walls of the corridor. He searched for another, less destructive, spell, finding none; as a Mage Questor, all he really knew was destruction.
"Sorry, Tordun,” he muttered. “It's you or me, my friend."
A spangling wisp of blue sparks drifted from the mage's fingers, but no spell came; Grimm's magic was exhausted.
Despite knowing he had lost, the Questor felt calm as he hoisted Redeemer over his right shoulder, ready to strike for the last time.
"All right, boys, who's first?” he asked, expressing a sense of bravado he did not feel.
The mindless mass of muscle surged forward, and Grimm readied himself for his last assault. At least he would be able to take some of them with him before he fell; he felt sorry that the noble Tordun would be among the first to fall.
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Chapter 33: “Grimm Must Be Saved!"
To Thribble, the dense, expensive silk of Grimm's pocket seemed as transparent as the finest glass. The demon's sight and hearing were superior to those of any human, and he could detect frequencies of light and sound to which mortals were quite insensitive. As soon as he saw the encroaching fighters, he knew the mage might be in serious trouble; had the warriors been as obliging as to arrange themselves in a neat, linear formation, he had no doubt that Grimm would have been able to destroy the men en masse.
However, the murderous-looking mortals seemed to have no concept of fair play.
At first, the grey imp had regarded the Questor as an interesting but otherwise unexceptional example of humanity. Grimm might be as frail and flawed as all the rest of mankind, but he seemed to have the knack of finding himself in difficult situations that provided the demon with the material for interesting tales with which to regale his netherworld brethren when he returned to his home dimension.
He still revelled in Grimm's adventures, memorising each vocal nuance and mannerism, with the fussy eye for detail of a dedicated archivist, but he had begun to see the young human in a new light.
The Questor seemed to be driven by conflicting forces beyond his control: his fear of failure; his desire for recognition; his raging, adolescent hormones; his burning need to redeem his family name. Sympathy and compassion might be difficult concepts for a demon to grasp, but Thribble had now spent nearly a year in the mortal realm, and he had begun to experience strange sensations he had never known before.
This fragile, overworld creature no longer appeared to him as a quixotic bag of flesh and disgusting humours, a means of providing Thribble's fellow demons with amusing anecdotes, but as a sentient being in his own right, almost heroic in his daily struggle with his troublesome, ever-present emotions and drives.
The demon would never have admitted it to another mortal or demon, or even to himself, but he had begun to regard this human almost as some oversized, clumsy, younger clutch-brother, who needed protection on occasion. The mortal word was ‘friend'. Grimm must be saved from his lack of foresight and his mortal inadequacies.
As the Questor took his stand, his staff at the ready, the demon hoisted himself from the confines of his silken prison and slid down the expanse of yellow silk to the floor.
Scuttling through the dense forest of the fighters’ legs, Thribble bounded for the blasted Pit entrance.
Two more humans stood guard here, but their befuddled eyes were locked on the embattled Grimm.
They did not notice the minuscule, grey shadow of the demon as he slipped between them.
The imp's sensitive eyes soon located the other mortals hiding in the bushes abutting the rotunda's walls.
Although they might have been well concealed from human eyes, they stood out like white paint on a black sheet to Thribble. Only two of the men appeared to be conscious, and the older of the two seemed in no condition to fight, as blood tric
kled down his face from numerous cuts and contusions; both the man's eyes were swollen almost shut.
That left the cowardly mage. Under normal circumstances, Thribble would never have considered Numal as a saviour for his friend, but he felt he had little choice.
* * * *
From the shelter of the dense bushes, Numal kept a careful watch for signs of approaching guards. Should any appear, he had no idea what he might do, but he intended to keep his word to Questor Grimm to wait for at least twenty minutes. He had no pocket-watch—such items were beyond the means of all but the very wealthiest—but he had a good sense of the passage of time, gained after long years in the Arnor Scholasticate, where punctuality was paramount.
The battered General Quelgrum tended to the fallen men as best he could, having detailed the squeamish Numal to act as look-out. The mage had never felt as helpless in his life.
Numal felt disgusted with his performance as a Guild Mage; he knew he had succumbed to his baser instincts on all too many occasions. His virtual imprisonment in the House for five decades had ill prepared him for the challenges ahead, and he had been thrust so quickly into the young Questor's violent, dangerous world that he had felt like spindrift in a hurricane; uncontrolled, driven from situation to situation.
Grimm seemed still to have an adolescent's sense of indestructibility, something Numal had long forgotten. The Necromancer knew he was too old for this young man's game, and he burned inside at the knowledge that he had ever mistaken the Questor's friendliness for something deeper. Numal had only the vaguest knowledge of the form of his inner desires; he had been cut off from normal human relationships since the age of seven.
On first discovering that Grimm had a forbidden paramour, the older mage was suffused with mixed anger, astonishment and disappointment. He had even dallied with the idea of exposing the Questor's peccadillo to the Guild hierarchy, but this had soon flown from his mind at his first sight of Drexelica: the first woman outside his family that he had met since his extreme youth. He recognised that she was beautiful, and he had felt his heart twisting. On one hand, he had felt jealous that Grimm was lost to him; on the other, he had been stirred by the young girl's fresh, feminine loveliness.
Did he desire men, or women? The Necromancer had no way of knowing; he sought only the love and affection denied him for so long, with no experience of affection or amatory affairs whatsoever.
Perhaps fifteen minutes had now passed since Grimm had blasted the doors of the Pit, and Numal risked extending his head from the safe concealment of the bushes. He saw nothing, but, straining his ears over the ever-weakening moans of the stricken Guy, he heard the distinct sound of rapturous applause from inside the Pit building. He found this both bizarre and disturbing, but he had no idea of what it might portend; however, he felt sure it could not be good.
Ducking back into the greenery, Numal slapped his brow, trapped in a prison of indecision. If Grimm, a Questor, was in trouble, what could a humble Necromancer hope to do?
As he wrestled with his doubts and fears, he felt something tugging gently at his robe, which caused him to start. Was this a rat, or some other vermin? The Necromancer shuddered, and he shook his right leg in an attempt to dislodge the nagging creature.
"Necromancer, stop! It is I, Thribble!"
The thready, high-pitched voice was at the limit of his hearing, but the words were just clear enough.
Against the background of the grey wool of his robe, Numal made out the shape of the small demon climbing up the rough material like a mountaineer scaling a sheer rock-face, blowing out his cheeks with the effort.
Numal scooped the demon into his hand.
"What is it, demon? Is Questor Grimm in trouble?"
"He is, human,” Thribble panted. “Pit-master Keller has marshalled all the fighters at his disposal to destroy the mage. Even your monstrous, pale companion, Tordun, is amongst his assailants. From their expressions, they are not under their own control. Questor Grimm is heavily outnumbered, and I fear he cannot destroy all of his opponents. He continues to fight, but the end cannot be long."
Numal felt a pang of helpless distress. “If a Seventh Level Questor can't hope to beat these men, what do you think a superannuated Necromancer can do to help him?"
"You are not completely helpless, mortal; you have your magic stick, do you not?"
Numal suppressed an inappropriate laugh. “So does Grimm, yet you say he cannot defeat his opponents, even aided by his powerful magic. Perhaps I could manifest a lost soul or two, to try to frighten the fighters, but I doubt it would be of any use."
"Perhaps it will not be necessary to face the pugilists,” Thribble said. “Keller seems to be their guiding influence. Perhaps all that is needed is to defeat Keller, and this man is no fighter."
"Nor am I, demon, and I'm scared! I'm just a bloody coward! "
Numal's heartfelt words seemed to have little effect on the demon, or on General Q.
"Everybody gets scared, mage.” The soldier's swollen mouth made it sound as if he had both cheeks full of marbles. “Show me a man without fear and I'll show you a dead man. You have no choice about whether you have fear or not. You do have a choice when it comes to submitting to that fear or not.
"I was fifteen years old when I fought my first battle, at the behest of my hated lord and master. I was a shepherd, and I'd just spent six months’ slavery in a mine for attacking an overseer with my crook, after he beat me with a cudgel for complaining about the inadequate rations.
"I'd had eight weeks’ training in swordplay, and I was so scared that I nearly fouled my breeches, but I fought. Since then, I've seen countless young recruits who thought they were too frightened to fight.
"I remember one young lad of about seventeen years of age, who fought beside me when we took on a band of brigands who tried to take over our base. We were outnumbered two to one, and I overheard him telling one of his friends he was worried he'd be too scared to fight. I stood beside him as we lined up for the start of the battle, and I saw him struggling with his emotions."
"I suppose you're going to tell me that he went on to a glorious career as a warlord, General,” Numal said.
"No: he died in my arms.” The General's expression was like stone. “But he told me before he died that he wasn't afraid any more. He was proud that he'd been a part of our victory, and he wasn't scared of death any more."
Numal snorted. “Very inspirational, General. But that boy didn't have to face the enemy alone. That's what I'd have to do, and I'm not going to. That's the end of it."
Quelgrum levered himself to his feet and glowered at the mage. “Perhaps you're right, Numal. Perhaps you are just a bloody coward. I'll do it myself."
Part of the Necromancer's psyche felt relieved that someone else would face the danger instead of him, but he knew the old soldier was in no condition to fight.
"You can't, General;” he pleaded. “It's all you can do to stand up!"
"If you don't go, I will. Don't try to stop me."
The soldier surged forward. Numal moved to block Quelgrum, but the soldier shot out his bruised left fist to strike the mage on the jaw, just hard enough to make the Necromancer stumble and fall.
The pain of the blow was subsumed by the realisation that the soldier had not held back in the least; the soldier had hit him with all the force available to him. The man was all but finished, yet still prepared to take on an overwhelming force.
"No, wait, Quelgrum!” he shouted, as the General stumbled out of the bushes. “There must be something else we.... can do!"
Quelgrum paused, and turned back to face the mage.
"It seems to me your magic isn't any great shakes, mage, and your willpower certainly isn't any better.
Forget it, coward. You can spend the rest of your life starting at shadows, for all I care."
"Perhaps there is something I can do,” Numal said, feeling a little sick at the knowledge that the old soldier would surely die if he attempted to save G
rimm. “It's not something I want to do, and I'm not even sure if I can. But I will try."
Quelgrum stepped back into the bushes.
"What's the big plan, then, mage?"
Despite the General's swollen, disfigured face, Numal saw the ghost of a contemptuous sneer on the soldier's face.
"Necromancy involves the manipulation of souls,” he said, the words tumbling, unbidden, from his mouth.
“I might, perhaps, be able to perform a spell of Juxtaposition. I've never attempted one before, but I know the runes."
"Let's just pretend for a moment that I'm just a simple soldier, and not a bloody Guild Mage,” the soldier said in a sardonic tone. “What the hell is a spell of Juxtaposition?"
"I can maybe exchange my soul with Questor Guy's,” Numal said, flicking a nervous glance at the now-silent, twitching form of the fallen mage. “He would inhabit my body, free to perform his Questor magic. He can do more than I ever could."
"He's all but finished, Necromancer. He's as weak as a new-born kitten!"
"That's just his body, General. He'd have mine to play with, and all its strength."
The General frowned and looked down at the twitching, groaning Questor. “Guy's in terrible pain. Do you think you can face that?"
"I'll have to."
"Not bad for a craven coward, Numal.” Quelgrum clapped the mage on the shoulder and forced his swollen mouth into a smile.
The Necromancer knew he must move quickly, before the dread demons of fear overwhelmed him.
Kneeling down beside the quivering form of the Questor, he put down his staff and applied both palms to Guy's forehead. “Hold him still, please, General."
As Numal patterned his mind for the spell, he felt a welcome sense of calm washing over him. There was no room in a mage's mind for both fear and precision.
While his mouth spat out complex, flawless syllables, he groped in the ether for Guy's soul. As he found it, he gasped at the shock of unimaginable, electric anguish, but the runes continued to issue from his throat; exact, perfect. A last pang of joy at the realisation that the spell was complete was swamped by agony.
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