The Sorcerer Knight

by Robert Ryan

The old man laughed. “I don’t know. I lean toward Ferla’s answer, but who is to say? You could have the right of it.”

  These sorts of conversations were often like this. Aranloth asked questions for which there was no answer. And in truth, Faran had begun to realize that he did not want one. What was more important here was the way they thought, and that their minds were opened to other views.

  “The ways of the knights are deeper by far than skill at battle and magic alone. A knight can fight a creature of the shadow to the death, or dine with the queen and discuss the scrollwork on her favorite cutlery.” He looked at them by turns. “So who will answer this first? Why does a bird have two wings and not one?”

  Faran shook his head in amusement. Only a lòhren could ask such a question.

  Ferla answered quickly though. “Because with one wing alone, how could a bird fly? It would be unbalanced, and would fly in a circle unable to go where it needed.”

  Faran knew the rules of this game well. His job was to come up with an alternative answer, and one that seemed plausible. That showed that he had considered the problem from different angles. But it was hard when Ferla gave what was obviously the correct answer.

  “Well?” pressed Aranloth.

  “Only a person would ask such a question. The bird just flies, and it needs no answer as to how it does what it does.”

  Aranloth clapped his hands together. “Very good! You’re getting better at this.” He turned to Ferla. “And what is the rebuttal to his answer?”

  “Neither he nor I are birds. Birds may not question things, but people do. That is our nature just as much as it is the nature of birds to fly.”

  The lòhren seemed pleased with their answers, but he was not done.

  “Now for a question that troubles the sharpest of minds. What is truth?”

  Faran considered his response. He hated these elusive and vague questions, especially the ones that seemed to have such an obvious answer. But he had learned much about himself by trying to answer them well, and more by thinking on Ferla’s responses, which were often far different from his own.

  “Truth,” he said, “is a fact. It can be proven by observation, experiment or testimony of reliable witnesses.”

  Ferla shook her head. “Who determines the reliability of witnesses? At best, that’s only an estimate. And observation relies on interpretation of what is seen, which is as much as to say it’s only an opinion. Nor is experimentation any different. In the end, the results must be interpreted just as observation is, and are therefore just as likely to be twisted by personal preference and prejudice.”

  Both points of view were plausible. Both could seem reasonable, and Faran knew from past experience that Aranloth would not choose one as correct over the other. Sometimes, he wished he would though.

  “This brings us close to another question,” the old man said. “Is perception reality?”

  Faran knew he could get dizzy if he thought about these types of things too much, but Ferla grinned. She enjoyed the game.

  “If you believe something to be true,” she said, “then it’s true. If you feel cold, then you are cold. If you’re hot, then you are hot. If you’re hungry, then you are hungry. It matters nothing that the person beside you may feel the opposite that you do. Perception is reality, and trying to filter reality through someone else’s perception is like asking a bird to run and a deer to fly.”

  Faran looked out over the lake. A cold breeze blew ripples over its surface now and made his eyes water. But better to look there than at Ferla. If he did, she would distract him.

  “If a person is sick, they may feel cold and shiver despite it being a warm day. Or a fever may wrack them, making them hot when in truth it’s cool. Perception is therefore unreliable. Better to judge what is real by reference to past personal experience and the common perception of a group of people. This is less likely to be misleading.”

  They trained then for a little while in the magic that Aranloth was teaching them, and they learned new words of power. These new ones, just as with the old ones, they could not use to much effect by themselves, but with the lòhren’s mind overshadowing their own, they progressed by slow increments.

  So too had their sword craft. They fought Aranloth’s summonings, and sometimes they won, and sometimes they lost, but they always learned.

  And they sparred each other also. This was often with practice swords, but they had moved on as well to a kind of slow sparring with their own blades. It was here most of all that Ferla came alive, and often she grinned for sheer joy as they fought. This was a habit that Aranloth was trying hard to break her from.

  It was cold again by evening, colder than it had been all year. A pale moon rose, full and bright in the clear sky. They ate their dinner and then gathered close to the hearth. Glad was Faran for all the timber he and Ferla had cut through the summer, but Aranloth seemed troubled, and he held tightly to his staff.

  “Something comes,” he said after a little while. “Something evil. I feel it in my bones.”

  Kareste seemed worried, and she too held her staff tightly. But she said nothing, merely moving to the door and opening it, but not stepping outside.

  The others joined her, each looking out the door. But there was nothing to see but the rising moon and the creeping shadows over the valley slopes.

  “There,” hissed Aranloth, and he pointed with his staff.

  Something moved down by the lake, but it sought no cover nor tried to hold still to hide itself. Instead, it strode toward them.

  Faran felt a sense of dread build. The figure was alone, but menace came from it. It walked through their training ground where they practiced, and that felt like a violation to him. How dare this thing come here and seek them out?

  For seek them out it did. It strode toward them, sure of purpose, and as it did so it became clearer. Tall it was, dressed in robes of black, and a staff was in its hand.

  “Is it an elùgroth?” Ferla asked, and Faran was impressed with the calmness of her voice.

  “No,” Aranloth answered. “It is worse. It is impossible, yet there it stands before us.”

  Faran knew then. It was the thing that hounded them. It had hunted them since the standing stones. It had pursued them through the tombs of the Letharn, and survived and escaped both Aranloth and the harakgar. It was the shadow.

  Yet in the silvery light of the moon, the thing cast a shadow itself. It had grown. It had become solid. It was less a shadow now than a person, but how was such transformation possible?

  The shadow-creature drew up before the cabin. Regal it was, in a dark way. A thing of great power. If it were a man, it would surely be some great lord. But it was no man.

  Yet still it spoke, and its voice was both strange and familiar.

  “Come forth, lòhren. You and I must battle this night. I can abide you no longer.”

  Faran looked to Aranloth. He knew the creature spoke to him and not Kareste. But it was Kareste who acted. With a swift move, she closed the door and barred it.

  Silence fell, deep and heavy. When Faran spoke, he hoped for Ferla’s calm, but his voice was high, and trembly.

  “The door will not keep it out,”

  “No,” Kareste answered. “But Aranloth and I have not been idle. We have cast wards of protection over this building. That magic is stronger than timber.”

  Faran and Ferla drew their swords. No noise came from without, nor any sign of the shadow.

  “It will not work,” Aranloth said softly to Kareste. “Our wards are set to defy the dark magic of the stone, but this is something else.”

  “They’ll still hold. And if they don’t, then we fight.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Whatever this thing is, it is for me to fight and no other. I feel the truth of that. I have always felt the truth of that.”

  At that moment there was a roar of noise and something smashed against the door. There was a wave of heat, and Faran knew the creature had struck
at them with flame. Yet around its edges, which he saw through the windows, was a flickering movement of blackness. Just as the creature was of shadow, so too the flame it summoned.

  The door held. Had it not been protected by magic, Faran knew even the heavy oak panels would have sundered to shards and embers.

  “The wards need strengthening,” Kareste said. She looked at Faran and Ferla. “You must help. There is a word of power for this. Haeldurn. It means protect. Say it, and think of the cabin as a shell around you, made invulnerable by magic.”

  They began to chant. Outside, more of that black light flared and the door rattled on its hinges.

  “Haeldurn,” Faran chanted. And Ferla did likewise beside him. He saw both Aranloth and Kareste take on an appearance of concentration, but they said no words. Yet still, he sensed their power spring to life and feed the wards that he now sensed all around them.

  But he understood those wards now that he had sensed them with his mind. They repelled magic. They would do nothing against normal forces. But there was a normal force the creature might use against them. Fire. Not fire born of magic, but just plain fire.

  The creature must realize that too. It must be able to sense the wards, but it had not taken that next step. Why would that be?

  Faran turned to the old man. “This thing doesn’t want to kill you. It wants you alive. It wants to fight you, but not kill you.”

  20. A Duel of Magic

  Once more, the door rattled and a dull boom sounded as though of thunder. This time, the whole cabin shook.

  Faran concentrated on the chant, and whatever power he had, so little and weak as it seemed to him, he felt it join to the great swelling of magic from the others. The wards flared to brighter life, and they held timber together that would long since have broken and blown apart under the strain of the assault they endured.

  The shadow ceased to throw fire at them. Now, a wind rose, and it howled in from a distance and then reached the cabin. The walls, made of logs as they were, still swayed. The roof jolted. The roar of the wind was deafening. Without the wards, the cabin would have been picked up and cast away. Yet it held.

  Faran chanted. He gave everything he had, his mind focused on the concept of Haeldurn, of protection. The wards had been weakened by the attack, but they strengthened again now. Yet they were not as strong as they were.

  Then a new attack came, the wind seemed to scream at them, and then it died away to a whimper and was gone. A profound silence grew. Even the silence seemed loud. It was as though Faran could feel it as an actual force.

  “The creature has used fire and wind against us,” Aranloth whispered into the silence. “Now it uses the weight of air. It piles it upon us, and it buttresses it from the sides.”

  “But air weighs nothing,” Faran said.

  “Its weight is very small,” Aranloth told him. “But it adds up. And there is no limit to it.”

  Faran went back to chanting the word of power, and he forced his will into that word and made it one with the wards. Yet still the pressure grew, and it seemed that a weight of mountains was upon him, and the logs of the cabin groaned.

  But the wards held, and the pressure released suddenly with a long rolling boom.

  “Come out and face me as you must in the end,” the creature called. And it spoke in a voice like Aranloth’s own, mocking him.

  “Do not even think about it, old man,” Kareste said.

  Aranloth straightened. “I must. This thing has dogged me, whatever it is. It will not give up. It must be defeated.”

  “We can escape,” Kareste argued.

  Faran did not see how. There was no way out of here except past the thing that attacked them.

  “To what end?” Aranloth asked. “It will find me again. Somehow we are joined, and it will shadow me across all the world if I run. No. I will not do it, and it weakens me to do so. I am not what I was, nor as strong as I should be. Better to fight now and have an end to it.”

  Kareste took a firm grip of her staff. “Then we will confront it together.”

  “No. I will not allow that,” Aranloth said. “You have another duty, and a greater. If necessary, escape with Faran and Ferla. Teach them what I would have taught them.”

  With that, he reached for the door and opened it. The silvery light of the moon spilled into the room.

  “I come, my shadow,” Aranloth said.

  The tall figure outside leaned on its staff. “You have it wrong, lòhren. You are my shadow.”

  That made no sense to Faran, but he stood in the doorframe, Kareste and Ferla either side of him.

  The two figures circled one another, and in truth, they did look like shadows, for they matched each other move for move.

  And then the duel continued that had begun months ago on the bridge of stone in the tombs of the Letharn.

  The shadow struck first, pointing its staff and hurling shadow-fire at Aranloth. The lòhren made no move to evade it. Instead, he raised his arms as though to embrace it. The dark magic struck him, but he seemed to absorb it, and then fling it back at his opponent. As it returned, the blackness was shot through with swirling strands of silver.

  The shadow leaped away, moving fast and flinging up shadows all around it to obscure exactly where it stood.

  The pale moonlight danced and jerked over the snow-covered earth, and Aranloth’s opponent blended in with all those shifting lights.

  Aranloth did not stand still. He leaped forward, light flaring from the tip of his staff. This revealed the dark thing, crouched low to one side. But it was not cowering there. Rather it was buying time for its next attack.

  And that attack came with a roar of wind that sent leaves hurling before it, and a moment later a driving wall of snow. Now, instead of shadows, the scene before the cabin was white. Snow rolled over the ground. Snow filled the air and enveloped the lòhren, then it tightened and coalesced into ice.

  Faran held his breath. These opponents seemed perfectly matched, and he wondered how that was possible. Surely one should have an edge over the other. He also knew he witnessed a battle such as few alive had ever seen. The forces of magic were stupendous, and the skill and long years of training that had developed it were beyond his comprehension. It would take many lives of men to reach such power, and he knew that if he trained the rest of his life his talents would be as a drop of water in a lake compared to this.

  Aranloth seemed frozen, and icicles hung from his jawline like a beard. But he cried out, and the light of the moon intensified, shining for a moment like the sun, and it filled the little area of the combat, swirling like the snow had done.

  Faran felt warmth from it, but it would be most intense near the lòhren, and even as he looked at the old man he saw the ice turn to steam and lift into the air.

  The creature of shadow cursed in some foreign tongue. Aranloth exalted in another. What they said Faran could not understand, but he sensed the emotions behind their strange words.

  The two combatants paused, each leaning on their staff and gazing at each other. Like twins they were, only Aranloth’s face was clear, but his opponent wore a hood that shadowed his.

  But suddenly Aranloth moved, raising high his staff and then pulling it back. His opponent crouched in a defensive position, but then slowly straightened as nothing happened.

  “You weaken, Aranloth. And soon you will be mine.”

  Aranloth did not answer, but he backed both away and stepped to the side. The shadow made to move toward him, but then paused mid-stride and looked behind him.

  Faran had seen it before him. Aranloth had summoned a great towering wave of water from the lake. It rolled up from the shore, higher than the cabin, growing as it came until it stretched high as a tree.

  The water was dark in the moonlight, but the foamy crest of the wave glowed silver. Then it blocked out both moon and sky and fell crashing atop the shadow.

  Water surged everywhere, smashing into the cabin but repelled by the wards.


  Aranloth stood tall. Water swirled and foamed around him, but he was as an island amid the tumultuous sea.

  Of the shadow, there was no sign, and Faran doubted anything could have survived that wall of water. Or if not killed, at least it would be cast down.

  Yet as the water receded, the dark shadow was revealed. It stood there just as Aranloth, untouched by the water and seemingly master of its environment. Aranloth gave no sign of surprise, but Kareste drew a sharp breath.

  The two combatants surveyed each other, hatred in the posture of one and puzzlement in the other. They were equally matched, and the one could gain no advantage over the other…

  Faran understood something of what was happening then, and made his choice.

  “Aranloth cannot win,” he said. “He is fighting himself. The shadow is him, some shadow of him born from the void.”

  Kareste did not answer. She frowned, and then realization dawned on her face. Faran was right, and seeing that, he leaped into action.

  With a wild cry he dashed from the cabin and ran at the shadow. His sword gleamed palely in the moonlight, and then he felt something within it stir to life. The magic that he had been told was there but never felt till now, woke.

  The sword caught alight with a cold blue flame, and Faran attacked the shadow. He swung high, aiming a blow that would decapitate the enemy, then dropped swiftly low. The first movement was a ploy, and the second the real attack.

  But the shadow was fast. Or else it knew the move even as Aranloth did. With contempt, it flicked its staff to deflect the blow and then swung it back to strike Faran across the head.

  It was the helm that saved him. It absorbed the blow, though it rang like a bell, yet the magic in it flared as well and repelled the stream of shadow-fire that erupted from the staff’s tip.

  Faran fell back. But Kareste and Ferla were there, launching their own attacks. If not for them, he did not think the magic of the armor would have saved him for long.

  He scrambled upright, sword raised high, and yelled at Aranloth.

  “Remember the words of the queen! You are your own enemy! The shadow is you!”