by R J Hanson
“Now, I’ll take that one,” Silas said, taking the cake back from Tabitha. “And you can have the one I took a bit out of. But you must promise to hide it in your pocket until after lunch.”
Tabitha nodded, accepted the other cake, and stuffed it down in her pocket. She beamed another smile at Silas. He returned the smile and patted her on the head.
“Now run along and play,” Silas said. “You can’t tell anyone you saw me, or we will get in trouble for having our cake before Nooning.”
Tabitha nodded again and turned back toward her village. Silas slipped back out the way he’d come picking his steps carefully. As he reached the edge of the forest, he heard the first scream.
“Poison is often called a woman’s weapon,” Dru said from behind him.
Silas whirled and leveled his crossbow. The sudden movement caused him to slip on the wet stones of the mountainside. His natural agility served him well, and he caught himself quickly. Only someone watching closely would have seen him slip at all.
“Sorry, my Lady,” Silas said as he lowered the weapon immediately. “You startled me.”
“I can move and see in the ethereal plane as well, actually better, than you can,” Dru said. “You are more stealthy than I gave you credit for. It doesn’t bother you that poisoning has an effeminate connotation?”
“Why should it?” Silas said. “It is only attributed to women because it requires some knowledge of cooking and avoids violent confrontation. Avoiding confrontation isn’t cowardly, it’s wise.”
“A man absent of pride?” Dru said, smiling.
“Oh, I assure you, my Lady, I am quite prideful,” Silas said. “I’m just not foolish.”
Dru caught the strong smell of blood on the wind. Not elven blood either. She turned to view the surrounding mountainside and took a deep breath.
“We are unknown to them,” Dru said, reverting to the drow language. “We move unseen among them.”
Silas, who had come to know Dru quite well, knew that she hated the ambiguity of the drow language and had only used it in their presence as a form of respect. He also knew she had a slight tell, a twitch of her lower lip when concentrating on a spell of mentalism.
There were three schools of magic, as Silas was coming to learn, all of which branched from the same original arcane source. Each of the three had their own strengths and weaknesses. There was Channeling, which those of the church used to literally channel the power of their chosen deity. Clerics and paladins called upon their god of choice through specific prayers, which oftentimes also called for particular hand motions or holy items.
There was Essence, the sort that wizards and mages drew upon from natural energy that resides in everything organic and inorganic alike. They spent years learning the exact incantations to elicit that energy and form it into the desired spell.
Finally, there was Mentalism, which was the rarest of the three. Mentalism was the mastery of one’s own mind and mental faculties to bring forth spells and magic out of sheer will. Someone drawing on powers of mentalism did not have to speak or gesture with the hand. They simply had to concentrate. Select few in the Silver Helm academy were taught to use it to enhance their ability to command troops at great distances or to spy on enemy forces, among a few other little tricks. They were called Lanceiliers, Sheld-wynn, and Sleuths. Silas knew that Shadow Blades, whose very existence was unknown by many, also knew how to use this rare form of magic. Silas had recently learned that vampires could use it innately.
A vampire’s power of mentalism was the actual source of so many fanciful tales of their charm and how they seemed to know the very thoughts of a man. Those abilities were no more than their use of magic to make an enchanted suggestion or cast a mindreading spell.
While novices to the use of mentalism had to expend a great deal of concentration to maintain a spell, an experienced practitioner of mentalism could cast a spell while performing any number of mundane acts such as carrying on a conversation or peeling an apple. Silas had learned that Dru was indeed an experienced practitioner, of all three realms of magic, yet she had the one small tell. That twitch of her lower lip.
He quickly turned over what she’d said in the drow language. We/us and they/them were interchangeable in the confusing mode of communication because, in the drow mindset, there were drow, and then there was everyone else. You were either drow, or you were lumped in with all the other second-class races of the world. Thinking thus, we are unknown to them, we move unseen among them became they are unknown to us, they move unseen among us.
It was a warning. Silas’s will pierced Shezmu’s outer mind with ease and accessed the ability to view the world through the mental lens of the ethereal. He smiled broadly when he saw the two mages, each clad in the deep blue of the Blue Tower, observing them from a few yards away. Their spell of invisibility had been masterful, their decision to stand upwind of Silas, and Dru had not.
One stood with a parchment draped over a writing board held in the crook of one arm while she furiously scratched down her notes. She had long, light brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and looked to be of common birth and between her thirtieth and fortieth year. The other stood with his hands held apart, one low the other high. His hair was also long and of a light brown. He also wore his hair in a ponytail. His fingers were contorted, and Silas guessed the final syllables of some attack spell hovered just behind his teeth.
Silas took a moment to reflect on the oddity of these two wizards. Both had clearly studied at the feet of the masters in the Blue Tower. They would not have been sent on such a dangerous mission if they were not well versed in their art. It struck him that they’d spent so many years seeking such power, and learning to master it, only to watch from hiding and make their observations.
Silas smiled. The irony of those thoughts struck him. For, who had he been in his life before? He’d been the wealthy son of a powerful family in one of the greatest cities in all of Stratvs. Yet, he spent his days observing the flora and fauna of the world outside the walls of that city where he wielded such power and influence.
Silas was still smiling when he leveled the heavy crossbow and loosed the quarrel from the hip. As he moved, so did the poised mage. Silas watched as lightning gathered in the mage’s palms and arced together and then outward. While the quarrel struck the mage just below the sternum and sunk deep into his diaphragm, Silas leapt with an unnatural speed in front of the bolt of lightning. The bolt the mage had aimed for Dru.
Self-sacrifice was not inherent in Silas’s nature. In fact, he’d been conditioned since birth to place his safety and wellbeing first and foremost with all others falling to a distant second. However, Dru was different.
There was, of course, the logical argument that, without her, the ritual that allowed him control over Shezmu would be violated. If that ritual were to fail, Silas would be violated shortly thereafter. Of that, he had no doubts. Furthermore, out in the daylight, Dru was in a significantly weakened state.
Yet, none of that played a role in his decision to throw himself in front of a bolt of lightning for her. He loved her. Not in a romantic sense or anything so trivial as that. She had been the only person ever to see value in his mind and his curiosity. She had seen his unvarnished soul and, instead of revulsion, had shown understanding. There was something from their pasts that bound them. Something that allowed them to truly see one another. They somehow found acceptance in each other’s eyes.
Silas willed his skin to take on the properties of his demon prisoner a bare moment before the bolt of magical energy slammed into his back and arced throughout his skeleton. The force of the blast knocked Silas into his mistress, and they both tumbled to the jagged shale of the gray-black mountainside.
Silas rolled up on his side to check on Dru and found she was still casting a spell, her focus unbroken. He wasn’t certain what spell could be so urgent as to cause her to ignore the rest of the developing events, but he trusted her judgment. Silas completed his rol
l and came up to his feet in between the two mages and his mistress.
One mage clutched at the crossbow quarrel still firmly embedded in his stomach while the other clawed at her throat as though some imaginary hand… But the hand wasn’t imaginary, and Silas somehow knew it. Dru’s spell had been to keep this one from teleporting them out. Silas understood immediately that these two from the Blue Tower must not be allowed to leave.
His smile broadened again. It seemed he was smiling quite a lot this day, and part of his mind wondered if it was a side effect from the rare glimpse of sunshine. That was until he smelled the smoke. His skin had hardened and changed its nature, yet his cloak had not. He was on fire.
Instinct seized his muscles and reflexes forcing Silas to focus entirely upon the flames that now began to roar up his back. He hurled himself to the ground. He rolled violently once again over the grim and wet dirt of the shale while his hands tore at the clasp that shackled him with a burning cloak. Silas ripped the clasp free and rolled again to get beyond the flames of his fully engulfed cloak.
When he scrambled to his feet, Silas saw something that genuinely impressed him. The mage who was being prevented from casting had applied some healing herb to the belly wound of her companion. Silas couldn’t see the herb clearly from his vantage point; otherwise, he felt confident he would have been able to name it immediately. Given the method of application (a moistening with spit and directly applied to the wound), however, the nature of the herb was limited to two families of plants. Silas presumed…
“Stop studying and start helping,” Dru managed to push through gritted teeth.
“Quite right,” Silas said, shaking thoughts about the herb from his mind.
He thought it unusual that the wizards didn’t try to flee. Of course, one of them was severely wounded, yet they weren’t even trying to scramble away. Silas soon discovered the reason for this curious behavior.
Silas decided to dispatch the downed one quickly and capture the note taker for questioning. He charged forward with incredible speed, thinking it would be easy enough to stomp one’s head in while grabbing the other up by the throat. However, as he moved within arm’s reach of them, they flew away. They seemed to actually fall away; the two mages and the mountain with them.
It took a moment for Silas to realize he was the one falling but, instead of falling down, he was falling up. He had walked, or rather ran, right into a spell trap they’d laid in advance. Silas wracked his mind working to remember every detail he’d ever heard or read about such a spell.
Within the chambers of his mind, Silas stood before a shifting wall of notes, boxes of memories, and tomes of every subject he’d ever studied. In the center of the room, Shezmu writhed violently against his chains, his head spinning entirely around several times. When the display grew too distracting, Silas walked over to the table and unscrewed the rusty metal plate that had secured Shezmu’s mouth.
Listen to me, or they will kill us both, Shezmu said/thought. Actually, it was more of a plea. It was clear he wanted to make his point before Silas elected to silence him again. The spell is not categorized as an attack spell, nor is it detectable as one. It only reverses the gravity in a set area for a set duration and dimensions.
We can survive the fall, Silas said/thought.
If we get the chance to fall, Shezmu retorted. Only the great gods know what dimension lies beyond the horizon, but I do know that if you travel high enough, you become weightless, and there is no air to breathe.
My, that’s clever, Silas said/thought.
Yes, very, Shezmu said/thought. Now allow me some room to get us beyond this spell.
Silas, in this imaginary room in the center of his mind, eyed Shezmu suspiciously. Then he began to smile.
Why are you smiling? Shezmu demanded.
This should be interesting, Silas replied as though that answer comprehensively expressed the limit of his concern.
Silas summoned a universal tool of his own mental creation. He molded the head with his will to fit the custom screws that fastened Shezmu’s grayish flesh to the green lexxmar manacles that bound him.
The fallen champion stretched his arm forward, metaphysically speaking, of course, and called upon his power to change. Silas had discovered this power and had used it on a few occasions in Moras when he needed to shift his appearance. After all, it wouldn’t do for a murder victim to be seen walking the streets. Silas had used this power primarily to alter his appearance to that of the new identity he’d created in Cambrose of House Wellborne of Split Town.
Now, Shezmu demonstrated just how small Silas had been thinking. Shezmu altered the shape of their legs to fins, which he then twisted in a downward angle. A black and leathery dorsal fin pushed through the back of Silas’s shirt, and his fingers became sticky and began to ooze together. In the blink of an eye, his hands had become splayed bat-winged monstrosities.
The mental interlude had lasted only brief seconds. Silas was about fifty feet in the air when the changes began to take shape. Silas manipulated the drafts and gusts around him to force himself forward and glide far beyond the influence of the mage’s spell. He moved several feet forward and experienced a severe attack of vertigo as his weight shifted, or rather gravity shifted his weight, and he began to fall in the other direction.
Silas found the wings his legs and hands had become remarkably intuitive to maneuver. He glided in a large circle around the two mages. Silas saw that the quarrel had been removed from the downed one’s stomach, and he was up; however, the other still struggled against Dru’s hold. Silas expected he would be forced to dodge a magical bolt or two before he made it back to the ground. The wounded mage appeared capable of casting, yet he just stood there for several long moments staring at Silas, stunned by the malformed creature before him.
As Silas reached the ground, the fins and wings withdrew rapidly and smoothly transformed back into his original shape as his bare foot touched down on the rock. His feet were bare, of course, because his boots had been destroyed by the extreme alteration his body had endured.
Silas cycled through his perceptions and found the hidden lines of power the mages had used to protect themselves. He called forth the dragon-claw scimitar, Dreg Zylche (or Dark Affliction in the old language), a favorite of Shezmu’s. The claw was black, both in the natural spectrum of light and in infravision, due to its intense cold.
The female wizard locked eyes with Dru, who was standing now, as they engaged in a battle of wills; Dru’s restraining spell against the wizard’s spell of teleportation. The other mage from the Blue Tower, one hand holding the remnants of the healing herb to his torso, was chanting and casting with his free hand rapidly.
Silas cut through the first line of protection, and his cursed scimitar glowed as though it were hungry for more. He could feel power flow into him from the hilt of Dreg Zylche. The cursed blade consumed the magic of the warding like cracked desert ground absorbing scant rainfall. The Essence of the enchantment flowed from the sword into him. No, not into him. Through him… through him and into Shezmu!
Before him, the ground began to vibrate. Chips of stone and mineral glass hovered above the ground and began coalescing into a large and terrible sword. Blades sprouted at different angles from a singular hilt. Each blade comprised of shards of rock and glass making for jagged, saw-toothed edges.
Silas raised Dreg Zylche, but it vanished as he leveled it to parry. The composite sword thrust toward him. He dove to the ground as the rough blade tore through what remained of the back of his shirt and the muscle of his shoulder.
Silas rolled to the side, feeling the shale of the mountainside abrade away slivers of his unprotected flesh. Silas rolled, and rolled again, narrowly dodging the heavy blows of the conglomerate sword created by the mage’s enchantment. Silas’s eye caught the subdued marks on a nearby stone of the final circle of protection erected by the mages. It was a protective ring of fire.
Within him, Shezmu raged. Silas returned to his
mind-room to find Shezmu standing atop the table and seething with magical power and fury. Silas conjured his shrou-sheld to wield in his left hand, and a whip of woven rose stems to wield in his right. This particular species of rose secreted a paralytic through its remarkably sharp thorns.
Shrou-sheld forward, the rose whip trailing behind him, Silas charged. Shezmu squared himself, and, with a magical effort Silas was only beginning to understand, forced another set of arms out from his sides. While he held the drake-claw scimitar in one hand and a shield fashioned from a goat’s head in the other, his two other arms clawed away at the manacles that still bound his legs.
As Silas closed with him, Shezmu’s lips stretched back from his twisted and broken teeth in a smile of fishhooks and broken glass. Silas thrust his shrou-sheld deep into that maw only to discover it was only an illusion of Shezmu. Shezmu, the real Shezmu, dropped onto the young physician from his black alcove above, the cold death of his scimitar charging through the air before him.
The scimitar cut through the embodiment of Silas’s will, his identity, or so Shezmu thought. Standing on the table over the perceived corpse of Silas’s ego, Shezmu was thoroughly surprised to hear the young doctor address him from behind the bookshelf.
Come and see, Silas said/thought.
The bookshelf of thoughts and memories folded away to an image of Silas’s hands pulling a glass vial from his side pouch. Shezmu watched, helpless, as the irrational fool poured the flower poison over his own lips!
The act of suicide, completely alien to the likes of Shezmu, ignited a panic in the fallen champion that stole throughout his mind and nerves with the speed and ferocity of a wildfire through the dead weeds of a winter plain. Shezmu saw the exit; his way to finally leave this mad spoiled boy behind. An opening in the sky of his mind split wide. Shezmu formed himself into a winged creature of celestial strength and speed and hurled himself for the opening.
