A Hero Born

by Michael A. Stackpole

  That casual disregard for the consequences of his actions should not have surprised me, given what I knew of him. Fialchar had long ago sparked a debate within the magickal community about the feasibility of creating a magickal item that encompassed in it the fabric of reality. The sorcerous brotherhood split down the middle on the subject. Fialchar convinced a dozen of his brethren who believed the task could be accomplished to go ahead and do it in secret, just to prove to the others that it could be done.

  They did, and proudly displayed their handiwork at a convocation of sorcerers. The Twelve stood by their creation, immeasurably proud of what they had done. Their labor had taken a dozen years, but they had finally succeeded. They had created the Seal of Reality.

  Then, at that convocation, Fialchar joined them and shattered the seal. Chaos immediately exploded and washed over the Empire. Sorcerers throughout the Empire immediately erected Ward Walls to hold Chaos at bay, but even after centuries the amount of the original Empire they had recovered from Chaos was tiny.

  Fialchar, before or since, never did explain why he had shattered the Seal of Reality. There are those who maintain that doing such was always his plan, hence his instigation of the discussion that resulted in the seal’s creation. While I was willing to accept that explanation, after seeing him in action it struck me that he might have destroyed the seal on a whim.

  Another casual gesture with hideous results.

  Kit and I followed the Warlord through the doors, and 1 heard them clang shut behind us. Over by a door across the room 1 saw Thetys and recognized his brother Lan from seeing him announced to the gathering. The Emperor hastily returned Kit’s salute, then bade us follow him deeper into the palace. “Forgive me wanting to talk as we go, but we have a problem that is somewhat larger than Fialchar’s being in the Empire.”

  My eyes grew wide at that statement. “What could be worse than the sorcerer who destroyed the Seal of Reality being in the Empire?”

  Lan answered me while his brother inserted a key in a small hole in a wall mural. “You saw the staff Fialchar had with him? You felt its power?”

  “Yes.” 1 nodded.

  “That was the Staff of Emeterio, one of the dozen sorcerers who helped create the Seal of Reality in the first place. When Fialchar shattered the seal, the dozen sorcerers he had tricked into creating it were overwhelmed by the flood of Chaos.” Lan grew pensive as he explained. “We had long assumed they were all killed and their tools destroyed at that time, but stories keep cropping up to suggest that one or more of them or their artifacts continued to exist in one form or another after Chaos.”

  The Emperor pulled back on the key, and a portion of mural swung away to reveal a dark passage. Lan preceded me into the narrow, rough-stone tunnel and cautioned me about the stairs as we started spiraling down through the palace. Flat discs on the ceiling of the passage supplied us light, but I noticed the illuminated area approximated the half-moon crescent the Lovers’ Moon showed tonight. I kept my balance by letting my fingers touch each wall, and that was by no means difficult. Were 1 given to the fear of enclosed spaces that torments Dalt, I would have gone utterly mad in the dusty dry wormhole.

  From behind me 1 heard the Emperor’s voice. “Fialchar knows that we possess the one item powerful enough to destroy and be destroyed by the Staff of Emeterio. That is the Fistfire Sceptre, and we keep it in a vault here in the palace. There are enough magickal wards on the vault to prevent him, I hope, from appearing in it the same way he disturbed the ball.”

  We stopped at a wide landing. The tunnel continued on to the right, but Lan didn’t go very far down it. He stopped beneath one of the moon lights, dropped to one knee, and started counting bricks up and over to the left. Once he found the one he wanted he passed a hand over it, and I saw a faint glow outline the brick. Looking up at his brother, he shook his head.

  The Emperor smiled uneasily. “Some of my predecessors found having access to the imperial Treasury without the benefit of the Minister of the Exchequer knowing anything about it rather useful. This entrance, my brother has just indicated, has not been disturbed tonight.”

  Lan nodded. “Nothing to worry about right now.”

  The Warlord frowned. “I know others are going to enter the vault through the main doors, once they get the wards out of the way, but 1 think we should check on the interior before they get to it.”

  “1 agree.” I opened my hands. “If Fialchar decides to come back, a little rhyme isn’t going to stop him. if the Fistfire Sceptre would do that, I think having it in hand is a good idea. As he could come back at any moment, the sooner we have it available, the better.”

  Thetys nodded. “That’s some of the wiser counsel I’ve had in a while.” The Emperor’s dark eyes narrowed. “The reason I asked for you to come with us here, Lachlan, is because you managed to break Fialchar’s spell, and he seemed displeased to see you—as I hope he will be now. How did you counter his magick?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. The rhyme I mentioned earlier was one I learned as a child. ‘Fire and silver/beat cold and night,/but try to avoid evil’s sight. When all is lost,/brave heart have you,/and evil’s thrall will then be through!’ It was for banishing night terrors.”

  “Let us hope it has lost none of the potency it showed earlier.” The Emperor drew a curved dagger from his belt, and the rest of us armed ourselves with our daggers. “Do you know why Lord Disaster said what he said to you?”

  “No, sire.” 1 shook my head and found myself flicking my thumb against the band of the silver ring. I brought my hand up. “Perhaps he recognized this ring, or whatever impressions my father had left on it. Whatever the explanation, I am glad it disturbed him.”

  Lan looked to his brother. “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Lan pressed his hand to the brick he’d found earlier and mumbled a spell. A portion of the wall faded to black, then evaporated like a shadow doused with light. Chests of golden coins that had been stacked against the wall toppled into the corridor in a flood of ringing metal. Torchlight from the vault’s interior flashed from yet more coins and burned in the jewels encrusting crowns and swords and hundreds of other treasures, in the rectangular room I saw more valuables than i had ever dreamed existed. In any of the smaller chests I knew I’d have found enough gold to keep me comfortable for even an abnormally long life.

  In fact, even the smallest chest the thieves were hauling toward the hole in the far wall would have satisfied me for two lifetimes.

  The appearance of a dozen human thieves in the Imperial Treasury surprised us as much as our arrival doubtlessly surprised them. The falling chests of gold had buried one man and bowled another over, while most of the rest stopped in the act of lugging loot toward their egress. Dropped chests crashed to the floor, spilling their contents in sparkling circles from the point of impact. Two robbers sprinted for the hole, while the others drew their knives when they saw we were alone.

  Kit and Gam Drustorn rushed forward into the fight while I knelt and grabbed up a gold Imperial coin. Clutching it in the curve of my index finger, I brought my right arm back. Keeping my hand parallel to my waist, 1 whipped the coin forward. The Imperial sliced through the dim air and smashed one of the thieves square in the face. His head snapped back, and he lost his footing on the gold carpet. As he went down an ornamental suit of armor toppled over on top of him.

  A thief swaddled in dark clothes and reeking of the sewers lunged at me with a hooked dagger. I blocked his strike by parrying his forearm wide with my left hand. Closing my hand on his wrist, I brought his arm up high and, with my dagger blade extending down away from my right thumb, stabbed through his right armpit. Bright arterial blood spurted out as I withdrew the blade and backhanded him across the face.

  As he reeled away, I flipped my dagger around so the blade poked out of my fist on the thumb side. The next thief rushed me, seemingly intent on bowling me over. He thrust his right hand forward, trying to stab me in the stomach
, but I stepped to the left and let his attack slide past my belly. 1 tangled my left hand in his wet hair and yanked back, then slashed my dagger across his throat.

  He gurgled and thrashed as he hit the floor, but 1 did not notice his death throes because of what I saw further in the room. Something moved, something 1 had seen from the first but had dismissed as unreal, or at best as the golden glints from a masterpiece hidden within a shadow. As it split itself off from the darkness where it had been hidden, I recognized the black mane and the tufted tail. The malevolent glow in his eyes touched me, filling me with an arctic chill.

  As our eyes met I sensed nothing to indicate he recognized me, but the creature clearly saw he had an audience. He lifted his left hand and brandished a yard-long sceptre made of gold. Rubies and emeralds alternated to form a band around the wrist of the metal hand at the top of the rod. Above, the golden hand clutched an absolutely perfect black pearl as large as an apple.

  With his treasure in hand the Bkarasfiadi sorcerer bared his gray needle teeth in a soundless challenge, then leaped to the hole and disappeared.

  I have heard other fighters describe their feeling when urgency or anxiety or frustration overwhelmed them. They speak of “snapping” as if something inside them breaks and allows them to plunge headfirst into a desperate fight. Often they use that term to describe what must have happened inside the head of a madman before he made a suicidal charge.

  For me there was no snapping. I just knew that allowing that Chademon to escape with his prize would be a disaster that no magick could repair. Two thieves stood between me and the hole in the wall; they were obstacles that had to be overcome. I didn’t see them as men or fellow citizens of the Empire, but as the sort of foe that, as I grew up, my grandfather had drilled me to deal with in daily exercises.

  1 moved through them by reflex, without conscious thought. Their moves and my reactions to them had been pounded into me for so long and so thoroughly that my body took over. 1 did not see the fight as a disinterested observer, but like a general watching the flow of battle, evaluating tactics and anticipating what needed next to be done.

  Sliding step forward and twist to the right. Let the thief’s lunge pass between my left arm and my body, then clamp my arm down on his forearm. |am my dagger up through the bottom of his chin. Ignore the feel of his scraggly beard and the blood trickling from his mouth. Swing his body around and use it to block his comrade.

  My hand opened, releasing my dagger. The dead man spun away, undercutting his partner at the knees. That man stumbled forward as my right knee came up to flatten his nose. He groaned loudly, then flopped to the ground, all boneless. A quick kick to the temple kept him down, opening the way to the hole in the wall.

  I bolted for it, trying to peer into the darkness at what awaited me there. Realizing I was unarmed, I plucked a jeweled Dwarven shortsword from a scabbard half-buried in treasure. Longer and heavier than my dagger, it was the perfect weapon for the sort of chop and thrust butchery I anticipated beyond the hole.

  The stink filling the treasury left no doubt that the hole led to the sewers. I had visions of a dank tunnel with catwalks on either side of a flowing ribbon of water, for that’s how one of my father’s books described the marvels of the capital’s sewer system. Clearly the sewers beneath the palace would handle wastewater and storm-water drainage, but I had never given much thought to what the palace’s being on a hill would portend for the sewers. Nor did I take into account the effect of the winter and the cold weather on the dank tunnels.

  The first thing I hit on the other side of the treasury wall was ice. My right leg slipped forward and out in front of me as I flew across the sewer tunnel and collided with the far wall. 1 rebounded, filling the air with shattered icicles that had previously hung from an arch.

  1 tried to get my feet under me, but the smooth ice coating the far catwalk made that impossible. With both feet flailing and flying up toward the top of the tunnel, I landed on my back in the sewer channel.

  if ice is slick, wet ice is yet slicker, and being on a wet icy slope in the dark with enemies lurking about is not where I had envisioned being to greet the new year. The cold soaked straight through to my bones faster than a tax collector appears after a windfall Having been momentarily stunned by my fall, I could do nothing to stop my slide down the sewer channel. I tightened my grip on the Dwarven sword but abandoned any hope I could use it to stop my descent.

  1 brought my heels down, but as they touched the ice, they immediately kicked up a cloud of stinging ice needles that prickled my face before melting. My right heel remained down a half second longer than the other and started me spinning around to the left. My left shoulder crunched into the edge of the stone channel, and i started back in the other direction. Quick application of my right heel to the ice straightened me back out at the cost of another ice-scourge across my face.

  I raced along swiftly as the sewers arced through a gentle curve toward the sea. 1 knew I was descending, and fairly rapidly, but 1 could only guess at how close I was to the level of the sewer tunnels running through the rest of the capital. As it was I braced myself a good three heartbeats before I actually splashed into a sluggish river topped with floating chunks of ice.

  I went under the water like a rock tossed from a cliff, but I found solid footing as my momentum died and shot to the surface. 1 whipped my head around to clear my eyes and yelped aloud at the aching cold of the water. My shout echoed up and down the main tunnel and shocked those waiting there enough to give me a chance against them.

  My slide had actually carried me beyond the two thieves who had fled the treasury when we entered. They stood like twin sentinels on either side of the flow, with a torch in one hand and a knife in the other. Being groin-deep in an ice-river did nothing to make them swift or sure as they struck, while I had enough fear in me to inspire whole Imperial Legions.

  I spun to my right, turgid water being churned by my thighs, and chopped through the flank of the man nearest me. The Dwarven blade bit through him as if it actually enjoyed the frigid surroundings. It popped free of his rib cage and dropped him into the water. His torch sizzled out and 1 dove forward.

  I did not like going under the water again, but I preferred that to the prospect of getting a poke in the back with a torch. I rolled to my back and came up again as the other thief stalked toward me. He brought the torch around for another swipe at me and, in doing so, let his dagger hand fall to his side.

  I blocked the torch with a solid chop, then whipped the blade free and twisted it through a slash at his midsection. He jumped back away from that cut, but being waist-deep in water meant he didn’t get far enough away to avoid my backhanded return slash. The shortsword caught him over the right ear. His leather cap stopped the blade from splitting his scalp, but 1 heard bone crack and saw the man’s eyes roll up in his head. He half grunted a surprised sigh, then sat back down in the water. He sank slowly, bobbing like a piece of ice, then vanished, leaving only bubbles to mark his grave.

  Before his left hand went under, 1 freed the torch from it and spun to face further down the tunnel. There, trying to flee from the torch’s weak circle of light, I saw the Chademon. I held the torch high to get a good look at him.

  From his dripping mane I knew he had preceded me down the channel, but his long legs had taken him well away from where the palace tunnel played out. Even so, the distance between us could not hide the misery in his expression. He was no more comfortable in the frigid water than 1 was, and i wasn’t hundreds of leagues from my home, lurking in the darkness beneath an enemy stronghold.

  1 started after him. “1 can’t let you get away, Bfiarasfiadi!”

  The Chademon glanced fearfully over his shoulder at me, then turned to face me. As he did this I realized I was very much alone. The Chademon seemed to come to the same conclusion because his head came up bravely, his gold eyes narrowed, and his lips peeled back in a feral grin.

  1 was in serious trouble.

&n
bsp; With the same casual, contemptuous motion 1 saw in my dream, the Chademon flicked a gesture toward me with his free hand. An incendiary red spark leaped from his fingers and shot at me like the coin I had thrown earlier. His spell started small, but it grew quickly, allowing its increasing brilliance to fill the tunnel. The spell became a scarlet triangle of light with a circular hole in the middle sizzling in toward me. I felt its intense heat from the moment he sent it spinning toward me and knew nothing my grandfather had drilled into me was of much help in this situation.

  I did the only thing it occurred to me to do. I parried the spell with my shortsword.

  The blade shattered as if it were glass. The triangle, slightly diminished, whirled on through my forearm, turning my sleeve into a torch. I screamed as it burned into my right shoulder. Nerveless fingers dropped the sword hilt, but I never heard it splash into the water because black agonies swallowed my consciousness whole.

  14

  I sputtered and snorted back to consciousness the second after the freezing sewer water forced its way up my nose. Struggling my way back to the surface succeeded in dousing the torch and left me in utter darkness. Echoes of my thrashing about drowned out any noise the Chademon made escaping.

  If he is escaping.

  1 crouched up to my neck in the water in case the Chademon was lurking around to finish me off. Floating chunks of ice bumped into me, and 1 spun this way and that in reaction to them. Because of the darkness, I had no way to detect any sign of the Chademon. 1 kept facing in what I hoped, but had no way of knowing, was the direction in which i had last seen him.

  1 steeled myself to submerge if I saw another flash of red. Trying to stay hidden seemed like a good idea, but I realized the cold would finish me off a lot faster than the Chademon would. If he wanted to find me, all he had to do was listen for the chattering of my teeth. Deciding that what I needed to warm me up was another of his spells, 1 rose to my feet and got my torso up and out of the sewage.