Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  “Grand,” echoed Candlemas weakly. Karsus’s entourage swept away, jabbering and laughing and making bets and plotting mischief.

  How, the pudgy mage wondered, in the name of the gods could anyone think a war was fun? Hadn’t they read any history, visited any ruins, heard stories of death and devastation? War was not a village football game, where you chose sides and donned costumes and fooled around until you were tired, then drank the night away. It was death and insanity.

  But then, no one in the city was sane except him.

  And Aquesita. With a pang, he wondered what she thought of this war nonsense. He couldn’t know, for she refused to see him. He’d been turned away from her door by bodyguards, had his letters sent back unopened, even had flowers returned. All because he’d kissed a phantom girl. Or perhaps some other reason he didn’t know. Old as he was, he was new to this love business.

  Love and war, he thought grimly. Neither made sense.

  * * * * *

  Sunbright was dying.

  He knew he was dying because he didn’t care. Only people with a spark of life worried. Once past that barrier, the journey turned interesting, he found, for he was sinking into the earth. On the floor of the hut lay the burned, broken hulk of his body, and far below sank his spirit, moving on to a new life, or the next plane, or wherever.

  Dimly, he wondered where. His people had many legends about death, all contradictory. That a spirit entered a nearby being just born, a musk ox, or a bluebell flower, or a baby; so the living, especially children, must be polite to any living thing, for it might be an ancestor. Or that one’s spirit traveled to a distant mountaintop and joined the wind, blown around the world eternally to observe and occasionally visit, which explained ghosts. Or that one’s spirit simply went to a spirit world to stalk spirit elk and spear spirit salmon. Sunbright had always fancied that last idea.

  Instead, he sank. Idly, he watched roots pass by, then a mole, a rock, then yellow sand. Odd, but perhaps the spirit world was below, not above. Spirits could go anywhere, after all.

  Too bad he had to leave Knucklebones alone, but then she was alive and so no concern to him. Certainly the living cared little for the dead. He wondered who he’d meet in the spirit world. Old friends? Enemies? His father, Sevenhaunt? That star-eyed woman of his dreams, whoever she was? Was she Mystryl?

  Greenwillow? Perhaps so, if she were truly dead. Sunbright had never really believed she was, but now he might find out. Unless, of course, she weren’t dead and he were, in which case he’d never find her.

  That slowed his sinking. Perhaps he didn’t want to leave life behind …

  But something was happening around his feet.

  The underworld or afterlife had begun to shine. A faint glow illuminated his toes (like Knucklebones’s glowlight cantra), then his legs, then his whole body. What caused the glow?

  It was greenish and deep, like the ocean when his tribe hunted seals in winter. An underground ocean? Was there such a thing? Why green? That was the color of nature magic, wasn’t it? But why here? This part of the world had been saturated in heavy magic, a corrupt force rained down by Karsus in his mad experiments. Why the green—

  Then he got it.

  Every place had its own magic: forest magic, sea magic, sky magic, mountain magic. Candlemas had argued that all magic was the same, a simple force like fire that could be used for good or evil, or just its pure self, as fire could torture a man, or cook his food, or forge his tools.

  This healthy forest had possessed its own magic, long ago, before corrupt heavy magic rained from the sky like black snow. But the forest magic hadn’t vanished, or been consumed. It had simply been crushed deep into the soil by the heavier magic.

  Hence this faint green ocean, like an underground reservoir. It had collected here and drawn more nature magic to itself, as streams ran to the ocean and became one.

  So Candlemas was wrong, he thought. Too bad Sunbright would never be able to tell him.

  But why had Sunbright been drawn to this spot? He was dead, or dying, beyond the need for magic. Besides, as a shaman he was a failure. He’d lost a good part of his soul to a wraith in the Underdark, and had never recovered it. So even when alive—

  —Unless he were still alive, and only sending his spirit winging, flying out of his body to search for knowledge and portents, help and hope.

  Astral projection, some called it. Dreamwalking. Spirit sending. Ghosting.

  What was the knowledge his spirit sought? That the flood of corrupt magic was only temporary? That it would eventually peter out, and the natural magic return, though it might take decades? Scant comfort to the cruel mutants caught in its web, or their undead leader who clung to a mockery of life.

  Or was the knowledge for him?

  In a way, Sunbright reflected, the hole in his soul left by the wraith was like the corruption in the forest. The gap in his spirit kept him from realizing his true potential, as the corrupted magic blocked the nature magic.

  So, could this forest magic help him? Was that why his spirit sank here? Or had it been steered here by a benevolent god or goddess? Wasn’t this the sort of miracle visited by Mystryl, Mother of All Magic, who controlled the Weave that formed the base of all magics?

  If that were the case, and he belonged here, then he should use the magic as intended. As shamans used it, for healing, for reading the future, for protecting the tribe and the balance of life between people and plants and animals, wind and water and weather, between sky and soil.

  Could he use it?

  What had he to lose? Wasn’t he dead now? Or dying?

  Contemplating, Sunbright laid back in the vast ocean of green-tinged magic, like a bather giving in to the sea’s embrace, so he floated on top of it, let it run over him and around him and through him.

  And while surrendering his body and spirit, he let his mind drift. Far out went his senses, smell and sight and sound. He heard the chuckle of the magic, like currents on a riverbank or waves on a sand shore, in the voice of birds and the cries of children at play, in the hiss of the wind through mountain passes, in a whisper—the voices of Greenwillow and Knucklebones. He smelled the magic, the green of it, like growing grass in springtime, and the breath of flowers—the scent of Greenwillow and Knucklebones—the tang of pine in the high sierra, the fruity yeast of grain in the fields. He saw the green of magic in the curl of flowers, the turn of a bat’s ear, the busyness of a squirrel scaling an oak, the break of a cloud readying to rain, the exquisite diamond cut pattern of snowflakes, and the swell of a woman’s breast and hips—the curves of Greenwillow and Knucklebones.

  Lying, listening, smelling, feeling, Sunbright came to know the magic of nature as few men or women ever had. For he’d surrendered everything, eschewed everything, even his body and life. And going where others feared, he learned how green magic, and man, and the world, fit together.

  And how to link one with the other with the other …

  * * * * *

  Knucklebones sat with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, head down. Sunbright was a scorched lump alongside her. Hours before he’d given up his ghost, sighed one last time in a grotesque death rattle, and expired. Knucklebones was alone now, lame with a festering foot, unable to flee, surrounded by enemies with fiendish plans.

  And now the greatest of them filled the doorway of the tiny hut.

  Wulgreth stared at her with stone dead eyes. He still wore his lizard skin robe with the scaly white breast, but he’d belted Harvester of Blood awkwardly around his middle. Knucklebones’s own dark elven blade was thrust through the other side, and her fingers itched to snatch it.

  The lich lord bent for a second, prodded Sunbright in his eye with a sharp fingernail, drew no response. Dead as cordwood. Wulgreth said something she didn’t understand, a guttural growl. He waggled a craggy hand, signaling that she should follow.

  Knucklebones felt partly dead already, for she’d blanked Wulgreth out of her mind, refused to acknowledge he w
as real, or that Sunbright was really dead. So the rough hand snagging her hair and dragging her forth surprised her, as did the agony of her hair being ripped out by its roots. She’d thought she was beyond feeling, but the dragging of her skin over dirt, the twisting wrench to her hair, and the thumping of her festered, swollen foot shook off her self-induced trance.

  Was she to be wife or supper? Which was worse, not that she had a choice? If he were to gut her and eat her, he’d need to ply a knife, and that gave her hope, for perhaps she could wrest it away and—what? Pierce his throat? Hamstring him? Carve out his heart? He was undead, and probably impossible to hurt. But she’d try.

  If she were to be wife, she’d kick and scream and punch until she was clubbed unconscious. He’d never defile her body without killing her first.

  Once she cried out: “Sunbright!”

  She wished he could fight alongside her, give her courage, make her feel again. But a heavy hand slapped her face, almost dislocated her jaw, set nose and tongue bleeding. She couldn’t even bite him, for it wouldn’t hurt—

  What was happening?

  Lying on one hip, her head hoisted by her hair, Knucklebones felt the earth tremble, as if a mythallar engine stuttered.

  Whatever it was, the sensation was new to the tribespeople, for they howled and gibbered in fear. Some fell and clutched the earth, crying like babies, babbling in fright. Others clutched trees. Wulgreth let go of Knucklebones’s hair so her head thumped the dirt. The undead wizard cast about, but couldn’t find the source of the disturbance.

  The campfire winked out, leaving them in early morning blackness. There were more howls and screams like demented monkeys, then the fire returned, a bright cone shining up from the blackened pit. But no, not fire, for this light was greenish. Knucklebones stared. What was it? No force or light she’d ever seen, though it resembled her own glowlight cantra, but a thousand times brighter.

  The fire pit split open as if from an earthquake. The light was very bright, but by squinting Knucklebones just made him out. Straddling the hole, a hole big enough to swallow a man, or spit one out, was Sunbright, hale and hearty.

  His bright blond hair was combed neatly into a horsetail with the temples shaved. His red shirt was restored, thick and soft, laced over with his calfskin vest brushed smooth. His boots were solid, the iron rings that the savages had fought over restored and stitched tight to jingle musically. His belt buckle shone, and Dorlas’s hammer lay tucked in its holster. Even Harvester was returned to its master’s back. Half prone, Knucklebones could see Wulgreth had lost it. As he’d lost his confident swagger and prideful stance. He was clearly flummoxed by this miraculous return of a vanquished enemy.

  Knucklebones didn’t understand either. A quick glance showed, by the light he shed, that Sunbright’s body no longer lay in the hut. So this was no angel, no spirit, but the real man truly restored. Then she recognized his voice.

  “Wulgreth!” called Sunbright. “Prepare!”

  Chapter 17

  “There! How do we look?”

  Enthusiastic applause.

  Karsus had arrived this morning in his latest finery. Instead of his usual ratty robe, he wore a blue-green tunic with a bold K emblazoned on the breast. The military cut sported a high, embroidered collar and stiff jutting wings at the shoulders. A jewelled baldric hung from one shoulder and banded his waist, and a silver sword with a tiger head pommel rattled at his side. On his head was a helmet of boiled leather, so laden with silver and gold wire it kept tipping over the mage’s wild golden eyes. Add to that his frazzled hair sticking out from under it, and that his neck and bare feet were still filthy, and the effect was ludicrous, as if the village idiot had stumbled into a chest of old uniforms.

  Candlemas applauded with the other toadies, and hated himself for it. By approving and helping in this war nonsense, he was furthering the empire’s insane plans.

  Though “plans” was too adult a word to give to these proceedings. The new craze for warfare was more like the antics of boys dashing though gardens with sticks for swords.

  Yet everyone partook, for the empire had been hideously bored and seized on this new game with both hands. Tailors and seamstresses and milliners throughout the city hired extra help and slaved night and day to fashion military style clothes for the empire’s elite, and male and female archwizards down to the lowest apprentices competed to wear the wildest designs possible, until the streets and glittering balls resembled peacock farms.

  For all their hasty preparations, no one was sure if war had officially been declared, for no shots had yet been fired. But the “enemy,” Ioulaum, Karsus’s sister city, had drifted up from the west until its buildings could be plainly seen. Candlemas was surprised at how small it was. He’d seen it once, over three hundred years ago, and it had seemed huge. It was, in fact, scarcely a tenth the size of the city of Karsus. It was the first floating enclave, created and ruled by Ioulaum, one of the oldest known wizards. At this range, his high-turreted castle resembled a king’s crown. It looked strange sitting atop an inverted mountain, nothing more than a cone of rock hanging in the sky, oddly contrasting with the real, upright mountains in the far distance.

  But Ioulaum was girded for war, people said, and everyone must prepare. Even dowdy Candlemas had been coerced into donning a yellow robe with bright red stripes, and a wide, studded belt hung with a long dagger he’d found hanging on a wall in his chambers. A little round hat wobbled on his bald head, and stiff boots cramped his toes. It made him miserable, for he hated finery and fluff.

  Miserable too because he couldn’t show his new garb to Aquesita. She still refused to see him, and he pined until he could think of nothing else. His best hope was his latest letter, a long, slobbering missive of apology, though he was still unclear of his lover’s crime. It hadn’t been returned, so presumably she’d read it. He hoped so.

  “Candlemas! Are you daydreaming?”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. People stared at him, some glaring because he dared to nod off before Karsus. The archwizard didn’t seem to notice. He was familiar with bubbleheads. “Yes?” Candlemas said, “A hundred pardons, O Great Karsus.”

  “Uh, uh!” Karsus tilted his head back to see under the brow of his bulky helmet as he spoke. “General Karsus! The city council agreed unanimously to declare me commander in chief for the duration of this great struggle for survival in which we are engaged.”

  More applause.

  Candlemas stifled a groan. Of course the stupid turds on the council would vote for that. They’d grant anything Karsus wished. As for a “great struggle,” Candlemas was appalled at how seriously people took it all. They’d even dredged up old grievances with the people of Ioulaum, feuds dead for centuries, as an excuse for aggression. The city of Ioulaum favored eagles as their mascots, it was said, and eagles preyed on white storks, the beloved symbol of their “homeland,” Karsus. An old border dispute had been dusted off. Foolishness about an abandoned valley that belonged to Karsus’s grandparents but that Ioulaum had “usurped” to mine for silver. Another cause for war between cities floating in the sky!

  Even the ground below was disputed. The peasants there farmed for Karsus, mostly, but Ioulaum had sent raiders into their territory. Every ill the city suffered, from poor tasting water to peeling paint was blamed on Ioulaum. All foolishness, of course. What did Aquesita make of it?

  But Candlemas had drifted off again while Karsus jabbered. “… Major Candlemas. No, that lacks something. Ah, Colonel Candlemas! Better sounding, is it not? Yes, I’ve asked that you oversee the first repulse of the villains who dare defile our beloved land.”

  Candlemas (Colonel?) blinked and sputtered, “M-me? I-I’m to lead a m-military expedition? I don’t know anything about tactics! I’ve never …”

  Karsus stared at an iron sconce above the mage’s head. “You were a steward, weren’t you?” the archwizard asked. “That means you know how to ride a horse and oversee peasants, or whatever
stewards do. It won’t be a bother. Just go with the lads and stand behind them in case of archers. There’s a military tactic! See them off, then return in the boat.”

  There was a brief space of silence, finally broken by a cheerful Karsus, who said, “Off you go! When you return, I’ll give you a medal!”

  Staggered, Candlemas stared. But the ring of frowning faces told him to keep mum and do as he was bid. If he balked, plenty of other toadies would take his place, and Candlemas might find himself out on the street. What would he do then?

  Not that he knew what to do now …

  “Very well, Great, uh, General Karsus. I hear and obey.”

  Feeling a total fool, he threw a sloppy salute. Karsus clasped his hands and giggled with delight as Candlemas marched off down the corridor in his tight boots, trying not to sigh. Leading a raid? Well, how bad could it be?

  It took a while for the carriage driver to find the right dock in the right part of the city, for the war had everything discombobulated. Wagons jammed intersections and soldiers tramped hither and yon, drilling. Furthermore, to add to the immediacy, city guards with red armbands stopped and searched wagons and carriages for “contraband” or “needed war matériel.” This was, of course, an excuse to do a bit of pilfering in the emperor’s name. If indeed the war were intended to distract the populace from rioting, it was working, for he saw no signs of dissent. Of course, anyone protesting the war was hurled into prison as a spy and traitor.

  Eventually Candlemas spotted troop boats arrayed at a dock. Each was a long, narrow wooden hull like an oceangoing dromond, or open peapod. Instead of sails or oars it wore a long metal foil stretched overhead from horizontal masts, designed to catch the sun’s rays. Candlemas didn’t know how it worked, except it was powered mainly by magic. Ostensibly in charge of this raid, or counterraid, against Ioulaum’s troops, Candlemas tiptoed toward a clutch of young, gaily clad officers. They hadn’t a clue who was in charge, but stood around boasting of their triumphs to come.