Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  “I hope we can enter Karsus’s compound.” Sunbright said, reaching over his shoulder to loosen Harvester in its scabbard and adjusting Dorlas’s warhammer riding on his hip. “I hope your little charges there, Aba and Zykta and Rolon, keep their heads down. I once promised Rolon I’d take him to the ground—”

  “He’s there now.”

  Knucklebones hunted a certain alley. She knew them all, but many were blocked by rubble or abandoned carriages or garbage.

  She answered Sunbright’s surprised look by telling him, “That’s why I sent them to Sleeping Gunn. He lives over the warehouses at the docks because he’s a smuggler. Since I’ve disappeared and there’s been war here, he’ll have ferried the children to a stronghold on the ground.” Her voice sounded wistful, missing them. Sunbright gave her thin shoulder a squeeze, and she touched his broad, scarred hand.

  “Come on.” She said choosing an alley. “We’ll go over ground a while, then underground. I know a back way into Karsus’s mansions, if it’s still open.”

  They were blocked repeatedly, and often had to hunker for guards or refugees to pass, but backtracking and retracing eventually brought them into the garden beneath Candlemas’s suite. Sunbright boosted Knucklebones, who pronounced a short word and fractured all the glass in one window. Sunbright used Harvester’s hook to drag the lead frame down like a gray metal spiderweb. Then they were inside.

  Knucklebones signaled to wait while she listened. Then she dashed from the room quick as a hare. A bleat was stifled, and Sunbright tramped after.

  The thief sat atop a plump maid jackknifed over the bed. Candlemas’s bed was bare to the striped ticking. Fresh silk sheets and blankets awaited. Piled by the door like rubbish lay the mage’s plain wool smock, rope belt, and warped sandals that retained the imprint of his broad feet.

  Sunbright was in a hurry, but told the terrified maid, “No harm if you answer. What happened to the mage who dwelt here? Why do you discard his things?”

  “He-he’s locked in the cellars, sir! He’s wounded horrible! They’ve left him to die! He—I don’t know what he did exactly, but he defied Great Karsus and they’ve—”

  Knucklebones tweaked her ear to silence her, said, “Tell us how to get there!”

  “No time!” Sunbright countermanded. He grabbed up fresh sheets, tossed them to Knucklebones, and swaddled himself like a servant buried in laundry. “Take us!”

  Trained to stay out of sight, the gasping maid brought them down servants’ stairwells to the cellars. With a quivering finger she pointed along a dim corridor lined with stone and lit only by a distant window. Four city guards idled, pitching coins against a stout wooden door, grousing at the boring duty.

  “Wait here.” Knucklebones told Sunbright. “I’ll circle around to take them from behind.” Towing the trembling maid, she backed away and down the corridor.

  But the barbarian couldn’t wait. Something impelled him to move quickly, as if he smelled doom in the wind. Drawing Harvester, he stepped full into the corridor. Knucklebones could catch up.

  “You guards! Stand away from that door! We’ve no quarrel with you, we only want Candlemas!”

  At his first words, the guards cinched helmet straps and snatched swords from scabbards. Now they assessed their enemy: a barbarian, a big one, armed with a huge scythe of a sword. They knew too that the prisoner Candlemas was important. They didn’t know why, but anyone who’d come to rescue him might fetch a large bonus. One of them growled and two guards—a man and a woman—trotted off to circle behind Sunbright, where they’d run smack into Knucklebones.

  The guard called, “You can’t get out. You’d best lay down your sword quietly.”

  “I’m sorry, but no.”

  Sunbright advanced slowly, sword tilted across his chest but ready to sweep down and around.

  “I need the man you hold. It’s not worth your lives to protect him, so begone.”

  The guard puffed, shifted to let his partner join him, and both drew silver tipped clubs in their left hands as makeshift shields. They were brawny men, but nothing to compare with Sunbright’s height and breadth. The first one, with a yellow beard, craned over his shoulder where the other two guards had gone. A scuffle sounded. The guard muttered something to his partner, then growled, “Rush!”

  They charged low, clubs outthrust, swords ready. Sunbright dropped his right foot and shoulder back, cocked Harvester, and waited.

  Obviously practiced, the guards swung clubs at the same time, one high, one low, to trap and block Harvester so their short swords could stab for guts. But the barbarian was faster with his trusty weapon. As the right-hand guard struck with ironwood, Sunbright flicked out the barbed tip of Harvester, snagged the man’s wrist, and tugged. Razor steel split skin and severed a tendon. Instantly the man’s hand went limp, and the club fell. Within a second, the great blade spanked to bat the other club down. So hard was the rap that the guard staggered at the blow. But he lunged on, jabbing with his sword.

  Sunbright hadn’t time to disarm them. Flicking sideways, he smacked the guard alongside the head just below the helmet. Skin split along his jaw as the strap was cut. Blood spouted from under his chin and he stumbled.

  Dismissing that foe, dragging Harvester back quickly, sideways across his gut, the barbarian banged down the upthrusting blade of the other guard. At the same time, he kicked savagely, either for thigh or crotch. His moosehide boot knocked the man’s knee out from under him. Two-handed, Sunbright helped him fall by bashing Harvester’s pommel on the back of his helmet. The man’s face hit the floor, helmet clanging. Sunbright recovered his footing and kicked the man’s head, not caring if he snapped his neck or not. The man lay still.

  The bleeding guard clutched his neck with both hands. Blood spurted between his fingers, gradually slowed, and the red hands fell away.

  Chest heaving, wiping his sword on a dead man’s sleeve and then sheathing it, Sunbright toed over the guards until he found a key on a rawhide thong on a belt. Ripping it loose, he strode to the door, unlocked it, slammed it back.

  Inside was dark, but before his eyes adjusted he heard a scrape and gurgle. Stepping into cool darkness, Sunbright latched onto a hairy, thick arm and towed the prisoner out. Knucklebones came, bosom puffing and blood on both hands and her dark elven blade. Sunbright laid his burden down for a look.

  Candlemas was a mess. His face was red and blistered, his eyebrows and beard and mustache singed to stubble, his bald head scabbed and seeping fluid. The yellow-red robe was spattered with his own blood.

  “Forest of Fire!” rumbled Sunbright. “What happened to you?”

  “I tried to … stop Karsus.” The mage’s voice wheezed, husky, for his mouth and lungs were scorched. “I was lucky. Someone pulled me … over backward … just before th-the … burning hands got me. But Karsus is spelling … to be a god!”

  “Be a god?” asked Sunbright. “Become a god?”

  “Can he do that?” Knucklebones gasped.

  “He can … do anything.”

  Wincing, Candlemas plied blistered hands to lever himself up, but fell back, coughing and gagging, strangling on fluid gumming his seared lungs. Blood burbled at the corners of his mouth.

  “Oh, it hurts! He’s using the … the star … stealing its power. Anything could happen.”

  Squatting, Sunbright touched Candlemas on both sides of his face, cooed to him as if to a child. The mage stared as if hypnotized. Then his eyes widened in surprise and he took a deep breath without coughing.

  “My!” snorted Candlemas. He hawked and spat, with no trace of blood in the phlegm. “Where have you been studying?”

  Sunbright helped him rise and told him, “I’m finally a shaman. I’ve learned the secrets of nature magic. But I had to die, or almost, to gain the knowledge.”

  “Great knowledge indeed.” Candlemas snorted. But his knees buckled and he fell. “Oh, I’m weak as a kitten.”

  Stooping, Sunbright grabbed a seared wrist and ankle. There
was no time to heal all the mage’s wounds, only the internal, dangerous ones. Grunting, the barbarian hoisted the heavy man across his shoulders.

  “No, I’m too fat,” Candlemas protested. “And your sword gouges my ribs.”

  Shifting, shoving, Sunbright ignored the protests and slid Candlemas behind his neck. But the barbarian suddenly weaved sideways and struck the wall. “Whoa! You are heavy!”

  “That’s not you!” Knucklebones bleated. She’d also been hurled against the wall. Fascinated, she stared as a guard’s helmet spun loose of its dead owner and rolled down the corridor as if possessed by invisible mice.

  The corridor tilted back, and Sunbright fell to one knee. Knucklebones was white, and her fear communicated to the barbarian and the sagging Candlemas. They both asked, “What is it?”

  “It’s the city!” howled the native. “It’s tilting. It’s never done that before. It’ll fall from the sky!”

  Chapter 21

  “What do we do?” demanded Sunbright.

  “Sita!” Candlemas called as he struggled to get off Sunbright’s shoulders, kicked a tilting wall, and pitched them both to the floor. The mage banged singed flesh, but scrambled up like a squashed toad, laid a hand on a slanted wall, and found it quivering. “I must get to Sita!”

  “In the name of the eternal mountains,” roared Sunbright, “who’s Sita?”

  “She’s …” The mage stopped. He hadn’t told the barbarian. “A friend! We need to take her with us when we flee!”

  “Flee where?” shrilled Knucklebones. She had to brace her feet against cracks in the cobblestones to keep upright. Another guard’s helmet rolled past. Then came a barrel, careening off the walls as it wobbled their way. Candlemas barely jumped aside in time. “There’s nowhere on Karsus that’s safe! The enclave will fall!”

  “Back to our time!” Candlemas splayed both hands against the walls to move upward against the tilt. It was steep enough to make his booted feet slide. “I fabricated a scroll, but lost it! It’s with the star!”

  “What star? Scroll for what?” Knucklebones screamed, but the thief was ignored.

  Sunbright caught her hand and dragged her after them. “ ’Mas knows what he’s doing!” he told her.

  “I wish!” the mage hissed to himself. Candlemas had gained the stairs, where the door flapped as if from a capricious wind. But there wasn’t any wind in this dim corridor, only the earth betraying their feet. Painfully, with scorched fingers, Candlemas hauled himself up the slanted stairwell, in danger of toppling at every step. Cursing, Sunbright climbed after, with Knucklebones the nimblest of all. She almost skipped like a mountain goat in Sunbright’s ponderous wake.

  The servant’s stairs gave out onto a wide, sumptuous hallway, but everything in it was skewed. As they watched, a vase wobbled and struck a wall with a crash. A table bunched against a rug and slid slowly. A mirror swung off its hook and shattered in a thousand jeweled shards on polished oak flooring. When Candlemas tried to walk, he slid uncontrollably. Braced in the doorframe, Sunbright caught him.

  “You can’t go uphill!” the barbarian shouted, “We’ll have to skid down and go around! Where are we going?”

  They yelled because sliding, grinding furniture destroyed itself, and throughout the mansion people screamed, called questions, hollered for help.

  “A white mansion on the grounds, downhill and …”

  Directions failed Candlemas, so he just pointed. Shrugging out of Sunbright’s iron grip, he swung onto the floor and slid on his bottom until he banged a corner already crowded with tumbled furniture. Skidding treacherously in his moosehide boots, Sunbright slid after. Knucklebones crowded so close to the barbarian that her feet rapped his kidneys when they struck a wall. They tried to use their hands as brakes, but broken glass and splinters cut their skin, even the ironlike soles of Knucklebones’s bare feet.

  In a main hall, the mess was worse. Tables, chairs, benches, statuary, and one dead body, a maid who’d struck her head. Skittering crabwise, they found the wreckage didn’t lie still, but kept moving, for in addition to the tilt, the enclave was rotating again so debris inched around corners and cascaded anew.

  Finally, inching and grabbing and gasping, they got to a wide pair of outside doors. Candlemas grabbed the doorframe and almost had his fingers smashed as the door swung back with a smash. Sunbright had to climb over the mage and muscle the door open. They fell more than jumped out the door.

  Outside, they could at least get a grip on gravel walks and flower beds and grass, as if they negotiated a hill. Sunbright paused to check that his weapons were still strapped tight. Knucklebones ripped a splinter long as a pencil from her bleeding foot. “Where are we going?”

  But Candlemas only stared. Nowhere was the landscape flat, and that betrayal was terrifying. In the city below, a tall, black tower, the Shadow Consortium, waggled like a nagging finger, then broke in the middle and plunged down like the arrow of Targus, God of War. Scores of people inhabited that building, he’d heard, and now it snapped like a twig and crashed onto scores more structures below. He’d just witnessed the death of hundreds of people. With more to come, for other buildings wobbled just as disastrously. Distant screams came from below and behind. Servants and nobles alike ran onto lawns to shout and cry.

  Candlemas recalled his mission and shouted, “Come on!”

  Sunbright and Knucklebones jogged as Candlemas crossed a grassy sward and bulled through a forsythia hedge. Knucklebones was hurled back by thick branches, so Sunbright had to grab her and lob her over, then crash through on his own. Catching up as Candlemas trotted along crushed clamshells, he yelled, “Karsus is causing this? Making the city tip and fall?”

  “Yes!” Candlemas gulped, his lungs afire. He was no runner. “He’s out to make himself a god! But I think he’s siphoning all the magic in the enclave! If the mythallars can’t keep up the city will plummet! Nothing can save it!”

  “But you can get us back to our own time?”

  “If there’s enough magic! If it’s gone, if the star’s power is used up, we’ll be stranded, and die with the city!”

  Trotting right behind, Knucklebones demanded, “What’s this about returning to your own time?”

  “Candlemas can get us back!” Sunbright vaulted the trunk of a fallen tree as he said, “To where we belong!”

  “Where you belong!” the thief corrected. “I’m Karsus enclave born and bred!”

  Sunbright cast her a sidelong glance. Her ratty hair bobbed about her head, tickled her pointed ears. Despite running hard, she was not winded, and stared boldly with her one green eye. “You’ll die with the city if you don’t get out!”

  “Instead, I should go with you?” she asked. The boldness in her voice turned hard.

  “Yes! I-I want you … to go with me!” Sunbright found himself fumbling for words.

  A statue of a man ahorse had toppled, smashing amidst a thick stand of cedars, blocking their way. Candlemas yelled a word, flicked his fingers, and the water in the trees exploded with a bang. Green specks floated around them as he rammed through denuded branches.

  Yet Sunbright paused to catch Knucklebones’s thin hand. “Will you go with me? Please?”

  “Why should I?” she asked. Her stance was wide-legged, her hips cocked, her chin tipped to stare with a green eye. “What am I to you?”

  Women picked the damnedest times to argue, Sunbright thought. Greenwillow had been the same way. It had been during such a crisis, besieged in a burning hell, that they had first bespoken their love. And as if Greenwillow’s ghost breathed the words in his ear, Sunbright found himself saying, “I need you. I love you.”

  The boldness was wiped away with one stroke, and a mistiness possessed Knucklebones’s eye. Softly, she told him, “Good. Because I love you too.”

  They had time for a quick kiss. Her lips were soft and firm, cool and wet. His, strong and hard. Then they were running after Candlemas as branches whipped in a wind that was not a wind.


  But the mage stopped on a path at the brow of a hill. Arms outflung, he called, “Sita! I was so worried!”

  The plump noblewoman flew into his arms, slamming his chest so hard he grunted, then hugged him tight, smearing her fine blue-green robe with his blood. “Me, too, dear Candy! I love you so! Don’t leave me!”

  “No, no! Never again! I love you, Sita!” For the first time in his life, the pudgy mage hugged a woman and breathed the words, and many more endearments.

  Still holding hands, Sunbright and Knucklebones caught up. Their eyes were shining, but their faces were worried. The ground lurched, and from behind rolled a giant ball of marble. They had to dash aside to avoid it, and it rumbled past and smashed flat a wooden gazebo.

  “Oh, our empire …” breathed Aquesita.

  The others turned to look. This brow afforded an all-encompassing view.

  The enclave of Karsus was dying. Many buildings had collapsed. Fires blossomed like yellow-red flowers, spinning off spirals of smoke. Water from splintered fountains and pipes sometimes met flame and burst into steam, but in other places flooded folks off their feet. Near the tumbled walls that surrounded Castle Karsus, hordes of people, from the poorest to the noblest, dashed into the grounds to seek high ground. Too, their anger swelled as their homes and families were destroyed, and instinctively they knew Karsus was responsible. The mutter of this mob became a growl, then a roar.

  But Aquesita mewed, and pointed at the sky. “Lady of Mystery!”

  From tilted horizon to slanted mountains, the sky was knitting, piling up gray clouds, coalescing into a solid mass. But amongst the clouds, stretched so wide the eye couldn’t see all, there began to form a face, and hair, and wide, outspread arms spanning the horizon, encompassing the empire.

  A woman, a goddess, blotted out the sun.

  “It’s the final prophecy!” whispered Aquesita. “The last true sign of the End of the End! The end of the empire!”