The Plague Knight and Other Stories

by Richard Lee Byers

  “You have no idea,” I answered.

  “So what happens now? We find the stone and try to use it to prove Dromis’s duelists cheated?”

  “No, because they didn’t. Not knowingly. They didn’t understand Dromis used sorcery to determine how they should fight. They just thought he was a brilliant teacher.”

  “Then we’re done. I mean, except for collecting the stone and using it to pick winning horses.”

  I was reasonably certain she was joking. But since coming to Balathex, I’d lost a ridiculous amount of coin wagering in the hippodrome, and I confess that, just for an instant, I was tempted.

  Light and Dark

  When I left Balathex at the end of winter, to help a dying friend, Tregan Keenspur had been a robust and vigorous man. Now, with the spring rain drumming on the roof of his family mansion, he looked not just lean but gaunt and hobbled with the aid of an ebony cane. And when sudden pain made him suck in a hissing breath, I had to ask: “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  He scowled. Wizards don’t appreciate having their abilities questioned, nor do the nobly born, and he was both.

  “It won’t help anyone,” I said, “if your heart gives out when you try to cast the spell.”

  “I still have strength enough,” he replied. “Do you remember everything I told you? Do you know what to do with the club?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then stand in front of the mirror.”

  Knowing what I knew, I did so with a certain amount of reluctance, even though he’d told me the curse took a little time to work, and that was assuming our adversary had even bothered to set a snare for me. The mirror was an oval big as a tower shield, the frame, a silver serpent swallowing its own tail. No doubt it was magical, but nothing uncanny happened until Tregan came to stand behind me. I cast a reflection, but he didn’t. Up close, he stank of unhealthy sweat. He whispered words that made me feel muddled and dizzy, then poked me in the chest with a soft touch. But the charge of power it carried sent me hurtling toward the glass.

  Or at least that was how it felt. But when I threw up my arms to protect my face, flailing with the length of polished blue-green wood he’d given me, I found I was standing as steady and motionless as before. Only now I was facing away from the mirror, and Tregan was nowhere to be found. Thinking I might see him peering out of the glass, I looked around, but he wasn’t there, either.

  Tregan hadn’t been able to supply a full explanation of what to expect in the mirror world, but he had warned me it might be strange and disorienting. On first inspection, it wasn’t. I still appeared to be inside the mage’s garret workroom with its stuffed harpy, racks of ritual staves and blades, and hint of incense hanging in the air. The only difference was that I didn’t hear the rain on the roof anymore.

  Still, it seemed a good idea to take my bearings. I moved to one of the windows, opened the shutters, then cursed in surprise.

  In a way, it was still Balathex outside. I recognized landmarks, like the Temple of Regrets and--to my relief--the watchtower. Three of the many fountains that inspired poets to call my adopted home the Glittering City or the Whispering City were visible. But the city walls were missing, and in general, it was as if a demented god had shattered the place into pieces, discarded some, and reassembled the rest into a chaotic jumble. Some buildings had portions sliced away, exposing their interiors. A bathhouse had fused with a tannery that by rights should have stood on the opposite side of town. A length of street slanted up to the top of a house like a ramp.

  The scene wasn’t wholly bright. Though portions were, many weren’t. But nothing seemed entirely dark, either. It all had a glossiness to it that muddled my sense of depth. At certain moments, the vista looked flat, like a landscape by a painter who hadn’t mastered perspective. At others, it gave the impression of a hundred flat surfaces in juxtaposition, somewhat like the facets of a jewel.

  And it all looked bright in contrast to the murk bordering it. Pools of blackness lurked wherever the various pieces fitted together imperfectly, and the town as a whole was an islet of light and form in an ocean of night.

  In its essentials, it was as Tregan had said it would be. This Balathex was made of reflections of the original our enemy had harvested from one mirror or another. If an object or space hadn’t cast its image somewhere, he couldn’t include it. While the darkness was the preexisting otherworld--some empty precinct of the Lower Worlds, perhaps--in which he’d constructed his refuge.

  Since nothing was where it ought to be, I wondered how much trouble I’d have finding my way around. Then I heard motion at my back.

  I turned to see Tregan, who raised the sword in his hand. The blade moaned as he swung it at my head.

  Balathex attracts a fair number of supernatural threats. And, more often than a sensible man would prefer, I find myself assigned the task of removing them. It’s what I get for setting up shop as a special sort of mercenary, one who no longer marches off to war but claims to know how to handle smaller and sometimes stranger conflicts.

  Despite that, when a wizard named Alexos Dambrin started practicing proscribed magic, I only played a small part in apprehending him. And when, weary and sore from my travels, I swung myself off my horse, I hadn’t thought of him in months.

  I tossed an iron penny to a boy who would take the animal back to the livery stable. Then I headed up the stairs to my rooms, which occupied the space above a tavern called the Goblin’s Bloody Nose.

  Just as I gripped the door handle, footsteps thudded behind me. I pivoted. A pudgy youth in the livery of the Keenspurs was scurrying up the steps. “Master Selden!” he gasped. “Don’t go in there!”

  “Why not?” I replied.

  “Lord Tregan says please, “ he said, still panting, “you have to come see him before you do anything else. He ordered me to watch for you. But I had to go into the alley to piss.”

  I would have liked to clean myself up and throw back a cup of wine, but if Tregan wanted to see me without delay, so be it. He and I were friends, to the extent that the difference in our social stations allowed.

  So the servant and I hurried off to Keenspur House with its gables and eight-sided turrets. And when the plump lad led me into Tregan’s presence, I was shocked at the gray, red-eyed appearance of his sharp-featured face.

  “You’re ill,” I said.

  “Not exactly,” he said, and waved a tremulous hand to dismiss the lackey. He waited for the door to shut before continuing. “I’m cursed.”

  “Do you know who did it?” And when he named the name, I said, “I thought the tribunal hanged him.”

  He sighed. “Masters of black magic don’t always die as easily as other men.”

  True enough, as my own experience attested.

  “You’ll recall,” Tregan continued, “when Alexos started studying forbidden arts, his patron demons taught him to play tricks with mirrors.”

  I nodded. “He could peer into his own glass and see out of someone else’s. He used what he discovered for blackmail.”

  “Yes. But it turns out he learned to do a lot more than that, and somehow, he must have gotten his hands on a mirror while he was awaiting execution. Because he escaped into it. The thing we sent to the gallows was only a kind of decoy.”

  “’Escaped into it’ and came out where?”

  He made a sour face. “Nowhere. Let me tell the story, and then you’ll understand. After the hanging, we nobles began to fall ill. The sickness spread so quickly that it afflicted dozens of us before anyone noticed that we no longer cast reflections.”

  “Alexos stole them,” I guessed. “And pieces of your souls, or your vitality, with them.”

  “Yes. The wretch gave us some time to worry, and then a message appeared inside certain mirrors. He demands a pardon, money, land, and marriage to a lady from one of the most prominent houses. Otherwise, he’ll keep what he took and let us waste away.”

  “As ransoms go, it could be worse.”

  Tre
gan grimaced. “So far, I’ve managed to convince my peers that you don’t capitulate to a practitioner of the proscribed arts. Aside from the dishonor, if you give in to such a blackguard today, there’s no telling what new concessions he’ll demand or what new atrocities he’ll perpetrate tomorrow. It’s much, much better to defeat him.”

  “In principle, I agree. And I take it that’s where I come in.”

  “Yes. Once I knew we were dealing with Alexos, I set about trying to locate him. I discovered that he’s created a sort of fortress for himself on the other side of the mirrors he used to curse us. I believe that, even weak as I am, I can send an agent there. Knowing you were due back soon, I thought of you.”

  “And stationed a man to catch me before I walked into my rooms and looked in the mirror on the wall. Just on the off chance that Alexos is laying for me, too.”

  “It’s possible. You have a certain reputation.”

  I smiled. “I suppose I do. Still, in this situation, why wait for me, and why rely on me alone? Why not send a whole company of soldiers?”

  “I told you, I’m weak. I don’t know that I can send more than one man, and he needs to be someone discreet. Balathex has other enemies besides Alexos. Do you know what might happen if word got out that all the city fathers are ill?”

  “I see your point.”

  “Then will you help?”

  “If you can tell me how to break the curse.”

  We discussed the options, then my fee, and then he sent me through.

  The real Tregan had become feeble and slow, but his counterpart hadn’t. I hopped back barely in time to avoid the sword cut. The groan of the enchanted blade spiked to a screech as it missed my face by a finger length.

  My first impulse was to drop the club and snatch for the broadsword at my side. But I feared doing mortal harm to the piece of my friend Alexos had stolen. So, gripping it with both hands, I hefted the length of wood into a middle guard. It was sturdy and well balanced, as long as an axe handle and slightly curved like one as well.

  Mirror Tregan lifted the groaning sword as though for another head cut. I could see it was a feint, and parried the true attack when it flashed at my ribs.

  I riposted with a blow to the shoulder. Bone crunched, and my opponent’s sword arm flopped down limp at his side. His blade squirmed from his fingers and floated toward his off hand. I batted it across the room, then hit Tregan over the head. His legs buckled and spilled him to the floor.

  I half expected his sword to fly up into the air and attack on its own, but it didn’t. After a moment, it even stopped twitching and moaning.

  When I was satisfied that it had no more tricks to play, I checked to make sure Tregan was still breathing. He was. Assuming I got his two halves reunited, he might have a sore head or even a broken shoulder, but nothing worse.

  I started downstairs and encountered another disorienting surprise. The steps only went down a little way. The descent ended abruptly in a lady’s bedchamber smelling of flowery perfume and full of wigs on head-shaped wooden stands.

  The room wasn’t where it should have been, but at least it belonged in the mansion somewhere. The space beyond the doorway didn’t. It was a piece of the outdoors, a wedge of plaza with sunlight gleaming on freshly fallen snow. Icicles dripped from the rim of the big stone bowl in the center. My breath steamed as I hurried across.

  With everything so thoroughly scrambled, it took a while just to find a way out of the mansion. Which wasn’t all bad. It gave me time to decide on my next move.

  I’d entered the mirror world thinking I’d probably attack and kill Alexos. According to Tregan, that should break the curse, and send everyone’s reflection back where it belonged. And while I assumed it might be difficult, I’d defeated wizards before.

  But now I knew Alexos hadn’t just stolen the aristocrats’ reflections. He’d turned them into slaves. Some, like Tregan’s, were evidently playing watchdog at the entry points to his redoubt. But he might well be keeping others close to guard his person. And while fighting a single opponent is feasible, even if he is a warlock, taking on six or twelve is a more difficult proposition.

  I also realized it was going to be challenging just to find my way around, and thus, quite possibly difficult even to locate Alexos. Whereas, once I groped my way out of Keenspur House, I should be able to see my alternate objective looming over everything else, and steer a course for it.

  So I’d try the tactic Tregan had suggested.

  Outside the mansion, in the gardens, I found the reflection of a relatively warm day, with no snow on the ground. I noticed again how everything but me possessed a subtle sheen. And how the light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, so that nothing cast a shadow.

  Once I left Keenspur House behind, I occasionally spotted figures prowling in the distance. I hoped that if they saw me, too, they mistook me for one of their own.

  Then I peeked around a corner and saw someone who wasn’t distant. His silk and velvet garments a medley of blues, their foppish frills an odd contrast to his coarse features and burly frame, a lord named Grelldac was tramping in my direction. He was only a few paces away, and would surely have seen me, too, except that his head was turned at that particular moment.

  Grelldac was one of Balathex’s better duelists, and I wouldn’t have been wildly enthusiastic about fighting him in the best of circumstances. I resolved to avoid his notice instead.

  I snatched my head back and cast about. One of the partial houses, with its front wall missing, caught my eye. The interior was comparatively dim, and if I hid there, I had a fair chance of escaping detection.

  Trying to move quietly, I scurried in that direction. My course took me near what looked like an utterly dark rift in the ground, one of the gaps between the ill-assembled puzzle pieces of Alexos’s mad little world.

  Suddenly I felt something glaring at me. My head throbbed, my guts churned, and I stumbled. If you’ve ever had a witch give you the evil eye, it was like that, malice so fierce it stabbed like a dagger.

  Previously, I’d conjectured that Alexos had situated his stronghold in an empty precinct of the Lower Worlds. Evidently I’d been wrong about the empty part. There were creatures lurking in that limitless dark, and they didn’t like intruders.

  It was a somewhat disturbing revelation, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I hurried on, took a deep breath, and the sick feeling faded. I crouched behind a table and chairs in the sundered house and watched Grelldac pass obliviously by.

  Afterward, I did my best to stay away from both Alexos’s wandering minions and the murky gaps, and reached the foot of the watchtower without further incident. Congratulating myself on making it that far, I pulled open the door, and my momentary feeling of accomplishment died abruptly.

  The tower was here because a mirror, or at any rate, some reflective surface, had captured the image of the exterior. But nothing had ever reflected the interior, or if it had, Alexos hadn’t incorporated that particular semblance into his creation. And so there were no stairs, just a pocket of absolute darkness, and the feeling of hostile eyes peering out.

  Inconvenient, but I wasn’t beaten yet. I was no master climber, but as a soldier, I’d learned how to go up a wall. I just had to find rope, and something to serve as a grappling hook.

  I’m not sure how long it took. It was hard to judge the passage of time without a sun or moon arcing across the sky. But eventually I had what I needed. First I climbed to the roof of a house that Alexos’s magic had planted next to the watchtower, then scaled the taller structure.

  That last part was nerve-wracking. It seemed likely that Alexos or one of his slaves would glance up at the skyline and see me. But I swung myself into the belfry without anyone raising the alarm.

  Fortunately, the inside of the top of the tower was in existence, although I still saw nothing but blackness in the shaft beneath. I pulled the club from my belt and stood in front of the huge bronze bell.

  Tregan had ba
sed his scheme on the notion that a realm created from mirrors would in some mystical sense share their properties. And on the truth that sound can shatter glass.

  He was also counting on the fact that the ancient bell, forged to warn of fire, raiders, or dangerous beasts emerging from the Forest of Thorns, bore certain enchantments. If I rang that magical artifact by beating it with my similarly enchanted stick, it should raise a vibration that would demolish Alexos’s artificial world.

  At first I couldn’t tell if my efforts were doing anything useful, only that the resulting clangor was painfully loud. But despite the discomfort and my concern for my hearing, I persevered. And gradually, the cityscape around me began to tremble.

  But at the same time, the enslaved reflections scurried into view, all rushing toward the tower. They hadn’t noticed me climbing it, but they and their master could hardly miss the pealing of the bell or the incipient earthquake. It was odd to see the august city fathers, as Tregan had called them, behaving like a mob, with me the object of their murderous intent.

  Odd and alarming. Hoping to put an end to this affair before they reached the spire, I pounded the bell as hard and fast as I could.

  Ripples ran through the city as they might across the surface of a pond, or through a piece of sheet metal when someone shakes it. But Alexos’s Balathex stubbornly refused to shatter.

  Hoping Tregan’s plan simply needed more time to work, I stuck with it as long as I dared. But I couldn’t let Alexos’s servants surround the watchtower and trap me. So finally I slid back down the rope, hung by my hands from the eaves of the adjacent house, and dropped to the street below.

  A shoulder roll kept me from breaking any bones, but as I scrambled to my feet, I saw that I might have waited too long to attempt my escape. A lord equipped with a hand-and-a-half sword and a frail-looking white-haired matriarch incongruously armed with a battle-axe were already close enough to pose a threat. They moved to flank me.

  I lunged and swung my club at the lady’s torso. She tried to catch the stroke on her axe, but reacted too slowly. The impact knocked her on her rump.