Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  “I’m well sweet Essaline. Surprisingly well. Though it is a shock to somehow know the Lady’s will as my own, it is not that much different to how it was before, at least for me. Her laws are strict, but I obeyed them before I knew them and so they are no further encumbrance upon me. Many of the others I hope will realise the same in time.” Of course that was perhaps the view of a man in love with a priestess and very happy with his life in an elven village. From those in their towers who spent their every day awakening their most powerful of magics and growing in knowledge with little regard for the outside world, a different view was likely. From the dwarven spellcasters, who’s magic mostly seemed to be concerned with ripping the mineral riches out of the ground regardless of the cost to the land, that view might be even more different again. Certainly the dwarves at the convocation had seemed more than a little upset by what had transpired.

  “So young, so wise. Elder Lorelli was right about you.”

  “Actually my beloved I think she said something about wisdom coming from the mouths of babies. I suppose I should be grateful at least that it wasn’t spittle she was speaking of.” He made her giggle with his words, and kiss him a little more, for which he was truly happy.

  “Yourself, and the other priests?”

  “Good. Truly good. We all have so much more strength now, and so many more allies that we can call upon as we carry out the Goddess’ will. And her words, they strengthen the peace, even as they bring life. High Priest Verral has said that we should look forwards to a golden time when this crisis is over.” Of course he would say that Marjan knew. He still hadn’t considered the sheer stubbornness and cunning of wizards and other spellcasters as they went about trying to re-forge their own destiny. They would not be bowed even by the Goddess, or at least not without a fight. But perhaps he had reason as in the end no matter how they struggled, they would have to give in. Either way it wasn’t the time to bring discord into the world.

  “I’m glad. Would you perhaps stay with me a while my beloved and share a small evening meal.” He wasn’t too worried by the formalities of sharing food with his betrothed alone just then. The protocols of their daily lives now that they were coming ever closer to that wonderful day when they would be wed, were being relaxed, and besides, his tent really more a sheet an a bedroll in truth, was out in the open, along with those of so many others, nearly all of whom knew of their situation, and who would see what transpired. There was no privacy any more in Evensong. Nothing untoward would be allowed to happen.

  “I would enjoy that very much my beautiful man.” And to prove it she even handed him a few more rabbit thighs, vegetables and some berries from a pouch that she’d brought with her, and then took a seat by the fire, while he added them to the hot stone. She’d always planned on staying for tea and that made him happy, though looking at the amount of food she’d brought he quickly gathered that they were expecting company. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise to turn around once he’d finished adding the food to the stone, to see her parents, sister and a few children also arriving out of the darkness.

  He raised an arm in greeting to them, actually happy to see them, and then turned to grab another thick tree branch to pull it over to the fire so that they could all be seated in some comfort.

  It was then that he felt a sudden stinging sensation in his back, followed by a strange thunk and a sudden feeling of weakness and he knew something was wrong even if he didn’t quite know what. But looking down and seeing the arrowhead sticking out of his side, his blood pouring down his leg, he slowly understood that someone had shot him.

  Time seemed to hang about then as he stared down at his side, at the arrowhead sticking out of it, and the blood pouring down his front, while he tried to make sense of the senseless. Who could have shot him? It was all he could think about, until he heard Essaline scream and life started returning to his confusion. She was in danger.

  He spun like a man crazed with fear, which was too close to the truth, and even as he did managed to fling two spells into the air all around them, one for light to see by, and one to slow movement. Of course he was still too slow, having wasted too much time in confusion, and even as he cast the spell of sloth, he felt another sharp pain in his shoulder, and saw an arrow sticking out of it even as it knocked him back a step or two. It was only then that he realised that someone was actually shooting at him on purpose. Moreover, he was hitting him. Finally, far too late, he felt the blood flowing in his body and the pain went away as he knew he had to act.

  “Take cover!” He screamed it as loud as he could even as he started hunting out his enemy, as rewarded by seeing people all around diving for the ground, though in his hasted state it seemed that they were almost floating. But that gave him time, time enough to look at where the arrows had come from and finally lay eyes on his enemy. Time he almost wished he didn’t have when he finally saw him.

  It was a zombie, badly decomposed, almost at the stage of a skeleton with strips of hanging flesh everywhere, holding a giant black bow far taller than him, and already drawing another arrow from the quiver at his side, and he realised with a growing sense of horror that the undead were walking. What he didn’t know was how that could be, who could have raised such a creature. But as the walking mass of dead flesh and bone notched the arrow to his bow strong he also realised he didn’t have time to wonder about such things. Not if he wanted to live.

  With a thought, a gesture he sent a blast of force at the creature, and watched somewhat satisfied as the undead thing went flying backwards, loosing its arrow skywards as it fell. It hit the ground with a sticky wet sound, while the arrow disappeared somewhere into the night sky, and he knew he was safe for a moment. Long enough to look around and see that no one else was injured. Lying there on the ground, frightened, and screaming, they were still unharmed, and that was what mattered. But it wasn’t all that mattered. He knew that as he watched the zombie start crawling to its feet once more, reaching again for its great black bow. The battle was far from over.

  Another gesture and he set the zombie, longbow and arrows all on fire, and by the time it had made it to its feet, the thing was well alight, flames reaching high in to the dark sky. But it wasn’t finished. A man would have been running around screaming in pain, but this thing just calmly raised its bow and notched another arrow, all while burning furiously.

  He hit it with another blast of force, this time aimed directly at the centre of that terrible black long bow, and was rewarded with the sound of it snapping in half. Its attack was over. But even as he thought that, he heard a scream, the sound of a man truly enraged beyond all sanity, and he knew the battle was barely begun. A heartbeat later something dark and nasty flew through the air past him, some sort of shade perhaps, and even as he dodged he finally laid eyes upon his enemy.

  “Dimeter!” He was shocked to see him standing there, in the middle of Evensong, shocked more to realise that somehow, despite having been bound by the Goddess he was still raising dark magic, and more shocked still by the look of undying hatred in his eyes as he started summoning another soldier to his cause. But none of that meant anything he knew, as he understood he had to fight. Fight or die.

  A streak of cold from his fingertips turned the young wizards right arm into a frozen mass of ice in a heartbeat, stopping him from moving it as he intended, stopping him in turn from casting his magic. But then whatever evil he’d been calling suddenly exploded in the air all around him.

  Dimeter screamed then, frightened and hurt as he surely never had been before, and for a moment Marjan dared to believe it was over. But it wasn’t. Whatever he’d called, something dark and evil was still with them, and no longer under any control at all as the adept gave in to his pain. It was a shadow in the darkness, a stench in the clean night air, and evil through and through, and it was hungry. Hungry for life, and for souls. It was a spectre, an eater of people.

  Without even thinking Marjan hit it with a sunburst, a powerful blast of heat
and light, and for a moment he lit it up, the light shining through even its darkness like the sun itself, and then it exploded in a glorious display of fire that reached for the stars themselves, cleansing the air all around them.

  After that it was over, and Marjan breathed a sigh of relief as he looked all around and saw people still moving. They were crawling on their hands and knees, blinded by his magic, surely terrified as they cowered, but alive, and that was what he wanted. Meanwhile Dimeter was lying on the ground with his right arm encased in a mass of ice, disbelief written all over his face. He hadn’t expected to lose, but more than that, he had never expected to be hurt, and he surely hurt. In time Marjan knew, when the ice melted and the healers had their way with him, that pain would become agony, and worse, before his arm had to be amputated. It was already frozen solid, dead, and only the extreme cold stopped the worst of the pain from sending him screaming.

  Despite it being the last thing he wanted to do, Marjan started walking over to the adept, making sure to check on the others as he did so. They were alive, blinded by his sunburst but slowly recovering, getting to their feet and hunting around for the enemy, not yet knowing he’d caught him. Dimeter though, wasn’t so fortunate.

  He was injured, badly wounded, and Marjan knew he was going to lose his arm when it finally thawed. But his mind was perhaps worse. The look in his eyes, undying hatred, it was so close to complete madness that he knew the lad would probably slip over into its embrace soon. But for all that, he was still able to see Marjan as he approached, and to hate him, hate him with a strength so great it even managed to make him forget about his pain for a while.

  “Why?” In the end that was all he could think to ask him, and somehow he doubted he’d get an answer. Maybe he hoped he wouldn’t. But as he controlled the blood loss and pain from his own wounds and thought about pulling the arrows free, Dimeter surprised him. He started laughing.

  It wasn’t a kindly good-natured laugh, not the sort of laugh that might pass between friends and neighbours, but he wouldn’t have expected that. It was the laugh of evil, of someone taking joy in another’s pain, of the demons in the underworld rejoicing in their foulness. It was the sound of madness. It was the sound of someone no longer fully human.

  “You think you’ve won.” Dimeter was all but spitting the words out like venom as he lay there. “You think you can just bind all of wizardry and walk away untouched.” He was hardly untouched Marjan thought, and even with his magic somehow holding him together when he should have been falling down, he could feel the pain of his injuries. He suspected he was going to be spending some more long days in the infirmary as it was.

  “You did it once, murdered a wizard and walked away. Now you damn us all and try to do it again.” At least Marjan understood his anger, if not how he could truly be blamed for it, or how Dimeter had somehow broken through his bindings to release such dark magic. His hatred must be a truly terrible power within him to turn his magic inside out like that, else he had found another patron, something that didn’t bear thinking about when he considered the magic he had been using.

  “Well no more. No more.” Dimeter screeched the last like a crazed village idiot, and as he did so looked away from him and to his undead servant, something that made Marjan do the same, but only to wish he never had.

  The zombie was getting up, still on fire, bow still broken, back still smashed, and the darkness that he had dispersed with the sunbeam was somehow forming itself around the creature, entering its flesh, and that was surely impossible. But the impossible didn’t bother him as much as the fact that something about the two of them forming into one being was familiar. That he knew him. And then, as he finally made out the terrible tracery of stitches that ran across his shoulder and arm where Dimeter had carefully sewn the corpse back together, he finally did know him, even as his blood chilled.

  “No!” Marjan screamed with horror as he recognised him, and the pain of his wounds was everywhere as his concentration failed. His blood suddenly began bursting free as well, but he simply couldn’t control his shock and horror as he finally recognised his childhood enemy, body and soul somehow brought back from the grave. He screamed some more after that, overcome with guilt such as he hadn’t known it in so many years. Not since that very first day.

  “You can’t be.” But he knew he was. So did Dimeter as he started laughing, knowing his victory even through his pain.

  “Marjan aren’t you going to say hello to your old friend Kyran.” The adept was enjoying himself, laughing with triumph even as he seemed to know exactly what to do, what to say to cause Marjan the greatest pain. “After all you killed him once, now you’re killing him all over again.”

  He was right too Marjan knew as he watched his childhood enemy burning brightly in the night air, and with a simple gesture he quenched the flames, even though he knew it was a mistake. But he had to, he couldn’t kill him again. That would be something more than just wrong, it would be a perversion of everything. But of course Dimeter had expected that, and so too had Kyran.

  He, it, opened its mouth, and out of it came some sort of dark spell, something evil and soul destroying, streaking straight for him, and Marjan couldn’t stop it. He didn’t know what it was, but even if he had, he couldn’t have held it away. His guilt and shame, his overwhelming horror at what he had done, again, they stopped him doing anything at all. And so instead the magic hit him, carried him to the ground, and started eating at him, body and soul, while he could do nothing but scream. Soon he couldn’t even do that as his throat closed over and not a sound could escape him. But that didn’t stop him trying however.

  It was like being in a sandstorm, the fine sand blasting his flesh with the power of a hurricane behind it, inside and out, the darkness, the accusations eating at his thoughts, his hopes and dreams, his joy, his very essence, and leaving him with nothing but the promise of only an eternity of damnation, suffering that would never end, could never end, not when he was guilty. The pain was terrible, but it was justice and he could not deny it.

  For ages it seemed he lay on the ground, not knowing he’d even fallen, being ripped apart, and there was nothing he could do about it, no one he could even cry out to, not when he was only being punished for his sins. No one could help him, no one had the right to interfere, and time passed agonisingly slowly as he prayed for merciful death that he knew would never come, while Dimeter’s never ending laughter filled the air, echoing and rolling through the hills in his mind like thunder.

  Somewhere in the distance a woman screamed, and he knew her, but he also didn’t. As the savage spirit ate at his thoughts, it stole her name from him, stole her memory as well, and all that was left was a scream, a scream that he knew was his fault even if he didn’t know what he’d done. Still he would have tried to help her if he could, to save her from whatever was threatening her, but even as he tried to rise, tried to open his eyes and see what was happening, a wave of righteous fury and insanity carried him back down into his personal underworld, accusing him again and again of his crimes, ripping his flesh apart, tearing at his heart and soul. Soon he was buried in them and nothing could intrude.

  “Evil!” Someone screamed the word, and he knew that voice as well, even if he had no idea at all who it might be, but it mattered for nothing when it came with a blaze of glorious light, beauty and wonder beyond anything he could ever imagine, simply flooding the world around him, letting him see again through the dark shadows, letting him breath, and for a moment the feel of the cool night air in his lungs was wondrous.

  Then came the thunder and lightning, awesome blasts that shook the ground and once more robbed him of his sight, and in the middle of it all, as he was blinded and deafened, his body pummelled and shaken, he heard a fading scream, a thin, reedy sound like that of a child falling to his death, and it sent a shiver of terror down his spine. Someone was dying and he could do nothing about it. He could not save him. He could not move, not even see. But at least he could hear
as someone was speaking.

  “Never have I seen such darkness. A wraith. A thrice-cursed blood-wraith. Here.” The man, it was a man he knew even if he still couldn’t place him, was upset, angry and yet in equal measure, shocked and hurt in some way. But maybe he had reason as Marjan heard someone else calling urgently for healers. Maybe someone was hurt.

  “A blood-wraith. An ancient terror, and never something a mere student should know of let alone call. What have you wizards been teaching your students?” That voice he knew, sardonic, hard, demanding and yet also concerned, Marjan knew it well. But not as well as the hands he suddenly felt on him, holding him, the soft woman’s voice so filled with fear as she called his name and cried, and even if he still didn’t know who she was, he knew he loved her, and that was enough. It was everything.