The Elements of Sorcery

by Christopher Kellen

  I started to protest, but Khaine shepherded me up into the carriage with a firm but gentle hand on my shoulder, and just the thought of doing anything to force him to draw that crystal sword kept me pliant. As long as we were talking, I got to hold onto my skin, and it gave me another moment to try and figure a way out of this mess. I found myself counting and savoring my breaths, even though my nautical voyage had proven that I no longer had any need for them.

  I rather liked breathing.

  He paused for a moment to pluck the light source from the front of the carriage before climbing aboard, and just before it vanished into his shirt, I saw the faint outline of the braided hilt and ring pommel that was the shape of the heartblade.

  Lost Arangoth, I swore silently. He was using his own heartblade to track mine. The thought left me a little cold, but he’d implied something about a cost, and the tiny thing seemed unharmed. My brow furrowed in confusion, but it seemed that Khaine had no interest in an explanation.

  Once safely aboard, he shouted to the driver, and the coach rumbled into motion.

  Khaine settled into the seat across from me and fixed me with his penetrating gaze again. “Now, where were we?”

  “You said ‘that explains a few things,’” I reminded him.

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  Silence.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “What does it explain?”

  “How you survived, of course.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve lost me.”

  He smiled enigmatically at me again. “You mean, you haven’t solved the puzzle? And you call yourself a sorcerer.”

  “Hey, now,” I started, nettled, but he laughed and waved me down.

  “Peace, Master Moncrief,” he said, but then his face turned thoughtful. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘brother?’”

  “Not that,” I said, suppressing a shudder. “Never that. Edar is fine.”

  “Ah.” For a moment, I thought I saw a trace of disappointment in his eyes, but then it vanished. “Edar, then. Tell me what you know of a man named Yzgar the Black.”

  I nearly choked on my next breath, and Khaine regarded me impassively. I’d never been much of a cards or dice player, mostly for that very reason. When I’m nervous or get caught off-guard like that, my tells can be loud enough to sing my vulnerability out to a dozen yards.

  “I take it you’ve heard of him,” the Arbiter said cheerfully.

  “You could say that,” I said, trying not to sound sullen.

  “Do you know why they called him that? ‘The Black?’”

  “I always figured it was because of the black magic.”

  “Everyone always does,” Khaine said. “The truth is, he was called that long before he was anywhere near so infamous. He was from the Silver Coast, all the way down in the southeast, far past any of the Old Kingdoms’ borders, and like all of the men from those parts, his skin was as black as night itself. Sorcery is an inherited practice there, the knowledge passed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Yzgar believed that such tightly-controlled knowledge was severely limiting, and he was right.”

  A faint frown creased my brow. “You sound like you knew him.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You—that’s impossible.” I tried not to splutter. “I know Arbiters live a long time—I researched it myself—but Yzgar died over a hundred and fifty—”

  The words died in my mouth as I looked at Khaine’s expression.

  “He was right,” Khaine continued, as though I hadn’t interrupted him. “The warlocks of the Silver Coast were barely dabblers, compared to someone like yourself. They exerted their influence subtly through sympathetic magic, mostly. Yzgar found, through extensive experimentation, that evocation of raw manna was not only possible, but quite powerful.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said, thinking back to the fire I’d unleashed on the shrike beneath Selvaria.

  “His ultimate goal was to understand his own mind, and by extension, the minds of all men,” Khaine said. “He worked for years to develop a way to see within his own mind. He wanted to examine it, layer by layer, lay it open so that he could see what was contained within. To that end, he applied his extensive knowledge of sympathetic magic to his newly discovered understanding of evocation, and developed an extremely complex invocation.”

  “The Verse of Undoing,” I breathed.

  “Precisely,” Khaine nodded, as though he were a teacher pleased with the acuteness of a student. “Unfortunately, his obsession led to an attempt to use the Verse with himself as the subject.”

  Having witnessed what the Verse of Undoing did to a human being in person—in horrid, graphic detail, no less—I couldn’t suppress a shudder.

  “Perhaps less than fortunately,” Khaine said, without acknowledging my reaction, “Yzgar’s mind did not last long enough for him to complete the incantation.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Less than fortunate?”

  “The half-completed spell left him devoid of sanity,” Khaine explained. “It was not long before he descended into deep corruption. The Verse left him a babbling madman, but did not stop his obsession. The Arbiters were forced to put a stop to him before long.” He sighed. “Such a waste.”

  “This is a nice history lesson, but what does it have to do with m—?”

  “D’Arden, of course, explained about your encounter with the vampires in Vrydanus,” Khaine interrupted smoothly. “You used the Verse on the one which had consumed Gaerton Daen’s spirit, did you not?”

  I nodded mutely.

  “When you unraveled its existence, the power living within the unfortunate Gaerton made a leap into the nearest available vessel.” He pointed a finger at me. “You.”

  The memory of that searing cold, the all-consuming chill that had come over me as the vampire screamed and unraveled, came back to me in full force, as though I were living it all over again. Gooseflesh erupted all over my body, and I shivered violently. I could hear my own voice, screaming the spidery, eldritch words of the chant which had saved my life as it tore the creature to spiritual shreds.

  I hadn't been given a choice. I didn't even know that it would work, at the time.

  Just like…

  The realization struck me like a lead weight.

  Just like when I’d used the heartblade.

  “It called to you,” Khaine said quietly. “You were already possessed by the power, and the heartblade did what it was designed to do. It awakened the Arbiter’s gift inside you, instead of ripping out your spirit and feeding it back into the Lifewell, as it would have with any other mortal.”

  My throat felt very, very dry.

  “You have borrowed significant power from the Arbiters, Edar, not to mention your liberal trade on our reputation for three years,” Khaine said, and his voice was quietly serious, with an edge that warned me that this was the moment of truth. “You have incurred something of a debt to us, would you agree?”

  Unable to speak, I just nodded mutely.

  His eyes flashed. “How would you like to repay it?”

  My eyes darted to either side of the carriage. If a lever or something opened the door, it was not obviously visible. No way out.

  If I hit Khaine with enough power, it might just…

  No. Even if it distracted him long enough for me to make an escape, he’d still come after me, and then we wouldn’t be having any more cordial conversations about history. Instead, I would simply be a walking dead man until such time as he caught up with me.

  I stared at the Arbiter through frightened eyes. “Um… preferably not with my life. Maybe I could commission a nice statue?”

  He barked a laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it this time. “Our power has saved your life on more than one occasion. If I am not mistaken, one of our artifacts has been lost…?”

  With a nod, I confirmed it.

  “Lost to the sea,” he finished. “Quite possibly forever. A simple stone memoriam coul
d not repay such a debt.”

  Silence stretched out between us.

  I wracked my brain, trying to think of something that might serve, but came up empty. I’d never been much for thinking clearly under so much pressure. Trying to concoct brilliant ideas with a knife at one’s throat was a sure way to get killed messily, which was why I always tried to do my best thinking alone in a quiet room. While Khaine didn't literally have a knife drawing a line of blood across my arteries at that moment, the razor-sharp edge of Khaine’s sword rested only a heartbeat away from doing exactly that, and it didn't help the fog that constricted my thoughts.

  After a few more moments of deafening silence where the pounding of my heart seemed to be the only sound in the world, I gave up.

  “Do you… have any suggestions?” I ventured at last.

  He grinned at me, and the tension broke.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I settled back into my seat, and Khaine laid out the form which my repayment would take.

  I'd rather have drowned.

  IX

  Two or three eternities later, the carriage rumbled to a halt.

  “Stay on your guard,” Khaine warned, reaching out—oh, there was that damned door lever—and popping open the door to the carriage. As he slid out onto his feet, his right hand reached back and drew his manna sword from its scabbard. Brilliant azure light sprang forth as the blade rasped free, and I realized that I’d never quite had the shade right when I’d designed my illusory version. It was a bit disappointing, actually, that I'd made such a simple mistake. Mine had been a touch too pale.

  With some reluctance, I followed him out. It was still night, and the chill air made me shiver as I stepped into it. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust my vision.

  “Thank you, Garth,” Khaine said to the carriage driver. “We shouldn’t be long, but if we’re not back in two hours, you have my leave to go.”

  The driver grunted assent, but said nothing.

  I swept my gaze around. We stood on what looked to be a very old and disused road, cracked and broken under the weight of decades—or maybe longer—of overgrowth. The forest was very old, with huge, limbless trees that stretched toward the dark sky above. There must have been a canopy somewhere above me, but it couldn't be seen for the gloom. The air was thick with humidity, and buzzing insects kept sweeping by my ears as they passed. I hoped that none of them were bloodsuckers, or carrying disease. I’d once encountered bloodsucking leech-flies the size of my hand near a lake in Amaria, and barely made it out before exsanguination had rendered me too tired to move.

  Not far off the road was a tumbled ruin that looked like it once had been a castle keep, made of pale gray stone. Dappled moonlight speckled the crumbled wreck in a way that made it look almost attractive, despite its sad state.

  As I gazed on it, a ripple of prickling pain ran down my arms from my shoulders and settled in my hands. I knew that feeling. It was the same sensation I’d experienced in the shrike’s lair, deep beneath Selvaria. The same tingle that had danced at the edges of my awareness as I stared at the apparition formed of equal parts hatred and mother’s love in a tiny village called Warsil.

  Corruption.

  In that moment, I named that feeling for certain, for the first time, and it etched itself indelibly upon my mind.

  As I stood there, taking in the scenery, it felt as though the world suddenly came into focus, as if I had been viewing everything through a dirty, warped lens and now it was clean.

  The world around me was hideous.

  Not in any sort of philosophical or existential way, either. On the forest floor, small plants grew twisted and black. Even the trees themselves looked bent beneath some invisible weight, ghostly pale in the dim light. The corruption wasn't confined to the ruins—it was everywhere, permeating everything around us like blight.

  A queasy feeling slithered through my guts and wrapped itself around my innards, and I put a hand to my stomach. I was looking at something a lot worse than anything I'd ever encountered before.

  Khaine stepped up beside me, the blade of his manna sword glowing brightly at his side. “The Arbiters used this place as a safe haven for nearly three hundred years in the time before the Master’s Council moved to the east. Any Arbiter operating in Grysalta knew that they could find shelter here, should they need it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “There’s a book in one of the Tower libraries that talks about this place,” Khaine went on. “Grysaltan legend at the time said that this keep was raised by one of the sorcerer kings during the early days through sheer will and magic alone, built stone by stone with his power.”

  “Sorcery can’t do that,” I said automatically, but looking at the place, I had to wonder.

  Khaine looked at me and grinned bleakly. “That’s what the common wisdom says, anyway. Impossible. The legends of using magic for construction are simply concocted from the minds of simple peasants, who were probably just in denial about their own slavery anyway.” He turned introspective for a moment. “I once saw a bridge spun entirely from manna crystal. I don’t see how that could have happened any other way.”

  A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the corruption emanating from the ruin. Just one small manna crystal was enough to suck the very life spirit from an average human being and transform them into a fel beast. A whole bridge made from it could only have been created for the Arbiters.

  “Where was this bridge?” I ventured after a moment.

  He shook his head. “It’s not important.”

  For a moment, I stood in silence, contemplating the crumbled keep. Most who became sorcerers did so for the power. They turned to the art to force their will on others, to reduce their enemies to piles of cinders or other such petty desires. Simple, direct force was the pinnacle of their ambition, and for those who survived the initial period of learning—most had their life force ripped out when attempting even the simplest of evocations—it inevitably led on a spiral toward self-destruction and eventually corruption. I’d encountered more than a few of those, like Trulia of the Thorn and many others, and they were little better than petty warlords who liked to execute their enemies just to see the blood flow. I had less contempt for a fel beast—at least they had no choice in their corruption.

  There were fewer, like me, who sought to use the manna in order to better understand the world and, by extension, life itself. Unfortunately, once they got a taste of power, most of them ended up on the same downward spiral.

  The thought of a group of sorcerers, working together to raise great works, to build instead of destroy, sent a pang of remorse through me. If such a thing were possible, no one had tried it anywhere in known history. I knew, because I’d studied history both known and unknown my whole life. The vision was grand, but humanity as I'd encountered it was simply too selfish to accomplish something like that.

  So then, my mind asked me. What explains you?

  What do you mean? I countered.

  You’ve spent a lot of time doing remarkably un-selfish things.

  No, I haven’t. Self-interest, all of it.

  Are you sure?

  I’d always considered myself a creature of self-interest. I never went out of my way for anyone, preferring to keep my skin intact. No one had ever stuck their neck out for me, so why would I have done the same for anyone else?

  What was the first time?

  My mind flashed back to that little village in the middle of nowhere. Warsil. Her pale blue eyes imploring me for help, even though she knew my secret. For the first time in my life, I’d felt compassion for the plight of another human being, seen beyond my own myopic point of view.

  A chill ran down my spine.

  That had been after I’d accidentally absorbed Gaerton Daen’s power.

  Had the manna begun to change me, even then? I’d assumed that it had begun the night I’d been forced to use the heartblade to save my pathetic life—that had been sel
f-interest, no doubt about it—but perhaps it had started sooner.

  Not exactly a pleasant thought.

  I looked up, my introspection interrupted as I realized that Khaine had already started walking. No more time for thinking. I wanted nothing more than to slow my steps, or even turn and run the other way, but I couldn’t. Corruption prickled at my neck and my arms and my mouth was dry and my hands trembled because I was terrified of what awaited us below, but I feared the razor edge of the Arbiter’s blade even more. So instead of doing anything that I wanted to do, I kept up with him, trying to stay alert.

  Khaine’s legs were longer than mine, with an easy, loping stride, and I had to take little half-steps in between to match his pace. As the stones grew nearer, I felt cold sweat beading on my forehead, and fear stabbed at my guts. From this angle, I could just make out a sliver of darkness marking the doorway where we would descend into the ancient Arbiter’s safe haven.

  At last, we reached the door, even though my stomach and my common sense had teamed up to form a mutiny that threatened to make me lose my lunch and run away screaming, but I roughly forced them down with my will. Somehow, despite the ruined state of the rest of the small castle, the square doorway still stood strong. It was weathered and beaten, and the door itself had long rotted away, but the stones seemed almost noble in their steadfast refusal to give way to time and the elements.

  Beyond lay nothing but blackness, and a slow, tingling throb of corruption.

  “Well,” Khaine said, breaking the silence at last in a soft voice. “Are you ready?”

  “N—no,” I stammered, unwillingly, and then a flush of embarrassment warmed my face. Biting down hard on the words, I forced down the fear that threatened to render me immobile and gathered my meager courage. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  He nodded, and with a measure of grace that I could never command, said nothing. The light from Khaine’s blade seemed somehow diminished as it projected into the blackness, though I knew it was merely an illusion of perception.