Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  Breakfast. Things rare in their lives. Jezzy scampered for the door with the coin and Willem just sank down on his heels where he stood, because he wasn’t there. He didn’t want to be there. He told the world so.

  “Pretty damn good,” Tewk said, and nudged him with his boot. “I know you’re there. Can you get us both through the palace gate?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I can.”

  “Willem,” Master said, and Willem got up, not feeling well at all. “Fetch me a scrap of paper, and a pen,” Master said, and Willem did that, one of the little pieces they used for spells.

  “Bigger than that,” Master said, so Willem brought that, and Master uncapped the inkwell, dipped the quill, and wrote symbols on the scrap of paper. “That’s an unlock,” Master said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Willem said. He could see how that was going to be useful.

  Master used the larger piece of paper and wrote something long and elaborate, in the twisty way Willem had never yet been able to master. When Master finished, he held up the paper, not quite giving it to him.

  “This,” Master said, “is a master’s paper. It ends your journeyman’s restrictions. You will be able to do a master’s spells if you take this. But if you take it, it will mark you as mine, and you will shine like a bonfire, once you leave the Alley, if you don’t take the Alley with you.”

  “Maybe I should just be quiet, Master.”

  “And what when you do get there? What will you do?”

  “I’d hope you’d tell me, Master.”

  A shake of Master’s head. “I can’t imagine what you’ll do. But you’ll smell like me. And you won’t be me. Do you understand?”

  He was a journeyman of Illusion. He understood instantly how that helped. “And the—the problem we don’t talk about…can it tell?”

  “Oh, maybe. Maybe it’ll know who’s really been holding the Alley together. It’ll know who could have brought it across town. But it’s not altogether here, with all that means. It has its limitations.”

  An illusionist understood that, too.

  “Don’t kill,” Master said. “Look at me. Don’t intend to kill. Especially not by magic. That takes you down a path you don’t ever want to set foot on. Do you understand me?”

  He did. He nodded toward Tewk. “That’s his job.”

  “Good lad. Just do what you know how to do. Take this. I advise you take it. You’ve earned it. Gods willing, you will earn it.”

  He reached and took it from Master’s hand, and a tingle went through his hand and up his arm and to his heart. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t anything. He really wasn’t anything. He looked at his own hand and couldn’t see it.

  I want me back! he thought, and there he was.

  “That was good,” Tewk said.

  “He needs to think,” Master said. “Go sit down in the corner, Willem, and think a while.”

  Just like with important lessons. Go think. He did. And he tried not to think about demons. That was how they got in, if you started thinking about them. He thought about the whole Alley not being there, but that wasn’t too bright: if Wiggy or Hersey stepped out back and missed the steps they’d be mad. Really mad.

  He marshaled his thoughts in a parade through what he had to do. Master had taught him how to do that. And everything was there. If nobody startled him, he felt stronger than he ever had.

  Fool, maybe.

  But a wizard couldn’t doubt. Every illusion came apart when you started doubting. He sat there concentrating on believing he could do most anything, but not being specific about what he could do, until Jezzy tapped at the door and brought in the biggest breakfast anybody had ever seen: Jezzy was sweating from just carrying it.

  They ate. They had a good breakfast, and water—there was beer, too, but Master said they should save that until later, and Tewk said that was a good idea. Maybe he’d had Wiggy’s beer.

  Master clapped Willem on the shoulder as he stood in the doorway, and Willem took one scared look back, afraid it was going to break his concentration. He looked at Almore and Jezzy, and the little room with all its shelves and books and papers, and their little table and benches and their pallets, and the faded red curtain—Master had a bed beyond that, in a little nook.

  It was home.

  Last, he looked Master in the eyes. They were gray and watery but they were still sharp enough to see all the way inside him, he was very sure of that.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and went out into the Alley. His Alley. With Tewk striding along with him.

  “You lead,” Tewk said, which didn’t make him feel that much better.

  “Mmm,” he said, trying not to talk. He was thinking hard, exactly how the Alley was, how there was just one door, to the Ox, and that was just a little blind pocket of an Alley, nothing interesting at all. He wasn’t interesting. He was just a kid in un-dyed linsey-woolsey, which mostly ended up gray or nondescript brown, a kid with brown hair, a nondescript face, maybe acne—nobody would look twice; and Tewk was just a workman with a hat, just a skullcap, and needed a shave, and carried a sack lunch and a hammer, which wasn’t against the law. They immediately found the Ox in front of them, and went in by the back door.

  “Say, here!” Hersey said. “You think you can just walk through wi’ them dusty boots? We’re not the public walk, here! I just swept that floor!”

  Hersey didn’t recognize them. Not at all.

  “Sorry,” Willem said in a different voice, and he and Tewk walked out through the front door and kept going, up the street where he had never gone.

  But he didn’t let himself think that. He came up this way a lot. So did Tewk. They were father and son, well, maybe a youngish uncle, and he was learning stonemasonry, and there was something—a cracked stone—wanting repairing up the hill.

  Maybe it was inside the palace gate, that stone. Stones cracked in summer heat, just now and again, especially along old cracks, and they might want that fixed. They did. They’d be taking the measure for it and matching some chips for the color: he knew about stonemasons. His father had been—

  His uncle was. Uncle Tewk. They were guild folk, and important in their own way, and gate guards were going to remember them when they saw them, that they had been coming and going through that gate for days.

  He couldn’t sweat. It was a warm day, but he couldn’t sweat. They were going to do this in broad daylight, he and Tewk, and he didn’t think about what came next, just getting themselves and their business through that gate.

  He’d never been near this place, not even before the duchess died. The gates loomed up, tall, with the figures of two lions on painted leather, red and brown. The guards looked at them in complete boredom. They were supposed to be here. They were a little late. The guards opened the gates for them, and they walked through, under the second gate, which could be slammed down in a hurry.

  “Signal tower’s to the right,” Tewk muttered, which shook Willem’s concentration, scarily so.

  “Shhsh,” Willem said fiercely, and Tewk shut up.

  But saying that about the signal tower had made him think about the signal, and the army, and—

  He had to stop it. Uncle Tewk. They had stone chips to compare. Had to fix the tower, was what. Broken stone. They could chisel it out and slip a new one in, cut to perfection.

  “Broken stone,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I wondered,” Tewk said.

  It got them across the cobbled inner courtyard and over toward the tower, at least. Steps went up the side of the wall at that point.

  But—

  “You!” someone yelled.

  I can’t, Willem thought, turning on his heel. It was one of the black-caps, with a sword out, with an angry look on his face. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…

  Steel whispered beside him. Tewk had a dagger out. A dagger, for the gods’ sake—it wasn’t enough.

  Was a big sword. Tewk…

  Tewk
was a black-cap officer.

  The man stopped dead and looked confused. And saluted.

  Tewk didn’t move.

  “Sorry, sir,” the man said. “Sorry.”

  “Good you are,” Tewk said. “Get up there and lay a fire. Big one.” This with a nod to the looming tower. “Put a squad on it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man sheathed his sword and went running.

  Tewk wasn’t stupid. Willem was sure of that, now. He stood there shaking in the knees, and Tewk stood there solid as the stone tower itself.

  “Pretty good,” Tewk said. “Pretty damned good. You don’t even write ’em down. Never saw that before.”

  “Who was I?” Willem remembered including himself in the disguise, and now it was coming unraveled.

  “An old man. Pretty scary old man at that.”

  “That’s good.” He’d broken out in sweat. They had to get out of here. There were gates and walls between them and freedom, and Master had said he had to bring the Alley with him, but he didn’t see the Alley anymore. Here was the palace grounds, a huge stone courtyard, towering stone walls, slit windows, and massive doors. They were in this place, and there was something dark inside, and there was no leaving until they’d done something he didn’t want to think about—

  Which was bad, because he had to think about it and get them in deeper before he could get them out again.

  Who’d get to the duke? Who’d be safe going through those doors?

  Soldiers.

  Maybe.

  They’re all mercs. Nobody wants the black-caps traipsing through, not even Wiggy.

  Servants. He saw two men in livery crossing the yard. Which he didn’t see well enough. He needed to see it to cast it.

  “Come on,” he said to Tewk, suddenly in a fever to get through this, get Tewk where he needed to go—not to think beyond that. Not to think about that dark thing. He knew what that was. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t think on it. He thought just about those two servants, and the closer he got, the better he knew what he had to cast. Only fancier. Fancy clothes gave orders. Plain clothes took them.

  The two servants were headed in the door. Merc guards there opened it and let them through.

  Let them through, too, Willem thought. Beyond was dark, dark. He didn’t know if Tewk could see it, but he felt it crawling through the hallways, as if all the fortress was one great beast.

  The door boomed shut. There was spotty lighting, a couple of lamps. The dark was real. It was around them.

  Stone steps ahead of them led up. It hadn’t been a main door. Stone steps at the right led down and a smell of cooking wafted up. Meat roasting. Bread baking. That was the kitchens.

  Where did dukes live, anyway?

  This time it was Tewk who said, “Come on. This way.”

  He climbed, keeping up with Tewk. They were two fancy-dressed servants on a mission.

  They were two fancy-dressed servants. Tewk was the senior. It was all right. Everything was all right.

  They reached an upstairs hall, and it was amazing. Tapestries. Oil lamps. Slit windows that let in white daylight. A carpet on the wooden floor, and then, around a left-hand corner, a bigger room and a stone floor past open doors, and huge hangings and a number of people standing around a man at a little table, who was writing.

  But it wasn’t the man who was writing that was best-dressed. It was the dark-haired, glowering man in the middle of the bystanders. That man was dressed in brocade and velvet and chain-mail and he wore a sword low-slung at his hip. He was as big as Tewk, and his glance swept toward them like the look of the biggest, meanest dog in town.

  Scary man. Scary. Willem stopped. Tewk didn’t. Tewk kept right on going.

  He’s a servant, Willam thought about Tewk. He’s supposed to be there.

  Something slithered across the floor. It was black and it was like fog and wasn’t just on the floor. It was on eye level and it was fast and it wrapped around the man in brocade as his sword came out.

  Tewk looks like that, Willem thought, and instantly honed that thought like a knife: Tewk looks just like that!

  Tewk did. There were two of them, and the man at the table grabbed papers and scrambled and the men around their duke drew swords as Jindus did, as Tewk did—with all that black swirling around and around like smoke in a chimney. The two swordsmen went at it, circling like the smoke, swords grating and ringing—but all the bystanders just stood, swords drawn, but nobody moving, nobody able to see anything but Jindus, twice.

  Except Tewk’s better, Willem thought. Tewk’s stronger. Scarier.

  A sword swung and one of the two went down, blood spurting clear across the room, spattering the men, the pillars, everything. And one Jindus stood there, spattered, too, sword lifted…

  And all that smoke whirled around and around and magic hit like a hammer, magic aimed at magic. Willem staggered where he stood, and didn’t see what had hit him, just felt it, and shoved back. The Alley was where he was. The Alley was here, and men yelled and swore, voices echoing off what wasn’t here at all.

  The magic lashed at him like a whip. It was dark, it was angry, and it was scared, and it came from one old man, one old man who stood over in the shadows, over beyond Tewk, who was backing up from the advance of three of Jindus’s men.

  Snakes, Willem thought, and there were all of a sudden snakes in their way.

  But that left him open, and the magic that hit made his heart jump, and he was on his hands and knees, trying to get up, trying to defend himself from that old man, from that thing that wasn’t here, but almost was. It was hungry for the blood. It drank it. It grew stronger. And stronger.

  But it was crazy, too. Crazy, and mean, and mad.

  I’m not here, Willem thought. And that left the old man. Miphrynes is. He’s right—

  An arm like iron snatched him right off the floor, up to his feet, and a length of sword was out in front of him in Tewk’s strong hand, between him and that old man.

  We’re not here, he thought, fast.

  The dark reared up above all the room like an angry horse, and then plunged down at the floor, spreading in all directions at once. It broke like a wave against the walls, and crested over, and flowed backward, all the waves headed at each other, with a shriek that racketed through Willem’s bones. The men went down. Only the old man, Miphrynes, was on his feet, lifting a staff that glowed with light the color of which had never been, not in the whole world. The eyes didn’t want to see it. The heart didn’t want to remember it. The ears didn’t want to hear the sound that racketed through the room, and the palace, and the walls.

  Tewk’s arm tightened until it all but cut off Willem’s wind.

  “Demon,” Tewk yelled in his ear.

  It was. And there was one man in the middle of that roiling smoke, and Miphrynes began to scream, and to scream, and to scream.

  I don’t hear it, Willem said to himself. But he couldn’t shut it all out. Tewk doesn’t hear it. We’re not here.

  It stopped finally. The smoke went away. And there were just bones, and black robes, and a charred stick across them. There was a scatter of armed dead men. There was Jindus, staring rigidly at the ceiling, pale as parchment.

  There was a great, deep silence—in this room.

  Outside, far away, out in the courtyard, maybe, men were shouting. People outside were still alive.

  “I take it that was the wizard,” Tewk said, letting up on his grip. “Are you all right, boy?”

  It took three tries to say yes.

  “Jindus was easier than I thought,” Tewk said, and nodded toward the pile of fresh bones. “That one—that one put up a hell of a fight.”

  “Did,” Willem said. He was on his own feet, now, and there was something over there in that pile of bones, something dangerous that as good as glowed when he thought about it. He took a deep breath and went over and got it, a small book on a chain, which came loose from the bones when he pulled on it. He didn’t want to loo
k at it. He knew better. He went over to the fireplace and threw it in.

  “Ugh,” he said. And watched it burn.

  “That’s not all that’s got to burn,” Tewk said, from where he stood. “Boy. Look at me.”

  He wasn’t a boy. Not now. Wanted to be, but even magic couldn’t manage that. Tewk looked at him and something changed in Tewk’s expression, something serious and sober.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Tewk said. “Have you got one more trick in you, son? Can you get us over to that signal tower?”

  Willem thought about it. A thick fog seemed to have settled in his brain. They were in a safe place at the moment, because everybody was dead. Demons were like that. That was what Master had told him: you could control them by giving them what they wanted, which wasn’t any sort of control at all—it was still what they wanted, after all, since they were still in their Place. And if you were going to bring a demon all the way into your Place so you could control it, you still had a problem, because you had to give them a shape to live in and if you wanted it to do something for you, you had to find something else it wanted. That meant you had to be stronger than that body was—Miphrynes hadn’t been stronger than Jindus—or smart enough to keep outsmarting the demon.

  And Miphrynes might not have been smarter than this particular demon, after all. It had gotten its blood. A lot of it. And a few souls. And it was back in its safe Place. Wherever that was. One hoped it was back in its Place.

  He wanted out of here. Right now. But wishing wouldn’t do it. Feet had to.

  “Willem!” Tewk caught up at the door, and grabbed his arm. “The place is crawling with mercs. They don’t know Jindus is dead. They might’ve heard something going on. But can you—”

  “You’re Jindus,” he said, and Tewk was. It wasn’t even a hard piece of illusion.

  Tewk looked down at his hand, which was browner, and scarred, just like that of Jindus, who was dead back there on the floor.

  Tewk looked a little uneasy.

  “You can do it,” Willem said. “We go down there and you tell them to light the fire.”

  “Works if nobody got out of that room,” Tewk said. “Where’s the old man? The scribe?”