The Sorcerer

by Denning, Troy

  Daring to raise her head and speak more forcefully, she said, “For too long we have been trusting others to do what we must do for ourselves. No one can break this siege but us.”

  “Then we are doomed,” Kiinyon said. “Without help, we are no match—”

  “When are you going to understand, Lord Commander?” Keya interrupted. “There is no help.”

  “Mind your tone,” Kiinyon ordered. “Lord Duirsar asked for your opinion. He did not give you leave—”

  “I have heard you calling to Khelben and the others,” Keya continued, growing ever bolder. “Have they come? Have any of the Chosen?”

  Kiinyon frowned at her insolence, but said, “They will.”

  “Before the mythal falls?” Duirsar asked. “I have been calling to the Chosen, as well. Only Syluné answers, and just to send word that the others cannot come.”

  The despair that came to Kiinyon’s face almost sank Keya into despondency as well.

  “Our situation is not hopeless,” she said, as much to herself as to Kiinyon. “We have resources and have only to use them.”

  “How?” Lord Duirsar asked. “Until you tell me that, you have told me nothing at all. If we dare not cross the Meadow Wall to meet them, and we cannot win by standing behind it, what are we to do?”

  “Make them pay,” Keya said. “If they want to attack the mythal, we must make them pay to do it.”

  “Again, I ask how?”

  “With these,” said Kuhl, one of the two humans flanking her in the company’s front rank. Burly and black-bearded, he was about as big as a rothé and woollier than a thkaerth, with a swarthy round face and hands the size of a plates. He stepped forward holding his glassy darksword in hand. “We sneak out there with the Cold Hand and start cutting them down, one at a time.”

  “And we keep doing it until they all leave or they’re all dead,” added Burlen, the human standing to her other side. “Or until there aren’t any more of us to go back.”

  “That’s the way we do it in Vaasa,” Kuhl said.

  Keya smiled up at her mountainous friends, then nodded to Lord Duirsar and said, “We teleport out there in small strike teams, hit hard, and come back.”

  Duirsar smiled. “And we see how determined they are, for a change.”

  “Risk the darkswords?” Kiinyon asked, shaking his head. “Every one we lose out there is one we won’t have in Evereska if they—”

  The lord commander was interrupted first by the crackling roar of an erupting fireball, then by a chorus of anguished screams. Keya and the others spun toward the sound and were astonished to see a battle mage and his escorts rolling on the ground in flames, a wagon-sized ring of smoke above them rapidly contracting around a breach in the mythal.

  Before the hole could close, a crimson sphere came streaking across the Meadow Wall in their direction. Lord Duirsar flung up his hand, raising a spell-guard with enough speed to convince Keya that the rumors about him being one of Evereska’s secret high mages were true. The fireball flattened against the mystic shield and crackled into nothingness, leaving only a faint orange glow to mark where it had struck.

  Duirsar watched only long enough to be certain that the mythal had sealed itself again, then turned to back to Kiinyon and said, “I would say that decides the matter, wouldn’t you?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Burlen and Kuhl. “Teams of six? Four warriors and two battle mages?”

  Unhappy at being left out of the planning and quite sure she was the only one who understood why the high lord was suggesting those particular numbers, Keya said, “That will be fine, milord—one mage to teleport and one to cast a decoy.”

  “Decoy?” Burlen asked.

  “So you have time to attack,” Duirsar said, nodding his approval to Keya. “Otherwise the phaerimm will be on you before you can recover from the afterdaze.”

  “Recover?” Kuhl scoffed. “We aren’t going to be there that long. Just give us mages who can get us out as quick as they get us in—and the teams should have three warriors, not four.”

  “Only three?” Duirsar asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Kiinyon said.

  He flashed a smile at Keya—as close to an apology as she would ever receive from the great hero, she knew—then he set about organizing the Company of the Cold Hand into trios. Though the company had less than twenty darkswords borrowed from the Vaasans who had fallen when the phaerimm escaped their prison, Kiinyon had close to a hundred of Evereska’s finest spellblades to choose from. The darkswords had been forged by the archwizard Melegaunt Tanthul over a hundred years earlier and passed down from parent to child for four generations, and they would freeze the hand of any wielder not of the owning family. To get around the problem, for each sword, the Company of the Cold Hand had five warriors who passed the sword from hand to hand as their fingers grew too numb to hold onto it.

  For these attacks, there would be only one wielder for each sword, so Kiinyon was free to chose the most experienced and powerful spellblades available. When he came to Keya and the two Vaasans, the only three members of the company who could hold their darkswords as long as they wished, the lord commander at first assigned Burlen and Kuhl to separate trios. When Keya insisted on being assigned to a group as well, they insisted on teaming with her.

  “Dex is already mad as a dragon about her taking his darksword,” Burlen explained.

  As Dexon’s lover—or more precisely, the mother of his unborn child—Keya had become a member of his family and able to hold his darksword without freezing her hand. With Dexon still struggling to recover from the wound he had received in the last big battle, she had taken his sword and rushed off to join the fight when the phaerimm began to attack. Dexon had chased her down Treetop and halfway across the Starmeadow screaming for her to bring it back and stay there were he could defend her. Keya half expected to see him come hopping out into the meadow at any moment, dragging his spell-withered leg along and yelling all the time that they had to protect her. Humans were strange that way, believing they could hoard what they loved like gold and keep it safely hidden away in their vaults.

  Lord Duirsar returned with seven of Evereska’s most powerful battle mages, most of them instructors in the Academy of Magic—when there had still been such a thing. Kiinyon explained the plan, then arranged five of the teams into a triangle, with the wizard in the middle and the three warriors ringing him, facing outward. The sixth team—Keya’s—he arranged in a square, taking the fourth side himself.

  “You’re sure this is going to work?” Kiinyon asked.

  “Like grease on ice,” Kuhl answered. “When we get there, just keep hold of my belt with your free hand and swing with your sword hand.”

  “Very well.”

  Kiinyon drew his borrowed darksword and signaled the attack. Keya heard the battle mage start his spell, then there came a dark eternity of falling. Her stomach rose into her chest, and she grew weak and dizzy and cold. A dead silence filled her ears, and she felt nothing but her own heart hammering fast and hard in her chest—and she was somewhere else, the ground rumbling beneath her feet and her eyes and nose burning with the brimstone stench of Hell.

  “Swing!” shouted a familiar gruff voice.

  Reminded of the sword in her hand, Keya swung even as her mind struggled to make sense of her smoky, fire-blasted surroundings. She hit nothing, but heard off behind her shoulder the wet slap of a sword cleaving flesh and spun instinctively toward the sound, bringing her darksword around in a vicious backhand.

  This time, Keya hit something and felt her blade bite deep. Blood, hot and sour-smelling, splashed her across the jaw and throat. A squealing whirlwind filled the air with dirt and ash, then golden bolts of magic appeared from nowhere and began to ricochet off her spell-turning bracers. Some of them came bouncing back past her head, deflected by identical bracers worn by all the warriors in the Company of the Cold Hand.

  Keya glimpsed an expanse of thorny scales and finally recalled
where she was and what she was doing there. She reversed her blade and brought it back across the phaerimm’s body, this time stopping at the end of the stroke to plunge the tip in deep.

  The creature screamed again in its windy language. Its tail came arcing up at her face, the barbed tip already dripping with its paralyzing poison. Kiinyon reached past her shoulder, catching the attack on his borrowed darksword and flicking the barb away before it could strike. Keya thanked him by bringing her own weapon, still plunged deep into their foe, down the length of its serpentine body.

  The phaerimm pulled itself off her blade by floating a few feet backward. Keya thought it would teleport to safety, until Burlen’s darksword came tumbling past and split the thing the rest of the way through. It fell to the ground in a pile of blood and entrails.

  Burlen extended his hand toward the sword. It rose out of the gore and tumbled back into his grasp, then Kuhl’s big hand grabbed Keya by the belt and pulled her back into position.

  “Time to go.”

  Realizing that she had released her own grip, Keya started to reach back for Burlen’s belt—then heard someone cry out from above.

  “Keya?” The voice was so weak and hoarse as to be unrecognizable, but it was speaking Elvish. “Can that be you?”

  Keya looked up the vale, and two terraces above, saw a half-starved wood elf scout peering through a gap in a wrecked wall. Over her shoulders and head, she had a makeshift camouflage tarp covered with withered grape vines, but Keya could see enough of the scout’s face to tell that her red-rimmed eyes were as sunken as a banshee’s and her lips cracked and bloody with thirst. A hundred paces behind her, a mixed company of beholders and illithids were rushing down the vale to investigate.

  “It’s time!” Burlen urged. “Grab hold.”

  “Wait!” Keya called as she started toward the elf. “She needs help.”

  “No time,” Kuhl said. Still holding her by the belt, he lifted her back into the fighting square. “We kill and run.”

  Keya tried to break free, but the Vaasan’s grasp was too powerful.

  “I can’t just leave her!”

  “And you won’t help her by getting yourself killed,” Kiinyon said. To the battle mage, he added, “Get us there and I’ll—”

  The battle mage cast his spell, her stomach rose into her chest, and there came that cold eternity of falling. A dead silence filled her ears and she began to feel queasy, then she was someplace not too different, the ground still shaking beneath her feet and the stench of brimstone still burning her nostrils.

  Keya felt the weight of the darksword in her hand, and recalling the last time they had teleported, she began to swing.

  Her sword hit nothing, but a familiar elf voice cried out, “What are you doing, you bear-stinking oafs? Hold your blades!”

  The Vaasans had picked up enough Elvish to realize that they were being addressed, and Keya glanced over her shoulder to find an exhausted wood elf glaring up at them. Even as haggard as the elf was, Keya recognized the brown eyes and cupid’s bow smile as those of her brother Galaeron’s favorite scout, Takari Moonsnow. Lying on the ground and covered to the shoulders in dirt and withered grape vines, it looked as though Takari was crawling up out of the ground, a sight that only added to the confusion of Keya’s afterdaze.

  “Takari?” Keya gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  A rumbling cloud of black fume appeared two terraces down and began to rain tiny spheres of magic. As the balls struck the ground, they exploded into crackling sprays of fire, lightning, or hissing green fog. Keya felt her knees weaken as she realized how close the strike had come—how close she had made it come—to the spell sprays.

  “Good thing you moved!” Takari said.

  The withered grape vines rolled aside and Takari emerged from beneath the camouflage tarp. She was protected by little more than a ragged suit of leather perforated in so many places it could no longer be called armor. Nor was she wearing any magic—not the boots of secret passing given to all rangers who served Evereska, nor even a pair of spell turning bracers or one of the mind-shielding helms Evermeet had sent to equip the elven army.

  Keya motioned Takari into the group as a rosy glow fell over them. She turned to see the pink cone of a magic-killing ray illuminating them from the great central eye of a beholder on the next terrace. With the beholder were another half-dozen of its kind and twice that number of mind flayers.

  “Lolth’s fangs!” Kiinyon cursed. “Over the wall!”

  Keya had no chance to obey. Kuhl was already lifting her by her belt, wrapping her into an arm the size of a thkaerth and diving over the wall. Keya barely had time to turn the blade of her darksword away before they came down on the other side, Kuhl crashing to the ground like a magic-felled rothé and Keya landing atop him as light as a feather. Burlen flashed past overhead and smashed down beside them in a heap of clattering armor.

  “Stay low!” Kiinyon yelled from somewhere beyond Keya’s feet. “Ready your magic bolts.”

  “Magic bolts?” the battle mage gasped. “We need to leave … and now!”

  “Do it!” Kiinyon ordered. “Kuhl, Burlen, watch our backs.”

  It sounded to Keya like the lord commander was preparing for a holding action instead of a fast retreat, but after coming so close to causing a disaster just moments earlier, she knew better than to question the order. She slipped off Kuhl barely in time to avoid being crushed as he rolled to his stomach and crawled off across the terrace.

  The pink radiance of the magic-killing beam vanished, and the mordant smell of rock dust began to fill the air as the beholders swept their disintegration rays back and forth across the wall. Keya readied her magic bolts, then lay listening to the sizzle of dissolving stone as she awaited Kiinyon’s order. He seemed to take forever, though perhaps it only felt that way because she knew the phaerimm who had assaulted their previous position would know where they were and would be moving up to attack.

  Finally, in a surprisingly calm voice, Kiinyon said, “Beholders only. Three, two, now.”

  Timing her move so she came up behind the sweep of the disintegration ray, Keya peered over the top of the smoking wall and loosed her spell at the second beholder in line. Three golden bolts streaked from her fingertips, striking the central eye and causing it to erupt in a bloody spray. The creature screeched in pain and began to spray the beams of its remaining eyes haphazardly along the length of the wall.

  Rising alongside Keya, Takari fired five bolts into the first beholder in line and dropped it on the spot. Kiinyon and the battle mage destroyed the rest of the creatures, the wizard spreading his attacks among three of the eye tyrants and leaving nothing but starbursts of red gore, Kiinyon’s magic splitting both targets cleanly down the center.

  “Cover!” the lord commander ordered.

  Keya and Takari dropped behind the wall side-by-side, then heard the heart-stopping rip of a fire storm erupt behind them. Recalling that Takari had no magical protection, Keya turned to throw herself in front of the wood elf. She found herself looking down the throat of a fiery spray of tiny red spheres. A handful of the flickering spheres—it could have been three or thirteen—came arcing in her direction, then encountered the magic of her spell-turning bracers and ricocheted off in a smoking meshwork of flame.

  Keya landed lightly on her side and knew instantly by the stench of burned leather and charred flesh that she had not prevented all of the fiery balls from getting through. She sprang to her feet facing the direction of attack, trying through smell and guesswork to place herself in front of the wounded wood elf.

  “How are you back there?”

  On the terrace below, she saw a pair of phaerimm moving behind the half-ruined wall opposite her, floating away from each other with only their arms and toothy mouths exposed. There was no sign of Burlen or Kuhl, though Keya knew better than to worry about that. The Vaasans had an uncanny knack for remaining unseen, even in the barest ground, until they attacked. Keya thought
it had something to do with the darkswords, but if so, it was a trick Dexon had not yet taught her.

  When Takari did not answer, Keya asked again, “You alive back there?”

  “Do I sound dead?” Takari’s voice was thin with pain. “How are you doing that?”

  “What?”

  A wave of ash and dust began to roll up the terrace toward them. Keya knew that, whatever was coming, she could not shield Takari from it by standing in front of her.

  Keya started, “On my—”

  Way ahead of her, Takari landed on Keya’s back and slipped an arm over her collar to hold on. Keya could feel the other arm hanging limply against her back.

  “The darksword,” Takari said. “How come it isn’t freezing your hand?”

  Keya glanced down at the weapon in her hand but was spared the necessity of explaining her circumstances as the wave arrived with a low, barely audible rumble.

  “Jump it!” Kiinyon yelled.

  Keya took three running steps and leaped.

  Though Takari was small for a wood elf and Keya’s muscles were hardened by half a year of military service, she was still not strong enough to carry them both over something that was nearly as high as her chest. At the last minute, she decided her only hope was to dive.

  The wave caught Keya just below the hips. Though her bracers protected her from the magic itself, the momentum of the impact numbed her legs and flipped her high into the air. Takari’s arm slipped free, and the Green elf went tumbling away. The world flashed past in a whirling kaleidoscope of blue sky and blackened ground, gray terrace wall and flickering orange mythal. Keya felt the darksword fly from her hand, then she crashed down flat on her back and felt the air leave her lungs in a single pained howl.

  A deafening boom sounded from somewhere above her. Keya craned her neck around and saw the wall she had just left erupting into the air. She watched in dazed fascination as the dry-laid rocks—each the size of an elf’s head—separated from each other and flew off in their own directions.

  As the stones finally reached the top of their arcs, it occurred to her that what went up usually came down—and that the gray shapes rapidly growing larger in the air above were going to come down on her. Keya rolled to her side and wrapped her arms around her head, then counted one, two, three nearby thuds before the first crashing thump struck her pauldron.