The Sorcerer

by Denning, Troy

  The enclave—or rather, the black cloud surrounding the enclave—dropped an abrupt five hundred feet, sending scores of veserabs tumbling through the air and bringing the city approximately level with Ruha’s hiding place. Though it was difficult to see much through the billowing murk, every so often she glimpsed a crag of stone cliff sweeping past, or an expanse of black wall plummeting down out of the shadows only to suddenly reverse direction and vanish back into the gloom.

  Shade was wobbling, Ruha realized, as though someone were struggling to keep it aloft. She could only guess what that meant for her friends, but it could not be good. Certainly, they were not the ones attempting to save the city.

  “Storm?” Ruha said aloud. “How fare you? I am here.”

  Knowing the Weave would carry no more than a few words to Storm’s ear, Ruha stopped there. Several more times, a craggy cliff emerged from the black mists and swept past. Each time, the stony face seemed a little hazier and indistinct, as though she were looking through a denser fog—or more of it. Despite this, she quickly began to recognize the features of the cliff and realized that the city was no longer sinking.

  Someone was saving it.

  “Storm?” Ruha called again. “Khelben? Are you there?”

  When no response came she tried Laeral, then Alustriel, and finally she received an answer.

  The battle went badly, and I cannot contact them either. Even coming to Ruha through the Weave, Alustriel’s voice sounded weak and full of pain. I was wounded and forced to leave. Is Shade still …?

  It stopped sinking. Ruha replied using Alustriel’s spell. What that means, I don’t know.

  Dove was injured as well, Alustriel reported. I hesitate to ask, but—

  I’ll learn what I can, Ruha offered.

  The rumble of a collapsing building—or perhaps several of them—sounded somewhere inside the enclave, then a huge cascade of rubble tumbled out of the cloud and splashed into Shadow Lake.

  The situation here is unsteady, Ruha sent, you may not hear from me for some time.

  Thank you, Alustriel said. Be careful. Dove and I will return as soon as we are well enough to help.

  Ruha watched until the rubble had stopped splashing into the lake, then she drizzled a little saliva on her hand. She had not used her magic for fear of alerting a Shadovar patrol to her presence, but Alustriel’s request rendered that fear irrelevant. The Shining Lady would never have asked for help, were she not worried that Galaeron’s plan had gone terribly wrong. Ruha made a wiping motion in the air before her, at the same time using the elemental magic favored by desert witches to cast a spell of clear seeing.

  The shadow mist grew transparent, so long as she looked straight ahead. For the first time, she saw Shade unmasked. The city of grand palaces and imposing edifices that had seemed so breathtaking was gone. In its place hung a jumbled mountain of shabby tenements and dilapidated mansions, collapsing one after the other as the enclave lurched about like a camel on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Even the overturned peak upon which it rested was flaky disintegrating shale instead of hard granite.

  Pouring down the face of the mountain was a stunning thread of silver liquid, not so much falling into the lake as stretching down through the surface. Whether it actually touched bottom or continued through it down into the heart of the Phaerlin was impossible to say, but Ruha knew by how the strand remained tight from top to bottom that it was not falling water. She followed its shining line up to the source and discovered that it came from a cleft in a red, heart-shaped boulder lodged in a horizontal fissure about halfway up the mountain.

  Swinging about beneath the boulder, affixed to it by some means not apparent at that distance, was a pudgy little shape with a pair of tiny nubs rising from the top of his head. Ruha needed no more magic to recognize what she was seeing. She knew a pair of cuckold’s antlers when she saw them.

  It was Malik’s accursed fortune that the Shadovar had to be the worst smiths on this plane or any other. He was hanging with his feet braced against the lower lip of the sun slit, trying to pull the Karsestone—which stood a full head higher than he was tall—through an opening that rose only to his chin. One of the links in his manacle chain had opened. The gap was not large, but given his strength and his pitiful condition even that much was a comment on the sorry state of Shadovar metalworking.

  “Cyric!” he called.

  He continued to pull, but kept a careful eye on the link.

  “The One—”

  The cleft swept upward as the city began another of its wild oscillations. For perhaps the hundredth time, Malik found himself tumbling down toward the opposite corner. He could think of nothing but the weak chain, of what would become of him if the link opened and he went tumbling into the lake below. Drowning would be the least of it. Thirsty as he was, it might even be pleasant. Afterward, though, the things that would happen to his spirit if he failed Cyric and died … that he could not even bear to contemplate.

  The free manacle struck him in the head, and the chain jerked him along upside-down. He slammed into the upper lip of the sun slit and flipped down in front of the tumbling Karsestone just in time to catch a long spray of whole magic straight in the face. He began to cough violently, then the boulder was rolling onto his chest. Ribs crackled, his breath left him in a scream, and the stone stopped. On top of him.

  Malik cursed and kicked and shoved, but the thing would not budge. It was wedged in place against the ceiling of the slit, which meant he had somehow—at last—dragged it into the opening.

  He craned his neck to the side, and through the cascade of silvery magic pouring down over his face, he glimpsed a ragged notch in the upper lip of the sun slit. Malik began to believe he might really succeed in stealing the stone. That he would no doubt be killed in the process was an unpleasant consequence, but in his service to Cyric, he had suffered many things far worse.

  The pain was beyond belief, and it was impossible to draw breath, but Malik had long ago learned to ignore minor inconveniences such as those. He hooked his heels over the lip of the opening and pulled. The Karsestone slipped a little—and more weight settled on his chest.

  Maybe that meant there would be more room at the top. Malik pulled harder with his legs. Something snapped in his chest. He pulled harder and shoved with his arms. Nothing moved, but he did grow dizzy from lack of air. Thus reminded that the stone was laying on him, he saw that if he could only get out from beneath it, there would be room for it to fall completely on its side and slide out into the empty air.

  Lacking any other means of extracting himself, Malik straightened his legs and began to swing them back and forth in a widening arc, trying to work first his hips free, then the rest of his body as well. Behind him, the roar and crash of screaming Shadovar and tumbling stone rose and faded in time to the wild oscillations of the enclave. The Karsestone pressed more heavily as the slit swung downward. Malik’s vision closed in, and stars began to appear around the edges of the darkening tunnel. The rush of oblivion filled his ears, then the slit reached the apogee of its swing and started back down.

  The weight all but vanished. Malik flung his legs down in the direction they were traveling and felt his hips slip out from beneath the boulder. He rolled to his side and pushed, hard, and was free.

  The Karsestone rocked toward him.

  “Devil rock!”

  Malik pushed off and pivoted on his hip, whirling out of its path and back into the loom chamber. The Karsestone settled on its side, rocked to the right, rocked to the left, and slipped over the edge.

  The manacle stretched Malik’s arm out full, and he thought his hand would pop free of his wrist. Instead, he flew out the sun slit after it and found himself following the Karsestone down through a swirling cloud of veserab riders. The boulder struck glancing blows to two beasts and sent them tumbling and hissing away, then finally caught one square between the wings. The impact slowed their fall just long enough for a little slack to develop in the chain th
at connected Malik to the stone. The rider slipped past, bloody and twisted on one side and the mount broken and screeching on the other, then the purple waters of Shadow Lake grew visible no more than a thousand feet below.

  Malik smiled.

  “Cyric!” he screamed. “Hear me now, Cyric, the One—”

  When he cried the last word, no sound came from his mouth. The lake continued to come up beneath him, though with the ferocious wind filling his eyes with tears, it was all but impossible to see. He tried again and remained as mute as a tortoise. He cursed Shar, thinking she was only trying to protect her prize, then glimpsed a dark shape angling down to intercept him. Thinking it was only an alert Shadovar lord, Malik reached for his stolen dagger—and instantly found himself engulfed in a web of sticky magic strands.

  In a web of sticky strands of Weave magic.

  Malik stopped falling, and wailed more in frustration than pain as the Karsestone stretched his manacle chain taut—again—and jerked his shoulder out of its socket. He thought the terrible strain would tear off his arm. Instead, the boulder stopped falling, and he found himself staring out a small gap down his manacle chain to the open link. The gap was as wide as a dagger blade and growing before the one eye that could see it.

  Malik tried to see who had captured him, but the magic web held his head too tightly for it to turn. It hardly mattered. He knew without looking who it was. She had a gift for arriving when he most needed her to be somewhere else. They turned and started across the lake toward the Scimitar Mountains.

  “Where are your manners, Malik?” Ruha called. “Will you not thank me for saving your life?”

  The opening in the link continued to grow, and in his fury it barely registered that Ruha had annulled the magic that had silenced him earlier. “Meddling Harper witch!” Malik cried. “Can you not see that I am robbing the Shadovar of their greatest power?”

  “And giving it to Cyric, I am certain,” Ruha surmised, relieving him of the compulsion to add this himself. “I think the rest of us will be better served with the Karsestone in the hands of the Chosen—and you standing before a Harper court.”

  “You may as well murder me here!” Realizing that he could speak again, Malik tried again to say, “Cyric, the—”

  Again, his words began to spill silently from his mouth. They passed out from beneath the city’s shadow, but Malik could see that the chain would never hold until they reached shore. The open link was straightening before his eyes. He tried to call out, hoping that if he could warn Ruha she would at least save the stone until he could steal it later, but the only thing to leave his mouth was his silent, anguished breath.

  The link lost its last bit of curve, and the Karsestone plummeted free. Malik and Ruha shot skyward, but only long enough for Ruha to regain control and start down after the falling stone.

  “You heel-biting cur!” Ruha stormed. “What have you done?”

  Even had he been able to speak, Malik would not have bothered to defend himself. He was too busy trying to mark the place the stone would enter the water. Flapping along behind the diving witch as he was, that was an impossible thing in its own right. He saw little more than flashes of dark water and streams of fleeing veserabs.

  “Kozah’s breath!” Ruha cursed.

  She pulled up sharply, and suddenly. As Malik swung beneath her he had a view of nothing but water. A giant waterspout was rising up to meet the Karsestone, seven watery fingers stretching out to entwine it. Perhaps the One had heard after all. Or so Malik prayed.

  The silvery fingers closed around the boulder and pulled it down into Shadow Lake, leaving behind a huge black whirlpool. Malik prayed that it had been Cyric’s hand that had taken the crown of the Shadow Weave and that consequently he would not be left to languish forever in the hell of his god’s displeasure.

  But it was not to be. As the stone vanished into the lake’s murky depths, a glistening purple eye appeared in the heart of the whirlpool and winked at him.

  Malik knew better than to hope the eye belonged to Cyric. The One never sent signs, except when he was angry.

  Head spinning with afterdaze, Galaeron arrived clasping Vala’s hand, his other arm looped around Aris’s knee, his eyes aching in the brilliant sun. Crackles, bangs, and half-muffled roars rumbled out of the sky while off in the distance an erratic din of booming splashes rolled across a broad expanse of water. There was trouble over there, and it slowly came back to Galaeron that he and his companions were the cause. Aris groaned, stumbling forward, and crashed to a knee, spilling an armload of bloodied humans as he put a hand out to catch himself.

  A glimpse of black beard was all it took for Galaeron to recall where he was and how he had come to be there. Instead of turning to check on the injured Chosen, he looked back and was disappointed to see the murk-swaddled city still hovering a thousand feet in the air, engulfed in swirling clouds of veserabs and releasing a steady rain of debris down into the lake. There were no obvious signs of pursuit, though anyone powerful enough to recapture Galaeron and three Chosen would come by shadow, not air.

  As Galaeron studied the enclave, he noticed a thin line of darkness running between the lake and the city. It was near the shore and so faint as to be almost invisible but also straight and unwavering. As he watched, the lower end moved out toward deeper water, slicing through the purple waves without leaving a wake. Shade itself remained where it was. Galaeron spent a few moments observing, trying to puzzle out what he was seeing. Veserabs circled around it, and debris bounced off it as though it were a solid rope, yet it was as transparent as a pale shadow. Through it he could see passing Shadovar, falling boulders, and even the mountains on the lake’s far shore.

  Galaeron finally gave up guessing, and seeing that the enclave was not going to sink any lower, he turned back to his companions. Laeral was handing Aris his third flask of healing potion, and the wounds Khelben and Storm had suffered were already closing. Khelben held a vial out to Galaeron and motioned at the gashes in his neck.

  “You may as well take care of those before we return.”

  “Return?” Aris asked. The flask Laeral had given him slipped from his hand and shattered on the stony ground. He appeared not to notice. “To Shade?”

  “That’s where the mythallar is,” Storm replied. She stood and tested her wounded leg. It nearly buckled beneath her, but that did not stop her from nodding approvingly. “I’ll need a quarter hour, no more.”

  In what seemed another life, Galaeron would have been impressed by how quickly the Chosen healed. Having seen what he had seen and knowing how quickly any Shadovar warrior—especially the princes—could heal themselves, he knew his companions to be woefully overmatched.

  But it was Aris who objected.

  “Has that silver fire melted your brains? We can’t return to Shade without Galaeron’s magic, and look at him!” Hardly seeming to notice the two shadow arrows still lodged in his shoulder, the giant waved a huge arm in Galaeron’s direction. “He’s going to have a terrible time getting back to normal as it is. You can’t ask him to use more shadow magic.”

  “Aris, there’s no ‘normal’ to get back to. I’ve told you that,” Galaeron said, wondering how he would ever make the giant understand that shadow and light were only illusions. Once one accepted the truth of that, everything became light … and everything became shadow. “I was not all good before, and my shadow was not all bad.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Aris said. “Or perhaps you have forgotten what happened in the Saiyaddar?”

  “Of course not, but that happened because of the struggle, not because of my shadow. It’s the refusal to yield that causes the crisis.”

  “It was the crisis that Telamont was trying to exploit,” Laeral surmised. “He wanted to make you fear your shadow so you would keep struggling and remain unbalanced until he could take control.”

  “To some extent, yes,” Galaeron agreed, “but the struggle is necessary. You need to build strength. The shadow is ve
ry strong, and I think it would overwhelm you if you accepted it too soon.”

  “I understand—better than you can know.” Laeral said. She cast a private glance at Khelben then looked back to Galaeron. “Once you’re ready, accepting your shadow will make you stronger and better.”

  “Stronger, yes, but better?” Galaeron asked. “I don’t know. Strength overcomes weakness, so the strengths in my shadow have overcome some weaknesses in my character, and the strengths in my character have overcome most of the weaknesses in my shadow. So I feel whole—but that hardly makes me a paladin. The world is a darker place than I knew before, and I’m the darker for seeing that. It’s not something I’d describe as better.”

  Sympathetic expressions came to the faces of all three of the Chosen, and Khelben said, “We can’t know what you’re going through, Galaeron, but I’m sure we share this much. There are times when we all wish we could go back to, uh … the way we were before, but the door only opens one way.”

  “And even were it possible to go back, I would still use any magic necessary to return us to the city,” Galaeron said. As thankful as he was for the understanding and comradeship the Chosen were extending to him, he was also convinced that it was folly to do as they asked. “If we return now, we accomplish nothing but our own deaths. The princes heal as fast as the Chosen, and there are more of them than of us.”

  “Which is why we must strike now, and quickly,” Storm said. Her eyes were locked on Galaeron, fixing him in place like a snake pinned beneath an eagle’s claw. “This is your plan. Will you see it through or not?”