The Colors of Magic Anthology (magic: the gathering)

by Richard Lee Byers

  Damon picked the disk up. "Maybe we can use this to distract the assassin," he muttered, and he tucked it into a wide pocket hidden in his shift beneath his frock.

  Together, he and Annarais tugged at the chest's cover, but it was sealed tight. They heard crashing noises from downstairs. Damon swore and kicked the chest. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Annarais by the forearm.

  "When have we ever seen Master Wane open anything with his hands?" He straightened up and took a deep breath. His eyes closed.

  He opened them a moment later when Annarais whispered, "Done."

  The chest was open, the cover gone. Probably never was one, Damon thought sourly. He glanced at Annarais. "Go see if you can open that door." She nodded.

  Inside the chest was a jumble of items and scrolls. Some Damon recognized from training exercises, most he had never seen before. He pulled out a sextant covered with spikes. What could that be used for? He dropped it back in the chest. Spotting the hilt of a sheathed blade, he extracted it carefully and slipped it into his inside pocket. It clinked against the disk.

  He was tossing scrolls and sheaves of paper from the chest, searching for more weapons, when he heard a pounding in the training room. His heart skipped a beat, and he looked up, but it was Annarais beating repeatedly on the door to Master Wane's personal quarters. Damon picked up his staff and hurried to her side.

  "If we could get through-" she said, tears of frustration forming in her eyes. "I tried the litany. We'd be safe, but we're not safe, we're going to die. It won't open. Nothing will open. I can't do it."

  Damon dropped his staff, grasped her shoulders, and pulled her back against his chest. She shook in his hands as she cried, then Annarais wiped her eyes with her wrist and sniffed loudly. Damon felt a tremendous sympathy well up inside him, an overpowering desire to protect Annarais.

  He felt a sudden confidence, an assurance, an acceptance of his own learning. Without a word to Annarais, he stepped forward and placed his hand on the handle of Master Wane's door. He pulled, not with great force but with great confidence.

  The door held. Damon's confidence crashed.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs shattered. Damon turned and held his staff defensively in front of him. The polished, plodding golem reached the top of the stairs, and its head swiveled to consider the apprentices. Behind it the stairwell stretched like a long, narrow pit in the floor, and Damon could just barely see the assassin lurking there at the bottom of the stairs.

  "Take another step and I'll disintegrate you both," said Annarais.

  Damon peered at her in astonishment. She was holding a squarish blue stone in her hand. It glowed as if alive. The assassin murmured a word to the golem and ducked back into the stairwell.

  Annarais raised the stone and pointed it at the machine. "Don't come any closer."

  The golem's feet scraped over the stone floor as it turned toward Annarais and began to walk toward her.

  Damon grasped Annarais's arm and raised it. "What is this thing? Can you really do that?"

  Annarais answered breathlessly, "Remember, we found it on the beach just after Jervis came. Sabra was left holding it when Master Wane found out." She looked at the golem as it continued its march toward them. She said in a rush, "The master dropped it on the beach and walked away, but Sabra kept it. She learned how to make it work."

  The golem was now managing a lurching jog, its arm raised for a blow. Annarais held out the device toward the creature and gave it a quick turn, as if it were a doorknob. A flash like lightning threw Annarais back against the wall, made Damon's hair rise, and enveloped the metal creature. The flash was gone. The golem was coming toward them as if nothing had happened.

  Damon sidestepped the machine and ducked its swinging arm. He backpedaled toward the writing stands, and the golem followed. Damon raised his disk and gave it a mental command. Between him and the machine, something took shape. It was a hairless, humanlike creature with long claws, the image that had terrified Sabra. It flapped its wings and hissed as it hopped from foot to foot. The golem brought its spiked ball down through the illusion with a spin of its whole upper body, and then, with the sound of gears grinding, resumed its stance, ready to strike.

  Untouched, the illusion continued to caper. The golem struck again, exactly as before. Exactly as before it resumed its ready position. Damon watched as it repeated its attack without variance three times. He remembered what Master Wane had said about machines that mimic life: they're still machines. Unconscious of its own actions, the golem responded as it had been built to respond. In the face of an unchanging foe, its response never changed. It was stuck.

  Damon slowly crawled through the discarded scrolls behind a writing stand, trying not to attract the golem's attention. He looked for Annarais. Behind the golem, near the far wall, she was shaking sense back into her head. He waved and started to crawl toward her, still clutching his staff.

  Suddenly the assassin vaulted out of the stairwell and crouched on the floor, blade in one hand. She saw Annarais near her then spotted Damon behind the writing stands.

  "Very good," she said. Her laugh was surprisingly pleasant and reminiscent of chimes. "Very smart, little fish. I was sure that thing would finish off the two of you. The fact that you both are still alive raises my opinion of you. The first two were easy kills." She tilted her head back and raised her voice. "Wane! Traitor! I hope that somewhere, somehow, you're using your magic to see this. If I can't get you, I want you to see what happens to your precious students."

  The assassin took her curved blade in both hands and walked purposefully toward Annarais, who was now holding her staff at the ready. Terrified, she had both her hands near one end, holding the other end out to try to keep danger at bay.

  Willing his disk to work again, Damon rose and charged the assassin. Before him, another winged creature took form. The assassin shot Damon a sideways glance and moved in on Annarais faster than she could retreat. With a swift, curving motion, the woman ducked past the end of the staff, grabbed the weapon's center with one hand, and slipped the blade underneath, where it disappeared into Annarais's frock.

  Annarais fell back against the wall, and the assassin pivoted to face Damon. Between them, the illusion of the imp blocked their view. Damon denied the imp, refused it a place in his mind. To him, it became a wispy outline through which he could see the assassin. He dropped the disk and charged, both hands on his staff. Damon saw the assassin weave to try to view past the illusion, but his aim was clear. Grunting, he leaped through the illusion, the metal-shod end of his staff bursting through the image and striking the assassin in the left eye. She rolled to the side as his momentum carried him past. The assassin held a hand over her wounded eye, but she swung her sword in such furious arcs that Damon had to pause. The illusion hounded the woman, but she ignored it.

  Damon heard Annarais cry out. She had struggled along the wall, grasping her belly, until now she was in front of the mirror. She grabbed the curtain with her free hand and toppled, pulling the curtain down. Heedless of the mirror and of the assassin, Damon ran to her side. There was blood everywhere.

  "Damon." It was Annarais's voice, but it didn't come from her. It was in his head. He looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror. There she stood, alive again, just as she had been yesterday. There was his reflection as well, clean and carefree.

  "Do you understand?" said Annarais.

  Damon did not need to say yes. He saw his yesterday self in the mirror. "You will never become a wizard," he thought to his reflection. "The apprentice does not become a wizard. He is replaced by one. I am not my past."

  Movement caught his attention. He looked past his reflection. Stalking him was… a white-robed healer. Damon reached under his frock, unsheathed his knife, and held it pressed flat against his forearm where the assassin wouldn't see it. He turned as she approached.

  Behind her, the first image of the imp continued to draw the repetitive attacks of the golem. The second image ho
pped and hissed, but the assassin was not distracted. Damon dismissed the second image with a thought. He looked at the assassin. He could see the wound he'd given her-a broken cheekbone. It hadn't shown in her reflection. The assassin sneered as she approached.

  Damon knew that her mind would be unable to withstand the mirror's magic if she looked at her own reflection, but the assassin fixed her gaze on him. Slowly, deliberately, she stepped closer.

  "You hurt me," she said. "So I'm not going to kill you as fast as I killed your friend. I'll make you squirm a little first. None of your little illusions are going to save you." She continued to fix her gaze on Damon and began swinging her sword before her.

  "There's where you're wrong," cried Damon. "The phantasms that live in this mirror are real." With his free hand, he gestured over his shoulder at the mirror.

  The assassin's gaze flicked to the mirror, to her own reflection-disguised as a healer. Her eyes lost their intensity, and she stood still. Damon saw the struggle raging behind her dark eyes, the intensity of her purpose against the magic of the mirror. Suddenly, she pulled her sword back over her shoulder to strike a blow, her training and determination just barely winning out over the mirror's magic.

  "Welcome, healer," said Damon.

  His words added to the power of the mirror's magic, and it overcame the assassin's resistance. What her eyes saw and her ears heard, her mind believed. She dropped her sword, and her arm fell to her side.

  "Who are you?" asked Damon, almost tauntingly.

  "I come from Kjeldor in search of the great Master Wane," said the assassin. She seemed a little confused. Her hands closed into fists and opened again nervously, as if the internal struggle continued, but she played her part.

  "I am a former student of Master Wane," said Damon. "I welcome you to his home." He held out his arms to embrace her, and she returned the embrace in kind. "You are what you see," he said.

  "But where is Master Wane?" persisted the impostor, uneasy in the embrace. "I have an ancient artifact which we Kjeldorans need his guidance on." She began to pull away.

  "I am what I will," continued Damon. He plunged the knife into the small of her back. The woman started, then backed away in shock. She turned and collapsed, bleeding, the knife sticking from her back. Her eyes were wide with surprise. Damon stooped over her, yanked the knife free, and planted it in her throat. Her reflection remained in the mirror. Damon turned toward it, his back to the corpse.

  "Begone," he said, and the reflection was gone.

  Annarais's image remained. "Thank you, dear Annarais," he said, and he dismissed her reflection, as well.

  In the mirror, he saw the golem, a creature with no mind, still locked in futile combat with the imp, a creature with no body. He was considering what to do with them when something grabbed his ankles and yanked him to the unforgiving floor.

  It was the assassin. Blood no longer ran from the gash where Damon's knife stuck in her throat, and her dark eyes were now lit by some eerie force. The black gem in her vest glowed like a cold heart. Her hands, strong as vises, pulled Damon onto his back and under the weight of the living corpse. They clamped onto his neck. His face bulged and he couldn't breathe. He clawed at the assassin's face, but she seemed impervious to pain.

  "Your little trick has killed me," said the assassin, in a hollow, ragged voice. The effort of speech made blood dribble past the knife in her neck. "But I am a devotee of the night. Death makes me stronger." She dropped her weight on Damon's belly, and the last of the air in his lungs squeezed out his throat. "You tricked my mind, but my mind has now been sacrificed to the night. You'll have no more luck with your trickery. That's all your kind of magic is-trickery."

  Damon's frantic struggles were useless beneath the weight of the powerful, skilled, relentless assassin. He closed his eyes to gather what was left of his concentration. He remembered Master Wane saying, "The mind that is moved is not the true mind."

  Damon opened his eyes and cast his gaze at the imp that held the golem in its endless cycle of attacks. He willed the imp to move toward him and the assassin.

  Staring down into Damon's face, the assassin continued, "You wizards of the sea and sky think you understand magic, but your magic is soft and harmless, insubstantial as the images you create."

  The golem followed the image of the imp, striking and striking with the massive, spike-covered ball at the end of its left arm. Now Damon willed the image to cover the assassin.

  "When you are dead," said the assassin, "we shall make a zombie of you, so that you can serve in my lords-"

  In a blur, the golem brought its mighty weapon and smashed the assassin's head to one side, cutting off her taunting speech. The impact knocked the corpse off Damon, and as he gasped for breath he willed the imp over the assassin again. The golem, finally striking flesh instead of phantom, smashed the flailing corpse beyond recognition. A blow shattered the black stone on the assassin's chest, and she stopped moving for good.

  For a long while Damon rested on his hands and knees regaining his breath, trying to comprehend all that had happened to him. Finally he rose, strode across the training room, and opened the door to Master Wane's chamber, the door that only wizards could open. Behind it he found not stairs but an empty shaft. He levitated into Master Wane's chambers. There he found nothing but a round room, bare walls, bare floors, and five open doorways leading to the balcony that circled the top of the tower. He walked onto the balcony and looked out over the sound.

  Damon saw the deep orange sky and the black clouds. At his will, the sky shifted from orange, through red, to purple, and then to blue with white clouds. He chose to see the sky as a nice, clear shade of blue.

  There, on the balcony, he awaited his colleague's return.

  Bound in Shallows

  Kevin T. Stein

  The casino was loud, but clean. Lamps burned expensive oil in the open windows. I glanced over the top of low, double doors. The people inside wore bright clothes of silk and brocade, their hair braided and combed as they moved about with the same expression: vague enjoyment, phantom pleasure. They lost their money to Dumoss-Master Dumoss. They should count themselves lucky.

  The sun labored to reach the city through thick clouds. The previous night's dustfall had left everything gray. Since the end of the great war, the Brothers' War, everyone who slept without shelter spent the day beating, brushing clothes to remove the dust. These poor walked past, cursing the brothers, cursing the war that changed everything, even their luck.

  I was clean. Last night, I slept in my flat.

  My side of the street was choked with shuffling people. Bent over, they didn't look to the casino or its patrons. They only looked at each other-general hatred and distrust inflamed by the great war. I knew they wanted to lash out at something, that they were chewing over their luck. Right now their luck was bad. But when it changed, they would be the ones wearing bright silks, they who braided their hair. They'd raise themselves up by stepping on the lives of those around them. Their anticipation, their lust tightened the air, mouths almost dripping like the muzzles of hungry dogs.

  They were all wrong. If they wanted to leave the street, they shouldn't step on each other, but those at the casino. I had dedicated my life to this simple idea. I could have told them, but I chose to keep my own council. I didn't do charity work.

  There were a thousand reasons I hated standing in that alley. It smelled old and musty and quickly covered me in a film of dust. I had watched the casino so many times from that alley I would have known if a stone were missing.

  There were other things to hate. Annise's shift hadn't ended yet. She was still bringing drinks to well-dressed, wealthy patrons. I hated waiting for her, afraid she'd find someone at the casino and leave me. It was only a matter of time.

  There was so much tension everywhere, in me. I needed a release, needed to be calm. I slowly closed my eyes and opened myself to the Flow to clean my spirit. I took a deep breath and the Flow filled me, pale and b
lue, water seen in the distance. I raised myself above my body, imagined flying like a bird to escape the street and dirt and hateful beggars. Hovering above the city, I could tell where the Flow was strongest this year, this month, could see where the wealth resided. The more luck, the more wealth. My spirit drifted.

  The hate would not be dismissed. I opened my eyes to the casino. Nothing had changed, not even my mood. Men in rich, blue cloth moved through the casino crowd, the pit bosses. Frowning, I leaned against the alley wall with folded arms. Still tense, I maintained control.

  In the window I saw a sudden flash of red hair, the color of the sun setting in the polluted, dusty sky. Annise. She turned, smiling down at someone. So beautiful. Caring for her, about her, was like a dare against fate, the ultimate gamble. No one had ever cared for someone as I cared for Annise. People were too afraid to give of themselves. I'd not yet told her what was in my heart. She'd never told me what I hoped was in hers.

  Through the open window I saw her pause, listening, intent. She threw back her head and laughed. I could hear her above the crowd noise, standing in that wretched alley across the street. She gently caressed an upturned face. And still I maintained control.

  Stepping into view was Dumoss. Master Dumoss of the casino was heavyset, had thinning black hair and wore red brocade chased with gold at the cuff and collar. Only the managers wore gold. A face built from high cheekbones gave him a youthful appearance, though he had not seen youth in scores of years. Around his neck he wore a pendant. Without effort I could see its place, its focus in the Flow. It had power.

  Dumoss snaked an arm around Annise's waist, and she still smiled. He leaned over, whispered into her ear, handed her something. Pulling back with surprise, she inspected the pendant on its chain. She'd lost her smile. He'd made her an offer-I could imagine for what. Dumoss waited for an answer. Annise let the pendant drop, pushed at him, playful, laughing. He reached for her in vain when she moved away.