Fistandantilus Reborn

by Douglas Niles

  “You will take nothing!”

  “Hah! You will pay, as do they all. You will be in my master’s thrall from this day forward! And if you do not give steel, then I claim by fee in dearer coin!”

  Infuriated, the young man attacked the figure, only to find that his fist punched through a cowl of black, cold air. He felt a chill of fear, but in his anger, he flailed wildly, both hands swinging through the intangible form. The vaporous messenger slipped past him in a hissing spoor of gas, a sound punctuated by a manic, cackling laugh.

  Belinda screamed as the insidious vapor swirled around her and the squalling baby. With a whoosh of wind, the gaseous cloud swept the child out of her arms. “You will obey. And to be certain, I will keep the child—one year, to begin with.”

  The ghostly vision danced laughingly away as Paulus lunged after his son. “After that time, you might get him back. And if you come after him, know that you shall be struck blind, and he will be killed.”

  With a gust of wind, the ghost whirled away, carrying the baby through an opened window and out of sight in the darkened skies.

  The pair charged out the door, but already the apparition—and the child—had vanished into the night air.

  “Where did they go?” The young mother’s question was an anguished wail. “Where did that thing take my baby?”

  Paulus, frantic with grief and fear, knew the answer.

  “The Black Kite!” He whispered the exclamation, as all citizens of Haven whispered when they mentioned the name of the feared and hated wizard. “This was his work!”

  “But why did he come here—why us?” Belinda turned to him, seizing him by the shoulders. “And why would he take Dany?”

  “He wants me—he wants power over me,” Paulus declared, stunned by the realization. “I should have expected this. He holds all this corner of Haven in his thrall.”

  “You can’t matter—not to him!”

  “I can.” Paulus was beginning to understand. “I know that Revrius Frank is forced to pay him, though he never speaks of it. Indeed, he’s ashamed of the fact. But the Black Kite takes his steel and leaves him otherwise alone.”

  “Then why did he take Dany?”

  “Because I was a fool,” Paulus admitted, slumping in dejection. “I should have paid him.”

  “No!” Belinda was suddenly adamant. “It’s more than that. He fears you. He knows you might stand up to him.”

  His wife continued, speaking with firm conviction—and affection. “He knows what a stubborn, bullheaded fool you are, and he knows the reputation of your fists.”

  Paulus flushed with shame, not wanting to recollect the part of his life spent brawling and fighting, but he knew that she was right.

  “I won’t pay him,” he vowed. “But I’ll get Dany back for us, and I’ll see that Whastryk Kite is the one who pays.”

  “But how can you? You heard him. You’d be struck blind as soon as you try to go in!”

  “I know, but I have a plan.” Or at least, he amended privately, I will have a plan. Indeed, Paulus was no longer an impetuous man. Yet his son was gone, and he was certain that if he was going to save him, he would have to act fast.

  Leaving his wife with a promise that he would be careful, Paulus went quickly to the smithy of Revrius Frank. There he spent several hours polishing to a high sheen the mirror of pure silver that he had been crafting for the garment maker. The reflective metal had been hammered so thin that it was of very light weight, easily transportable, and perfectly suited to the silversmith’s plan. Finally he attached a leather handle to the mirror’s back, ignoring the deep gouges he scored in the once immaculate frame.

  Next the silversmith girded on a sword, suspending the weapon from his own belt, which was secured by a sturdy silver buckle of his own design. The metal clasp represented most of the saved wealth of his young family, and it seemed appropriate that he wore it now, when he went to fight for that family’s very survival.

  It was a grimly determined Paulus Thwait who started through the streets toward the wizard’s home, which was a great mansion and compound that occupied a full block of the city. Black towers jutted from beyond a stone wall. The barrier was breached only in one place, by an arched gateway, an opening wide enough to allow passage of a large carriage.

  The reputation of the place was well known to everyone in Haven. There was no gate that ever closed across the entryway, but anyone who had entered there with hostile intentions had been met by the wizard, then struck blind by those searing darts that emanated from his eyes. Once sightless, the victim was usually captured or killed. Those who had been taken prisoner invariably vanished forever from the ken of the rest of humankind.

  “Whastryk Kite! I demand the return of my son!”

  Paulus loudly announced his presence, and then made as though to enter the low archway in the gatehouse wall. Here he waited in the shadow underneath the arch, watching the great door of the house.

  In moments the door swung wide, and something black swirled forward with impossible haste. The figure was cloaked heavily, its appearance blurred like the ghostly apparition, but Paulus knew this was the wizard, the Black Kite’s speed clearly enhanced by some arcane spell. The silversmith took care to keep his eyes low, away from his enemy’s face.

  “Fool!” cried Whastryk Kite, in a sharper, more immediate version of the voice that had bubbled from the legless visitor. “You dare to challenge me, silversmith? Know that your child, and your bride, shall pay!”

  The laugh turned to a sneer. “But take comfort that you will not have to witness their suffering!”

  Paulus still did not look at his enemy. Instead, he held the mirror before his face and stepped forward as he heard the mage bark sharp, guttural words of magic.

  Crimson light flashed in the courtyard, and the silversmith heard a wail of anguish. Now he drew his weapon, dropped the mirror, and charged.

  The wizard known as the Black Kite was reeling backward, both hands clutching the bleeding wounds that were his eye sockets. Paulus’s boots thudded on the pavement as he rushed closer, and he raised the sword for a single, killing strike.

  Then the man saw the mage, with his left hand, pull a small silver vial from a pouch at his side. Ignoring the danger and the blood pouring down his face, Whastryk tossed back his head and instantly swallowed the vial’s contents in the face of Paulus’s attack.

  A moment later the silversmith’s sword cut through the wizard’s cowled hood, slicing deep into his brain. The Black Kite stiffened and toppled heavily to the ground, where he lay motionless in a spreading pool of blood.

  The bold young silversmith stepped back only far enough to keep the sticky liquid from his boots. After a minute, he probed with his sword, making certain that the wizard was truly dead.

  Then he went into the house to look for his child.

  Chapter 5

  Further Evidence

  Scribed In Haven

  371 AC

  To my mentor and inspiration, Falstar Kane

  As I had hoped, Esteemed Master, a chance to study the local records has allowed me to penetrate closer to the truth. To wit: I have learned of the fate of the wizard Whastryk Kite.

  The tale was yielded up from the depths of Haven’s oldest records. He did, in fact, die in 37 AC, killed by one of the citizens of this wretched city, a silversmith whose son the Black Kite had kidnapped. (The man’s infant son was found, unharmed, within the magic-user’s stronghold.)

  As to the potion given to Whastryk Kite by Fistandantilus some thirty-eight years earlier, nothing is revealed by these records. It seems clear that, whether or not the magic was imbibed by Whastryk in his last moments, the enchantment had no effect on the outcome of the fight. The wizard was unequivocally slain; indeed, his passing was cause for more than a few celebrations.

  Of the silversmith and his family a little more is known. The man became a hero for a short time: His quest had regained the baby, and an entire quarter of Haven was able to
emerge from the shadow of the evil wizard’s reign. Reputedly, there was enough gratitude among the merchants and tradesfolk to cause them to pay the young couple a handsome stipend.

  Enriched by the rewards, the pair and their son removed to a small village in the country. There it is said that the baby grew to manhood, well versed in the tale of his father’s heroism. Beyond that reference, however, the line disappears from view, offering no more disturbance to the waters of the great river.

  Regarding the wizard Fistandantilus during this period of history, the records reveal no more. We know now that he used his time-travel spell to move forward to an age a hundred years following the Cataclysm.

  But of his scheme to transport his essence via the potion of the magic jar, it must be concluded that he failed.

  Your most loyal servant,

  Foryth Teel

  Chapter 6

  Gantor Blacksword

  251 AC

  Third Mithrik, Dry-Anvil

  The dwarf had been wandering for weeks, a span of time that seemed like years in the tortured ramblings of his mind. The Plain of Dergoth was a shattered, wounded landscape around him, everywhere waterless, parched into a barren desert by a midsummer sun. He had no destination, but he simply kept plodding along, leaving the tracks of his cleated boots like the trail of an aimless snake coursing through the dust and silt layering the hard, baked ground.

  As he had done so many times since the beginning of his exile, he spun about, staring wildly into the distance, seeing the lofty bulk of the High Kharolis rising into the skies. Raising a knotted fist, he shook it at the massif, crying shrill challenges and insults, spitting loudly, stomping his feet, venting his fury against rock and sky.

  And as always, the mountainous ridge remained silent and impassive, ignoring the dwarf’s railing hysteria.

  “I’ll come back there, I will!” Gantor Blacksword shrieked. His hand came to rest on the hilt of the once splendid weapon that had girded his waist. Several times he had drawn the thing with a flourish, waving it at the mountain dwarf stronghold, but even through the feverish agitation of his despair, Gantor had come to see the gesture for the foolish act that it was.

  Not foolish because the target of his rage was distant and unassailable, but because the hilt, steel-hard and wrapped with the hide of an ancient ogre, was only that: a handle, with no blade attached. Thane Realgar himself, lord and master of all the Theiwar clan, had snapped the weapon asunder as he had pronounced the sentence upon Gantor Blacks word.

  The bearded, perpetually scowling Theiwar had been prepared to face death for his crime, even public execution or a painful demise following a long period of torture. Indeed, both were common fates handed to Theiwar murderers under clan law, and there was no dispute over Gantor’s status as a killer of a fellow Theiwar. The best he had hoped for—and it was a slim hope—had been a forfeiture of his rather extensive personal wealth and a sentence to a lifetime of labor in the food warrens.

  He could have faced torture and death bravely, and he would have gone willingly into the warrens, even knowing that he might never see the lightless waters of the Urkhan Sea again.

  But he had never been prepared, could not have imagined, the utter horror of the sentence that Thane Realgar had pronounced.

  Exile, under the naked sky.

  The very concept had been so foreign that, upon first hearing the words, Gantor Blacksword had not fully grasped their meaning. Only as the thane had continued his dire pronouncement did the full sense of disbelieving fear seep slowly into Gantor’s wicked and hateful brain.

  “Your crimes have extended well beyond the boundaries that will be tolerated by our clan,” declared Realgar, tacitly acknowledging that assassination, robbery, assault, and mayhem were common tactics for the settlement of disputes among the Theiwar.

  “It is well known,” Realgar continued, “that your conflict with Dwayal Thack was deep and true; both of you claimed ownership of the stone found between your delvings, and had you limited your activities merely to the killing of Dwayal in a fair fight, your presence before this board of judgment would never have been required.”

  Gantor had glowered and spat at the time, refusing to accept the words, though now he admitted to wishing that he had handled the problem exactly as the thane had suggested. Dwayal Thack had been a larger dwarf than Gantor, more skilled in the use of sword and axe, but even so the aggrieved miner had not been without recourse. After all, a fair fight among the Theiwar did not disallow the use of ambush or a stab in the back, and even the hiring of a trained assassin would have been acceptable, though in the latter case, Gantor might have been required to a pay a small stipend to the victim’s family.

  Instead, however, he had decided to take care of the problem himself. His plan had been simple but well thought out, and undeniably lethal.

  It had been a simple matter to use carefully chiseled plugs of granite to block the two ventilation shafts connecting the Thack apartments to the rest of vast Thorbardin. Then Gantor Blacksword had visited one of the Theiwar alchemists, who were always willing—for a price—to aid the nefarious activities of their clients.

  Armed with a smudge pot full of highly toxic vile-root, Gantor had approached his neighbor’s front door during the quiet stillness that descended over the Theiwar city in the midst of the sleeping hours. Gantor had ignited the highly toxic mixture of herbs, hurled open the barrier, tossed the smudge pot inside, then slammed shut the door and fixed it in place with several carefully tooled steel wedges.

  The rest of the killing had only taken a few minutes. There had been screams and gasps and a few feeble bashes against the door, and then silence.

  Gantor still remembered his elation as he had awaited outside the door. Dwayal, his wife, his collection of brats—three or four offspring, so far as the murderous Theiwar had remembered—and whatever slaves and servants Dwayal Thack had employed had been inside the crowded apartments. They were inevitably dead by poisonous suffocation within minutes, though they suffered horribly during their last moments. The telltale stink of the vile-root extended into the corridor, so those who came in response to the commotion had no choice but to wait. Fortunately one of the things that made vile-root such an effective tool for this kind of work was the fact that the toxins in the smoke settled into a layer of soot within a few hours of vaporization.

  When it was safe to enter, Gantor and several Theiwar wardens had entered the apartments—and then the true horror had been revealed.

  One of Dwayal Thack’s sons—may his name be cursed by the gods through eternity!—had been friends with one Staylstaff Realgarson, a favored nephew of none other than the Theiwar thane. Worse, Staylstaff had been visiting his friend, engaged in a bout of gambling, at the time of the murder. Naturally he, too, had perished as a result of the toxic fumes.

  And Thane Realgar had proved utterly unwilling to treat the mishap as the unfortunate accident that it had surely been! Instead, the ruler of the Theiwar clan had reacted to the killing as if it constituted some sort of heinous, even unprecedented, crime. Gantor had been called before a clan tribunal, forced to listen to all sorts of accusatory remarks, and eventually came to realize that he would be punished for his natural and understandable—by Theiwar standards—attempt to defend his right to contested property.

  Faced with the deliberations of the august body of wild-eyed, bristling dark dwarves, the accused had been prepared to accept his sentence bravely. He had vowed to himself that, no matter how heinous the tortures, he would not give the thane the satisfaction of seeing him, Gantor, lose his dignity or his pride. Indeed, he had been prepared to spit contemptuously when he was confronted by the terms of his punishment.

  Yet all that resolve had vanished in the face of the actual sentence. Exile! Never in his worst nightmares—and Gantor Blacksword suffered some very horrible nightmares indeed—had the dwarf pictured a punishment so terrifying, so unutterably bleak, as that which cruel fate had delivered unto him. Thane Re
algar’s pale and luminous eyes had gleamed with a wicked light when he pronounced sentence, and the cheering of Dwayal Thack’s many relatives had echoed from the rafters of the vaulted Judgment Hall when he had made his announcement:

  “Gantor Blacksword, you are banished forever from the Theiwar Realms, and as well from all attended and allied steadings of the Kingdom of Thorbardin. You are sentenced to the world above, where you will live out your miserable days under the cruel light of the sun and without the comfort of your fellow dwarves.”

  His own scream of shrill terror had been drowned out by the delighted cheering of the gathered throng. With bitterness, Gantor remembered his own wife and elder son joining in the celebration. No doubt the faithless female had already taken a new mate, and the worthless offspring was certainly in the midst of squandering his father’s hard-earned fortune. Such practical and unsentimental avarice was neither more nor less than the Theiwar way.

  Of course, there was always the hope of revenge.… Someday Gantor Blacksword would find a way to make all his enemies suffer!

  For a time, here under the horrifying, endless sky, the exiled Theiwar had failed to let reality dissuade him. He had spent the first days of his banishment in picturing the many vengeances he would inflict: his treacherous wife, slow-roasted on a spit over the family hearth. His son, skinned alive, but only over the course of many months. Indeed, perhaps the wronged patriarch could exact a whole year’s worth of diversion before the wretched wastrel was at last put out of his suffering.

  And Thane Realgar, too, would suffer the wrath of Gantor Blacksword, though not so mercifully as wife and son. No, the thane could only be sufficiently punished in the same fashion as he had sentenced Gantor Blacksword: He would be condemned to wander under the sun, banished from the comforts of stony Thorbardin for the rest of his days.

  But over the initial weeks of his wandering exile, Gantor had at last realized that thoughts of revenge took him down a useless road. Without any real hope of returning to Thorbardin, he had no practical prospects of harming any of his enemies. And though the hatred, the desire for death and mayhem, never faded far from the forefront of the Theiwar’s awareness, he had gradually realized that those urges would remain mere fantasies, unrealized by acts of truly gratifying bloodshed.