Crusader

by Andrew Smith

  “Well, for an old colleague like you. I haven’t thought of a cool enough name for it yet,” he confessed. “But it’s pretty brilliant.”

  “I see,” said Delilah, clearly skeptical, and quite concerned. “And that thing in the middle, putting out the dark sorcery vibe... I’ve never felt anything quite like it. But I have a pretty good idea what it is.”

  “Oh. Well... Good work then.”

  “Damon,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “tell me you’re not. Tell me it’s not a Sorcery Core.”

  Damon avoided her eyes

  “Damon! Those things are dangerous. You don’t know where they come from. You can’t possibly know everything they can do!”

  “Not exactly, but I don’t have to.”

  “Oh Damon, don’t talk that way. You know what you’re sounding like, don’t you? I really thought you and I were something alike.

  Neither of us started out in the dark sorcery with the intention of being like the others, yet here you are with a Sorcery Core talking like you’re about to start a war of attrition.”

  “Come on, Delilah, I never said-”

  “Stop it, Damon! You and I used to be friends. Don’t you remember? I remember the sweet boy who used to pick me flowers from my mother’s garden. The one who joined me after... After... Who joined me in learning the dark sorcery, and I might add, joined me in a pact never to be like the dark ones, with all their ridiculous machinations. And then you started disappearing from my life. I’ve hardly seen you in how many years? And now this. What are you doing? Just tell me, please.”

  Damon took a steady breath. “It’s a device based off a Sorcery Core. The Sorcery Core amplifies my power, but that’s not the really brilliant part.”

  “You were always good enough,” said Delilah.

  “Yeah, you’re right D. I was always good enough, and that’s all. You were forever ten steps ahead of me, and I could never catch up.”

  “That’s no reason...”

  “You don’t understand. You’re still the same dumb kid you always were, Delilah. Sure, we made a promise, but that was before we started ever learning. I see the potential of the dark sorcery now, and it’s way beyond what you wanted.”

  “What we wanted, Damon. Both of us. You know how helpless I felt after...” After so many years, Delilah could never bring herself to speak out loud about what had happened. The incident that brought the painful darkness to her eyes, and opened the world of dark sorcery to her. “And you did too, because you couldn’t help me. That’s why we started.”

  “Right. We started using dark sorcery to protect ourselves from dark sorcery. And this,” he gestured to the cabinet, “is the ultimate defense.”

  “But it’s more than that,” Delilah rejoined. “With a Sorcery Core in it, it has to be, and you can’t pretend. You can’t-”

  “Just shut up, Delilah! Or better yet, grow up. You’re capable of so much more than you do, so much more than I ever could, without this,” he stabbed the air next to the cabinet. “And you don’t do it. And it’s pathetic.”

  “I don’t do it,” Delilah shouted back, “because it’s the wrong thing to do! What’s pathetic is spouting trite garbage like ‘grow up’ when I’m trying to talk with you! Just because you’re a dark sorcerer doesn’t mean you have to get all evil and go for mad amounts of power. Dark sorcery is just a name.”

  “No it isn’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t tell me you don’t hear it speaking to you. Every night, in your sleep. Telling you to open up. Telling you to use it, use it for all it’s worth.”

  “Oh, Damon, that’s not the sorcery. There are people in the normal world, where all the sorcerous orders are completely dormant, who have those thoughts. Everyone has the potential to do bad things, and everyone thinks about doing them, sometimes. You don’t have to do them, no-one can force you. Nothing can force you.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Damon, his voice a dead whisper

  “I’m right, Damon. You know why I was always better than you? However afraid I may have been of the people who used the sorcery, I was never afraid of the sorcery itself. I knew it could never force me to do anything. It can’t. It can’t,” she repeated. “And I can’t let you do this.”

  “You don’t have a choice, D.”

  “Core or no core, Damon, you don’t want to fight me.”

  “What a great idea,” he replied sardonically. “Then I can go back to being the lamest sorcerer in town, and we can meet every week for lunch and talk about our feelings.”

  “Now you’re really starting to irritate me. I’m trying to help you, idiot.”

  “You’re trying to hold me back.”

  “Same damn thing.”

  “Get out, Delilah. Before I hurt you.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she replied firmly. “Don’t think I don’t remember the time when we were climbing in that tree, and you accidentally knocked a bird’s nest off its branch. There were three eggs in it, and one of them broke, and you were absolutely inconsolable. You placed the nest back in the tree.” She started giggling, “And then, you left a note for the mother bird saying how sorry you were.”

  Damon glared. “I was nine.”

  “You were sweet,” she countered. “And that boy is still in there, or so all the modern psychologists tell me.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  “You still couldn’t hurt me,” she said

  “I killed two men putting this device together. Are you still so sure I wouldn’t harm you?”

  “Oh, Damon,” she said.

  “Stop saying that!”

  “I’m taking your...your whatever it is, and I’m destroying it. And we’ll think of something. You’re not that person, that clichéd, power-hungry dark sorcerer. I won’t let you be.”

  “You don’t have any choice,” he informed her

  She shook her head. Her poor friend. Poor Damon. She raised her wand and sent ropes of twisting blackness to bind him. He raised his hands and they dissipated in a flash of blue-white.

  Delilah gasped. “You don’t even have to be touching it? How cheap. I want one.”

  Damon ignored her. With a gesture, a crackling beam of energy, blue in the center with white arcs all around, blew out the door to the cabinets and slammed into Delilah. She was thrown across the room and into the opposite wall. The effect snapped off. Delilah hauled herself to her feet. She looked at Damon, and at the device, glowing from the ruined cabinet.

  With a gesture, she filled half the room with fire. Even before he extinguished the flames, she could tell they weren’t hurting him.

  “See? That’s the brilliant part! Who can match a powerful dark sorcerer? Only another of the dark ones, and now, they can’t touch me. Not you, not anyone.”

  Delilah’s mind raced. How could he cancel out dark powers with a device built from the same? “The stained glass,” she said aloud. “Oh no, you didn’t... You got it from a church?”

  “The priest was a bit reluctant to bless the shards once I blew out his window, but he acquiesced. Eventually.”

  Delilah closed her eyes, just for a second.

  “I never thought you where stupid enought to go all supervillain. You know you’ll be killed, right?”

  “Sure,” he smiled. “Wait and see exactly what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Voice of truth!” Delilah yelled. A point of light, like a star from the night sky, issued from the point of her wand and hit Damon in the chest

  “So you learned a little sorcery from the other orders. Nice. But do you want to know the reason why that didn’t work either? It’s because I’m not under a spell. This is me now, D. Funny that you should bother to learn the ‘voice of truth’ spell. How many people can even do mind control these days?”

  Delilah didn’t reply, save to say ‘cry of Anubis’ in the language of ancient Egypt. Outside, Wyyla shielded her ears, but nothing happened.

  “Keep trying, D. Nothing’s going to work, but
you can keep trying.”

  “Stop calling me ‘D’,” said Delilah, trying to ignored the searing pain that took her every time she inhaled. She feared her impact on the wall had broken some ribs. Her mind cycled through all the spells she knew of the other orders. Most people knew a little of each, without even knowing which spell came from which order. But Delilah had chosen to specialize the dark callings early in life, and most of the other sorcery she knew was probably too basic to be effective. Force-of-light. What was that? Nature, most likely. Delilah had suddenly developed a pounding headache. It was getting difficult to think. She raised her wand and said the words, and a green orb shot at him. It was the most she could manage.

  Damon hadn’t been expecting the ubiquitous spell, and it hit him on the shoulder, spinning him around. She fired again and the orb hit him in the back. She hated herself for her joy at the sound of her old friend’s ribs cracking as the force of the light threw him into the wall. He threw up his hands and the Sorcery Core fired another beam of light. This one was easily a foot larger in diameter than the last, but Delilah still dodged it, firing again.

  She hit Damon in his right shoulder blade, and his arm went limp. He turned around and said, in ancient Egyptian, the words ‘take of the Nile’. Delilah tried to jump out of the way, but was unsuccessful. From overhead, water appeared. Not normal water, but a darker blue, tinged with black like jets of squid’s ink. It crashed down on her as she jumped, forcing her to the floor. She landed hard on her knees and then flopped to the ground as the water rushed away. Her wand slipped from her hand. Damon turned to her and said the Cantonese words ‘deadly palms’.

  The shadowed suggestions of hands appeared from the corners of the room and rushed at Delilah from different directions. She launched herself at her wand, which was being carried away by the retreating water. She barely managed to get her fingers onto it before it slipped through the doorway. The first palm struck her in the thigh. She was familiar with the spell. She had never used it, but knew, theoretically, how to perform it, and what it should be. The second palm slammed into her side, below her rib cage, and another to her hip, knocking her into the wall.

  “You’re pulling your punches,” she cried just before a palm hit her in the side of the face. “Ow.” She used the wall to brace herself as she stood. It would do no good to dodge the palms. The came a dozen per spell, and they would have to be cancelled by another spell. One clapped her on the temple, adding to her already tragic headache. What was that spell she had been thinking of? A shadowy palm found its home in her solar plexus and knocked the breath from her lungs. She gasped. “Clouds,” she sputtered, and a shadowy veil surrounded her. The remaining palms struck it and dissipated. She fired another force-of-light orb at Damon as he was distracted, doing something.

  It hit him in the stomach, but didn’t do her a whole lot of good. Her protective veil of shadows disappeared. “You cancelled it didn’t you? You dirty cheat.” She charged across the room and kicked him in the same spot the orb had hit. He gasped, but wasn’t distracted for long. Her eyes flashed and the room turned black. A spiky, amorphous darkness was the only reality.

  Wyyla was trapped in it as wall and window evaporated. She was suddenly and intensely disoriented. She fluttered this way and that for a moment, and began to chant. The words were in her own language, the language of sprites, the language of nature, the order of sorcery that lived within her. A small globe of reality, only a few inches in diameter, glowing with a warm yellow candlelight, and more than sufficient for Wyyla, appeared around her. Within, Damon didn’t seem to be affected much, and Wyyla decided she should step in. Delilah appeared to be losing. Damon laced his fingers and swung his arms around, hitting her in the face. Delilah faltered. Wyyla rushed forward and hit the wall. She couldn’t see it until she was right next to it. She fluttered along it to try and find the window.

  “Sanguina!” Damon shouted. He brought is fists down on Delilah’s back. Hard.

  The fabric of her dress began to rip in a pattern like a spider’s web, and so did the skin underneath. She gasped. Blood began to drip from mouth. The enveloping blackness began to flicker in and out of view.

  “Sorry, Delilah,” Damon spat. In an instant, he grabbed his creation from the ruined cabinet, shouted ‘Icarus’ and took to flight. Wyyla ducked as he burst straight through the window and shards of glass bigger than she was flew everywhere.

  Delilah lay choking on the floor. Wyyla was a tiny streak as she flew to the woman. All over her body, the cutting web spread and the blood leaked slowly out. “Delilah!” she cried. The dark sorceress tried to say something, but only succeeded in making a pained choking noise. Wyyla began to chant, but the wounds would not heal. Nature was the order of life, of healing. Wyyla was a sorcerous creature, without need of the Foci humans required to tap the capacity within them, but the wounds would not heal. Perhaps if she were a sprite, Wyyla could help her. Wyyla had no practice with humans.

  Wyyla tried to lift her. Her strength was sufficient, but her grip was not. She quickly grew to her maximum two feet and lifted the dying woman from the ground. “Don’t worry,” she assured Delilah in her soothing alto tones. “Don’t worry.”

  Delilah tried to speak again, but Wyyla didn’t know what she meant to say. Her wings buzzed and they lifted from the ground. She maneuvered them through the window and flew to the Persephone Hospice. Wyyla moved as fast as she could, all the implications of what she had just witnessed announcing themselves in her mind. As they flew, a trail of red points formed itself behind them.

  A Chase on the Air

  Delilah Runestone was resting comfortably. It took six of Persephone’s finest healers to stop her bleeding. They said if Wyyla hadn’t been there, and so quick, that Delilah would have bled out and died. She was semi-conscious and mumbling sad things about the loss of her friend. Wyyla desperately wished to stay with her, but realized that she had to leave.

  She assured herself that Delilah would be safe here, even if Damon somehow realized that she wasn’t dead. The Persephone Hospice was neutral territory, and the rule was strictly enforced. Anyone who thought otherwise quickly found themselves the occupant of a very secure hospital room.

  She made for the tea shop with haste. Generally, she liked to wing between the buildings, for the entertainment value. Now, she took to the air above all the surrounding buildings, taking in as much of the great city as she could see. In the normal world, the curvature of the Earth limited how far a person could see on land. Here, the world appeared to be flat indeed and many miles of the city would spread out before anyone at a sufficient altitude. Especially a sprite whose eyes were as sharp as her ears.

  Sadly, she found exactly what she was looking for. A flickering storm of blue and white, some miles away. Wyyla didn’t know what Damon McLenen was firing at, but stabs of blue like the one he fired at Delilah, appearing smaller at this distance, tore into the ground below. She could already see three patches of fire glowing a dull orange in his path. The only thing missing was the maniacal laughter.

  She noticed that there were not, as yet, any Peeler flares in the air. Wyyla surmised that the neighborhoods he was raining fire upon were, at present, not very nice places. The thought failed to console her much as she made her way to Mme. Rumella’s Tea Shop.

  She fluttered in front of the door. She tried to pull on the handle from her position in the air, but couldn’t get a sufficient grip with her near-microscopic hands. The shop was always open to late-night, self-service customers, but it was abandoned at the moment, and everyone appeared to be still in bed. Except Grace Owen, slumbering on the sofa. Wyyla knocked frantically until she caught Grace’s attention. The detective woke with a start, then looked blearily around her. Seeing nothing, and convinced she awoke because of something she had dreamed, the detective closed her eyes and began to settle into a more comfortable position.

  “Grace!” Wyyla called at the top of her voice.

  Grace emitted a shout of su
rprise and looked all around.

  “Grace! It’s Wyyla! I’m at the door!”

  “Oh!” Grace sounded relieved. She went and pushed the door open. Wyyla darted inside, but Grace held the door and scanned the area outside it. “Are you in?”

  “Yes,” Wyyla replied by her ear.

  “Ah! Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry! Quickly, we have to wake everyone! I’ve got news.”

  “Good or bad?” Grace asked, fearing the answer.

  “Ummm,” Wyyla buzzed. “Lots. Lots of news.”

  She flitted away up the stairs as Grace followed behind. Soon, all were roused and arrayed in the first floor seating area. Wyyla described what she had seen, as briefly as she could manage.

  “It’s built around a Sorcery Core,” she concluded, as everyone who had been in the city long enough muttered oaths, “and it makes him invulnerable to the dark sorceries.”

  “Only dark sorcery?” Hunter asked. “Then that’s not so much trouble,” he said, as a blue-white beam cut in the street next door and left a lingering fire on the cobblestone. “I may be mistaken,” he amended.

  Mme. Rumella analyzed the direction of the beam. “Oh my. I fear the auditorium next door may be on fire. I’ll go and check.”

  “And I’ll go take care of this McLenen guy,” said Hunter, removing the arquebus from his back.

  “Do you sleep with that thing?” Leila asked, unnoticed.

  “You’re not going alone,” said Voz.

  “I’m going,” Hunter returned.

  “But not alone. Do you know exactly which order all of your spells come from?”

  “Er, no,” Hunter admitted.

  “Then you might just be in trouble. I’m going with you and don’t you try and stop me.”

  Hunter shrugged as he, Mme. Rumella, Voz and Wyyla exited.

  The auditorium was indeed on fire. The beam had carved up a cut of street, and continued into the building. A thin stretch of the high front wall was burning, and spreading rapidly. Mme. Rumella sighed and readied her wand.