by Logan Jacobs
“Who gives a damn?” she asked. “You wouldn’t die anyway.”
“So, an eternity being burnt alive, that sounds rather like another concept I’ve heard of,” I said.
“Any hell that you suffered would eventually end,” Vera said. “And once you’d lived long enough, no torment would feel like it lasted any longer than the blink of an eye. Any person who ever opposed or displeased you, you would watch them wither away into dust without ever having to lift a finger.”
“That sounds like a rather petty reason for wanting to live forever,” I remarked.
“If I lived forever, think what I could accomplish with magic,” Vera said. “More than any sorcerer has ever dreamt of. My legacy would never die, Hal. I would reshape the very world.”
“If any gods exist, I sure hope they are sensible enough not to give you the chance,” I said.
“You think the world is perfect as it is, then?” she demanded. Her dark brown eyes flashed. Vera could lie through her teeth with the best of them, when she was in a composed and calculating state of mind, but when she was talking about a subject that really mattered to her, it had always been hard for her to conceal the grandeur of her passions.
“I don’t think any good could come of meddling with it,” I said. “And I don’t think that any one man, or woman, has the right to shape it to his or her own preferences.”
“You kill people for a living, Hal, why do you keep insisting on lecturing me about right or wrong?”
“What I do doesn’t fundamentally change a damn thing about the world,” I said. “It’s part of how nature works. When I kill, I don’t think of myself as a god. I am nothing more than the stronger of two animals at a given time and place. At some other time, another animal stronger than me might come along and devour me. That’s just how it is, and I accept it.”
“But you don’t have to accept it!” Vera exclaimed.
“It wouldn’t be very sporting to be an assassin for hire if I were immortal, would it now?” I asked.
“For God’s sake, Hal, you could change trades,” she scoffed. “Has that thought never occurred to you?”
“Sure it has, it’s just never been very appealing,” I replied.
“I think you’re hiding from your true destiny,” she said. “Your own power, your own potential, it terrifies you.”
“For fuck’s sake, not every long-lost prince is suffering some kind of existential crisis over his identity,” I said. “I happen to be quite happy as a sellsword. The lifestyle suits me.”
“You need to think bigger!”
“Like Gorander?” I scoffed. “Your ambitious husband-to-be?”
“I know you think he’s a monster--”
“And a pretentious fool.”
“But he has promised to hunt down the remains of the Alemanian Newt for me, once his palace is complete,” Vera declared.
“You still haven’t learned your lesson,” I sighed, “even after your last attempt to obtain those lizard nuts cost you everything?”
“Which means that I have nothing left to lose,” Vera stated as she stood absolutely still and stared me in the eye. “Do I?”
“Your sanity,” I said. “You do know, history hasn’t exactly been kind to sorcerers who have become obsessed with spells beyond their reach? Immortality, gold, the resurrection of loved ones… it’s up there with the most classic of pitfalls, Vera. I’d think there are a sufficient number of cautionary tales for you to refer to without feeling the need to turn yourself into one.”
“That was true of all the explorers who failed to reach the fabled New World, until one succeeded,” Vera replied with a stubborn tilt of her chin. She turned, walked a few steps, and sat down on top of thin air. From the way she arranged her body, I realized there must be a chair wherever the real Vera was, although there wasn’t one in the corresponding location in my room.
“Look here, what do you want?” I asked. “You knew I was never going to chase immortality with you, and that I didn’t take kindly to you trying to sacrifice me for a pair of lizard balls.”
“Newt. And I thought you would understand. Even if you didn’t agree with my decision.”
“I understand that you’re not to be trusted, and that there are no lines you won’t cross.”
“What I want is you,” she breathed. She got up from the invisible chair and walked over to face me where I sat on my footstool. I could see her, every familiar detail of her exotic beauty, but there was no trace of her familiar scent, a combination of pine, vanilla, and spices. She leaned over me and planted her hands on either side of me. Her nose was practically touching mine.
I shoved her away. Of course, my hands just went through her and caused her image to waver, but she understood the gesture, sighed, and walked back over to the chair. I felt relieved and disappointed at the same time.
“Even if you hadn’t tried to sell my life to get the ingredients for the spell, even if you had just innocently found them in a field, don’t you realize what a violation it would have been to impose immortality on me when you knew I wouldn’t want it?” I asked.
“You’d have come around eventually,” she said unrepentantly.
“Get out,” I said. “I want nothing to do with you. Scurry back to your master.”
“He’s not my master, he’s my partner in sorcery, and nothing else. Why, are you jealous?”
“No,” I said honestly. “You’re using him, and he’s using you, with a false promise of a lizard nut sack that he doesn’t even have and never will. I don’t see any reason to be jealous. I do see every reason to be amused.”
“You won’t be so amused tomorrow afternoon,” Vera said. “He will kill you. He told me that he only plans to allow you one day. And since you’re rejecting my attempt to help you, I will stand by and watch.”
“Oh, I can laugh at my own death as much as anyone’s,” I assured her. “Unlike you. Death laughs at you, watching your desperate attempts to thwart it, when it will inevitably catch up with you no matter how many lovers you betray or how many sorcerers you serve or how many lizard parts you scour the earth for.”
“You say you don’t fear death, but you’re willing to surrender to it,” Vera said. “I don’t fear it either, but I don’t accept that it must be all-powerful. I will fight back and I will defeat it.”
“Good luck with that, doll,” I muttered.
“I will remember you, and I will miss you,” she said. “Enjoy your supper. The servants will bring it shortly.” Then she wavered and vanished in a shimmer of scattering particles.
Theo snorted. I shared his sentiment on the matter.
Vera and I couldn’t even share one lifetime together without literally trying to kill each other. I didn’t know how that madwoman thought we could share an eternity.
“I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by lingering, do you?” I asked Theo. “Vera’s spoken her piece. We listened. No one’s going to change their minds.”
I needed to get out of this hideously mismatched room, and from there, out of Gorander’s palace without running into any more of those maggot-filled, flesh-eating demons, or at least not more of them than I could manage to destroy single handedly. And then I would camp out somewhere nearby and plot a way to battle the two sorcerers on my own terms instead of theirs, now that I knew more about the layout of their fortress, and the kind of army that manned it.
“A nice meal,” Theo suggested. “I heard Vera say ‘supper.’”
I sighed, looked around, and spotted a basket of apples on a pearl-inlaid tabletop that had probably been left there just for him. I didn’t doubt that they were safe to eat. Vera and Gorander had absolutely nothing to gain by poisoning my horse. I reached over, grabbed one, and tossed it to him. He caught it in his teeth and started crunching.
Meanwhile I walked over and tried the door. Locked. So much for being treated like honored guests.
I looked over at Theo and pointed at the door. While still munching on h
is apple with a dissatisfied sulk on his face, he trotted over and obligingly reared up and kicked it. It burst out of the frame and crashed to the floor. I saw that the oaken door was so thick that it was very unlikely I would have been able to produce the same effect with my shoulder. I guessed Vera and Gorander probably hadn’t really considered that consequence of allowing my horse to room with me.
As was my habit every time I stepped into a new, potentially hostile situation, I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword right before I crossed the threshold of the room.
My hand closed on empty air.
I looked down at the sheath. The hilt protruded from it, just as it should have. Once again, this time staring at my own hand, I slowly and deliberately attempted to grasp the hilt.
My fingers went right through it.
It was an illusion. When Vera came up and invaded my personal space so brazenly, she had apparently seized the opportunity to steal my sword. I had no idea how she had done that, having been an insubstantial illusion herself at the time. It was possibly the cleverest bit of magic I’d ever seen her perform. I was enraged. I was also impressed.
“You never could keep your hands off my sword, could you?” I called out into the empty hallway.
There was no response. There weren’t even any guards posted outside. Maybe that was because the pair of sorcerers had been dedicated to keeping up the awfully flimsy pretense that we were guests, not prisoners. Or maybe it was because the palace was filled with the eyes and ears of their demon servants, and they weren’t worried because they didn’t think we’d get far regardless, especially now that Vera had robbed me of my sword.
Theo followed me out into the hallway in a clatter of hooves and a smacking of lips as he swallowed the last bits of his apple. I swung up onto his back.
I didn’t have my sword, or even the tomahawk, anymore, but I still had one weapon. I still had my mind and my own kind of magic. And Theo and I had the advantage of the element of surprise against our enemies, who had apparently thought we’d sit peacefully, eat the snacks they brought us, and twiddle our thumbs waiting to be executed. Well, Gorander and his other servants had the excuse of a very limited acquaintance with the two of us, but truth be told, I was a little insulted that Vera hadn’t reckoned on more trouble.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I commanded my horse.
Chapter 16
I didn’t know the way out of Gorander’s palace, but it was fairly evident from the cool, damp quality of the air alone that our luxurious room had been situated on one of the lower levels, possibly even underground like a dungeon. So the first thing to do was to move up. There was a set of stairs to the left, and a few shafts of light cut down across it, as if inviting us in that direction. Out on the hot and dusty plains, the harsh sun usually felt like the enemy, but right now I couldn’t imagine anything better than being back at its mercy.
Theo groaned audibly as I led him toward the stairs. Like most horses, he hated them.
“What if I break a leg?” he inquired.
“Then I guess you’ll have to stay here,” I said. “Don’t worry. Savajuns hate talking animals, but most sorcerers quite value them. A very prestigious accessory for them, you see.”
“Prestigious accessory?” Theo muttered. “Well, if I do fall, I’ll be sure to crush you.”
“A nice way to repay all my years of tender care, protection, and stalwart companionship,” I remarked sarcastically. “And may I add, an act of treason against the crown.”
“Oh, now all of a sudden you give a damn about that?” Theo demanded as he placed a hoof on the first stair.
“No, I just know that for some inexplicable reason you do, and I prefer to keep all my limbs intact,” I replied. “Actually, I do know why you care. It’s because you still like to think of yourself as a royal horse. Even though you’ve been roughing it on the frontier for almost the last two decades.”
“That’s because I am not some dumb beast of burden whose only memories are instinctual associations,” Theo said haughtily with a stomp of his hoof for emphasis. “I know exactly what I am, and I consider it one of my sacred duties not to let you forget exactly what you are.”
“Halston Hale, swiftest sword in the West,” I declared.
“More like biggest or smallest sword in the West,” Theo scoffed.
“Big enough for every mare I meet, right?” I snickered, and Theo just huffed.
And with that, we were at the top of the stairs, and we fell silent to avoid being detected by any unfriendly ears, although I was sorely tempted to make a patronizing remark about Theo’s reluctance to climb the stairs.
We found ourselves inside a dim tunnel of stone walls that resounded with a faint dripping sound, just like the one we had previously been led down. I ran my hand along one of the walls as we walked, just in case there turned out to be a gap concealed by illusion, but the stones seemed to be completely solid, so I concluded that at least an extensive part of this tunnel network had genuinely been built, I suppose by the enslaved residents of Fairhollow who had then been sent off to mine for potencium.
At the end of the first hall, there was a fork. The right and left branches looked virtually identical, and both stretched on into darkness.
Theo and I looked at each other, and we took a breath.
“Right,” Theo said at the exact same moment as I said, “Left.” The lack of any assailants lying in wait for us as we proceeded down the hall had emboldened us enough to start talking again, although not loudly.
“I’m holding the reins,” I pointed out, which I was, although said reins had been sliced in half from when I freed Theo from the post outside the Savajun chief’s lodge.
“I’m bigger than you,” Theo pointed out, which was hard to deny.
Truth be told, I didn’t care which way we went. I had just picked a direction at random.
“Right it is,” I said cheerfully as I tugged Theo by the reins in the direction he had picked, also presumably at random. “You know this means you’re responsible for wherever we end up, right?”
“You’re responsible for us being in this place to begin with,” Theo pointed out. “No one hired us to kill Gorander. So why are we trying to do it?”
“It’s going to be our best paid job yet,” I said. “Even though we’ll have to wait to be hired for it after it’s completed, and the clients get their wits back. At least, I hope they’ll get their wits back.”
“You didn’t somehow know that Vera was going to be here, did you?” Theo asked suspiciously.
“I had no idea,” I answered honestly. “If I had, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Why?” Theo asked. “Because you think she’s more powerful than you? Or because you don’t think you can bring yourself to harm her?”
“Neither,” I said. “Because coming here is exactly what she would have wanted me to do.”
We were approaching another set of stairs. It led up, so I figured that was promising, and we were headed in generally the right direction.
Then, my hand, which I had continued to run absentmindedly along the wall, suddenly plunged through empty air, and I almost stumbled and fell. I pulled Theo to a halt and he turned his massive head to watch as I stuck my hand in and out through what appeared to be impeccably mortared granite stones.
I got down on my knees and moved over by a few feet so that, on the off chance that someone had been watching my disembodied hand emerge into the room on the other side of the wall, at least my head wouldn’t appear in the exact place where they expected it, and I’d be less likely to get immediately shot with an arrow or bludgeoned in the skull. Then I poked my head through the illusory wall to see what laid on the other side.
It was a library. A quiet one with towering shelves that cast long shadows, crammed full of scrolls and leather tomes that must have numbered in the thousands. It was possible that Gorander was using more illusion magic to make his library collection look more impressive than it really was, b
ut it was also possible that he really had collected that many texts over the course of his lifetime.
Sorcerers were voracious readers, particularly the ambitious ones. Often they were apprenticed to other sorcerers, but the only way for them to surpass their teachers was by gaining more knowledge from books. Ancient and forgotten knowledge. Obscure and overlooked knowledge. Dangerous and forbidden knowledge. Well, uninformed experimentation was also an option for expanding one’s magical abilities, but that tended to be an ill-advised option which as often as not resulted in the experimenter’s premature death.
Since I was no sorcerer, I wouldn’t be able to utilize any of the information in most books of magic directly, unless they just so happened to pertain to my particular rather obscure ability. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious.
I picked up one of the books and saw that it was entitled, “A Most Complete Bestiary Part VIII.” I flipped open to a random page and saw an illustration of a unicorn. It was large and white, as muscular as Theo, and its lowered horn dripped blood. The creature appeared to be scowling.
“Think this is real?” I showed Theo the illustration.
“Hmm,” he snuffled the page with interest. “I dunno, but I’d fuck her.”
“You… what?” I asked. “You meet nice mares all the time, and you’re telling me this is what you’re into? I didn’t even realize it was a female unicorn, but if it is, she looks like a bloody psychopath.”
Theo didn’t answer and just looked at me pointedly.
“Vera’s not-- she didn’t-- well, fine you are right, but never mind,” I grumbled. We stalked quietly down that aisle of books, as quietly as Theo was capable of anyway. I didn’t hear or see any movement besides our own.
I grabbed another book with a vivid green spine that caught my eye and checked the title. “The Architectural Achievements of Iberos during the Tanamoor Period.” I flipped open to a random page which illustrated the evolution of various shapes of windows and described the symbolism of each. It wasn’t a book of sorcery at all. I guessed that perhaps some of Gorander’s research wasn’t dedicated to magic, it was dedicated to monarchs of the past and various aspects of their lifestyles, since he seemed so obsessed with emulating them himself. Based on the hedge maze I’d seen outside, I was willing to bet that he also had a book or two on the palace gardens of the eighteenth century Gallioque emperors.
