The Bard of Sorcery

by Gerard Houarner

"If you wish to call it such."

  "You assume I need written words to satisfy my curiosity, when spoken words will do just as well."

  "And who will speak these words?"

  "You, my friend."

  Laughter, like the sound of sharp scythes slicing down the long stalks of grain grass, hissed behind Tralane.

  "You have learned a trick or two, my young one, but do not presume to think you can change your destiny with a little fakery and a few weak probes of the mind."

  "Who gave me this destiny?" The question went unanswered. Tralane, still leading the Jade Warrior through the streets, continued. "It is true I cannot fight a destiny I myself have made, but one imposed from without can surely be sloughed off when its wearer has become too large for it to contain."

  Again the laughter overtook him, but Tralane kept his eyes ahead. The time for a stand had not yet presented itself.

  "You have imposed your own destiny from without," the Jade Warrior said enigmatically, still laughing. "How can you free yourself from what has been wrought by your own hands?"

  "Whom do you serve?" Tralane asked forcefully, not liking the Warrior's smugness.

  "Serve? The Jade Warrior is vassal to no one."

  "Then why does such a mighty being choose to waste its time following me?"

  "Ah, because we are allies, you and I."

  "Allies? In what cause."

  "Our own."

  "We share nothing, Warrior. Not anymore."

  "Renouncements come late in the game. They do not alter what has been agreed upon, and what has been set in motion."

  Tralane was trotting through the streets now, giving the impression of searching desperately for something. The Warrior was following with long strides. Suddenly, Tralane darted into a side street, broke into a run, and wove a pattern of sharp turns and quick bursts of speed through the maze of passages. The Jade Warrior's steps dogged him, as he had hoped.

  "You cannot escape me. I can follow your trail on earth, stone, or space."

  Tralane gave a nod of agreement and continued to run. He came across the building with the open doorway and entered. He crossed the empty room cautiously, afraid the floor might collapse into a basement under his weight. He reached the recess with its stairs safely and sighed with relief. He began to climb the steps, stumbling over their uneven distribution but thankful that, like the floor, they were made of solid stone. Even so, he felt some of the stones tremble beneath his feet as he put his weight on them, protesting the sudden strain of use. The very elements of nature were weary of existence on this world. Tralane unsheathed his sword, as if to beat back the closing twilight of being, and continued gingerly up the steps.

  He emerged on the roof of a building which was level with those of the adjacent structures. He went to the edge of the roof and looked down on the street he had just passed through. The Jade Warrior, stalking him with an even stride, confident in whatever supernatural sense allowed him to follow Tralane, could be heard several streets away. Tralane backed off a few steps, then ran and leaped across the narrow divide of the street and landed on the opposite roof. He waited for a few moments, listening for the Warrior's reaction to the sound of his landing. But his enemy continued his straightforward pursuit, and Tralane wished he could be certain whether the Warrior was really as confident as he appeared to be, or whether the creature was taking the blunt approach to tracking out of the same fear of a confrontation that made Tralane's knees so unsteady.

  Tralane crawled to the opposite edge of the roof and lay at its edge. The Warrior appeared shortly, turning the corner with his head bent down slightly to catch the path Tralane had taken. The thin ruby streak separating his upturned lips showed the Warrior's pleasure in hunting down a seemingly panicked mortal. His senses were focused on the particulars of Tralane's trail, and not the whole of the quarter. The creature's rigidity extended beyond mere appearance; whatever the Warrior's sorcerous origins, he had learned only too well the human traits of arrogance and pride. There was no question of him and Tralane sharing the wisdom of fear.

  Tralane tensed as the Warrior passed below him, then leaped to the street. The paved street crumbled under the blow of his landing, cushioning his fall and raising an exploding cloud of dust. The Warrior whirled about, his sword raised in defense before he had completed the turn. Tralane, his sword out, lunged forward through the dust before the Warrior realized what had happened, and pricked a point between two facets of the creature's crystalline torso he had previously picked out as a vulnerable cluster of nerves.

  Before the sword could penetrate, the Warrior had parried Tralane's thrust. But the lunge had made him fall backwards and lose his balance, so that he could not take advantage of Tralane's momentary helplessness on the ground. The bard scrambled to his feet as the Warrior fell against a wall, but he held back his urge to charge forward when he saw the Warrior brace himself. They stared at one another, allowing the surprise to settle into reality.

  Tralane examined his enemy's torso for any signs of damage, and was at first dismayed by the lack of apparent wounds. He had gambled on being able to strike first, to slow down the Jade Warrior so that a mortal would at least have a chance against the creature. Perhaps he had not struck deeply enough, perhaps the Warrior was safe-guarded against the black blade. There were so many possibilities, so many chances for failure. But of course, in the end, Tralane would have lost anyway, so best to have taken the inevitable with his own hand, rather than waiting for it to be thrust upon him. He looked to the Warrior's face, expecting to see a sneer of contempt. He saw, instead, a blank, dull surface, like a dead lake beneath gray skies.

  He looked again, and this time he saw, at the point where his sword had penetrated, a tiny black cloud that was slowly growing, disturbing the icy peacefulness of the Warrior's glittering torso.

  The Warrior threw himself off the wall and glided with long, easy steps towards Tralane. The Warrior held his sword with two hands. As he swept by Tralane, he let it fall in a bewildering series of tiny, crisscrossing arcs, so that the bard was never sure where the blow would land. Tralane crouched and, as the Warrior went by him, slashed the creature's stomach with his blade. His blow bounced ineffectually off the Warrior's hide, and he cursed himself for not aiming more carefully at another set of nerves. He stopped cursing and greeted the street with his face when the Warrior's sword grazed his head, chopping a section of fur from his hood.

  Tralane rolled forward, feeling the Warrior's sword point tearing through the back of his coat, just missing flesh. As he got up, he barely had time to put up his sword to avert the Warrior's next sweep. He stumbled backwards, and found himself against the same wall the Warrior had just launched his attack from. He was breathing heavily.

  He was no swordsman, and the black blade, whatever its strength-giving qualities were capable of lending him, could not guide his hands with the skill to match the Jade Warrior's practiced limbs. The Warrior was not a badly armed hillman or even a towering but essentially slow-thinking monster like the Beast. Raw strength and stealth would not prevail against such craftsman-like skill, backed as it was by near invulnerability and an equal, if not superior, degree of strength and intelligence. Tralane did not have the time to choose his target. It was all he could do to defend himself; he knew his chances of survival were better against the greatest champion on his homeworld than before this almost perfect fighting machine he had just set in motion. But strangely enough, he did not regret his action or feel pity for himself. He stood face to face with the certainty of death and found in the solitude of the dead city the strength to face his doom without cowardice or thoughts of self-betrayal.

  So it was all the more shocking when, in bringing up his sword for the final death stroke, the Jade Warrior froze in mid-motion and remained standing like a waterfall in the heart of winter.

  Tralane at first could not believe what had happened. He waited for the Warrior to complete his move, thinking he was being toyed with. But the moments stret
ched on, unbroken by physical movement, and at last Tralane moved out from the Warrior's path and stood aside, appraising the new twist in the course of events.

  He was surprised at the deadliness of his perception, for the cloud that had marred the Warrior's crystalline lines was now ballooning into a massive black storm. His eyes had, with a courtier's acuity for weaknesses, chosen and memorized the precise spot that marked the Jade Warrior's death, and with an archer's keenness directed his weapon into that vulnerability.

  Tralane was startled by the Jade Warrior's voice, which was hoarse and grating.

  "You have betrayed me," the Warrior whispered with an effort. "I am stricken with the venom of my own creator."

  The being's face twisted into a frightening range of mountains and valleys. His eyes stared over Tralane's shoulder, at spaces beyond the close confines of the street. Tralane, confused by the Warrior's defeat and the mystery of his words, chose to latch onto the last phrase and pursue his own line of questioning.

  "And who created you?" Tralane asked, his voice shaky. He placed the point of his sword against the Warrior's side, where another cluster of nerves lay hidden, accessible through the flaws of the joint where two facets of the creature's body met. He kept the weapon steady as a threat of more pain, though he was loath to inflict anything further on the Warrior. If he had not needed answers so badly, he would have finished the Jade Warrior.

  "I am the child of Wyden and the Emperor of Many Faces."

  Again, Tralane grasped only the familiar. "Wyden?"

  "The serpent, whose coils can stretch across eternity, whose Eye was cast into the Pool of Worlds to destroy those who might prove to be the enemies of its master, the emperor."

  "Is Wyden a god?"

  "The god of gods, whose fangs and poison can shatter the unifying power of magic and spread chaos through all the worlds."

  Tralane glanced at his sword, then at the Warrior's. "What swords did you carry?"

  "The Fangs of Wyden."

  The rent in his coat suddenly seemed to allow a gust of cold wind to chill his spine. "And where is Wyden?"

  "With the Emperor of Many Faces."

  The black cloud was spreading with greater speed, like a flood wave gaining momentum as it rolled closer to the shores of death. Tralane hesitated before placing his next question.

  "Who is the Emperor of Many Faces?" he asked finally, weakly.

  "The ruler of the worlds beyond this one, where the suns have faded and the soil has turned to dust. A traveler, who came to the end of all possible alternate worlds, blinded and subjugated that last remaining god, Wyden, and then coupled with the serpent to people his realm."

  "What is their interest in me? Why have I been chosen to be a Keeper of this Eye? Why were you sent to me?"

  "You are a destroyer, brother and ally to the Emperor, and thus his most dangerous enemy. You are the last of his … enemies. You were drawn to the Eye, because you and the Emperor are part of one, and he called you through the thing you stole. I am … I was to retrieve the Eye, after you had destroyed yourself. But you … you betrayed me. You turned against me, against yourself…"

  "Why did you name me as your ally?" Tralane asked, though the answer was on his mind.

  "Because I am of the flesh of Wyden, and you are the Emperor's brother. The bond that ties them together is the same that lies between us."

  Tralane was reeling from the Jade Warrior's replies, vehement denials struggling with more questions in his throat, when the creature suddenly slumped to the ground. The sword's venom had spread to the Warrior's arms and legs, transforming him from a creature of hard stone into a lump of charred, rotted matter. The Warrior was dead, if he had ever truly lived.

  The Jade Warrior's destruction left Tralane unsatisfied and drove him into lonely melancholy. For all his hatred of the Warrior, there had been bonds between them. Now he felt them by their absence, for he had grown accustomed to the unfaltering presence of the Warrior. Now he had no one with whom to exchange even unfriendly words.

  He felt as if he had been lured outside of himself to affirm his true identity, and then abandoned to stumble and falter through reality by himself. The shadowy ties to the Emperor, formed through the Warrior and the Eye, merely defined the craving in Tralane that needed to be satisfied. The hidden pattern in the recent events of his life, the faint sense of another while his mind sought to possess the amulet, and finally the Warrior's demise, were not answers or solutions, but bait that forced Tralane to explore deeper into realms that bore little resemblance to his native reality. He had to follow the wispy trail of relation to the Emperor, and hope the strength given to him by Cumulain's words of confidence and the two victories over the Beast and the Warrior would be enough to bring him through this next trial.

  Tralane turned away from the corpse, gouged to hollowness by the thought of the new arena of conflict he saw ahead of him. He perceived clearly the strands of mystery emanating from his unknown parentage, running through his forced apprenticeship with Mathi to this moment. He cursed the old sorcerer again for not having been honest about how he had received Tralane into his care.

  There had been brothers after all, Tralane thought bitterly, and perhaps sisters as well. Obviously, like himself, they had all been mortal, frail flesh and bone, except for one, the one who claimed kinship through the Jade Warrior, the one who lurked within the Eye, watching, waiting. But waiting for what? Were his mortal relatives a threat to his demi-godhood? If this were so, then why was Tralane still alive? This brother had journeyed somehow to the ends of all worlds, won great power, and then surrendered it. Why?

  Even the blood that pounded in his ears fed the strangeness of his life. Had his mother slept with a god and borne a child, only to be murdered and the family cursed by a jealous goddess? Or had his father lain with a goddess and won the son away from the mother, along with her wrath? He blushed as he recalled the many stories in his repertory that might have been the tale of his own family. Perhaps Mathi had, through the parable of such stories, told Tralane the tale of his origin, expecting his young ward to divine the true meaning of the tale and realize the danger implied in having an immortal for a brother.

  Then for a moment Tralane despaired, for all this might also be a lie and the truth be hidden in some dark corner that would never yield to the light of day. But the despair lost itself as the dark corner merged with the gloom and became indistinguishable from sadness.

  Tralane turned back briefly to the Warrior's sprawled corpse and bent down to retrieve the creature's sword. Only the Emperor of Many Faces held the answers to the bard's questions, and if Tralane were to unravel the truth concerning his origin and destiny, he would need all the power he could raise to compel his godling brother to give up his knowledge.

  Tralane strapped the second belt around his waist, so that he had a scabbard on either side of him. He sheathed his own sword and walked through the narrow streets until he found the broad avenue where he had originally entered the city. He took the Eye out and gazed into its depths, his mind fixed on the Emperor of Many Faces and the god Wyden itself. This time he did not let the tantalizing glimpses of other realities lure him away from his quest. He rejected the false images of his desire, letting the temptations to discover and explore new sensations and experiences wither in the blaze of his purpose. Finally, amid the half-seen, flickering shadows of green and black, a masked and armored figure appeared. The figure flashed out of existence, but Tralane summoned it back. When he had it clearly in the amulet, reflected across its many facets, he saw the emblem of a coiled serpent emblazoned on its chest. Behind the figure, a mountain solidified, and on its uppermost peak clung' a small city with walls carved from the rock and towers piercing the dead night sky. Below the city walls, a massive, glittering rope of green wound its way down the mountain to disappear in the valleys and hills below.

  The Emperor was found but, curiously, only the hint of his form appeared. His mind, and that of the god, was still bey
ond Tralane's reach. But that did not matter now. Tralane opened the door between worlds and commenced the journey, the image of the city captured in the amulet in his hands. As he walked down the avenue, he felt the cold touching him again, tracing a raw edge along the length of his spine. It would be colder on this last of all worlds, and not all the fires and warm clothing would be able to keep out the frigid void he would find there.

  The world of the ruined city began to lose substance, the glow of the dim noonday sun fading among the stars. On the horizon, a delicate tower broke and fell majestically behind a skyline of smaller domes and towers. The grave land silently accepted the defeated structure, its sudden collapse signaling the departure of life from that barren world.

  Chapter 18

  The darkness unfolded as the ground became rocky and treacherous. Tralane groped his way up a black mass of sharp, loosely packed stones and boulders, nearly blind in the deceivingly bright starlight. The unseen smiles of the night leering down at him from beneath the cold, derisive eyes that were the stars drove Tralane steadily upward. His climb was methodical—reaching, feeling for security, balancing, pushing and pulling with his legs and arms. He brushed aside the fears of darkness and high places, setting in their place the soothing balm of routine. His body worked forcefully against the near-vertical slope, and his mind and emotions shielded themselves from the maddening loneliness and danger of the place by allowing action to take precedence. Cumulain's healing powers had transformed his image of himself; where before he had been a lowly archer avoiding every possible chance to exert himself and usually managing to win through negligence a post guarding some noble of dubious honor, he now thrilled with the exertion of the climb and the smooth delivery of strength to his limbs. The chill, dead air biting along the trails of his sweat was a keener bait to life than any of the power and dangers his court machinations had led him into.

  The rock surface he climbed suddenly began to take on the chiaroscuro of detailed reality exposed to harsh light. A shadow, his own, faced him. He looked up at the sky and saw the craggy escarpment ahead of him, with what appeared to be a shimmering wall of green, blue, and white crystals jutting out from the rest of the mountain. The coils of the god Wyden were waiting for him. Grimacing with disgust, he turned his head to find the source of the new light. He opened his mouth to gasp, but found he could only clutch at his hold on the mountain until his hands ached with the strain.