"Have you come to master me?" Tralane asked ingenuously.
"If you are a demon, yes. If you are a god or some sorcerer of this world I have already vanquished, you shall be destroyed."
"And if I am neither?"
Agathom rose a hand's length off the ground and floated towards the tower without taking steps. The runes on his robe glowed fiercely.
"I am aware of your strengths and I am protected. I do not walk the earth, nor touch the sky. I will find your weakness, whoever or whatever you are, and then your nature will not matter."
Tralane retreated from his post, slid back into the tower, and hid in the furthest corner of the ground floor rooms. He was not certain Agathom would come through the door, and watched the walls, ceiling and ground for any attempts to catch him by surprise. But the sorcerer was bold and confident. He blasted the front door into flaming fragments; before the fire had subsided, he entered. Tralane greeted him.
"Welcome to my home, Agathom. I've decided to return the courtesy of shelter which you so kindly granted to me."
"You!" Agathom exclaimed, shock contorting his face into a complex rune of hatred. Then the Sorcerer King's face relaxed into a mask of contempt. "Is it only you…?”
"Didn't you bring a few of your knights along, or have you grown so powerful that such toys are meaningless?"
Agathom advanced carefully into the tower, until he stood by the winding stairs. "I am not distracted as when we last saw one another," he said with a pretence of condescension. He turned slowly, examining the walls for signs of a trap, probing the rooms for the origin of Tralane's voice. He found the bard's hiding place and spoke directly to him. "No matter what powers you've gained in your travels, they will not be enough to stand against me." He stopped, considering Tralane's shadowed form. He smiled and seemed at ease. "I know you now, wanderer. You should have stayed in some safe little world beyond my reach and played your little game of power with strangers and those even weaker than you. I haven't made the same mistakes as I did on my home world. This time, I flaunt my power against the gods. I mean to draw them out, to have them face me in their anger. And then I'll destroy them and take their power. With that, no other family of immortals, on this world or any other, will ever drive me away again. Do you understand? I have the power to crush the gods."
"And what if they decide to hurl a moon or two at you again?" Tralane taunted.
"I will go to them and fight them on their own ground. They may destroy this world, but what do I care? I'll have their power, as I will take back what you stole from me. There are other worlds, and with the amulet and the strength of mortal and immortal sorcery, the need for these feints and strategies will have vanished. If first the gods are conquered, how can the people defeat me?"
"By never allowing you to bring doom to their gods."
Agathom began to advance, holding out a hand.
"Give me Wyden's Eye and your death will be quick."
Tralane smiled and melted into a shadowy recess.
"Cause me the pain of effort, and I will punish you for the destruction of my servants," Agathom warned.
Tralane slid into the space separating the tower's inner and outer walls through a natural crack hidden in the recess. He crept between the walls, not as easily as he had when he was a boy, but quickly enough to give him some distance between himself and the hidden entrance.
"You are in my house, Agathom," Tralane shouted. "Are you afraid the dust will soil your robes? Will your demon lovers turn away when you come to them stinking of sweat?"
Agathom laughed and sent a flurry of stinging lights after Tralane.
"You are a foolish boy. You cannot goad me into a trap, when I seek to lure the gods out with the same ploy. The spells of preservation will give way. Then, when you've been stripped of protection, I shall make your skin, your muscles, your veins, and your bones each burn with a different, agonizing fire. And do not think your torment will end soon. Death will be a star lost in the blinding light of day."
"Poor Agathom," Tralane replied mockingly as he reached the loose stone in the outer wall, through which he had escaped from his studies so many times as a boy. His tutor Mathi had sat by the tower's entrance, preparing the evening meal or reading by the afternoon sun, preventing Tralane the normal means of taking his walk through the dusk. It was only when Tralane had suggested the plan they had followed thus far that Mathi, now Suthra, told him he had been aware of the boy's escape route. "A soul constrained consumes itself," was Suthra's only comment to Tralane's expressed surprise at the discovery of his childhood deceit. It was then that Tralane knew his father had given him as much as he had been capable of giving.
Tralane pushed the stone out, then crawled through the opening. Breathing heavily from his effort in squeezing through the passages of his youth, Tralane circled the tower, then burst into a long-stride run toward the hill to which Suthra and Akyeetha were to have retreated. As he ran, he waved an arm to signal his father to take the next step in the plan.
At the first rumblings of the earth and the creaking of walls, Tralane glanced back over his shoulder. Around Suthra's tower swirled wisps of radiant white mist, which rapidly came together into strands of blinding whiteness. The tower was caught in the eye of a vortex that linked the earth with the sky. For a moment, Tralane was not certain whose magic was being worked. But then the vortex disappeared with a sudden rush of wind into the clouds, and the tower's walls began to bulge, crumble, and disintegrate.
As Tralane returned his attention to running, the tower collapsed with a resounding crash, weak with age and unable to support Waithrae's weight without Suthra's spells.
"Is that all you can do?" Agathom cried out after him, his voice filling the air as the thunder had done. "Is that all you learned, all you hoped you would need to overcome me? If your allies could protect themselves with spells against my demons, what made you think that I could not do the same? Did you think the sight of you would make me throw off caution?" The Sorcerer King laughed, then burst from the rubble of the tower to float above the ruins.
"Is that you running? How pathetic you look. You were dressed better when you stole the amulet from me. How ever could you get women to do your bidding now?" Once again, Agathom sent the stinging lights after Tralane. They scorched his skin and singed his hair, until finally he tripped and fell.
The Sorcerer King approached him, gliding along the rising wind.
"Where is your fast thort now, Tralane? Where is your laughter? Noble intentions have slowed your wits, young man. You were much cleverer when you were not trying to save your world."
The wind battered Tralane and beat him back to the ground when he first tried to get up. He struggled, gained his feet, and started running again. Agathom swooped in behind him.
"Faster, Tralane. You must be quicker. Doom is standing on your shadow, reaching for you. Do you feel its fingers in your hair, Tralane? Is its touch as soothing as Crecia's? Don't you want to lie down, rest, and join that Crecia of yours?" Agathom's laughter would not stop.
Tralane continued to stumble forward, using his arms to keep his balance. And as his arms waved about, he snatched at the pouch hanging from his neck. He drew out Wyden's Eye, keeping it away from Agathom's line of sight. Then, when the Sorcerer King's laughter seemed to resound in his skull, Tralane deftly made the signs over the face of the amulet that opened the way between worlds.
They went to the world of the Emperor of Many Faces.
Tralane fell on the dusty, exhausted earth and rolled forward. Agathom, floating above him, stopped his pursuit and looked around at the barren world, the huge, terrible moon, and the putrefying corpse of the serpent god stretching from one horizon to the other. Agathom raised his hand as if to shield himself, and his laughter died among its own echoes in some nearby mountains.
Then Tralane scrambled to his feet and started to run once again, repeating the signs over the amulet.
"Wait!" Agathom cried out, but Tralane did not.
The way between worlds opened, and Tralane went back to the world he had just left. And once Tralane's feet touched familiar earth, he continued to run, not with joy over having escaped Agathom again, but with eagerness to rejoin the world of the living.
He was back on the tower grounds. All around him, the earth was losing its solidity as demons and spirits, mastered and buried by Suthra so he could use their power, awakened from their sleep and discovered themselves unbound. Caskets opened, bottles shattered, and unearthly hands broke through clinging soil to reach for light. In the distance, to Tralane's left and right, trees and rocks sundered as beings imprisoned within them escaped the merely physical aspects of their prisons. Baleful eyes stared up at him from murky pools of rainwater.
Without breaking stride, Tralane continued his run. He could see Akyeetha perched atop a boulder, anxiously watching his progress. Next to her, the dark, broken shadow of his father stood, his glowing eyes watching the awakening of his enemies. He strained to run harder, knowing Suthra was keeping the earth he ran on safe for him. Every moment Suthra waited for his son was a moment his enemies could use against him, to prevent his transformation.
The air was full of violent crackling and explosions, and Tralane glanced up at the sky, expecting another downpour. The clouds were struggling with one another, and once again thunder, this time directly overhead, shook the earth while lightning lashed the ground. Shadows raced up the lances of bright light, like insects scrambling up ladders to reach the safety of a farmer's loft.
Wind came to beat against his advance and threatened to carry him up into the sky. Branches on trees were like spears of a marching army, the leafy blades challenging the clouds above.
Some rain fell, but not as much as might have been expected. He was about to glance up at the sky again when an explosion behind him almost caused him to lose his balance and fall. Instead of water, clods of earth and small stones fell on him. A quick look revealed a huge shape lifting itself upward from behind the ruins of the tower. The magical beings were beginning their journey back to the nether-universe of their origins. The winged creature on which the Sorcerer King had arrived, the collar around its neck gone, was among the first to be lost in the sky.
Tralane reached the hill just as several other bursts of sound ripped the air. The storm above was being met by a host of unleashed powers released from below, and for once the earth was not allowing the sky to have its way without a challenge. A battle was taking place in the air above Tralane, as rain and lightning fell on, and were absorbed by, a torrent of fleeing spirits. Earth, trees, and rocks followed in the wake of the demons, thrown star-ward by the wind caused by the departure of sorcery. Wearily, Tralane climbed the hill until he felt strong hands around his arms and shoulders. When he sensed rock beneath his feet, he collapsed to his knees. He looked over his shoulder and watched the frenetic spectacle of elements and sorcery caught in conflicting purposes; while the elements fought, the sorcery fled.
Suthra came up behind Akyeetha and Tralane. The energies that had kept him among the living were at last exhausted, and he could hardly stand. Tralane listened carefully so he could hear his father's words over the din.
"I must leave now, Tralane," Suthra said at last. "The gods are watching, and soon they will know me. Pichen-ma-thele would still try to keep me from Gen-jima."
"Is it over?" Tralane asked, reluctant to let him go. "What of the demons bound to avenge the Sorcerer King's death? What of his armies?"
"The demons will not rise, for he is not dead. And he cannot return to raise any more monsters or trouble this world with his sorcery. As for his armies—I remember the Karthasian Empire was quite capable of handling itself when it came to war. And without Agathom's sorcery, his forces will crumble in pitched battle. It is over, my son."
Tralane thought he heard, for the first time, a plea in his father's words. Was it only a trick of the fury of sound coming from the tower grounds? Or was it a sign of Suthra's physical weakness?
"You have my thanks, Father." Tralane thought he saw Suthra shrug, but was not certain whether the motion was really a sign of indifference.
"It was my duty, as you made me aware. And perhaps this has somehow made amends for what I was never able to give you."
Tralane framed a reply, but the child within him would not let the words come out. Akyeetha came up beside him, rescuing him from the verbal paralysis resulting from the clash of adult understanding with childhood feelings.
"You have ended your time by serving the gods you hate so much," she said, her voice surprising Tralane with its mixture of pity and anger. She had regained complete mastery of her voice, and he envied the range and depth of emotions she felt for his father.
"Only to do in human fashion what they, in their arrogance, would have done through a god's means." Suthra pointed to the grounds of his old domain, saying, "There, at least, no one was harmed."
Suthra took a few steps down the hill, away from them, then stopped, facing the scene he had painted across reality with deft strokes of his magic.
Tralane stepped forward.
"Father, I will make you proud," he said quickly. He felt the release of pent-up emotions within him, and he reached out. "I didn't know—"
"Yes."
"—if it had been different—"
"It would have been the same. But I am happy the tale of Gen-jima you know is false, and the Wizard King and the goddess did indeed love each other and have a child. Add that to the tale, Tralane, and make the Wizard King glad at what his son became."
And Tralane shook his head from side to side, smiling at his father's reticence even to the end, while sadness burdened his spirit over the loss of a father so recently gained. Then, with the suddenness of a breeze blowing out a candle's flame, the body of Mathi that was also Suthra crumbled into an unrecognizable heap of matter which was absorbed into the ground. Akyeetha and Tralane were left alone on the hill's slope.
They left before the storm had subsided. At the crest of a hill, where the wind blew towards the sky, Tralane drew out the pouch containing Wyden's Eye and threw it into the air. The pouch vanished into the clouds, to be sucked into the demon dimensions in the wake of the last of the escaping spirits, where he wished the amulet to remain, out of the reach of men and gods. They then walked downhill and followed the road they had taken to Teach the tower, until the wind was just a caressing breeze and the roar of the storm resounded only in their memories.
They slept beneath a clear sky filled with stars that night, comforting each other in the cold breath of immortal loneliness. And when they awoke the next morning, the mystery of what they had done seemed as remote and inconsequential as the night's sleep and dreams from which they had just emerged.
BONUS STORY – GHOST SWORD OF THE HEART
The robin's song trickled through the forest's fog-shrouded canopy to fill Aki's mind with the small moments of its life. The weeping quality to the bird's call, hinkarakarakara, saddened the ronin. Dwelling on loss drew misery so close it withered his heart. He drew the bamboo flute from a saddle bag hanging down the side of the ox he rode and answered the call.
Cheer up, he tried to say. I'm only passing through. The fog of Ameratasu's curse on me will pass, and she will smile on you again and warm your wings when I'm gone.
The robin chirped, startled. Stayed to listen to Aki's song. Birds always did.
A drum beat resounded among the trunks, faded. Fog swirled around the small oil lamp hanging from a bamboo pole curled in a gently bobbing arc from saddle to a spot a spear's length from the ox's horns.
A steady rhythm of drumming followed, in its own time, as if a nearby village was calling lost sons home for a festival. But, of course, the drumming was only the work of the tanuki, who so easily passed themselves off as small dogs when not pounding on their bellies to lure lonely travelers to their doom.
Aki changed rhythm and modulated the song to tell the tricksters not to bother.
As if
rising to the challenge, the fog on the road ahead and to his left flickered and then burned with a steady glow that illuminated a stand of tall conifers. Foxes gathered there to make the light they hoped would lead him astray.
It was going to be one of those days.
He'd hoped a temple lantern might have been the source, as a flame lit in fog was sometimes a sign his skill was needed by someone nearby. The living knew of his coming as easily as the spirits. And the dead. The silence of insects, a deep chill in the air, the sudden rising of a veil of mist or fog – as he'd been told by innkeepers and fellow wanderers – were the warning signs. Restless spirits knocking in walls or sighing from wells confirmed he was near.
Even now, ghosts gathered like butterflies to nectar, shaping the fog around them into floating skulls and wisps of entrails. They were drawn to the fire of his life on the borderlands of death, oblivious to the danger he represented to them.
He was their fox, capable of luring them to their doom. The songs from his flutes often reached and touched the one or two dim memories of life that sustained their hold on existence. They came, eager for more of what he offered. So many, that if ghosts could only farm or take up the trades they'd known in their living days, he would have made himself richer by hiring himself out to them instead of the living.
Instead, he led them to the darkness of their ending.
Leaves rustled overhead.
Aki did not look. Instead, he followed his thoughts to the conclusion that he'd have to make do with casting ghosts out for the living. That was the way of his existence.
Wings flapped.
But ghosts were not all he cast out. Ghosts would not be his problem today.
The robin fled.
That was why he also carried a sword.
“Traveler,” a voice whispered, so close Aki looked over his shoulder. “Stop.”
The Bard of Sorcery Page 28
