Sagaria (82 page)

“He served his purpose,” said the Shadow Master with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I was glad to see him go.”

“Irrelevant,” snapped Perima with a wave of her own hand. “Deicher himself was not glad to ‘go,’ and yet we made your mighty sorcerer do so – two of these ‘runts.’”

The Shadow Master stared at her, then abruptly turned his gaze away.

“You have learned so very little, Arkanamon,” murmured Samzing wistfully, sounding almost sorry for the man. “You still make the mistake of confusing cunning and deceit with wisdom.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Shadow Master, looking more like a serpent than ever. “My old acquaintance, Samzing the Infinitely Forgettable.”

“Whom I see you haven’t forgotten,” said Samzing.

The Shadow Master snorted disdainfully. “It has been a long time since we
last clapped eyes on each other, schoolmate. I see the years have treated you roughly. You’ve become a stooped old man, while I’m still as young as I was then – and stronger, so very much stronger.”

Staring at Arkanamon, Sagandran couldn’t think how the man could be proud of his physical youth. It was impossible to guess the Shadow Master’s age, because the evil within him had so twisted his appearance that it was hard to believe he was still truly human. Didn’t the Shadow Master ever look in a mirror? Or was the only reflection he ever saw the one he wanted to see?

“If the price to pay for youth like yours is stealing the life force of the innocent,” Samzing was saying stoutly, “then I am glad that I’ve become old.”

Again the Shadow Master gave that horrid giggle, sending bony fingers up Sagandran’s spine. “You still don’t understand, do you, old man? No, I see you don’t, no more than you ever did. Not even when I arranged, oh so cleverly, for your expulsion from the college of the Elemental Orders at Qarnapheeran. It was so simple to make it look as if you’d deliberately tried to murder me. The difference between the magic of darkness and the magic of light is elementary to perceive, Samzing, you fool, and yet you’ve never been able to do it. The magic of light seeks ever to obey the rules, but the magic of darkness knows no limits. Its power is unbounded, unrestricted by the petty concerns of morality. That is why the magic of darkness will always prevail over the magic of light.”

“We shall see,” said Samzing with simple dignity.

The Shadow Master must have felt the restrained force because he flinched away from the wizard. “Only I shall still be there to see,” he muttered.

Sagandran had had enough of this shadow boxing. “Where’s my grandfather?”

The Shadow Master fixed him with a stare. Sagandran could feel it like needles pricking the skin of his face.

“You mean you worry about the dotard? You’re so small that you have time for concern about someone so expendable?”

Sagandran felt his blood beginning to boil. “Only the truly contemptible have contempt for the lives of others,” he said.

Arkanamon shrugged. “Well, you’ll meet him soon enough. I have kept him alive that long. The last I saw of him, Melwin was somewhat … tired after the long hours of his latest interrogation, and said he needed to take a rest.” The Shadow Master giggled once more. “Just a little rest from all the high excitement,” he added.

Fists clenched, Sagandran took a pace toward the cloaked man. Samzing’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, holding him back.

A voice spoke from behind, and the companions spun to see the newcomer.

Newcomers in the plural, they discovered.

“You have brought my Earthworldling servant, have you, Tomaq?” said the Shadow Master.

The officer bowed deeply. Beside the armored Shadow Knight stood a smaller figure.

“Webster!” gasped Sagandran. “You again.”

Webster O’Malley’s face looked beaten by circumstance, as if the spirit had been squeezed ruthlessly from him like toothpaste from a tube. But he managed to conjure up a mockery of his old sneer, as if everything was going according to his master plan.

“Ah, yah, Sag. It’s the way it goes, you see. Like my Dad always says, in business there have to be some winners and that means there has to be a heck of a lot of losers. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you know. There’s no more point in the losers whimpering about it than there is in the eggs complaining that they’ve been broken.” He spread his hands. “I had to buy myself a ticket home, didn’t I? And you were the fee the ticket-collector asked for. Now I’ve come to claim my reward.” His grin gained something of its old cocksureness. “Just like the lottery, ain’t it?”

“Creep,” said Perima.

Sagandran, who’d been about to let fly at Webster with a stream of invective, realized that she’d said it all for him.

“But you failed, Webster,” interposed the Shadow Master. “Don’t forget you failed.”

Webster looked at him with a display of defiance. “It wasn’t my fault. It was them halfwit Shadow Knights of yours that failed. I did my best – ’sides, you got Sag and the rest here now, so where’s the difference? When are you going to send me home, like I was promised?”

“Promised, Webster? Do you think I would bother to promise anything to an insignificant wretch like you?”

“You did!”

The Shadow Master looked to his subservient officer. “Did I do any such thing, Tomaq? I do not recall it.”

Tomaq tried to bow even further. “Neither do I, sire.”

Arkanamon gave a mock-sorrowful sigh. “Then I think you must be mistaken, Webster.”

The boy’s eyes were wild with distress. “I did everything you told me to!”

The fiery eyes waxed yellow. “Then you must learn, Webster, that sometimes everything is simply not enough.”

The Shadow Master stretched out a bony hand and pointed a finger at the cringing boy. “
Zorax litca abselifor.
”

“Whaddya mean,
zorax
thing?”

As Sagandran watched, his mouth wide in horror, the lower part of Webster’s legs turned the gray of stone.

At first, Webster didn’t notice the transformation happening to his body. Only when he was marble up to his waist did he look down, and then he started to scream.

“Farewell, inadequate servant.” Arkanamon’s voice was soft, yet it cut through the screaming.

The upper edge of the stone was soon around Webster’s chest. His lungs could no longer fill with air. With the last of the air in them, the boy let out a final, despairing shriek, and then the whole of him was gray. Where there had been a living boy, there was now a marble statue whose face was frozen in a scream of anguish.

The Shadow Master tapped the top of Webster’s stone head. “Another masterpiece for my collection,” he commented mildly. “I’ve become quite the connoisseur, you know. Tomaq, take this specimen down to the gallery and place it among the others.”

“Right you are, sire,” said the Shadow Knight, bending to put his arms around the thighs of what had once been Webster. He grunted as he lifted the heavy statue, then staggered away from the open balcony.

Sagandran let out a moan of dismay. “Sheesk. I never liked Webster O’Malley but …”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say,” interrupted Perima with some semblance of cheerfulness.

You’re a princess,
thought Sagandran.
You’ve been trained to be callous. I haven’t.

The Shadow Master was once more staring at him. “I think we’ve had enough little courtesies, don’t you? Sagandran, give me the Rainbow Crystal.”

“No.”

“Give it to me. You will not enjoy the experience if I have to take it from you.”

“No.” Sagandran stuck his jaw out and gripped the crystal. It seemed to pulse with a life force of its own, feeding him with strength and determination into him. Perhaps it was no more than an illusion, but in that moment he felt invulnerable, invincible, a match for the worst that the Shadow Master might throw at him.

False confidence, but better than no confidence at all.

There was a new voice. Samzing’s voice. “Leave the boy alone, Arkanamon, you scum!”

The wizard raised his arms, preparing to cast a spell, his lips already moving in the first syllables of the incantation. “Scum, am I? You and your cronies at Qarnapheeran always did look down your noses at me. Now the tables have been turned – with a vengeance. I suppose it falls to me to teach you that.”

“Like you taught me before? That retaliation of yours was supposed to kill me, Arkanamon, yet here I stand before you now.”

“You stand before me as an old man, Samzing,” said the Shadow Master, as if repeating something to a deaf great-uncle.

What scared Sagandran the most was that the Shadow Master’s hissing voice seemed compassionate, caring, sympathetic.

“Well, old man, I recall the spell that almost did you in last time. Now I propose to let it finish its work.”

From the Shadow Master’s hand there grew a great ball of light, far too bright for Sagandran to look at. Screwing up his eyes, he half-turned away, trying not to let his vision be dazzled.

With a flick of his skeletal finger, Arkanamon sent the thunderbolt hurtling toward Samzing. The bolt struck the wizard in the chest, throwing up a cloud of sparks and smoke, and sending him crashing into the balcony’s balustrade and almost over it. As the air was crushed out of him, he slumped with a moan against the stone barrier. His face turned as gray as the stone that Webster had become. The air smelled of scorched cloth and flesh.

“You murderer!” cried Sagandran. “You’ve killed him!”

“That’s not all I’ve done,” continued the Shadow Master in that same whimsical, almost tender tone. “Take a look at your friend.”

Sagandran turned. “Oh,
no
.”

Perima.

Frozen where she stood.

She must have realized at the last moment what the Shadow Master was doing, because her face was twisted and distraught.

“Later,” cooed Arkanamon, “I shall take the greatest of delight in turning her into a statue to join your friend, Webster. Or maybe not. On second thought, I believe I have … other uses for that high and mighty princess of yours. So very pretty she is.”

“I’ll—”

“What you will do, Sagandran,” said the Shadow Master, his voice hardening so that it cut like a cold diamond, “is give me that crystal. Otherwise things will go ill for you and for your friends. They will curse you for not allowing me
to merely transform them into pretty stone ornaments.”

Sagandran felt his body moving into a crouch. Ridiculous as it seemed, it was instinctively preparing to launch into an attack. Fight or flight, the old principle. His mind would not let his body flee, so it was readying itself for the only other option.

“Whatever you do to me, to us, I will never surrender the Rainbow Crystal to you. With the last breath I breathe, I’ll fight you to safeguard the three worlds and all that I hold dear.”

To symbolize how the Rainbow Crystal was of the same essence as he was and could never be taken from him without his destruction, Sagandran stuffed the gem back inside his T-shirt.

“So stubborn,” said the Shadow Master, as if Sagandran’s resistance were of little consequence, a minor irritation. “As stubborn as your grandfather. You forget, boy, that I can do to you what I could not do to your grandfather, who served as bait to draw you here – draw you
and
the Rainbow Crystal here. To take the trophy from you, all I need to do is kill you.”

“And you can do that so easily?” retorted Sagandran, drawing courage from somewhere. His adrenaline was rushing as if he were the one threatening the Shadow Master, not the other way around. “Then how come you haven’t done it already?”

The Shadow Master’s eyes flared to a white heat, then his mouth tightened in detestation. He made as if to strike out with his thin fist, but managed to control himself.

“I think,” continued Sagandran, “it’s because you can’t.”

A surge ran through him, a feeling of power. He was the one in control.

“And why should that be, Arkanamon? Why are you unable to strike me dead where I stand?”

The Shadow Master did not respond. He just watched Sagandran through eyes that were the narrowest of slits.

“I believe,” said Sagandran, “it’s because for all your talk about the magic of darkness being able to transcend every boundary, it must, in fact, abide by the rules – like every other form of magic. Somewhere in those prophecies you’ve been using as your guide, it says that the Rainbow Crystal cannot be taken. It will remain itself only if it is freely given.”

As if he were mimicking Arkanamon, Sagandran dropped his voice to a whisper. “And I do not choose to give it to you!”

It was a standoff. Arkanamon couldn’t kill him for the crystal, but neither could Sagandran strike out at the Shadow Master. Sagandran could turn on his heel and walk out of the Palace of Shadows unharmed, but that would leave
all his friends and Grandpa Melwin to face whatever horrific fate the Shadow Master could dream up for them.

The Shadow Master smiled hideously. “You forget one thing, Sagandran.”

“Yeah, right. Like what?”

“Like the fact that my army,” Arkanamon gestured over his shoulder at the distant plain where the throngs of armored warriors swirled like angry termites, “is mighty enough to conquer Sagaria, unaided by the power of the crystals. Yes, my conquest would be
better
if the triumvirate of the stones was complete. My control over the subjugate world would be more absolute, but that doesn’t mean that Sagaria would be spared from the tramp of my soldiers’ iron boots. Then, once Sagaria is mine, it would be only a matter of time before the Earthworld fell to my forces too.

“So you can annoy me by withholding the stone from me, Sagandran. You can delay my mastery of the three worlds. You can make my conquest of them more difficult, but you cannot change the final outcome. Now,
give me that crystal.
”

Sagandran thought wildly. “Why should I trust you, wizard of lies?” he cried. “I saw how you ‘kept your promise’ to Webster. How could I possibly believe a word you say?”

The Shadow Master visibly lost patience. All control gone, and he let the full force of his ruthlessness flood back into his voice.

“Then take your skepticism to the grave, boy.”