The Elements of Sorcery (20 page)

Time stopped. My breath came hard, echoing in my ears as a hollow rasp. I became hyper-aware, noticing everything from the tonal variation in the ululating cries of the daemons, the horrible faces which seemed to be fixed in a dire grimace as they shrieked the sound of death. Tingling shudders ran down my spine, prickling at my fingertips and my toes.

Corruption
.

I even saw the subtle shifts in the light cast from my enchanted sword as I held it before me, and then I was screaming, and Mendoz was screaming, and everything crashed together in a cacophany of steel.

My mind froze, the words of my spell slipped from my thoughts like so much sand. My mouth was bone-dry, my heart racing, I was weak and dizzy but there was no one there to hold me up, Mendoz shouted as he countered the attack of one daemon and then the other, spinning in place as his blade flashed in the light of mine, deflecting their blades as they sought the kill.

The spell, you cowardly moron!
 
My brain shouted.
 
Use the damn spell!

“Uh—” I started, but was forced to instead throw myself to the ground as one of the daemons turned toward me while I stood, dumbfounded. I hit the ground rolling, nearly slicing open my leg with my sword. I rolled too far and struck the wall, and my ribs contracted. The breath went out of me in a rush, and then I couldn’t breathe—

My eyes went upward just in time to see—

No

—one of the daemon’s blades as it pierced through the weak point under Mendoz’s armor—

Please no

—blood fountained—

anything but

—he screamed, not in challenge this time but in pain—

can I wake up now

—and the second daemon’s blade took his head off at the shoulders.

It was obscene, really, how the severed head of my companion—

friend

—bounced as it struck the floor, the eyes already overcome with the fixed stare of death—

accusing

—blood poured onto the carpeted floor—

No... please.

Let this be nothing more than a dream.

It’s not a dream.

He’s dead, and it’s your fault
.

I gaped up at the daemons like a beached fish, my mouth opening and closing as I tried desperately to draw breath. Then it was there, filling my lungs with golden radiance, and the words of the spell returned to my mind.

An incoherent scream ripped its way from my lungs and I surged to my feet. The daemons tried to advance, but as the first syllables of the spell left my lips, they were held in place. Tentacles of manna wrapped around them, seizing their sword arms and their legs and preventing them from moving another step.

The spidery words and phrases of the Old Tellarian language were harsh and bitter on my tongue, my head filled only with the scent of my murdered friend’s blood. Speaking the spell was like biting into the still-beating heart of a foe, ripened flesh, filled with the savagery of hatred and abandonment, the rage biting off every hard consonant and glottal stop.

In the radiance of my false Arbiter’s blade, the daemons’ countenance was rendered even more fearsome. They were hideous, inhuman creatures, called from dark realms to serve a tyrant as he desperately clung to the slipping reins of power. Hatred engulfed me, overwhelming even the fear as I chanted on.

Then, as my voice grew ever louder and I launched into the final sequence, they began to scream.

Tendrils of manna reached into the core of their very being and began to tear them apart. It was a horrific thing to watch as they began to melt away, but I no longer had any care for horrors. I watched with glee as their horrific faces sloughed and withered, revealing—

revealing?

The faces of men beneath.

Not daemons.

Men.

The horns were props, the red flesh was steel, the daemonic visages simply masks worn to intimidate the weak and fearful—

I cannot stop the chant.

Suddenly, the words transformed, now like chewing charred parchment and bone dust, dry as a forgotten tomb, hated turning into bitter resentment and defeat as quickly as a candle is snuffed out by a sudden breath.

I watched as the spell I’d crafted tore the Lannthan king’s guards apart, layer by layer, stripping them of their essence as they screamed. At last, they went silent, and the spell ground their very bones to dust before I ran out of words and was left, breathless and panting, on the blood-soaked carpet beneath me.

Betrayed.

From behind me, there was a retching sound. Martine had clearly not taken the spectacle of my disintegration chant very well. I might have been sick myself, but instead, all I felt was dead inside.

I’d been betrayed.

There was a sound in the hallway ahead of me, from the direction that the daemons—the king’s royal guards—had come.

“Hello, cousin,” King Talavar the Ninth said, as he stepped into the light.

“Hello, Talavar,” Martine answered, her voice only a little shaky.

“I see you’ve come to take my throne after all,” said the king of Lannth. “I always wondered when you might convince the Kalais bitch-queen that it was a good idea.”

Their voices went on around me, but I had stopped caring. All I could do was stare into the vacant eyes of my friend’s severed head, silently apologizing over and over for all the mistakes I’d made. My hubris was gone, my confidence shattered, replaced only by a sort of sick sadness that seemed to live in my guts.

There was a scuffle, someone cried out in pain. I knew not who it was, nor did it matter. An eternity passed as I knelt on the blood-soaked floor in silent torment, bitter rage and hatred shredding every ounce of identity I’d built over the past three years. Or was it my entire lifetime? It was impossible to be sure.

My self-hatred was only broken for a moment when I saw the body of King Talavar the Ninth collapse to the ground in front of me, his hand gripping a thin-bladed rapier whose hilt was carved in the exact same style as Martine’s.

I grimly met Mendoz’ dead eyes again.
 
She has a Lannthan blade. That’s what you were trying to tell me, isn’t it? A Lannthan blade. She has a claim to the Lannthan throne, and that’s why we’re here...
 
the only reason...

The persona of the Wayward Crystal Warrior that I'd spent three years developing evaporated in the span of three seconds, destroyed by the searing pain of loss and betrayal. All that was left was me.

Edar Moncrief.

Sorcerer, scholar.

Peddler of love potions and wart removal.

Outwitter of Arbiters.

Savior of Warsil.

Shrike-slayer... assistant, anyway.

The smartest and most dangerous manna-slinger in the Old Kingdoms.

Someone was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear them. I retreated into myself as my mind, shattered of its illusions and stripped of its false pride, began thinking wildly.

Such a betrayal cannot go unanswered.

Martine se Vassoch would pay for using Edar Moncrief for her own personal ends.

An ugly grin stretched across my face from ear to ear.

I reached down and took the antique heirloom crown from the head of the slain King Talavar the Ninth of the Kingdom of Lannth.

I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew, I was emerging from the palace beside Martine, and she was carrying Mendoz’ severed head—

—
no, wait, it’s King Talavar—

—and holding it aloft, screaming out her victory—

the city is fallen and it’s your fault, your fault

Sevenstone for Kalais, thanks to the Arbiter

Three cheers for the Arbiter

Did I actually watch Falgar of the Sanfar Freemen executed before my eyes, or did I only imagine it? The images blurred together, the sounds one loud echo, faint beyond the rushing of blood in my ears, and then—

I was standing on the cliffs at the edge of the city of Sevenstone. There was a low stone wall about half my height which ran along the very edges, giving a beautiful view of the vast blue expanse of the Western Sea. The waves crashed against the stones three hundred feet below me. The sound was almost soothing, and I felt as though I might drift away on the mist.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Martine said beside me. I looked over—she was holding the Lannthan crown, turning it over in her hands. A wave of self-satisfaction crashed over me. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

“You got what you wanted,” I snarled. “Leave me be, Duchess General Martine se Vassoch, you poisonous snake. You make me sick.”

Her tone of voice never changed. “I really am sorry about the monster hunter... but don’t be too sad. Everything dies.”

Then her voice was in my ear, a hissing whisper.

“Even Arbiters.”

The pain in my legs as they struck the low stone wall never registered. Then I was falling through a vast empty space, plummeting toward the rocks and sea below.

An Old Tellarian saying goes:
 
There is no pain in the fall, but beware the sudden halt at the end.

They were right.

There was no pain in the fall. Only blissful silence and the roar of the surf below.

It didn't matter.

In a day, a week, a month, when Duchess General Martine se Vassoch crowned herself the Queen of Lannth by blood and by right, she would place that crown on her brow. She would not have a new one made. The crowns of the Old Kingdoms were centuries old, the most recognizable symbol of royal power in the west.

The moment it touched her temples, an enchantment—the precise one I'd used to slay the "daemons", the one which had disintegrated those men in an instant, eternal agony, would invoke itself and literally tear her to shreds.

She would die in screaming agony in front of her vassals, her family, and her closest friends, the same kind that she had deceived me into wreaking on innocent men defending their king.

It was a satisfying thought.

There was a paralyzing flash of pain.

Then nothing.

Nothing at all.

Lesson V
S
ORCERER'S
T
RUTH

When I plunged from the cliffs of Sevenstone, the sea swallowed me whole. First came pain, and then a rush of impossible cold. The light from the sky above slowly faded to blackness, and then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

I don't know how long I drifted. Hours, days, weeks… it might have even been years, for all I could tell. At first, the water around me changed colors as the sun rose and fell, but after a time, even that just faded to black. The salt stung my eyes, but then I became accustomed to it, and it no longer bothered me.

After the panic following the first lungful of seawater faded away and I realized that breathing was, like eating and sleeping, no longer strictly necessary, I closed my eyes and let the current carry me away.

For a while I was cold, and then I was simply numb. It was better that way.

The images that haunted my mind—blood, death, lives wasted on a pointless endeavor, with my magic supporting them all the way—were vivid in the beginning, but as the sea grew darker and my mind grew colder, even they stopped bothering me.

Fish swam by and nibbled on the ends of my fingers and toes, but I could barely make them out in the darkness. It was only by the cold tingling of manna—by then, the only sensation I had left—that I knew the wounds were healing on their own.

At times I even hoped for some great nautical beast to come by and tear me to shreds just to end it all, but I never got so lucky.

I had failed. Utterly, completely. Failed everyone that mattered, most of all myself.

Worthless.

Pointless.

The sea can have you, Edar Moncrief,
I said silently.
I'm done with you.

For a long time, I wallowed in silent misery beneath the waves of the western ocean. Then, at last, the tides dumped me onto a rocky shore.

In the end, even the sea rejected me.

The tide that delivered me to that rocky waste slowly retreated, leaving me behind like a discarded lump of seaweed. The cold had numbed me through; despite the fact that I could dimly see my fingers moving out of the corner of my eye, I felt nothing from them at all. Even when they turned over and clawed at the slick black stone and began to leak pale blue fluid which sparked and fizzled on contact with the air, no pain reached my mind.

At least the sun was warm.

With no small amount of effort, I managed to clamber to my hands and knees. I still felt nothing from my limbs. My arms gave way and dropped all of my weight to the stone. The sudden impact didn’t hurt, exactly, but the shock to my innards resulted in a choking half-vomit cough that expelled a surprising amount of brine from my nose and mouth. I did it twice, thrice more, until I could once again draw air in and push it back out, as I had before my unexpected maritime misadventure.

Exhausted, I dropped back to the stone and managed to roll limply onto my back.. At some length, staring at the white clouds floating by above me, I expounded on the sea’s many vices with as much thoroughly blasphemous language as I could muster in six tongues. Due to my half-frozen state, most of it came out as incoherent mutters or low moans, but at least I could still make sound. When I had finished hanging it out to dry—ha—I turned my head toward the vast blue waves and stuck out my swollen tongue in a very ungentleman-like manner.

To its credit, the sea made no reply at all.

I heaved great, desperate breaths, like the dying breaths of a great whale trapped by the sand dunes and shriveling in the sun. The salted air felt like sandpaper going down my throat, but it was
warm
, dammit, and incited near-ecstasy in my addled brain. I could not say how long I lay there, soaking in the light from the sun and letting the sea breeze scrape along my trachea, but after some indeterminate time, the faintest hints of prickling sensation began to creep along my limbs.

My mind’s next coherent thought was a series of chained observations which concluded, with some finality, that I had somehow survived.

It seemed impossible, as my mind replayed those last few moments atop the cliffs for the nth time. Still, I was a sorcerer. Dabbling in things which most men knew to be impossible had once been my daily routine. A dim realization slowly wound its way through my head, and before I could stop myself, I slapped at my chest where I’d kept the tiny heartblade in a leather pouch.

There was a sopping meaty smack, and I surprised myself by letting out a wordless cry as pain splashed across me. That
hurt
, dammit.

My dismay gave way instantly to joy—I could feel something!—but transformed just as quickly back when my groping hands found nothing there but the thin, salt-soaked remnant of my tunic. The leather thong which held the pouch must have given way somewhere beneath the waves. My heartblade, the treasure that I’d given up my old life for and protected so zealously, had been eaten by the sea.

By that time, hints of sensation had turned into full-on pins-and-needles stinging all of my extremities, and I clenched my jaw to keep from letting out an undignified whimper at the sudden onslaught of sensation. There was one thing to say for cold: at least it stopped hurting after a while. Trying to think of some way to distract myself, I levered into a sitting position and cast a look around.

There was a shoreline in the distance, mostly obscured by what appeared to be a mid-morning fog. My sea-addled brain worked frantically, trying to figure out how that was possible, and I finally came to the conclusion that I must have come ashore in some kind of bay or inlet. The fact that the water lapped right up against the rocks and the gentle inland slope behind me spoke of a land very far distant from where I’d entered the briny deep. I was nowhere near the great western cliffs of Lannth.

So, then
, I was forced to wonder.
Where exactly
am
I?

After another agonizing eternity where the sun moved an inch toward its zenith, I had regained enough feeling in my arms and legs that I was able to push myself into an unsteady standing position. My clothes had been reduced to ragged tatters that ended at my elbows and knees, my matted hair stuck to my scalp and neck in a most unpleasant and itchy fashion, and there was no sign at all of boots, gloves, or my slender enchanted sword. The sailing ship
Edar Moncrief
had sunk, reduced to flotsam and jetsam, all hands presumed lost. Alarmed by that thought, I took a moment to be silently grateful that my actual hands remained attached to the wrists where they belonged.

The sharp rocks left little cuts on my feet as I wobbled and took slow steps toward the tall waving grass a few dozen yards away from the water, but at least I didn’t have to worry about infection. If drowning couldn’t kill me, disease wasn’t likely to either, or so I hoped.

When I finally stepped off the wet black rocks and into the warm yellow grass, my throat closed and I very nearly let slip a few decidedly masculine tears of joy. I most certainly did
not
blubber like an overgrown child and kiss the dirt several times. Ahem.

Alive for certain, but with no idea where or when. Once I’d steadied myself again, I rose to start hunting for some hint of my location.

In the distance, I heard a shout. Whirling to face it, I could see two dark shapes atop the waving amber stalks, and one of them was pointing at me.

Blaggard’s bones
, I cursed wearily in my head.
I hope they’re friendly
.