The Sorcerer (27 page)

A pair of dark disks came hissing across the basin and would have slashed their heads off, had Aris not knocked them off their feet before it arrived. Galaeron rolled to his knees and counterattacked with a flight of shadow arrows.

Brennus blocked them easily and sent the dark shafts streaming back in their direction. Aris took two in his arm, and Vala one in her shoulder, and three more nicked Galaeron along one side of his neck and arm.

“If s done,” Galaeron said. They were the most difficult words he had ever been forced to say, and also the surest. He took Vala’s arm and shoved her back toward the three battered Chosen. “We aren’t going to win this.”

Aris refused to retreat.

“But the mythallar—”

“Is cracked,” Galaeron said. “Perhaps that will be enough to bring the city down.”

Aris turned and hurled his hammer at the heart of mythallar.

Clariburnus waved his hand and sent the tool somersaulting away, then Brennus sent a bank of black fog rolling toward them. Galaeron raised a wind spell that he hoped would send the fog rolling back toward the princes, but Brennus dispelled it with a gesture. Storm began to choke on the fumes, and it occurred to Galaeron that he was learning something else about power, that sometimes the most difficult part of wielding it was knowing when it was not enough.

“We’ve done as much as we can.”

Galaeron motioned for the wounded giant to gather up Storm and the other Chosen, then he grabbed hold of Vala and shoved her into the others.

“Well said, elf,” Khelben replied. He stretched a hand behind Vala’s back to clasp Galaeron on the shoulder. “You’re learning.”

Another shadow bolt came hissing into the group to catch Storm square in the back. Laeral’s arm lashed out to catch her sister under the arm, then the basin tipped precariously in the opposite direction. Only Aris’s sticky appendages and long reach kept the group from tumbling across the basin and becoming separated again.

“All right!” Laeral cried. “Galaeron, will you please get us out of here while there’s still something left to get out of?”

Ruha sat wedged in a shady cleft high in the Scimitar Spires East, watching the Shade Enclave slowly sink toward the purple waters of Shadow Lake. Enormous as it was and swaddled in black shadowstuff, the enclave resembled a storm cloud crashing down from on high, complete with sheets of silver lightning illuminating jagged sweeps of misty curtain and mysterious, half-heard roars rumbling out from its hidden heart. Veserab riders were descending from the city in masses of swirling wings, and hordes of shadow walkers were beginning to emerge from dark places all across the nearby hills. This increased the likelihood that she would be forced to flee before she found her friends—and Malik—but Ruha was glad to see so many Shadovar escaping alive. As terrible as were the calamities

they had unleashed on Faerűn with their shadow blankets, she had no thirst for vengeance. The death of an entire city would do nothing to bring back the hordes who had already perished.

The enclave—or rather, the black cloud surrounding the enclave—dropped an abrupt five hundred feet, sending scores of veserabs tumbling through the air and bringing the city approximately level with Ruha’s hiding place. Though it was difficult to see much through the billowing murk, every so often she glimpsed a crag of stone cliff sweeping past, or an expanse of black wall plummeting down out of the shadows only to suddenly reverse direction and vanish back into the gloom.

Shade was wobbling, Ruha realized, as though someone were struggling to keep it aloft. She could only guess what that meant for her friends, but it could not be good. Certainly, they were not the ones attempting to save the city.

“Storm?” Ruha said aloud. “How fare you? I am here.”

Knowing the Weave would carry no more than a few words to Storm’s ear, Ruha stopped there. Several more times, a craggy cliff emerged from the black mists and swept past Each time, the stony face seemed a little hazier and indistinct, as though she were looking through a denser fog—or more of it Despite this, she quickly began to recognize the features of the cliff and realized that the city was no longer sinking.

Someone was saving it

“Storm?” Ruha called again. “Khelben? Are you there?”

When no response came she tried Laeral, then Alustriel, and finally she received an answer.

The battle went badly, and I cannot contact them either. Even coming to Ruha through the Weave, Alustriel’s voice sounded weak and full of pain.
was wounded and forced to leave. Is Shade still… ?p>

It stopped sinking. Ruha replied using Alustriel’s spell. What that means, I don’t know.

Dove was injured as well, Alustriel reported.
hesitate to ask, but—p>

III learn what I can, Ruha offered.

The rumble of a collapsing building—or perhaps several of them—sounded somewhere inside the enclave, then a huge cascade of rubble tumbled out of the cloud and splashed into Shadow Lake.

The situation here is unsteady, Ruha sent, you may not hear from me for some time.

Thank you, Alustriel said. Be careful. Dove and I will return as soon as we are well enough to help.

Ruha watched until the rubble had stopped splashing into the lake, then she drizzled a little saliva on her hand. She had not used her magic for fear of alerting a Shadovar patrol to her presence, but Alustriel’s request rendered that fear irrelevant. The Shining Lady would never have asked for help, were she not worried that Galaeron’s plan had gone terribly wrong. Ruha made a wiping motion in the air before her, at the same time using the elemental magic favored by desert witches to cast a spell of clear seeing.

The shadow mist grew transparent, so long as she looked straight ahead. For the first time, she saw Shade unmasked. The city of grand palaces and imposing edifices that had seemed so breathtaking was gone. In its place hung a jumbled mountain of shabby tenements and dilapidated mansions, collapsing one after the other as the enclave lurched about like a camel on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Even the overturned peak upon which it rested was flaky disintegrating shale instead of hard granite.

Pouring down the face of the mountain was a stunning thread of silver liquid, not so much falling into the lake as stretching down through the surface. Whether it actually touched bottom or continued through it down into the heart of the Phaerlin was impossible to say, but Ruha knew by how the strand remained tight from top to bottom that it was not falling water. She followed its shining line up to the source

and discovered that it came from a cleft in a red, heart-shaped boulder lodged in a horizontal fissure about halfway up the mountain.

Swinging about beneath the boulder, affixed to it by some means not apparent at that distance, was a pudgy little shape with a pair of tiny nubs rising from the top of his head. Ruha needed no more magic to recognize what she was seeing. She knew a pair of cuckold’s antlers when she saw them.

It was Malik’s accursed fortune that the Shadovar had to be the worst smiths on this plane or any other. He was hanging with his feet braced against the lower lip of the sun slit, trying to pull the Karsestone—which stood a full head higher than he was tall—through an opening that rose only to his chin. One of the links in his manacle chain had opened. The gap was not large, but given his strength and his pitiful condition even that much was a comment on the sorry state of Shadovar metalworking.

“Cyric!” he called.

He continued to pull, but kept a careful eye on the link.

“The One—”

The cleft swept upward as the city began another of its wild oscillations. For perhaps the hundredth time, Malik found himself tumbling down toward the opposite corner. He could think of nothing but the weak chain, of what would become of him if the link opened and he went tumbling into the lake below. Drowning would be the least of it Thirsty as he was, it might even be pleasant. Afterward, though, the things that would happen to his spirit if he failed Cyric and died … that he could not even bear to contemplate.

The free manacle struck him in the head, and the chain jerked him along upside-down. He slammed into the upper lip of the sun slit and flipped down in front of the tumbling

Karsestone just in time to catch a long spray of whole magic straight in the face. He began to cough violently, then the boulder was rolling onto his chest Ribs crackled, his breath left him in a scream, and the stone stopped. On top of him.

Malik cursed and kicked and shoved, but the thing would not budge. It was wedged in place against the ceiling of the slit, which meant he had somehow—at last—dragged it into the opening.

He craned his neck to the side, and through the cascade of silvery magic pouring down over his face, he glimpsed a ragged notch in the upper Up of the sun slit. Malik began to believe he might really succeed in stealing the stone. That he would no doubt be killed in the process was an unpleasant consequence, but in his service to Cyric, he had suffered many things far worse.

The pain was beyond belief, and it was impossible to draw breath, but Malik had long ago learned to ignore minor inconveniences such as those. He hooked his heels over the lip of the opening and pulled. The Karsestone slipped a little—and more weight settled on his chest.

Maybe that meant there would be more room at the top. Malik pulled harder with his legs. Something snapped in his chest He pulled harder and shoved with his arms. Nothing moved, but he did grow dizzy from lack of air. Thus reminded that the stone was laying on him, he saw that if he could only get out from beneath it, there would be room for it to fall completely on its side and slide out into the empty air.

Lacking any other means of extracting himself, Malik straightened his legs and began to swing them back and forth in a widening arc, trying to work first his hips free, then the rest of his body as well. Behind him, the roar and crash of screaming Shadovar and tumbling stone rose and faded in time to the wild oscillations of the enclave. The Karsestone pressed more heavily as the slit swung downward. Malik’s vision closed in, and stars began to appear around the edges

of the darkening tunnel. The rush of oblivion filled his ears, then the slit reached the apogee of its swing and started back down.

The weight all but vanished. Malik flung his legs down in the direction they were traveling and felt his hips slip out from beneath the boulder. He rolled to his side and pushed, hard, and was free.

The Karsestone rocked toward him.

“Devil rock!”

Malik pushed off and pivoted on his hip, whirling out of its path and back into the loom chamber. The Karsestone settled on its side, rocked to the right, rocked to the left, and slipped over the edge.

The manacle stretched Malik’s arm out full, and he thought his hand would pop free of his wrist Instead, he flew out the sun slit after it and found himself following the Karsestone down through a swirling cloud of veserab riders. The boulder struck glancing blows to two beasts and sent them tumbling and hissing away, then finally caught one square between the wings. The impact slowed their fall just long enough for a little slack to develop in the chain that connected Malik to the stone. The rider slipped past, bloody and twisted on one side and the mount broken and screeching on the other, then the purple waters of Shadow Lake grew visible no more than a thousand feet below.

Malik smiled.

“Cyric!” he screamed. “Hear me now, Cyric, the One—”

When he cried the last word, no sound came from his mouth. The lake continued to come up beneath him, though with the ferocious wind filling his eyes with tears, it was all but impossible to see. He tried again and remained as mute as a tortoise. He cursed Shar, thinking she was only trying to protect her prize, then glimpsed a dark shape angling down to intercept him. Thinking it was only an alert Shadovar lord, Malik reached for his stolen dagger—and instantly found himself engulfed in a web of sticky magic strands.

In a web of sticky strands of Weave magic.

Malik stopped falling, and wailed more in frustration than pain as the Karsestone stretched his manacle chain taut— again—and jerked his shoulder out of its socket He thought the terrible strain would tear off his arm. Instead, the boulder stopped falling, and he found himself staring out a small gap down his manacle chain to the open link. The gap was as wide as a dagger blade and growing before the one eye that could see it.

Malik tried to see who had captured him, but the magic web held his head too tightly for it to turn. It hardly mattered. He knew without looking who it was. She had a gift for arriving when he most needed her to be somewhere else. They turned and started across the lake toward the Scimitar Mountains.

“Where are your manners, Malik?” Ruha called. “Will you not thank me for saving your life?”

The opening in the link continued to grow, and in his fury it barely registered that Ruha had annulled the magic that had silenced him earlier. “Meddling Harper witch!” Malik cried. “Can you not see that I am robbing the Shadovar of their greatest power?”

“And giving it to Cyric, I am certain,” Ruha surmised, relieving him of the compulsion to add this himself. “I think the rest of us will be better served with the Karsestone in the hands of the Chosen—and you standing before a Harper court”

“You may as well murder me here!” Realizing that he could speak again, Malik tried again to say, “Cyric, the—”

Again, his words began to spill silently from his mouth. They passed out from beneath the city’s shadow, but Malik could see that the chain would never hold until they reached shore. The open link was straightening before his eyes. He tried to call out, hoping that if he could warn Ruha she would at least save the stone until he could steal it later, but the only thing to leave his mouth was his silent, anguished breath.

The link lost its last bit of curve, and the Karsestone

plummeted free. Malik and Ruha shot skyward, but only long enough for Ruha to regain control and start down after the falling stone.