Dangerous Games

Chapter 16

"Now, watch!" yelled Karsus. "This is one of the cleverest uses of all!"

The mages, Candlemas among them, stood on the balcony of a mansion overlooking a bridge that spanned a canal. A lesser mage waited with a bucket. Karsus waved a hand, and the mage walked onto the bridge, then chanted as she upended the pail. Candlemas didn't see anything happen. The bridge was slate flagstones on a stone foundation, and the bucket's "water" actually super heavy magic, but it left no wetness. The magic just seemed to disappear. Still, the mage crept gingerly along the bridge's railing until she reached solid ground. Candlemas scratched his bald head. He didn't see any effect.

Yet Karsus almost danced with glee, rubbing his hands, giggling. Other mages waited patiently. Karsus gave a call, and down the path from the opposite side a stable boy led a white horse. Karsus waved him on and the boy stopped at the edge, pointed the horse to the bridge, cooing and patting it, then slapped its rump.

The horse tripped across the bridge, got about halfway, and plunged down through the center. It vanished for only a second, then reappeared underneath whinnying in fright, then crashed, half in and half out of the canal. It thrashed and kicked its back legs, shrilling. One of its front legs was bent at an acute angle.

Karsus howled with delight, "See? It's one thing to create a phantom bridge. It's another to pour heavy magic on a real bridge that dissolves the stone and instantly takes its place! You could use it anywhere: a staircase, a street. You could fashion half an acre of a phantom plaza, say, and stampede people into it and drop them right off the enclave! And once you'd made up the magic, you could hurl it in catapults so it dropped out of the sky and mimicked whatever it hit. You'd have invisible potholes and death traps all over the enemy city! Or put it in the privy. Wouldn't that make a rare joke, a phantom toilet seat! Oh, think what you could do!"

Candlemas thought of a few applications, and wanted to apply some to Karsus. That horse had a broken leg. And although he knew horse leeches could do much with magic, repairing a horse's complicated, delicate leg was out of the question. That animal would be destroyed, its throat cut for no reason other than for Karsus's egomaniacal demonstration.

Yet one of Karsus's crawlers offered a more insidious way of killing with heavy magic. Insinuate heavy magic into someone's ear, then call a charm to flip the "magic dagger" at a right angle, tearing a great channel through the brain. Candlemas couldn't help wonder if someone hadn't tested that one already.

There were more deadly tricks in days to follow. One apprentice drew praise when he constructed a block of heavy magic a foot high and six feet long. For the demonstration, the block was colored a very pale yellow, like a box full of sunshine. The block was infused with Aksa's disintegrate spell. The eager youngster picked up a wooden stick and swiped it at the block. At the end of the swipe, he'd lost a foot of wood. This trap, he explained, could be laid across any narrow street or sidewalk. With the yellow dye removed, it would be almost invisible, impossible to see at night by gasglobe. And just lying there would do its work.

"I know," Karsus crowed. "I know how it would work! Only a genius of my stature could discern this. If someone walks into it, his foot would be instantly disintegrated! He'd lose a limb, fall down, and bleed to death. Even someone with working wards might miss it because it's so low to the ground. Oh, and think! You could make two layers, with a dimensional door behind them. If his foot is snipped off and he falls, he'd tumble in and vanish entirely! Oh, very clever, Krikor, very clever! You may sit at my right hand at dinner tonight!"

The youngster beamed. Candlemas rubbed his bald head.

More mayhem was created: incendiary clouds like slow billowing fireballs, masses of bright lights that pulsated fast and slow, able to hypnotize, or blind, or induce seizures. There was a transportable Proctiv's rock-mud transmution spell that could dissolve a whole hillside. "Mice mines": Karsus's green mice, released with tiny packets of heavy magic to infiltrate houses and cause random explosions. Even pointed slivers of heavy magic that could be inserted into fruits and vegetables. Overnight they would convert sugars into natural poisons like arsenic, nightshade, or belladonna.

It was too much for Candlemas. Once, when Karsus was striding down a corridor babbling about the success of the latest experiment, he blurted out, "By Jergal's Quill, Karsus, what is all this destruction for?"

The wild-haired mage stopped capering and stared with golden eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked blankly. "Oh, Candlemas! Yes, you were my special friend. Well, since it's you, I'll tell. But you must promise to keep it a secret."

The pudgy mage wanted to swear, but refrained. Fifteen mages trailed Karsus with an equal number within earshot. Beaming, the archwizard forgot about the oath of secrecy and stage-whispered, "This is something the city council has been toying with. You know them, always busy." Catering to Karsus's whims, Candlemas knew, but he leaned forward as if enthralled. "Anyway, and don't tell a soul, they're thinking of starting a war."

"War?"

"Shhh!" Karsus waggled a finger. "Don't be a blabbermouth! Yes. I asked them if we might use these war machines on the borders, but we're at peace with everyone, drat it, and our neighbors would take offense if we attacked. Soooo, we're going to stage a war between cities!

"Ioulaum has agreed to partake, and one other, as yet to be named. It shall be a battle between the first and greatest. The first city, that's Ioulaum, since he was the first to float one, and Karsus, which is the greatest city because it's named after me!"

Despite Karsus's shushing, the mages in the corridor were buzzing, and others leaned out of doors and windows for the news. Candlemas rubbed his scalp and found it sweaty.

"I don't think-"

"Oh, you don't need to!" Karsus cut him off. "All the city councilors agree with me. It will be great sport! And allow us to playtest our new weapons for when we do seek to invade a neighbor. Also, the councilors reckon it will distract the populace from the famine-keep them from starting food riots and other trouble!"

"Great sport." Candlemas kept his voice cool. "Except that people will die. Children will die."

"No, no, no. Not important people, no archwizards, just commoners! Though some of the noble sons want to test their prowess in battle, it's said. Instead of dueling in the streets, they can do it on the battlefield, once we have one. Anyway, everyone's very excited, and buying new clothes and weapons and medals, and getting ready to host war balls and celebrations! It'll be simply grand!"

"Grand," echoed Candlemas weakly. Karsus's entourage swept away, jabbering and laughing and making bets and plotting mischief.

How, the pudgy mage wondered, in the name of the gods could anyone think a war was fun? Hadn't they read any history, visited any ruins, heard stories of death and devastation? War was not a village football game, where you chose sides and donned costumes and fooled around until you were tired, then drank the night away. It was death and insanity.

But then, no one in the city was sane except him.

And Aquesita. With a pang, he wondered what she thought of this war nonsense. He couldn't know, for she refused to see him. He'd been turned away from her door by bodyguards, had his letters sent back unopened, even had flowers returned. All because he'd kissed a phantom girl. Or perhaps some other reason he didn't know. Old as he was, he was new to this love business.

Love and war, he thought grimly. Neither made sense.

Sunbright was dying.

He knew he was dying because he didn't care. Only people with a spark of life worried. Once past that barrier, the journey turned interesting, he found, for he was sinking into the earth. On the floor of the hut lay the burned, broken hulk of his body, and far below sank his spirit, moving on to a new life, or the next plane, or wherever.

Dimly, he wondered where. His people had many legends about death, all contradictory. That a spirit entered a nearby being just born, a musk ox, or a bluebell flower, or a baby; so the living, especially children, must be polite to any living thing, for it might be an ancestor. Or that one's spirit traveled to a distant mountaintop and joined the wind, blown around the world eternally to observe and occasionally visit, which explained ghosts. Or that one's spirit simply went to a spirit world to stalk spirit elk and spear spirit salmon. Sunbright had always fancied that last idea.

Instead, he sank. Idly, he watched roots pass by, then a mole, a rock, then yellow sand. Odd, but perhaps the spirit world was below, not above. Spirits could go anywhere, after all.

Too bad he had to leave Knucklebones alone, but then she was alive and so no concern to him. Certainly the living cared little for the dead. He wondered who he'd meet in the spirit world. Old friends? Enemies? His father, Sevenhaunt? That star-eyed woman of his dreams, whoever she was? Was she Mystryl?

Greenwillow? Perhaps so, if she were truly dead. Sunbright had never really believed she was, but now he might find out. Unless, of course, she weren't dead and he were, in which case he'd never find her.

That slowed his sinking. Perhaps he didn't want to leave life behind…

But something was happening around his feet.

The underworld or afterlife had begun to shine. A faint glow illuminated his toes (like Knucklebones's glowlight cantra), then his legs, then his whole body. What caused the glow?

It was greenish and deep, like the ocean when his tribe hunted seals in winter. An underground ocean? Was there such a thing? Why green? That was the color of nature magic, wasn't it? But why here? This part of the world had been saturated in heavy magic, a corrupt force rained down by Karsus in his mad experiments. Why the green Then he got it.

Every place had its own magic: forest magic, sea magic, sky magic, mountain magic. Candlemas had argued that all magic was the same, a simple force like fire that could be used for good or evil, or just its pure self, as fire could torture a man, or cook his food, or forge his tools.

This healthy forest had possessed its own magic, long ago, before corrupt heavy magic rained from the sky like black snow. But the forest magic hadn't vanished, or been consumed. It had simply been crushed deep into the soil by the heavier magic.

Hence this faint green ocean, like an underground reservoir. It had collected here and drawn more nature magic to itself, as streams ran to the ocean and became one.

So Candlemas was wrong, he thought. Too bad Sunbright would never be able to tell him.

But why had Sunbright been drawn to this spot? He was dead, or dying, beyond the need for magic. Besides, as a shaman he was a failure. He'd lost a good part of his soul to a wraith in the Underdark, and had never recovered it. So even when alive — Unless he were still alive, and only sending his spirit winging, flying out of his body to search for knowledge and portents, help and hope.

Astral projection, some called it. Dreamwalking. Spirit sending. Ghosting.

What was the knowledge his spirit sought? That the flood of corrupt magic was only temporary? That it would eventually peter out, and the natural magic return, though it might take decades? Scant comfort to the cruel mutants caught in its web, or their undead leader who clung to a mockery of life.

Or was the knowledge for him?

In a way, Sunbright reflected, the hole in his soul left by the wraith was like the corruption in the forest. The gap in his spirit kept him from realizing his true potential, as the corrupted magic blocked the nature magic.

So, could this forest magic help him? Was that why his spirit sank here? Or had it been steered here by a benevolent god or goddess? Wasn't this the sort of miracle visited by Mystryl, Mother of All Magic, who controlled the Weave that formed the base of all magics?

If that were the case, and he belonged here, then he should use the magic as intended. As shamans used it, for healing, for reading the future, for protecting the tribe and the balance of life between people and plants and animals, wind and water and weather, between sky and soil.

Could he use it?

What had he to lose? Wasn't he dead now? Or dying?

Contemplating, Sunbright laid back in the vast ocean of green-tinged magic, like a bather giving in to the sea's embrace, so he floated on top of it, let it run over him and around him and through him.

And while surrendering his body and spirit, he let his mind drift. Far out went his senses, smell and sight and sound. He heard the chuckle of the magic, like currents on a riverbank or waves on a sand shore, in the voice of birds and the cries of children at play, in the hiss of the wind through mountain passes, in a whisper-the voices of Greenwillow and Knucklebones. He smelled the magic, the green of it, like growing grass in springtime, and the breath of flowers-the scent of Greenwillow and Knucklebones-the tang of pine in the high sierra, the fruity yeast of grain in the fields. He saw the green of magic in the curl of flowers, the turn of a bat's ear, the busyness of a squirrel scaling an oak, the break of a cloud readying to rain, the exquisite diamond cut pattern of snowflakes, and the swell of a woman's breast and hips-the curves of Greenwillow and Knucklebones.

Lying, listening, smelling, feeling, Sunbright came to know the magic of nature as few men or women ever had. For he'd surrendered everything, eschewed everything, even his body and life. And going where others feared, he learned how green magic, and man, and the world, fit together.

And how to link one with the other with the other…

Knucklebones sat with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, head down. Sunbright was a scorched lump alongside her. Hours before he'd given up his ghost, sighed one last time in a grotesque death rattle, and expired. Knucklebones was alone now, lame with a festering foot, unable to flee, surrounded by enemies with fiendish plans.

And now the greatest of them filled the doorway of the tiny hut.

Wulgreth stared at her with stone dead eyes. He still wore his lizard skin robe with the scaly white breast, but he'd belted Harvester of Blood awkwardly around his middle. Knucklebones's own dark elven blade was thrust through the other side, and her fingers itched to snatch it.

The lich lord bent for a second, prodded Sunbright in his eye with a sharp fingernail, drew no response. Dead as cordwood. Wulgreth said something she didn't understand, a guttural growl. He waggled a craggy hand, signaling that she should follow.

Knucklebones felt partly dead already, for she'd blanked Wulgreth out of her mind, refused to acknowledge he was real, or that Sunbright was really dead. So the rough hand snagging her hair and dragging her forth surprised her, as did the agony of her hair being ripped out by its roots. She'd thought she was beyond feeling, but the dragging of her skin over dirt, the twisting wrench to her hair, and the thumping of her festered, swollen foot shook off her self-induced trance.

Was she to be wife or supper? Which was worse, not that she had a choice? If he were to gut her and eat her, he'd need to ply a knife, and that gave her hope, for perhaps she could wrest it away and-what? Pierce his throat? Hamstring him? Carve out his heart? He was undead, and probably impossible to hurt. But she'd try.

If she were to be wife, she'd kick and scream and punch until she was clubbed unconscious. He'd never defile her body without killing her first.

Once she cried out: "Sunbright!"

She wished he could fight alongside her, give her courage, make her feel again. But a heavy hand slapped her face, almost dislocated her jaw, set nose and tongue bleeding. She couldn't even bite him, for it wouldn't hurt What was happening?

Lying on one hip, her head hoisted by her hair, Knucklebones felt the earth tremble, as if a mythallar engine stuttered.

Whatever it was, the sensation was new to the tribespeople, for they howled and gibbered in fear. Some fell and clutched the earth, crying like babies, babbling in fright. Others clutched trees. Wulgreth let go of Knucklebones's hair so her head thumped the dirt. The undead wizard cast about, but couldn't find the source of the disturbance.

The campfire winked out, leaving them in early morning blackness. There were more howls and screams like demented monkeys, then the fire returned, a bright cone shining up from the blackened pit. But no, not fire, for this light was greenish. Knucklebones stared. What was it? No force or light she'd ever seen, though it resembled her own glowlight cantra, but a thousand times brighter.

The fire pit split open as if from an earthquake. The light was very bright, but by squinting Knucklebones just made him out. Straddling the hole, a hole big enough to swallow a man, or spit one out, was Sunbright, hale and hearty.

His bright blond hair was combed neatly into a horsetail with the temples shaved. His red shirt was restored, thick and soft, laced over with his calfskin vest brushed smooth. His boots were solid, the iron rings that the savages had fought over restored and stitched tight to jingle musically. His belt buckle shone, and Dorlas's hammer lay tucked in its holster. Even Harvester was returned to its master's back. Half prone, Knucklebones could see Wulgreth had lost it. As he'd lost his confident swagger and prideful stance. He was clearly flummoxed by this miraculous return of a vanquished enemy.

Knucklebones didn't understand either. A quick glance showed, by the light he shed, that Sunbright's body no longer lay in the hut. So this was no angel, no spirit, but the real man truly restored. Then she recognized his voice.

"Wulgreth!" called Sunbright. "Prepare!"