Dangerous Games

Chapter 18

"Candy! Candy!"

Candlemas stumbled down a landing ramp, bruised, bloody, singed, and thoroughly rattled. Who was calling him that silly name? He didn't know anyone-then a warm bundle bounced into his chest. Soft arms were flung around his neck, his sweaty, sooty face was smothered in plump and delicious kisses. Struggling to stay on his feet, he wrapped his arms around the woman's broad back and hung on. When she paused for breath, he saw who it was.

"Sita! Aquesita?"

"Oh, Candy, I was so worried, I had to come see you!" she sobbed. Tears of joy and relief spilled down her cheeks. "When Karry told me he'd sent you into battle, I couldn't believe it. But it was true! Oh, I'm so proud of you, my darling. So glad you've come back to me unhurt."

"I'm not quite unhurt," his words were mushy, his mouth sore. "I bit my tongue when the ship crashed."

"Crashed?" The word brought on a new flurry of tears, kisses, and hugs. "Oh, my poor, brave soul!"

Stunned, and not just from knocks in the head, Candlemas hung onto his ladylove and basked in her praise and attention. Her broad back was comforting, her modest bosom, pressed to his dirty uniform, exciting. Awkwardly he kissed her hair, stroking it with smudged hands, murmuring what sweet nothings he could conjure.

This made no sense; his brain whirled. For days, Aquesita refused him an audience, returned his letters and flowers. Now she ran to his arms because he'd been in danger. Was this love madness, woman contrariness, or male thickness? He couldn't begin to guess, so he just gave into it and let himself be pampered.

The coddling included a ride in Aquesita's long carriage, plain white but painted with vibrant, intertwined roses and vines. Lolling on red cushions, Candlemas sipped wine that stung his swollen tongue and watched the hustle and bustle of the city pass his window. He'd done his share. War wasn't so bad, he reflected, if these were its rewards.

He shifted idly, seeking a muscle that didn't ache. Moving sent a faint whiff to his nostrils: the stink of burned flesh. Rocking forward, he gagged on his wine, spraying it on the floor and the hem of Aquesita's blue gown. With the smell came the memory of screams as men and women burned to death, hair and flesh igniting. Suddenly his hands trembled so badly the wineglass stem snapped and cut his fingers. That could have been him, crippled and unable to flee the heat ray. He could be ashes fertilizing a forest right now.

Slowly, head down, he breathed deeply while Aquesita cooed and stroked his back. Best to not think about the raid, the disaster. Hollowly, he said, "I'll be all right. I just need a minute. And a… bath. What's-" He stopped himself. No, better not ask about her just yet. Their separation might be a sore point. "What's the latest gossip?"

"Gossip?" Aquesita laughed uneasily. "You know I don't follow gossip, dear Candy. I've no interest in who sleeps with whom, or who's gambled away his or her fortune, or who's lashed whom to ribbons. There are finer things in life to consider, and nobler pursuits. No, there's-wait! There was one unpleasantness that's newsworthy. Certainly it's a scandal. Did you ever meet a silver-haired woman named Polaris?"

"Lady Polaris?" Candlemas snapped upright so fast it made him dizzy. Cradling his aching skull, he said, "I know her-knew her. Worked for her once, long ago. She's a cold thing, a heart of ice, single-mindedly dedicated to her personal pursuits, with no concern for anyone else. She could be empress some day." If she lays off the food, he added mentally.

He kept thinking of the slim, calculating Polaris of old, not the bloated, preening, self-deluded pig he'd met in this time.

"She'll never be empress," Aquesita said. "She was assassinated last night."

"A-Assassin-Assassinated?" Candlemas sputtered as a fresh stab of pain shot through his head. "Dead? Polaris?"

The plump hand caressed his shoulder. "I'm afraid so," she cooed. "I never knew you worked for her. Yes, she died in a new and peculiar way. Someone devised a spell that injects a sliver of heavy magic into fruit without a trace. The magic turns the sugars into arsenic, or cyanide, I forget which. It was candied dates did her in. How unfortunate. It'll throw the empire into a tizzy, everyone fretting over new methods of assassination…"

Her pleasant voice droned on, but Candlemas didn't hear. He couldn't fathom the concept. Lady Polaris, once the most beautiful woman in the empire, and perhaps the most powerful-she'd bailed him and Sunbright out of hell with two fingers-dead, snuffed out, fit only for worms. It didn't seem possible.

And Candlemas was partly responsible. The "splinter of heavy magic poison" idea came from Karsus's new experimentation with super heavy magic, which in a way, Candlemas enabled by uncovering the fallen star. Of course he wasn't totally responsible, perhaps not at all. He was a victim of the new magic as much as she.

But he felt sorry and unhappy, though he'd never have believed it… and worried, and fretful. The empire, this war, Karsus's mad manipulations that brought certain disaster, it had to stop. Or else Candlemas had to leave it behind.

Sunbright was right, he realized suddenly. He, they, should return to their own time. It was the only sensible choice. There was no place for him here, no future, not with the empire hurling itself to destruction. He owned nothing, owed nothing, had nothing to hold him.

Except Aquesita.

Sensing his unease, the woman leaned close, her soft bosom pressing his arm, sending a tingle through him. "Dear?" she almost whispered. "Is something wrong? Shall I stop the carriage, or take you to a healer?"

"No, no, I'm fine. Better, anyway."

He sat up straight, though the weight of the world seemed to press his shoulders.

"Aquesita, do you… would you… is there…"

Patiently she waited, eyebrows arched, red mouth parted invitingly. Her eyes sparkled, and for a moment Candlemas imagined she thought he was asking to marry her. That couldn't be, could it?

"Yes, dear?" she waited.

But Candlemas didn't know what to say, so only enfolded her tightly, and hung on to her softness, inhaled the perfume of her hair, and wept like a lost child.

She patted his back, murmuring, "There, there, love. It's all right…"

Knucklebones was snatched off her feet by a bronzed hand and plunked in a crotch of the fallen oak. Sunbright's speed made her dizzy, and he moved faster all the time.

A flash lit the night as moonlight, starlight, and firelight all reflected off the blade of Harvester of Blood. The wide, nose heavy, hooked blade had never burned brighter, the steel polished to a fine luster, the whole glowing with the eerie green-tinged nature magic Sunbright had embraced. Like a winter moon descended from the sky, like white fire, the blade swept after the encroaching snake skeleton. One smash sent brittle bone fragments sailing in all directions so they rained like pointed hail. The blade flashed again, and the floating balloon things were punctured, sheared through. Red smears on the blade were quickly wicked off, leaving only a whiff of marsh gas and stingers that flopped to the ground and writhed like lizard tails.

Wulgreth was hollering, screaming, ranting. Knucklebones didn't know if he shouted encouragement, orders, or just noise. He thrashed against the fallen oak, furiously splintering branches in his craggy hands, climbing, pointing, and shrieking at the same time. The small thief clutched her elven blade close and waited for an opportunity to strike, but these undead menaces were beyond her capabilities. In Karsus, she'd have run ten blocks by now. And Sunbright held the center of the battle, and nothing could get near him for his whirling blade.

The dumpy manling with mandibles plied short knives in all four hands. He slashed the air and keened like a seagull, distracting Sunbright until others could strike. The shadeling slithered under the tree to circle behind, and the amputee zombie dragged itself up close to strike with a rusty cleaver it wore on a thong down its back. Sunbright watched them all, still calm, but singing the battle anthem of his people.

As she watched and waited, stunned, Knucklebones felt a thrill in her breast, an admiration for this man who possessed not only strength and intelligence, but gentleness and the will to win, to learn, to delve into magic and make it his own. Too, she felt a sudden and surprising yearning to hold him close, a rush that made her belly tingle. Mighty queer feelings for a disastrous battle in a darksome, haunted forest.

The attack coalesced when the knitting yarn tangle of arms and tentacles dropped from a tree onto Sunbright's head. Immediately limbs began to wrap around his eyes and mouth, to blind and smother him while the other fiends rushed in for the kill.

But Sunbright took it all in stride. Still watching his enemies, he squirmed his left hand up along his neck and cheek, halting the tangled thing's cruel embrace. Biting through a ropy arm, then wrenching, he ripped the thing off his head. His skin was torn and rasped, for the tentacles were as abrasive as a squid's. Sunbright wore a mask of his own blood, but as the thing coiled around his bicep, he smashed down hard to grind it against his ribs, crushing it in his armpit.

The four-armed manling scissored pipe stem arms wide, slid them between Sunbright's legs, and sliced to hamstring and cripple him. But the barbarian snapped his free hand on the juncture of two of the manling's arms, flicked his wrist, and broke both arms so they dangled and flapped uselessly.

The cleaver-wielding zombie scuttled like a crippled crab to hack at Sunbright's backside and spine, and here Knucklebones got her chance. Hopping up and skipping along a branch, she might get behind the thing and yet be out of reach of Sunbright's long, flashing sword, or so she hoped. Crouching, she latched onto the zombie's tattered robe to jerk it backward and pierce its throat.

The rotten cloth only tore in her grip. Grunting, the zombie spun faster than she would have imagined and the pitted, nicked cleaver came at her. The undead thing grunted, and Knucklebones saw with horror that its tongue was missing, cut out long ago. Up close the fiend was unspeakably repulsive. It stank of the grave and had only patches of skin to cover its yellowed skull, yet a deadly unlife glittered like moths in its eye sockets. Knucklebones wanted to shriek, but that would only get her killed, so she put her energy into striking instead. A short stab with her dagger, and the blade sank to the hilt in the zombie's neck. With a lurch and wrench, she jerked the blade toward herself and down to sever windpipe and vein. The blade tore free, the dead skin tearing like old, gray leather.

The hideous wound did exactly nothing to the zombie, despite the fact that its head was half severed. The glittering moth eyes only bored deeper into Knucklebones as the cleaver whipped at her head. Still crouched, she stumbled backward, hooked her swollen foot on a branch, and fell. That left her legs exposed to the zombie's chop. She'd be as legless as it was in a second.

Sunbright still had the tangle ball pinned in his armpit, for he hadn't the necessary second to rip it loose. The thing's arms and tentacles slapped, rasped, and sucked frantically at his arm and side and neck and thighs. The bitten off limb flailed, spraying black blood like octopus ink, and the limbs seemed to be growing, thinning and elongating. Two sucker-covered limbs wrapped around the barbarian's knee and yanked upward to trip him. Sunbright ground his arm tighter against his ribs, making the thing squirm, and tried to ignore it. The dumpy manling with two broken arms was hot for revenge.

All this took place by the eerie light of the barbarian himself, for the green-white glow still surrounded him. Too, in the east and high up, dawn sent rose-yellow tendrils of light onto a low overcast slit as if with a knife.

Knucklebones glimpsed all this as she flopped. The zombie made to chop at her leg, but she whipped it free before the cleaver struck. It cleft instead the branch she'd tripped on, the dull steel chipping through bark to white wood. Its stinking evil had first terrified Knucklebones, but now infuriated her. This zombie had been a bastard in life, too, she would bet. Scrambling on her butt and hands like a crab, she kicked hard at its brow, avoiding the mouth of broken teeth. The sturdy blow rocked the thing, but it didn't tumble. It was heavier than she'd guessed, as if the flesh had taken on the denseness of its tomb. Another quick kick glanced off its skull, shearing away rotten flesh and exposing fresh bone. For a moment, Knucklebones thought she'd vomit. Instead, she crabbed away from it.

Sunbright grappled with the yarn ball that flapped and flailed like a mad octopus. Snatching another limb with his free hand, he put it to his mouth and bit through that also. He spat, lips black with blood. The dumpy manling chittered at him with a high, rabbitlike keen. Sunbright had no desire to kill it, for it was obviously under the thrall of Wulgreth. But the yarn ball was becoming a problem, raking his skin raw where it touched. Sunbright feinted at the manling, a quick jab to make it fall back.

The manling did scuttle back, cradling its broken arms across its chest. With two good arms it slashed the air viciously, but long as those pipe stem limbs were, they couldn't reach past Harvester without taking damage. Another swipe of the glowing blade made it hop back on short, stumpy legs and bare feet.

That step landed it on the stingers severed from the gas bags.

The manling yelped as if it had stepped on hot coals, then yelped again as the barbed stingers jammed into its dirty yellow feet. Screeching, it caught the saw-toothed barbs and ripped so blood flowed. But now its tiny, skinny hand was poisoned.

Sunbright grabbed another handful of arms and tentacles and branches to bite again, but the yarn ball creature was learning, and its pseudopods coiled around his hand like a bullwhip. When the tentacles retracted the barbarian's arm was jerked back tight to his own shoulder, and more coils trussed him. So it was stalemate, Sunbright thought. He had the thing pinned, and it had him half trussed. Cursing, he whirled to see how Knucklebones fared, and where Wulgreth had gotten to.

The upshot was not good. As Knucklebones scrambled to her feet, knife in hand, and backed from the truncated zombie, Wulgreth clambered over the trunk to snatch her from the rear. She'd be a hostage, Sunbright saw. He made to shout a warning, but a coil slapped around his mouth from chin to cheek, tightening too fast for him to bite. He cast a quick glance to his left, saw the four-armed manling had toppled, screeching and rubbing its feet with dirt. No enemies behind. But hadn't there been The shadeling struck.

All this time the smoky being had skulked close and low, biding its time. Now it leaped, like a shadow cast by a candle on a wall, and landed on Sunbright's back.

The barbarian caught the flicker of it, but at first felt nothing. It had no weight, no substance.

He felt the attack in his mind.

Suddenly his head seemed empty and echoing. His thoughts were a jumble, spinning as if a tornado had infiltrated his skull. The shadeling sifted his thoughts so it could know him, intimately, down to the last squib of his life. Because-he saw the threat now-it intended to suck his mind dry, take his place, and kill him.

To Knucklebones it looked as if Sunbright had grown another head, one rasped and bloody, one clean and fresh. Behind him clung something like a shadow, initially black and dim, but now taking on color and thickness and a life of its own. The thin mass adhered to the barbarian's back, and yet was separating from him, so that behind his bright blond horsetail, another head and neck and set of shoulders took form. The eyes of this shadow mimic were not Sunbright's, but hard and glaring and cruel, single-minded of purpose, dedicated to death. The barbarian struggled with the yarn ball even as the shadow being gained strength. The thief could have wailed. How to defeat an insidious foe like that, especially when she had her own stump zombie to fight?

Knucklebones watched as the zombie scuttled after her. Her knife couldn't hurt it, so she needed something else. Sunbright would say to use whatever was handy. She jumped and pounced on the branch chopped by the cleaver. Wrenching it loose, she circled back to the tree trunk. The branch was long and leafy as a giant broom, and thrusting it into the brute's face flustered it. If she reversed it quickly, perhaps she could slam the point through its chest. A stake through the heart killed vampires, legends said…

A strong, cold pair of hands clamped around her throat and lifted her, throttling, into the air. Knucklebones kicked, clawed at the hands, and raked her elven blade across the cables in the back of both hands. The razor sharp knife creased the skin but would not cut, as if she sawed on hardwood. Wulgreth gurgled by her ear, a noise of fury. He didn't shake her, nor snap her neck, but kept her alive and still. A hostage to subdue Sunbright. Still kicking, the one-eyed thief wanted to cry with frustration. Wulgreth too used what was handy to defeat Sunbright, and successfully, for the barbarian's gentle heart would not allow her to be harmed. Oh, to fight something living that could be hurt and bleed!

Sunbright fought for sanity as the shadeling picked his mind apart. Already he was forgetting things, unable to recall his homeland, or his mother's face, or how he'd come to be a fugitive in the lowlands, or an outlaw in the floating city. This evil nothing monster would seize control of him, strip his mind, leave him a hulk, like the zombie that now stumped toward him to chop at his legs. Knucklebones strangled in air as Wulgreth watched the battle with stone dead eyes, and Sunbright's spirit faded away, his mind sucked dry as an empty cocoon.

Desperately he tried to think of an escape, butting his head and slashing over his shoulder with only one hand, for the damned octopus arms wrapped tighter than ever. Nothing worked, he couldn't touch the shadeling. But it could touch him.

Or someone else.

"Knuckle', hang on!" he bellowed.

Through a veil of his own blood and skin raked by the yarn ball, he saw her kick in answer. But her single eye was haunted and helpless. She saw no way out. And he was weakening, losing his mind and strength as the life and soul drain grew stronger.

But Sunbright had an answer.

He dropped Harvester so the blade fell flat on the dusty, leafy ground. Giving the yarn ball another fast squeeze, he squatted, and grabbed the stumpy zombie.

The thing's fluttery moth eyes wrinkled as Sunbright caught it by a sturdy arm and hoisted it one-handed. It was vastly heavy, and made him grunt, almost fall to his knees. The rotted stench made him gag, but he ignored the stink and furious twitching, pitched the undead tomb guardian over his shoulder to crash over his back-right into the not-Sunbright face of the shadeling.

The shadow being's spell was interrupted as the zombie got in the way. The barbarian hadn't been sure it would work, but the phantom claws sifting his brain were suddenly gone. As if breaking free of a spiderweb, he jumped to get clear.

A quick glance showed he'd succeeded better than planned. The zombie lay on its back, curling, twisting, kicking its bony stumps. The shadeling clung to it like morning cobwebs, like darksome mist. The image of Sunbright had shrunken to half its size. Instead of drawing life from a living man, the soul sucker tapped a dead thing, losing its corporeal existence in the process. The stolen image of Sunbright shriveled as the magic sputtered and died and curled in on itself. The barbarian had no clue what would result, but was glad to be free.

Another quick glance showed him that the dumpy, four-armed manling was dead, poisoned through feet turned black.

That left only the yarn ball, and Wulgreth.

With his right hand, the barbarian reached under his left armpit, caught a squirming clutch near the core, and wrenched savagely. Arms, tentacles, branches, and whips popped and tore, ripping his vest and shirt and skin as they were pried loose. The shredded beast seemed stunned, for it hung in his hand a moment like a fish on a hook, gathering strength to flap anew.

Sunbright didn't give it time. Jumping up on the tree trunk, he advanced on Wulgreth, who backed away with Knucklebones dangling in front as a partial shield.

"Let's trade," Sunbright rasped, his voice as scarred and scraped as his mind and body. "My bundle for yours!"

"Noooo!"

But Sunbright trailed out his right hand and slung the black dripping mass of wounded arms. The squishy clump slapped on Wulgreth's shoulder and upper arms, and immediately they grabbed hold, whipping, coiling, curling and grasping, burying the lich lord's head and smothering his upper torso. Instinctively Wulgreth let go of Knucklebones to grapple with the writhing tangle that was trapping him.

As he did, the small thief bounced light as thistledown, bunched her legs, and bounded away. A good thing too, for Sunbright had regained Harvester of Blood.

Lunging, diving over the trunk, Sunbright grabbed the pommel two-handed, slung the long glowing blade far behind, and swung.

The keen steel slammed into Wulgreth's side just below the ribs. The blow knocked him sideways, staggering him. Hissing through his teeth, Sunbright ripped the blade loose and gave him another shot. Two more blows rained, as if the barbarian chopped a tree. There was no blood, but the meaty smacks chopped Wulgreth's thick skin and dried organs to hash. Then Sunbright lined up to cut a leg out from under the undead tyrant.

Wulgreth had had enough. Clawing tentacles free to peek out, he whirled, and ran for the deepest stand of mutant brush and drooping trees.

Sunbright stood, chest heaving, blood dripping, and let him go. It could take him all day to chop the lich to fist sized chunks, and he wasn't even sure those would be dead.

So he let Wulgreth go. He'd won. He and Knucklebones.

And the natural, growing, living magic that was part of this land.

Sunbright panted, even dropped Harvester's point on bare ground. He pulled up the hem of his spattered red shirt to mop blood off his face. Sweat stung in the scrapes, but he didn't mind, for he was glad to be alive. And to see Knucklebones with a rare smile, "So the country mouse is a timber wolf on his home ground," she teased. She ripped loose a sucker-covered arm still stuck to his neck.

He grinned back, examining his arms and hands. The green glow was indistinct in the sunrise, but he knew it had faded.

"More like a firefly," he said. "I've used up the magic."

"So it's gone?"

"No," he answered, "it's still here, an ocean of it. Down there." Moving around the tree trunk, he walked to the fire pit, saw a crack in the earth yards long and wide enough to admit his hand. "I came up through there, somehow. The magic came with me. Feel it?" He waved a hand as if over a campfire.

Knucklebones shook her head. All she felt were the warm rays of the day's sun slanting through the mutant trees. But she was glad Sunbright could feel the magic, for it meant he'd remain a shaman, and she wanted it so.

"No matter," he told her. "I think-I'm sure the nature magic only needed a conduit, someone to care for it, ask its help. It's hard to explain, but from this spot, I believe the nature magic will begin to heal the land, until the corrupt magic of Karsus has leeched away and the forest is balanced again."

The thief turned at a scuffle and shuffle. Creeping from huts and bushes came the mutants, eyeless, limbless, warty, alligator-skinned, deformed. In the darkness, they'd tortured Sunbright to death and beyond, but by day they looked pathetic and harmless.

"And them?" she asked.

The barbarian hoisted his sword, wiped the blade clean, and marched to the mutants, who cowered before him. Even the testy raptors in their makeshift corrals were quiet, almost docile. Standing tall, arms on hips, Sunbright asked, "Who's the eldest here?"

A withered crone with blind eyes raised a shaking hand and said, "I, sir."

"Then you're chief now, for Wulgreth won't be back. This forest will no longer tolerate him. Nor will it abide torture any more, or raids on your neighbors. You are to become a people of peace from now on, at one with the land. Nurture it, care for it, and it will care for you. The elders can teach you, for they remember when this land was healthy and alive, liked the feel of human feet, and nourished its dwellers. Will you do this thing?"

The old crone bobbed her head and told him, "We shall, your highness. We shall."

Sunbright nodded, satisfied. Knucklebones was more skeptical, but realized the mutants probably thought Sunbright a glowing god risen from the earth itself. Certainly they'd seen it, would tell one another and their children in years to come, and so they'd believe, and obey.

Sunbright took Knucklebones's small hand with the brassy bars adorning it and led her to the far side of the camp, where a path wended into the diseased forest. Up high a bird sang, and was answered from afar. Liking the feel of his strong, gentle fist, she asked, "So they'll heal, get better?"

"No." The barbarian shook his head as he answered. "These scars, on people and plants, will remain, and die out slowly, naturally. But the children will be normal, and the seedlings. Nature moves slowly, like a glacier, but nothing can stand before it."

"That sounds like something a prophet would say," she half kidded.

He grinned in answer, saying, "It does, doesn't it? Ooh!"

"What?"

He touched the back of his neck where his horsetail rested.

"Besides all my other aches and pains, now I'm burned on my scalp. Candlemas must be signaling me, as I called him. We'll have to go see.

"But I think I'll wash first," he added, studying his bloody arms and hands.

"Candlemas?" Knucklebones frowned. "He's up in the city. How will we get there?"

Sunbright studied the high treeline as if reading the weather. Distantly, he asked, "Why don't we fly?"