Dangerous Games

Chapter 2

With no idea of their destination, Sunbright tramped after the frowning Hamuda with the giggling maids trailing. The twin girls were pretty, he noted, small, not one higher than his elbow, with short, dark hair, unlike the women of his tribe, who were mostly northern blonde like himself. The girls had pixie faces and white teeth, and looked alike, as if they were all cousins. They'd been recruited from one tribe, he reasoned, an idea reinforced when they occasionally whispered words in a language he didn't recognize.

The dark, shining hair peeking from under their caps reminded him of Greenwillow's hair, black as only an elf's can be. The memory sent a pang through his chest. Greenwillow had been lost, crushed or burned to death in a fiery chasm of a lesser hell. He'd seen it with his own eyes, yet somehow couldn't believe she was gone forever. Her spirit was out there still, he knew. But whether it was a forlorn lover or a shaman-to-be who hoped so, he didn't know.

Lost in thought, he realized they'd stopped. The girls stood behind, Hamuda to one side. They waited.

So did Sunbright. "What is it?"

For answer, Hamuda waved a bony hand at the wall. It was all white, broken by square lines. A sigil of some kind was painted on the wall. When Sunbright hesitated longer, the head maid swallowed a sigh and pushed the wall. The square part swung back to reveal a room.

"Oh!" Sunbright nodded. "It's a door! I've seen these in the cities."

To the accompaniment of fresh giggling, he was ushered into the small room. The air inside was hot and steamy and the walls were lined with white tile. Two more maids waited inside, wearing only short white smocks and wilted hair. At the center of the room was a raised circular rim. Sunbright approached, touched it. "Is this a well? No, a hot spring."

"It's a bathtub," rasped Hamuda. "If master would be so kind as to get in?"

"In?" Sunbright clamped his hands on the rim and leaned over carefully. "How deep is it? There's a hot spring near our summer camping grounds that's bottomless, and it gets hotter the lower you go. If you weight a trout with a stone on a line, you can cook it by sinking it nine arm-lengths."

A gasp sounded behind, one maid finally losing control and setting all four sniggering with hands over their mouths. Sunbright smiled too, until he realized they were laughing at him. He bit down on a frown.

Hamuda clapped her hands, stifled the girls somewhat, and shooed out the two in black. Sunbright was left with the two bathmaidens, who held fluffy towels as they gestured to the water invitingly. When he still hesitated, one slipped over the edge of the tub in her shift, demonstrating that the "spring" was only knee deep. Still frowning, Sunbright shucked the robe, kicked off his boots, and climbed in. Unused to the slick bottom, he almost slipped and brained himself on the opposite edge of the tub. The bathmaidens pretended not to notice.

The water was so hot Sunbright's toes tingled, and his many insect wounds itched and stung. Gingerly, he made to sit.

One of the bathmaidens asked, "Is it too hot, milord? We can add cold water." Stroking a finger along a silver pipe to one side, she breathed, "Wet!" Cold water spilled from the spout, then she shut it off. "Dry!"

Wondering, Sunbright touched the pipe. It was cold. Sunbright stoked the pipe. "Wet!" Nothing happened. He asked the girls, "What is the secret?"

"No secret, milord. Just a simple cantra to turn the spigot off and on. The water is behind. It just needs to be released."

Sunbright squinted in the steamy room. "You can work magic?"

Giggles. "Everyone in Netheril can work magic, milord. At least, everyone born and raised in the empire. It's… part of our being."

"Magic. Can-truhs. Spit-guts." Suddenly Sunbright felt as thick as an addled mule. And as out of place. "I have a lot to learn."

The girls nodded absently. One unbraided his horsetail to gently comb out sticks and specks. The other plied a washcloth soft as bird down to scrub wood smoke and blood from his face. Surrendering, Sunbright laid his head back on the tub rim and let the girls scrub him. Their quiet competence and dark hair again reminded him of Greenwillow and brought a fresh pang of loneliness. She would never have mocked his ignorance.

He sighed aloud. "So much to learn."

Candlemas's workshop had been swept, scrubbed, and aired, but the maids hadn't dared to throw anything away, so the fresh-wiped tables were heaped with the remains of his work and hobbies.

A dark, dumpy, bearded, balding, paunchy man, Candlemas knew he was no beauty, and took little regard of his looks. Despite his status and personal wealth, he wore only a gray wool smock, rope belt, and sandals when working and administering from his high tower. Vanity, love of clothing and jewelry, and lust for fine robes only distracted an arcanist from his studies, he believed. Candlemas was determined to study hard and soar up the ladder, to someday be as fabulous an archwizard as Lady Polaris herself. Perhaps then, when he owned his own floating castle and lands, and had his own under-mages slaving to resolve his problems, then he might succumb to vanity. For now, he could look like a shepherd and keep busy.

But a lot of work had been lost. Some of the broken jars and pots he recognized on the table had been vital experiments that he'd pursued for months. Growling at the callous idiocy of his underlings, he gathered a handful of trash, marched to the high windows, and pushed it through the mild shield spell that kept out the icy wind. He let it drop onto the fields or forest or whatever lay below. Though he was steward of all the lands visible from the castle, right now he didn't care what happened to them. They belonged to Lady Polaris after all, not him. Very little really belonged to him except his knowledge and studies; his hard work that had been destroyed, again.

He'd hurled out the last of it when Sunbright marched into the workshop. The young man's face was still pink from the hot bath, but clean, his hair neatly combed and retied, his temples neatly shaven. He wore his thick knee-high boots and an off-white shirt that reached to his knees with a wide belt of brown leather. The boy (as Candlemas thought of him) dressed as simply as he, like a son he might someday have. It gave the arcanist a glad feeling: if they agreed on simple clothing, they'd agree on much else, and accomplish more.

Candlemas glanced around his half-emptied workshop, then waved his hands. "Never mind the losses. Things can be replaced. Let's get on with your lessons. Now… the first step in conjuring magic is summoning it. So-"

"Where does it come from?" Sunbright interrupted.

"What?" Candlemas flexed his pudgy fingers. "Where does what come from?"

"Magic. Where does it come from?"

"The weave, of course. Now-"

"Where does the weave come from?"

"What do you mean, where? It just is. Like… the rain."

"Rain comes from the sky, from clouds. Clouds are full of water, as anyone who's climbed a mountain into a cloud can tell you." Sunbright stood spraddled-legged, arms folded across his chest. "If magic rains, where from?"

"It doesn't rain from anywhere," snapped Candlemas. "You summon it and it's there, to use as you wish."

"It must have a source. Everything has a source." Sunbright frowned in concentration. "Even the mightiest river is formed from the tiniest streams of the hills."

"Well, there." Candlemas absently picked up one of his fine silver statues. It had been a medusa, but most of the snakes were broken off her head. He set it down again, unsure what to do with it. "Magic is collected from the thousands of tiny sources that make up the weave. If you can answer your own questions, why ask me?"

"I need the answers wizards have gathered over the ages. I have only the knowledge of my people, the barbarians of the tundra. They know many things, but not all, and I've much to learn. The girls showed me that."

"Girls? Oh, you mean the bathmaidens." Candlemas chuckled knowingly. "I imagine they can teach you a thing or two. Did you enjoy them?"

"Enjoy? No. I felt like an ox awaiting slaughter, too stupid to see the hammer in the butcher's hand."

"Butchery? Slaughter? The girls mentioned that?"

"No, of course not!"

"Then who brought it up? Hamuda?"

"No one said it. When I talk of dressing livestock, I speak of myself!"

"But-never mind." Candlemas rubbed the top of his bald head and moved to an empty table. From a pocket in his smock he drew a steel stylus, but he had nothing to write on and didn't know why he'd taken it out. Angrily, he put it away. "We're getting off the track. Now be silent and listen. How do you expect to learn anything if you keep asking questions?"

Sunbright blinked. "What?"

Disgusted with both of them, Candlemas growled, "See? That didn't make sense. You've got me babbling nonsense to your pesky questions. What I meant to say was, If you keep hurling questions at me, I won't have time to answer them. No, wait, that's wrong too, damn it!"

"Wait." Sunbright waved his hands. "Ignore the source of magic for now. What's the price of magic?"

"Price? Magic doesn't cost anything. It's free!"

"Free like what? Deer in the forest?"

"Forget the animals, would you? Is food all you think of? Jewels of Jannath, I wish I were twenty-odd again and had your appetite!"

"I wasn't talking of food, though now that you mention it, I am hungry. How old are you, anyway?" Sunbright was nothing if not curious.

"Old enough not to discuss butchery with a bath-maiden!" the mage retorted hotly. Plying magic, Candlemas had in fact lived three times the span of a normal life, but he didn't like to be reminded of it. "Can we get back to the lesson? When I say magic is free, I mean it's there for the taking by someone who can master it. Like the damned deer, if you will."

"I thought we'd forgotten the deer," Sunbright chided. "And I may just be a moss-brained barbarian, but even I know magic costs. Nothing is free. If you shoot a deer or an elk, you must lay it on its side gently, slit the belly to release its spirit, then stuff its mouth with lichens to feed the beast on its way to the other world. Otherwise it's offended, and won't be reborn to be killed again next year to feed your family. And then there'd be no more elk, and the people and timber wolves would starve, and so all. That's what I mean by the price of magic."

Staring, Candlemas sputtered, "What a barrel of blather! What superstitious claptrap! Elk aren't reborn to be shot again. Elk calves come from mother elk-bull elk know what to do with randy cows, at least! They make little elk. You can have as many elk as you like. They're free for the taking, and so is magic!"

Put out, the steward stamped to another table. Propped against a cracked urn was a painting of a boy teaching his dog to jump for a snack. But a giant flea's claw had punctured the boy's face. Furiously, Candlemas kited the ruined painting at a window. It rebounded off the shield spell and clattered on the floor.

He whirled. "Why can't you just believe me when I tell you something? The knowledge I offer is the sum total of eons of study by the most learned mages of all time. Men and women so wise they transcend humanity to challenge the gods themselves! But if you question every little thing I tell you-"

"I don't believe anything I don't witness myself." Sunbright cut in. "I don't believe half of what I witness anyway. The eyes can be deceived just as easily as the mind, which you would know if you ever hunted elk in a spring fog near the ocean at sunrise. You'd loose a quiver full of arrows into wisps of fog and come home with nothing on your shoulders. And where would you be then? Hungry!"

"I don't need to go hunting!" Candlemas shouted back. He was unsure when the shouting had begun. "If I want venison, I ring a bell and tell the cook's boy. Hunting is for peasants! It requires no more knowledge than a cat pawing a mouse. It's instinctive. Any fool-"

"Fool? The hunters of my tribe are the smartest, fastest, toughest men and women on the tundra! The tribe counts on them-"

"Will you stop nattering about that misbegotten clot of lunatics who hunker on the prairie and gnaw knucklebones by moonlight? I'm sick of hearing about them! Forget them! That's in the past. You've been blessed by the gods, can't you see that? You're in Castle Delia, on the threshold of the entire Netherese Empire, with a chance to advance up the ranks of true nobility-"

"Nobles who hunt men for sport?" the barbarian sneered. "Nobles who starve entire cities without conscience? Nobles who dump garbage on sacred groves-"

"If you don't care to associate with nobles, why the blazes did you come here in the first place?"

"You invited me!" Sunbright jabbed a finger like a fireplace poker. "But I'll admit I need help. I scoured the empire for any sign of Greenwillow and failed to trace her! I was despairing of what to do when you came along-"

"I invited you here because I thought you showed promise! You've exhibited a natural flair for magic-or call it shamanism if you please-and I thought you could think! Instead you rant like a crack-brained child about birds and flowers, and clouds shaped like oysters!"

"Oysters?"

"Can't you get this straight? Can't you see your opportunity? The Neth are the greatest, most enchanted race ever to inhabit this sphere! We've learned all there is to know about magic, mostly. We've sweated and slaved to learn the rules of dweomer, to bend magic to one's will! Based on that-"

"But at what price! To lose your souls? To be heartless fiends, insensitive to suffering, like vampires come up from the ice holes?"

"Damn your ice hole! Vampires come from dark caves, not underwater! How will you ever learn clinging to these foolish beliefs? Can nothing I say penetrate that stony barbarian skull? Open your mind and think!"

"I'll not bargain a bear for his teeth! I know what magic costs! I've seen the old ones with their bent backs, their very hearts and livers shrunk beyond endurance from practicing the ways of the shaman, from healing the sick and tasting the wind, warning of storms and tracking the seals under the ice. No one twists magic to his will. Magic twists the twister until it ties you in knots. No one takes up magic unless he's willing to sacrifice their all for the good of the tribe. Yet you would have me believe that a wizard can reach out a finger and turn magic on and off like a spit-gut!"

"Like a what?" Then the arcanist sighed. "Never mind. We're getting nowhere. I had hoped this would be your first lesson, and we'd get through the elementary principles quickly. Instead I'm arguing the origins of magic!

"The question has been asked before, you know," Candlemas continued. "Wizards have sought the source of magic for centuries. Though the goddess Mystryl is certainly in control of a great deal of what comprises the weave, no one believes she controls it all. Certainly she didn't create the weave…"

"Why not just say so, then?" retorted Sunbright. "I'd have accepted that answer!"

"What?" Candlemas was suddenly tired, as if he'd conjured an elephant from the far southern deserts. He wished he had. A mad mammoth might prove less truculent than this hammerheaded barbarian. "What would you accept?"

"That no one knows the source of magic!"

"Oh, very well. Here, let me say, 'No one knows what the source of magic is.' How's that?"

Sunbright folded his arms again. "Go on. I'm listening."

"Good, good." Candlemas dragged out a stool and sat down. But a leg was cracked, and he almost spilled onto the floor. "Uh, that's all for today. I'm exhausted. Come back tomorrow morning."

"Very well." The barbarian padded out of the workshop, sure and silent as a panther.

Candlemas watched him go. "Ye gods. What a bargain I've struck… what else can go wrong?"

A page, a young boy in a black-and-white tabard, scurried around a screen. "Master Candlemas? Lady Polaris wants you."

The pudgy mage stifled a groan. "That's what can go wrong."

Threading his tables and stacks, Candlemas came to a black palantir mounted on an eagle's claw stand. In the globe floated the shining head of Lady Polaris, his liege lord. Even Candlemas, who had lust for women but no love, felt a pang when he beheld her. Polaris had snow-white hair cascading around her face and shoulders. Her face was calm as a queen's, only far more lovely. She was the most beautiful woman in the empire, and grew more beautiful every year, a beauty that bespoke enchantment, though no one knew her secret. Her mysteries were manifold and unfathomable. Her stunning beauty made her master of any scene, and rendered men all but dumb, even filtered by the smoky glass of the palantir. Even the page boy was awestruck.

"Candlemas," she said without preamble. "How goes the solution to the blight?"

"Uh, well, milady." Polaris disliked negative news. "We're making progress-"

"Good." She dismissed the problem. "I need something."

Always, thought Candlemas. How many hands did she think he possessed?

"You must fashion a device to move bones without my moving or blinking or having to chant. In the shape of a brooch, perhaps, but nothing that will attract attention. I need it by the new moon. Have you got that?"

"Yes, milady. I'll get-" But the palantir had gone blank.

"Bones!" Candlemas swore. "What kind of fool does she take me for? The only bones she ever touches are dice! And while she's gambling and demanding my help, whole villages will wither and die! Where will she get money then, eh? Where?"

But Candlemas was ranting to himself while a wide-eyed page stared. "Get busy, boy." The boy scooted away. Candlemas chided himself, "And me too."

Sunbright didn't go far. There was something he had to do, and he'd been dreading it, putting it off. Now was the time to face it.

He stood in a stone-lined hallway cut by windows down one side. As with Candlemas's airy tower, nothing showed outside but the purple slopes of the Barren Mountains. Tightening his gut, Sunbright stepped to the window, braced both hands against the window frame, and leaned out to look.

The side of the castle dropped sheer for many stories, a dozen at least, all pierced by square or round windows. Far down showed the footings of solid granite. Below that…

The earth and dark forest far, far below.

Sunbright groaned involuntarily. His palms on the window frame were slick with sweat, trembling. He wanted to back away, but forced himself to stand firm. He'd known all along where he was, of course. He'd seen Castle Delia float over the southlands (for a tundra dweller, everything below the Barren Mountains was south), had known it was Candlemas's home. So when the arcanist offered to bring him "to his workshop," the truth had eventually dawned on him. Now he was here, and he'd have to adjust It was no good. His legs shook so violently his kneecaps drummed the stone wall. Stand here too long, and he'd pitch out the window like dice rattling out of a cup. Slowly, shuffling his broad boots, he crept away from the gaping space.

"Is something amiss, milord?"

Already spooked, Sunbright jumped at the girl's soft question. Backing against the inner wall, he willed his heart to stop pounding. Sweat trickled down his cheeks, dripped salt onto his lips. He must look a fool, he thought, the greenest of country bumpkins. Humility was not helping his pride this day. Earlier he'd had to have a water closet explained. He'd rather face a pack of starving wolves than live through that embarrassment again.

He didn't belong in this place. Room lights, water closets, running water, even drains that magically whisked away garbage were alien to him, as was the inhabitants' casual use of magic. Even the sweepers could nudge a dustpan along without touching it. Sunbright was here to learn magic from Candlemas, and he knew less than the slop boy who could spark a fire with a flick of his finger. Surrounded by magic-users, Sunbright felt like a trained raccoon at a market fair: it might wear clothes and do tricks, but it wasn't human.

The girl sensed the reason for his unease. Moving gracefully to the window, she peeked out, murmured softly, "It is high. Being in the clouds takes getting used to. I couldn't even walk past a window for the first month I lived here."

For something to say, Sunbright croaked, "How long…?"

"Have I been here? A year and some months. I work for my dowry. My family had all girls and little money." She smiled, not to mock, but to comfort. Like many maids, she was small, pixieish, with short-cropped hair and natural curls now emphasized by dampness. She was one of the bathmaidens, and still wore a bulky black robe.

"Where…?"

"… is my village? It's very small, at the headwaters of the Ger, but in sight of Patrician Peak. Frosttop, we call it, not that it needs a name. Not many come our way."

Sunbright nodded. His breathing had slowed, and he mopped his brow with his sleeve. He hated being up in the clouds. His land was the tundra, table-flat, where a musk ox looked like a mouse standing on the horizon.

He'd been up high only once, and that accidently, on the back of a dragon, and he still screamed in his sleep when he recalled that trip.

Patiently, the girl waited while he gained his composure. "You know, my lord-"

"I'm no man's lord. Or woman's. Call me Sunbright. Please."

She bit her lip. "Very well, uh, Sunbright. You know, it's not often we have a visitor so tall and strong, so handsome and dashing. You make a girl wonder what the future might bring." As if scratching idly, she tugged open the fluffy black robe, revealing the soft upper curve of a modest breast.

Dully, the barbarian nodded. Without knowing why, he reached for her, and she leaned to meet him. But his hand didn't stray to her throat or breast. Rather, the knotty scarred brown hand stroked her hair along one side. She smiled shyly, confused by a gentle touch from such a fearsome man.

As if speaking in a foreign tongue, Sunbright said, "One day a fine and simple man with violet eyes will ask a drink of water, then marry you, get you with strong children, a round half-dozen. But you'd best get about it soon. It's unnatural to live here on high, suspended on naught but magic. T'will come a time when thunder tolls and these castles fall."

Surprise flickered in the girl's brown eyes, then fright. Sunbright felt her fear, and sensed it within himself. How had he made such a pronouncement? He'd spoken like a seer, a prophet.

A shaman.

Dazed by his own behavior, his hand dropped from the girl's hair. She bit her lip, excused herself, and bustled away, robe pulled tight around her neck.

Sunbright shook his head, laid a hand on the inner wall for support. The rough stone tingled under his fingers, as if he felt stone for the first time in his life. The floor too seemed full of imperfections: dips and whorls, and huge cracks where before it had been smooth.

Why was he seeing things so clearly, so brightly? Had someone cast a spell on him? Or had he cast one upon himself?

What power? What knowledge?

Why here?

Why now?