Dangerous Games

Chapter 21

"What do we do?" demanded Sunbright.

"Sita!" Candlemas called as he struggled to get off Sunbright's shoulders, kicked a tilting wall, and pitched them both to the floor. The mage banged singed flesh, but scrambled up like a squashed toad, laid a hand on a slanted wall, and found it quivering. "I must get to Sita!"

"In the name of the eternal mountains," roared Sunbright, "who's Sita?"

"She's…" The mage stopped. He hadn't told the barbarian. "A friend! We need to take her with us when we flee!"

"Flee where?" shrilled Knucklebones. She had to brace her feet against cracks in the cobblestones to keep upright. Another guard's helmet rolled past. Then came a barrel, careening off the walls as it wobbled their way. Candlemas barely jumped aside in time. "There's nowhere on Karsus that's safe! The enclave will fall!"

"Back to our time!" Candlemas splayed both hands against the walls to move upward against the tilt. It was steep enough to make his booted feet slide. "I fabricated a scroll, but lost it! It's with the star!"

"What star? Scroll for what?" Knucklebones screamed, but the thief was ignored.

Sunbright caught her hand and dragged her after them. " 'Mas knows what he's doing!" he told her.

"I wish!" the mage hissed to himself. Candlemas had gained the stairs, where the door flapped as if from a capricious wind. But there wasn't any wind in this dim corridor, only the earth betraying their feet. Painfully, with scorched fingers, Candlemas hauled himself up the slanted stairwell, in danger of toppling at every step. Cursing, Sunbright climbed after, with Knucklebones the nimblest of all. She almost skipped like a mountain goat in Sunbright's ponderous wake.

The servant's stairs gave out onto a wide, sumptuous hallway, but everything in it was skewed. As they watched, a vase wobbled and struck a wall with a crash. A table bunched against a rug and slid slowly. A mirror swung off its hook and shattered in a thousand jeweled shards on polished oak flooring. When Candlemas tried to walk, he slid uncontrollably. Braced in the doorframe, Sunbright caught him.

"You can't go uphill!" the barbarian shouted, "We'll have to skid down and go around! Where are we going?"

They yelled because sliding, grinding furniture destroyed itself, and throughout the mansion people screamed, called questions, hollered for help.

"A white mansion on the grounds, downhill and…"

Directions failed Candlemas, so he just pointed. Shrugging out of Sunbright's iron grip, he swung onto the floor and slid on his bottom until he banged a corner already crowded with tumbled furniture. Skidding treacherously in his moosehide boots, Sunbright slid after. Knucklebones crowded so close to the barbarian that her feet rapped his kidneys when they struck a wall. They tried to use their hands as brakes, but broken glass and splinters cut their skin, even the ironlike soles of Knucklebones's bare feet.

In a main hall, the mess was worse. Tables, chairs, benches, statuary, and one dead body, a maid who'd struck her head. Skittering crabwise, they found the wreckage didn't lie still, but kept moving, for in addition to the tilt, the enclave was rotating again so debris inched around corners and cascaded anew.

Finally, inching and grabbing and gasping, they got to a wide pair of outside doors. Candlemas grabbed the doorframe and almost had his fingers smashed as the door swung back with a smash. Sunbright had to climb over the mage and muscle the door open. They fell more than jumped out the door.

Outside, they could at least get a grip on gravel walks and flower beds and grass, as if they negotiated a hill. Sunbright paused to check that his weapons were still strapped tight. Knucklebones ripped a splinter long as a pencil from her bleeding foot. "Where are we going?"

But Candlemas only stared. Nowhere was the landscape flat, and that betrayal was terrifying. In the city below, a tall, black tower, the Shadow Consortium, waggled like a nagging finger, then broke in the middle and plunged down like the arrow of Targus, God of War. Scores of people inhabited that building, he'd heard, and now it snapped like a twig and crashed onto scores more structures below. He'd just witnessed the death of hundreds of people. With more to come, for other buildings wobbled just as disastrously. Distant screams came from below and behind. Servants and nobles alike ran onto lawns to shout and cry.

Candlemas recalled his mission and shouted, "Come on!"

Sunbright and Knucklebones jogged as Candlemas crossed a grassy sward and bulled through a forsythia hedge. Knucklebones was hurled back by thick branches, so Sunbright had to grab her and lob her over, then crash through on his own. Catching up as Candlemas trotted along crushed clamshells, he yelled, "Karsus is causing this? Making the city tip and fall?"

"Yes!" Candlemas gulped, his lungs afire. He was no runner. "He's out to make himself a god! But I think he's siphoning all the magic in the enclave! If the mythallars can't keep up the city will plummet! Nothing can save it!"

"But you can get us back to our own time?"

"If there's enough magic! If it's gone, if the star's power is used up, we'll be stranded, and die with the city!"

Trotting right behind, Knucklebones demanded, "What's this about returning to your own time?"

"Candlemas can get us back!" Sunbright vaulted the trunk of a fallen tree as he said, "To where we belong!"

"Where you belong!" the thief corrected. "I'm Karsus enclave born and bred!"

Sunbright cast her a sidelong glance. Her ratty hair bobbed about her head, tickled her pointed ears. Despite running hard, she was not winded, and stared boldly with her one green eye. "You'll die with the city if you don't get out!"

"Instead, I should go with you?" she asked. The boldness in her voice turned hard.

"Yes! I–I want you… to go with me!" Sunbright found himself fumbling for words.

A statue of a man ahorse had toppled, smashing amidst a thick stand of cedars, blocking their way. Candlemas yelled a word, flicked his fingers, and the water in the trees exploded with a bang. Green specks floated around them as he rammed through denuded branches.

Yet Sunbright paused to catch Knucklebones's thin hand. "Will you go with me? Please?"

"Why should I?" she asked. Her stance was wide-legged, her hips cocked, her chin tipped to stare with a green eye. "What am I to you?"

Women picked the damnedest times to argue, Sunbright thought. Greenwillow had been the same way. It had been during such a crisis, besieged in a burning hell, that they had first bespoken their love. And as if Greenwillow's ghost breathed the words in his ear, Sunbright found himself saying, "I need you. I love you."

The boldness was wiped away with one stroke, and a mistiness possessed Knucklebones's eye. Softly, she told him, "Good. Because I love you too."

They had time for a quick kiss. Her lips were soft and firm, cool and wet. His, strong and hard. Then they were running after Candlemas as branches whipped in a wind that was not a wind.

But the mage stopped on a path at the brow of a hill. Arms outflung, he called, "Sita! I was so worried!"

The plump noblewoman flew into his arms, slamming his chest so hard he grunted, then hugged him tight, smearing her fine blue-green robe with his blood. "Me, too, dear Candy! I love you so! Don't leave me!"

"No, no! Never again! I love you, Sita!" For the first time in his life, the pudgy mage hugged a woman and breathed the words, and many more endearments.

Still holding hands, Sunbright and Knucklebones caught up. Their eyes were shining, but their faces were worried. The ground lurched, and from behind rolled a giant ball of marble. They had to dash aside to avoid it, and it rumbled past and smashed flat a wooden gazebo.

"Oh, our empire…" breathed Aquesita.

The others turned to look. This brow afforded an all-encompassing view.

The enclave of Karsus was dying. Many buildings had collapsed. Fires blossomed like yellow-red flowers, spinning off spirals of smoke. Water from splintered fountains and pipes sometimes met flame and burst into steam, but in other places flooded folks off their feet. Near the tumbled walls that surrounded Castle Karsus, hordes of people, from the poorest to the noblest, dashed into the grounds to seek high ground. Too, their anger swelled as their homes and families were destroyed, and instinctively they knew Karsus was responsible. The mutter of this mob became a growl, then a roar.

But Aquesita mewed, and pointed at the sky. "Lady of Mystery!"

From tilted horizon to slanted mountains, the sky was knitting, piling up gray clouds, coalescing into a solid mass. But amongst the clouds, stretched so wide the eye couldn't see all, there began to form a face, and hair, and wide, outspread arms spanning the horizon, encompassing the empire.

A woman, a goddess, blotted out the sun.

"It's the final prophecy!" whispered Aquesita. "The last true sign of the End of the End! The end of the empire!"

Candlemas tore his eyes away, grabbed his ladylove's hand. "It's nothing! A storm, an illusion!" He didn't believe it himself, so barked louder, "Let's go! We need to find your cousin before the mob does!"

No one argued, but they had to tear Aquesita from staring at the sky, at the death knell of her beloved empire. Stumbling, running uphill, they fought the bucking earth and crashing debris to get to Karsus and his star chamber.

The quartet found paths that were clear, dodged fallen cornices and fences and statues and trees, and managed to scramble up polished stone steps by clinging to handholds and helping one another. The rioters were far behind, but still coming. The city tilted ever steeper. If it continued to turn at this rate, they'd be crawling on all fours.

But the worst problem came because Karsus had outsmarted himself again.

Their first inkling of trouble was a maid and butler screaming past them, bloody from scratches and slashes on heads and arms. Taking the lead, clinging to a wall, Sunbright slung Knucklebones behind to drag Harvester from its sheath, ready to battle whatever terrified the servants.

What erupted around a paneled corner was a female apprentice no higher than Sunbright's breastbone. The woman sported blood on her chin where she'd bitten her tongue and lips, other peoples' blood on her fingernails hooked like claws. Her clothing was torn where she'd shredded it herself, and her eyes were wild, inhuman. She screamed like a cougar when she saw Sunbright, and raced to tear him apart with her bare hands.

The barbarian acted instinctively and stabbed straight to keep her back. The madwoman ran her stomach onto his blade. If Sunbright hadn't twisted the blade to hook deep in her liver, she would have slid along it and gouged out his eyes. As it was, she was champing bloodstained teeth and slashing with fingernails when the light faded from her glazed eyes. She fell heavily, and Sunbright had to stamp on her breast to rip Harvester loose. Blood gushed over his boot and ran in a river down the sloping floor.

The barbarian's voice shook as he asked, "What is this?"

"Berserker spell," echoed Candlemas. "Karsus said once that he'd always be protected by those who loved him best. I thought he was just airing his tongue, or joking. But he meant it. He must have enchanted all his mages so that if Karsus were attacked from any direction, they'd go fighting mad, assault whatever they saw until Karsus was safe again."

Sunbright wiped his forehead. He'd hated to kill the woman, innocent and deadly as a rabid rabbit.

"But who attacks Karsus?"

Candlemas glanced over his shoulder at the gray, roiling sky. The sky woman's monumental features were hardening, growing more defined, despite a hearty wind kicking up. "Magic attacks him, for he's taken on too much. That and, I suspect, a goddess."

They saved their breath for running. In the lead, Sunbright had to cut down half a dozen apprentices raving under the influence of the berserker spell. Killing them was no harder than cutting daisies, but it sickened the barbarian, so he found himself hesitating. Yet they were mad dog wild, and so they died, not knowing that Karsus, their beloved master, had betrayed them, used them as pawns.

On they traveled, down sloping corridors, past smashed furniture that had staved in entire walls. Litter and glass splinters and wreckage rattled everywhere, some forming waist high barriers. They helped one another, watched out, and Sunbright killed another dozen apprentices until he was spattered with blood like smallpox.

"How many damned apprentices did Karsus have?"

"Ninety! Or nine hundred!" called back Candlemas.

They knew the star chamber was near because of the heat.

Waves gushed from the room, eye and mouth-drying heat like a blast furnace, until Sunbright felt he'd stumbled into another pocket of hell. But he didn't understand the source until he saw what transpired within.

Karsus was lit like a bonfire.

Caught in some state between man and god, Karsus hung suspended above their heads. He'd grown perhaps twelve feet tall, but looked wider because his hair stuck straight out and his arms and legs were outflung. Skin, eyes, feet, robe, all shone white and silver like an illuminated mirror. He burned with an internal flame that would have melted lead.

The workshop was a madhouse. The stone floor, scorched black in spots, tilted even worse here than the rest of the building, so steeply the heroes couldn't have stood on it. Everything loose soared and whirled and spiraled around the room, including several mages killed by the sheer fury of the magic unleashed. A whistling roar drowned out sounds as jars, chairs, and tables, all ducked and wove in the air in some insane dance. Whirling books and objects and corpses caught fire if they spun too close to Karsus.

But Karsus would soon be a corpse himself, it was obvious, for he burned his life away. The massive infusion of super heavy star magic raged inside him as if he'd swallowed molten gold. His eyes bugged, his tongue protruded, his cheeks were sunken, his fingers clawed the air, his toes curled, but he still fought for control. He shouted chant after chant, a rapid, arcane babble unlike anything they'd ever heard.

Sunbright hung onto the doorjamb, took one look, and let Candlemas pass. "This task falls to you!" he shouted.

The pudgy mage stared, said, "I don't know what to do!"

"What is Karry doing?" Aquesita sobbed, clinging to Candlemas's sleeve. "What's happening to him?"

"I don't know!" the mage hollered. "He's sucked up immeasurable power, not only from the star but from the mythallars too! That's why the city tilts! The magic generators that keep it aloft are robbed of energy! But he's internalized all that magic and-I just don't know! Is he trying to dispel it without losing all of it, so we won't fall? Or return it to the star? Or is he forging ahead, trying to tame it and become a god?"

"He can't become a god!" Aquesita countered. "The gods wouldn't allow it! Lady Mystryl herself fills the sky and frowns on us!"

Candlemas scrubbed his bald head with a singed hand. He poured sweat that was instantly whisked away by searing heat. Desperately he tried to think what to do-if anything. Perhaps Karsus could dispel the power, channel it elsewhere, save enough to right the city. But if he opposed the gods, spat in Mystryl's eye and demanded the room for a newcomer, who knew how the gods might retaliate?

In the corridor, Knucklebones gave a yell and whipped out her elven knife. Another berserk apprentice raced around the corner, then tumbled in his stupefied, zombified trance. He rolled, bouncing painfully but not feeling it, then fetched up against a wall. Ignoring blood running into his eyes from a scalp wound, he snarled and swiped for Knucklebones. Latching onto Sunbright's belt with one hand, the thief neatly speared the mad apprentice's throat. He fell and tumbled on down the slanted flagstones like a discarded doll.

But the barbarian barked an alert, for more crazed mages charged, a dozen or more, hands like claws and jaws champing. Shifting Harvester, he tried to find a foothold. Fighting madmen in a tilting city was something new, but maybe mountain fighting tactics would work. He shunted Knucklebones aside so he could block the doorway with his greater bulk. The more nimble thief had to move out into the corridor and cling to flagstones with bare toes as best she could. Over his shoulder Sunbright bellowed, "Candlemas, do something!"

Candlemas and Aquesita watched Karsus burn like a flare while shouting defiance into the teeth of the wind. They were boxed behind, yet to enter the room would crisp them like stepping into a blast furnace. Candlemas croaked, "I don't know-Sita, I'm sorry."

A whirling parchment caught Candlemas's eye, and he stabbed for it. He smoothed the wrinkled folds. It was his scroll, the time travel spell, dropped as litter when he pushed Karsus aside. That event seemed to have happened ages ago.

A blessing, for he finally knew what to do. "Sita! This scroll! I fashioned it! It can return us-Sunbright and I-to our own time! I can take you too, if you want to go!"

The plump woman stared, and Candlemas's heart plunged into his stomach. Clearly the concept was alien to her. To leave the empire, family and friends, journey to another time and place with a man she barely knew. But he saw the noble lines in her face tighten as she debated, sifted the notion in her mind. Despairing, he guessed her answer before she asked, 'What about Karsus?"

"I can't take him with us." Candlemas had to shout above the whistling roar, but his voice sounded like a mouse squeak. "Just you."

"Candy…" said the woman. "I… I love you. Truly. But I have obligations. To my family… and the empire."

"The empire is going to die!" Candlemas shouted in desperation. "This is the end of the end! You said so yourself!"

"Not if Karsus succeeds!" She gazed at her cousin, who shouted threats at the ceiling as he floated higher. "He will ascend to godhood and save the city! Save the empire! He's the greatest mage…"

Candlemas only stared, unsure if his lover was trying to convince him, or herself. Then her words were lost as the building's ceiling blew off.

Tons of stone, slate, timber beams, granite, carved cornices, and other elements exploded upward like wheat chaff. Not a speck of dust rained in the roofless room. High up, yet almost close enough to touch, frowned the cloud face of Lady Mystryl, Controller of the Weave, the stuff of all magics. And facing her, still shouting, was the presumptuous mage who would steal her power, usurp her place, walk into the firmament and take the throne of the gods themselves.

The cloud face was not pleased.

The corridor had become a slaughterhouse. Seconds before, Sunbright had killed three berserkers in quick succession. With one hip propped on the door jamb, he stabbed the first one straight through the belly, didn't even hurl the body aside before twisting his thick wrists and jabbing a madwoman from behind to pierce her liver. Despite the sword protruding through his guts, the mage in his face still clawed feebly. The barbarian had to risk his footing by stamping a boot against the man's thigh and wrenching Harvester free. He only slid the gory blade loose a second before yet another apprentice charged from the side, and died with a sidelong hurl of Harvester's heavy tip.

Knucklebones had it easier, for the ensorcelled apprentices mindlessly sought to protect Karsus. More kept rushing into the corridor from all over the castle, drawn by their master's will. And all of them charged Sunbright, who stood between them and their master. Passed by, the thief could slash her elven knife across hamstrings and drop berserkers like puppets. Yet once she attacked them, they retaliated, and she was forced to slice their throats as they grabbed wildly for her. One dying berserker clutched at her naked blade, and it fetched up in bone, so she resorted to battering with her brass knuckles. A wallop to the forehead would knock them back and down, or else a smash to the bridge of the nose set them gargling blood, drowning as it filled their lungs. Yet more and more arrived, until she and Sunbright were surrounded by a sea of waving arms and clashing teeth, as if they'd fallen into a snake pit.

Then the ceiling had blown off. Plaster exploded in clouds, lathes and splinters whirled like jagged knives, a beam thundered down and crushed five mages like mice. Knucklebones could barely see for blood and dust, but she heard Sunbright calling her name, clearly worried. That he cared sent an odd thrill through her bosom, even though she was so tired she could have collapsed and slept on the debris and bodies.

With gods about to clash overhead, this place was doomed. Candlemas knew they must go. With only one way out, with no time for arguing, he yelled, "Sita, you'll have to go with us! Sunbright, grab Knucklebones and hang close! I'll read!"

Hurriedly, Candlemas looked over the smeary lines to familiarize himself with the spell, for he'd only get one chance to read it aloud. The lines would disappear as pronounced, and botching it, or halting halfway, would halt the spell, with no second chance. He couldn't get any closer to the star, thirty feet away, without shriveling. He only hoped the crazy magic washing the room didn't disrupt his spell.

Glancing back at Sunbright, yelling for Knucklebones, and sucking a deep breath, he grabbed Aquesita's hand. But the noblewoman jerked away. "You can't enchant here! Not now! You'll steal the power Karry needs! You can't-Wait! There! Feel it?"

They'd braced their backs in the doorway to keep from tumbling into the hot, whirling room, but now, slowly, like a whale surfacing under a boat, the floor tilted and came upright. Within a minute, the room had stabilized, no longer shuddering.

Sunbright spat dust and blood, slung his sword one more time to behead a mad apprentice, called again for Knucklebones. Bodies writhed all around, some trapped under debris, some crawling to reach him. Blood powdered white ran across the floor under his moosehide boots, making the tilted footing even more treacherous. Bracing his back on the doorway, he planted a boot against the beam to shift it lest it roll back on him. Knucklebones, dirty as an alley rat, watched both ways to see if more berserkers came running. Then, flicking her hair from her face, snorting dust, she clambered over the wreckage and grabbed Sunbright's brawny hand.

"I don't know if more will come!"

The barbarian glanced into the room over a cowering Candlemas and Aquesita.

"They won't have anyone to protect in a moment!" Sunbright yelled, "Look!"

Chanting, Karsus floated higher, grew larger, until he hovered above the high, sundered walls. He was almost a god. With a few more steps he'd leave humanity behind.

Karsus, and the star behind him, began to pulse with white-hot light. Lightning sizzled and crackled around his frame, and he grew bigger than ever, until he was three times the height of a man, so bloated with magic he must have weighed thousands of pounds. His voice was no longer a wheezy whine, but a resounding boom like rolling thunder. He drew magic from the star until even his toes sparkled, and he seemed to stand on a cloud of his own making, a cloud of star energy.

Above, the cloud face of Lady Mystryl retreated. Even she couldn't withstand the driving force of the star power Karsus controlled. He flared like a sun of blistering magic, and Mystryl faded back, withdrew, like thunderclouds pushed by a hurricane. Along the horizon, sunlight leaked and cast long shadows across her cloudy face. Karsus controlled the sky, moved the elements, stole the power of a weather god, like Selune, or Shar, or the Earthmother-or Mystryl herself.

"See!" Aquesita's cheeks were wet as she cried out, "See? He's saved the city! Everything will be all right! You needn't leave us, Candlemas!"

The pudgy mage doubted that. A world ruled by a god like Karsus would be a dangerous, messy place to live. The new god's capricious whims would make puppets and playthings of people, turn the world into a toy. Secretly, Candlemas sided with Mystryl, but even the Mother of All Magic had retreated before the former human, Karsus the Mighty, the All-High. Karsus the God.

And who knew but that this god, mounting into the sky, wouldn't let his former city drop away from his feet?

Then he jerked, for Aquesita screamed.

The room suddenly swarmed with tornados.

In an eyeblink, as if a nest of giant wasps had been smashed, tornado beings spun around the room, a dozen or more. They were impossible to see clearly, for they rotated like buzzing tops, spinning cones of gray stone except for diamond-tipped tails that winked with a thousand facets in the meager daylight.

The mad scene grew crazier as the tornados bobbed and weaved and spun. Then, before the watchers' eyes had barely focused, the Phaerimm bounced into the air and converged on Karsus.

The huge glowing mage shrieked once, a word Candlemas and Sunbright and Knucklebones and Aquesita finally understood: "My enemies!"