Dangerous Games

Chapter 4

Mouth open, hands clawed in an instinctive flinch, legs splayed to dive out of the hole, Sunbright stood frozen, unable to move anything, even his eyes. All that worked was his brain, and it wondered at what he saw.

The dirt and rock and black sky were drawn from solid objects to fine threads. A stone under his foot shrank and elongated, until it was a gray line like a pencil mark traveling from underneath him out of the hole, into infinity. So too went the dirt, and the nothingness of the hole itself. The night sky was shredded into splinters that sailed past him like black spears to mingle with strings of soil and tree roots that could encircle the world. All these objects stretched in two directions, all intermingled yet all separate, so Sunbright could follow the lines of each with his stiff and staring eyes.

Even Candlemas was drawn thin, like gold wire under a smith's tiny hammer, the outlines of the arcanist's body flattened and smoothed and stretched. Yet it was still the pudgy mage, Sunbright knew, whole and intact, but hair-thin. And so, he supposed, he must look to Candlemas. Sunbright shaved into a thousand splinters laid together like hair in a horse's tail.

They were moving and yet not moving. But if the lines of themselves were stretching from the hole to somewhere else, where were they going? Was this magic, or some other force? Certainly Sunbright had never heard of anything similar. Had the magic star somehow fashioned this weird not-spell? For it too was not an arm's length away, yanked fine, sailing through space, yet lying still as ever.

It was confusing, frightening, maddening. Sunbright wondered if it would last forever: certainly he felt like a granite statue. What if the fallen star sought to protect itself, and had suspended them in a spell forever? Could anything break it? Was this the ultimate curse, to stand and think unmoving for eternity? Could they be rescued, or even found? What if the hole collapsed about them, and buried them unmoving? How many seasons would pass before they saw sunlight again?

And if Sunbright stayed frozen this way forever, how would he ever find Greenwillow?

He stood for years, centuries, longer, waiting and fretting and wondering if this strange journey would ever end.

Then it was over.

Sunbright fell over and sprawled awkwardly on ornate tile painted with flowers in dozens of colors. He rolled on his shoulder and toes, shot to his feet, and whipped Harvester from its scabbard.

Before him was a skinny young man of average height, with tousled brown hair, grizzled beard, and sparkling golden eyes. With a bright smile, the stripling flicked his fingers in the air.

A striped cat as big as a horse reared on two broad cloven feet before Sunbright. Claws tipped appendages that were half-hands, half-paws. The cat's muttonchops and mane were white and stuck out at right angles. Its back was flaming orange with white and black stripes, and its broad chest blazed a snowy white.

The cat-man monster roared and slashed at Sunbright with finger-long talons.

Sucking in his belly, Sunbright skipped backwards, feet shuffling, butting aside a dazed Candlemas. He hoisted from knee-high to slash upward and across: he hoped to crease the animal if possible, or split its muzzle, but at least drive it back.

He missed as the cat leaped in the air. Hooves clattered as the beast landed, skipped to match Sunbright, and lashed out with a lower leg. A chitinous hoof tunked on Harvester. The blow rang like a sledgehammer's, knocking the heavy blade skyward. Before Sunbright could recover, the beast jig-trotted in place and kicked him soundly in the breadbasket.

Sunbright had barely hopped backward in time, and still grunted at the pain and fear of shattered ribs. The fighter sucked wind and hopped backward once more, forced to take the defensive. Behind that cat's muzzle lay a churning, thinking brain. Grasping his sword two-handed, he lowered the pommel near his short ribs so the long steel blade pointed straight. Unarmed, the monster would find it impossible to avoid a thrust. Or so he hoped. Meanwhile, he watched for an opening, marked a spot under the beast's arms and the pit of its lower belly.

All this in seconds, for the tiger-man slashed the air in dizzying circles, paw-hands a blur. Before Sunbright could lunge or duck, Harvester was again slapped aside, so hard the hooked tip caromed off a painted wall. The beast was too strong: it could crush him with a paw. But that was his mind recoiling. His sinews instinctively used the momentum of the impact against his assailant.

With a grunt of exertion, he dragged around the rebounding steel and added his own brute strength. Slashing backhanded, he slammed Harvester's barbed tip past the tip of clawed fingers to bite deep into the monster's neck. Hollering a nameless battle cry, he ripped downward to sink the hook in life-giving veins and tear them loose. And succeeded.

Frothy red blood gouted from the cat-man's neck. Red splashed the side of its face, soaking whiskers and pointed ears and white muttonchops in gore. More blood spattered Sunbright, rained on the wall and ceiling. The beast yowled in agony, but the sound trailed to a mew. Light sparking in its eyes winked and died. Sunbright barely skipped aside as the monster's back seemed to break and it plunged forward at him. A claw tore the barbarian's thigh as the dead thing's head struck the wall with a clonk muffled by thick orange-red fur.

Sunbright backed, panting, wary of any final kicks from those anvil-like hooves. He held his banged side, which throbbed with every sobbing breath. But he kept his sword ready for another attack.

There had been a young, tousled mage, he recalled suddenly, who'd flicked his fingers and "You!" The barbarian whirled. "You conjured that fiend!"

"Yes, more or less. But it wasn't really here, so it doesn't matter."

The young wizard wore an expensive but rumpled and frayed robe embroidered in green-blue and white lace. By contrast, his hair was a rat's nest, his fingernails cracked, gnawed, and filthy, his chin stubbly, his bare feet black with grime. And he needed a bath. Yet his eyes were golden, like melted gold swirling in a vat, and arresting. He smiled in a cockeyed way and waggled the fingers of one hand. The tiger-man disappeared, as did the blood on the walls, the blood on Sunbright's sword, and even the blood on his hands and arms. The barbarian felt a tug at his side, and realized the pain of that frightful kick had disappeared too.

"You-" Sunbright's breathing was still a sob, "that was an… illusion?"

"No. It was real, mostly. It hurt, didn't it?"

"Why… attack me?"

A bony shrug. "You had that curious sword. I just wanted to see how you'd fare in a fight."

"I'll show you how!" Sunbright slung Harvester far to the right to give it weight, swung it back hard, slapped his left hand on the pommel to add his own weight and cleave the interfering idiot in half. Harvester split the air, wind off its blade making a high keen But suddenly he was upside-down, his horsetail and scabbard flopping, blood rushing to his head, feet pedaling uselessly. He fought to focus on his target, saw the idiot fifty feet off across a tiled and painted floor, or ceiling. Sunbright growled in rage, but his voice was choked by a thickening in his throat. He felt helpless as a fox hoisted in a snare. Wordlessly, he cursed freely and long.

At the same time, the wary barbarian scanned his surroundings, automatically hunting danger, exits, things to use as shields and weapons.

But even upside down, nothing he saw made sense.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, twisted in the air, searching for sanity. There was none to be found.

If he could trust his eyes, the room had no walls or ceilings, only floors on all its surfaces. Staring down-or, at least, in the direction that his horsetail pointed-he saw, looking up at him, a woman's face framed by a bowl of golden hair. Coolly, she said, "If you drop the sword, you'll probably descend."

Sunbright wasn't listening. He looked at his feet. Below his moosehide boots another woman with dark hair sat in an ornate chair at a table and scribed in a book. The barbarian could hear her goose quill scratching on uneven parchment. She never looked up at the man hovering an arm's span over her head.

Trying desperately to orient himself, Sunbright looked east, west, all around. The vast room, bigger than all of Candlemas's tower, was a wizard's workshop, he recognized, with much the same jars and books and odd artifacts, but people worked on every surface at right angles to one another. No, even that assumption was wrong, for none of the walls met at neat angles, but at random, cockeyed ones.

Sunbright struggled to understand. The vast chamber was like a beehive, in a way, with busy bees crawling everywhere upside down or right side up or sideways. He closed his eyes, which bulged, fit to burst like overripe grapes.

He cast about for the blonde woman and finally found her "overhead." He croaked, "What? What did you say?"

"Drop your sword."

"It's tempered. The tip will shatter."

Without a word, the woman extended a blunt hand stained and burned by magic-making. Sighing, Sunbright inverted Harvester and pushed the pommel three feet to her hand. She had to use both arms to catch it, it was that heavy. Gradually Sunbright sank until his hands touched the cool tile floor. Eventually he got his knees down, then clambered upright. He still felt airy, like a cloud, as if drunk, and his vision was clouded red from dangling.

The room didn't make any more sense standing upright. Overhead a dozen feet was the scribbler. Candlemas and the young wizard clung to a wall like flies fifty feet over and up.

Otherwise, the place was much like Candlemas's workshop in Castle Delia, only very much bigger. The same tables racked with bottles and jars, the same scales, even the same salty, punky smell of brimstone and saltpeter as Candlemas's tower. Yet where Candlemas's was largely plain, everything here was ornate. The walls and floor were an eye-blurring rainbow of colors and flowers, the ceiling fairly dripped with sculpted and painted plaster. All the tables were fashioned of brightly polished woods, many inlaid with lighter-colored wood or mother-of-pearl. Even the simplest objects were filigreed and tooled. Mouse cages were hand cut in tiny silver vines and leaf patterns. The wizard's purple robe was so heavily embroidered that no original material showed, only gold, silver, and purple threads interweaving in a dizzying array. All these lesser mages, forty or more within sight, were dressed that way.

Far off, the young wizard jabbered at Candlemas like a child. Candlemas nodded sagely. Sunbright picked up his sword, stood fuming, fighting to control his temper. He wanted to sound another war cry, race across the room, and split that interfering moron from crown to crotch. But he'd tried that and failed, been hung upside down like a ham. Another rush might find him anywhere: hanging upside down outside a window, for instance. And he wasn't even sure he could walk cockeyed, like a drunken mountain goat, to the spot where Candlemas stood.

To say something, he engaged the young apprentice. "Thank you. Who is that sawed-off snot?"

"Karsus." She turned back to her workbench, which contained a dozen cages where green mice ran inside wheels, then said over her shoulder, "This city is named after him."

"Moander's Mouth! After him? Why?"

"He owns it." A shrug. "He's the most powerful archwizard in the empire. The most powerful ever."

Sunbright stared, slack jawed. "That…pimple?"

"Aye." The apprentice, or whatever her rank, held a green mouse by the tail and gently lowered it into a cage lined with sandpaper. The mouse paddled its legs until it could run, which it did, frantically.

Nothing made sense, but Sunbright had to start somewhere. "Why are the mice green?"

"Karsus made them green. He reckoned it would make them run faster."

That made no sense, but he persisted. "And do they?"

"Oh, yes." The woman tapped a cage where panting mice whirled round and round. "In fact, they can't stop running. They run themselves to death. So I'm trying to find a way to slow them down."

Sunbright didn't know what to ask now. Absently he tried to map the room, but it only got madder. Off a ways, he realized, a floor had been inserted between two opposing floors. This intermediate floor was no thicker than solid boards, so people stood almost sole-to-sole, like reflections in a mirror pond. Sunbright shook his throbbing head.

The woman went on talking about her work. "Karsus wants the mice to be fitted with tiny baskets and strings on their tails. That way they can deliver dollops of heavy magic to the spaces between walls in old buildings. The globs could be illuminated so light shone through cracks at top and bottom to cast a softer glow. But unless they stop sometime…" She hoisted an exhausted mouse from a cage and dropped it in a box of rags, where it proceeded to burrow out of sight.

Sunbright felt like doing the same. "How do you get from here over to there?"

The blonde turned, her hair flicking on her cheeks. For the first time, Sunbright noticed that her eyes were different colors, one green, one brown, like some cats. She said impishly, "Well, you could jump, but that can be painful."

Reaching onto the table, she took a small jar and tossed it up. Sunbright watched it sail upward, hesitate, then shatter on the floor above. The scribbling brunette looked up indignantly. "Watch it, Seda!"

Sunbright was more confused than ever. The blonde pointed a languid finger. "Actually, you just walk to any intersecting wall and step across. You'll get used to it."

No, the barbarian thought, he never would. Shuffling his big, rough boots, he scooted toward Candlemas and-Karsus?

He paused a moment. If Karsus was the most powerful wizard ever, why hadn't Sunbright ever heard of him?

Sword in hand, the barbarian threaded tables, chairs, bookshelves, marble slabs, cages, iron sconces on tripod legs, telescopes, and more. Some wizards looked up curiously, but most did not. They'd seen odder things, obviously. Finally he reached another floor that tilted up at an angle. Gingerly he reached up, planted his foot, and stepped onto the next tiled floor. His stomach gibbered like a frightened animal, sent a burst of nausea into the back of his throat. Then he was across the magic barrier, for such it must be, and marching toward Candlemas and Karsus.

Regretfully, but at least proud of his self-control, he sheathed his sword before getting within striking distance.

Karsus was kneeling and babbling like a child. One dirty hand tugged at his hair, so much so it was ragged and short above his ear. His other hand stroked the star-stone repeatedly. "Exactly, exactly what we need! Exactly! All my experiments have been leading up to-"

The young wizard broke up, bounded and hopped on one foot before Sunbright. "Did you like my mutant? I bred him from a tiger and a dwarf! A big dwarf. I keep them in the cellars. Actually I just made him up from thin air. Actually a friend captured it in the southlands and gave it to me. People bring me lots of presents. They like me."

Sunbright couldn't see why. And three contradictory sentences in a row was a bad sign. On the tundra, this man would be the village idiot. Here in the empire, he owned a city. It said a lot about the empire.

"But you fought well. Why does your sword have that hook on the end? Would you like to fight in the arena? I could augment your strength, or give you eyes in the back of your head. You'd be famous! Women would love you. Men too…"

All Sunbright wanted was to squeeze this fool's neck until blood shot out his ears, but he clamped his hands on his belt and asked Candlemas, "What does this-person-want? Can we leave? Where are we, anyway? They say this is the city of Karsus, but I've never heard of it, and I've walked from one end of the empire to the other."

Candlemas nodded absently, but then rubbed his mustache. The young wizard blathered, "My city! Actually, it's named after my father, Radman. Mother wanted it that way. Of course, I've sold a lot of it, I think, so other people can live here. People never call it Radman, though. Everyone wants to live here near Karsus the Great…"

The pudgy mage interjected gently, "Yes, this is Karsus, Arcanist Supreme, the greatest Inventive/Variator of all time."

"Which means he waves his hands and conjures things," replied Sunbright blandly. Karsus dropped back to the stone, sniffing it all over like a dog. "So what?"

"Um…" Candlemas was plainly embarrassed about something, and Sunbright wanted to throttle him now. He'd choke somebody soon if he didn't get answers. "As I said, this is the city of Karsus and, uh, Karsus has been experimenting with a new form of magic called 'heavy magic.' He's had some success, but needed a final ingredient to, ah, cement the process. And we've found it with this fallen star, because it's so monstrously heavy. So when we, uh, uncovered it, Karsus brought it here to him. He brought us, too, so we could explain where it came from." Candlemas sounded outwardly calm, but something in him trembled. With fear? Anticipation?

"So?" Sunbright's great scarred, knotty hands clenched and unclenched. He cast about the dizzying workshop again, with its busy-bee apprentices stuck to floors all around. The place made his brain churn. He wanted to go outside. But something was distinctly wrong. "He's got it! Collect your reward, and we'll go home!"

"That's just it," hemmed Candlemas, until Sunbright took a dangerous step forward. "Wait. Karsus fetched the shooting star hither with a spell. Through space but, uh, time, as well."

"Time? What in the name of-?"

Candlemas rubbed his beard. "Three hundred and fifty-eight years."

"What?" Sunbright looked down. Karsus was rolling the star like a child's ball. Apprentices came running like rabbits at his bawl. "Three hundred-"

"Fifty-eight years. It's the year thirty-five twenty here."

Sunbright shook his head. It had been the First Year of Owldark when he left his tribe, for they counted by the reign of clan chiefs. Or the Year of the Bright Snow, as some elders had named it.

"We've been drawn into the future, Sunbright, many generations past what we know." Candlemas's voice was urgent. "Everyone we knew in Castle Delia is dead dust. Back then, we would have disappeared, never been seen again. The castle itself was sold, Karsus assures me. Lady Polaris doesn't own it anymore, if she's even alive. He's not sure she is. There's nothing back there for us."

"Nothing for you." Sunbright's face was blank as he tried to sift the information. His people told legends of heroes who traveled from Now to the Elder Days, and met heroes of ages past. Was he doing that now? Better to hear of adventures than live them…

"No. I had no friends in the castle, really, just servants. All I did was slave for Lady Polaris, and get precious little thanks for it." The pudgy mage sounded excited, almost like Karsus. "But this is better. Karsus has invited me to help him work, experiment! And the man knows more magic than anyone, ever!"

Sunbright looked where Karsus kissed the lumpy star. "The man has bugs in his brain! He can't even comb his hair."

"He doesn't need to. He's got five hundred mages working under him, in this part of the city alone! He's the most powerful arcanist the empire has ever seen."

"An empire run by a madman? How long can that last? Are we in another damned floating city? What if Bug-brain here sneezes at the wrong time and loses his concentration-what little he has? You'd need to sprout wings damned quick!"

"You don't understand genius." Candlemas rubbed his bald head. "Anyway, I'm staying here to work under him. Six months' study and I'll know more than Lady Polaris ever hoped to!"

"What about your wheat rust? Weren't you responsible for curing that?" Sunbright had so many objections and questions they just popped out of his mouth. It would take him weeks to sort out this madness.

"See? That's solved!" The mage waved a hand at the ceiling/floor. "That problem's three hundred years back in time! Someone else must have fixed it, or the empire wouldn't be here. And look how rich it's become! Look at the opulence of these work tables, look at the clothes on even the lowest ranked apprentice."

"What about my tribe? I've got to get back-" Then he realized. All the people he'd known would now be dead: his mother, Owldark his enemy, Thornwing, Blinddrum, so many others. He felt his throat constrict. Could a man be more cut off from what he knew and yet still be of this world? Feebly, he croaked, "What about Greenwillow?"

Candlemas huffed. "She's dead. We knew that already."

Within seconds Candlemas was hoisted by his smock, feet dangling as Sunbright rammed him repeatedly against a wall of curlicued plaster. "This is how you honor bargains? Make it someone else's problem? People starved or didn't, but it's none of your concern? Greenwillow's trapped in some hell and you slough it off? I'll tear your heart out, if you have one!"

"Wait, wait!" Candlemas fought to regain his feet, to loosen the stranglehold, to breathe. "I can't get you back! Neither of us can go-" His wind cut off.

"Is he distressing you?" came a voice from Sunbright's left. "Here. Let me…"

Sunbright found himself standing in a street. Night was falling. Gasglobes were just igniting, blotting out the thousand stars.

"Mages! Hand-wavers! Sorcerers! Wizards! Bastards, all of them! I'd like to pitch them off their own floating cities, and hear their bones crunch when they strike the villages and fields they so dearly love to dump on!"

Sunbright groused as he tramped the darksome city. Needing to walk off his anger, he'd stomped for miles in his moosehide boots. Harvester patted his back in a companionable way, but nothing assuaged his black mood. Once again he had no idea where he was, no idea where Candlemas was, had no idea even if he were still in the floating city of Karsus or even in the same century, for that matter. But the K sigil for Karsus was everywhere, so he supposed he hadn't been shifted far: just out of harm's reach.

Walking should have spent his energy, but instead it stoked his anger like a bellows. He cursed freely and often, and stamped so hard his iron-ringed boots set off a metallic ching ching ching. Unusual for a barbarian on foreign soil, he didn't notice much around him, for his mind churned with outrage.

Thus he stumbled on a crime.

Whirling around a corner, he almost bounced off the back of a man vigorously kicking something. Three men, in fact, holding mugs of ale to one side so as to not spill. They grunted with the effort of kicking a tiny something-a child? — with their heavy boots or wooden clogs. They'd have done more damage if they weren't so drunk, but as it was, Sunbright's bellow froze them in mid-kick.

"Halt, you blackhearted swine! Else I split your heads and suck your brains!"

They turned to see Harvester, the hooked tip glistening like a crescent moon. The "child" they'd been kicking sprang up and sped off. Seeing the tiny form run man-fashion, Sunbright wasn't sure it was a child.

"Hoy, help us!" A shrill whistle, and the door to a bar split open to spill light, pub noise, and more assailants.

"He's let our gnome escape!" called one of the kickers.

"Let's get 'im then!" came a roar.

Sunbright looked at a dozen angry attackers. He just had time to wonder what a gnome was before they swamped him.