Sword Play

Chapter 13

In growing dimness, Greenwillow sat on a stone wall and stared at the space where Sunbright had disappeared. Perhaps, wherever he'd gone, he'd find a way to escape and come back to her. She doubted it, but didn't know what else to do.

A cool evening wind swirled from the mountains and kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear seductively. Elves weren't supposed to fall in love with humans, the message seemed to remind her. The two races stood apart for good reasons. And all along on this benighted quest, her doomed mission to deliver condemnation from a haughty elven council to an undead king, she'd fought to stay aloof, reserved, cool. She'd battled against love harder than any mortal enemy she'd ever fought. In vain. She Who Shapes All had laid the path before Greenwillow's feet, and the half-elf could but walk it.

Until now, when the one she loved had catapulted after a temptress, a trollop, a…

Without any tickle to her keen elven senses, a man stood by her side.

Instinctively she shot up, laid a hand to her sword's pommel, and slid the weapon from its sheath a hair. Certainly there was magic about the human, for he hadn't walked to this spot. That she knew. But too, he looked vaguely familiar, was podgy, bald, and bearded, dressed in a plain linen smock. Then she recalled.

"You… talked to Sunbright that day just before he joined our party of merchants. In the village of Augerbend, it was."

"Did I? Oh, yes, yes." Candlemas was distracted. A lot had happened since then. He stepped across the road to where the portal had materialized.

"But who are you?" demanded the elf. "Sunbright said you were steward of the castle, but that was untrue."

"Hmmm?" The mage studied the wreckage of Tinnainen, the gaps pounded in the walls, the trickles of smoke in a dozen places, the collapsed roofs and gutted palace. He shook his head in wonder at what he and Sysquemalyn had stirred up-all for a silly wager, or was it something more? Now the air reeked with the residue of mighty magics, of dragons and liches and others, power only a Neth could master. But at least that battle was over, the fires out, Wrathburn departed. Within days, Tinnainen would be a backwater again-unless the Nine Hells erupted nearby.

He frowned at the sky. Was his eyesight fading? No, he'd just come so far east the sun had already set here. He felt old, was all. Constant intrigue and tension ground a body down.

"I asked," Greenwillow said, jerking her sword from its scabbard with a steel whisper, "who are you?"

He turned to look at her. Despite smudges and nicks, she was more lovely in real life than when seen through a palantir. Always swayed by feminine beauty, the mage spoke formally. "I'm sorry, my dear. I am a steward, but of another castle, uh, higher up. I'm a friend."

Frowning again, the mage knelt stiffly and ran his fingers over the soil. Still warm. Then he flinched as something black fluttered near his face. But it was only the raven, which said nothing.

Greenwillow did, though. "You're a friend to the raven, too?"

"Eh?" Candlemas craned to see her face. "Oh, ah… What do you know of the bird?"

"That it talks. I followed Sunbright a few times, just to-" Now she hesitated, even blushed. "Just to watch him. He didn't see me, but I saw him converse with the raven. Did you send it?"

Candlemas nodded absently. Lifting his hand palm up, he felt for the exact spot where the portal had been. Waving his hand slowly, he traced the outline: the rift in the fabric of reality. "Good, good. Or very bad. For me anyway."

Rising, extending his hands with fingers spread, he keened again, a long, loud wail.

The portal winked into being. Nothing showed inside it, just a view of the stone wall.

With a cry, Greenwillow jumped up, slapped her sword home, and started to push past Candlemas. But the mage swept her back with a thick arm. "Stand back, young woman. There's nothing you can do."

Sighing, he hiked his skirts and stepped through the portal. The golden shimmer tingled around his legs, then his body, as if he crept into lightning-charged water.

The mage paid no notice to Greenwillow. For too long had Candlemas been steward of a castle, where his orders were obeyed immediately without question.

Greenwillow didn't question him either. She just shadowed the bulky man, hovering inches behind him, and held her breath.

Seconds later, the portal winked out, and the road to Tinnainen stood empty.

Candlemas stepped onto a platform of black glass. Not much wider than a public fountain, it curved up all around, so he slid toward its center. The mage didn't recognize the conveyance, but it resembled the bottom of a palantir, as if he stood inside. Perhaps he did.

Around the platform was nothingness, a blank limbo like fog. Candlemas didn't dare touch it.

Sprawled like a rag doll on the glass platform lay Sunbright, his sword under him. The barbarian was dirty and scraped up, but alive and breathing. For now.

A cry sounded. With mild annoyance, the mage found the half-elf Greenwillow had followed despite his orders. She stooped to gather Sunbright in her arms, smothering his face with fervent kisses. That brought the barbarian around better than a bucket of water.

His first words were accusatory, aimed at the mage. "Chandler! What are you doing here?"

Single-minded, barbarians were, Candlemas thought. If humans were dumb brutes, as Sysquemalyn argued, the tundra people were no smarter than their reindeer. This young hide-wearer leaped to battle instead of waging love on the elven beauty. The mage sighed, "I'm not a simple steward. I'm more than that."

Clutching his throbbing head, Sunbright clambered up from Greenwillow's embrace. To her questions, he rasped, "That yellow fiend that grabbed Ruellana. It saw me following somehow, and crushed me with a hand like a hayrick. I don't know where it went from there."

Still groggy, he slid a pace on the glass platform and almost pitched over the side-if there was a side. No noise or feel or smell came from the foggy limbo. They might have been bugs in a bottle, Candlemas thought, and perhaps were.

Sunbright leveled a scarred arm and calloused finger at the older man. "You're a filthy mage, aren't you?"

A tiny shrug. "A mage. My name isn't Chandler, by the way. It's Candlemas. A chandler makes candles, see?" His rueful smile was not returned.

"So everything you told me was a lie?"

"Not everything." Candlemas scanned their surroundings, which were the blankest he'd ever seen. How could he entice the barbarian to penetrate the not-fog? "About half, well, much of what I said was true."

"You used me!" A finger stabbed downward. "Even that damned raven is yours, isn't it?"

Candlemas blinked at the platform and saw the raven. Funny, he hadn't seen it enter the portal.

The raven cocked its head as if also confused as to how it had gotten there. It croaked, "Sorry. That's how the egg breaks."

"The raven is an avatar," Candlemas explained. "A shade of mine sent to watch over you. Like a homunculus, only more reliable."

Sunbright rubbed his throbbing temples. He snarled, "I don't want any more of your damned magic near me! Wait, you sent Ruellana, too, didn't you?"

"Ah, no." The chunky mage cast about again, then settled creaking onto his hams, which slipped down the glass toward the middle where Sunbright stood. He had to drag his hands to stop his slide. "Ruellana is an avatar-no, a persona-of another mage named Sysquemalyn. She's chamberlain while I'm steward of, uh, a castle. She got us into this current pickle. And I'd have to say that, while I've used you somewhat-but kept you from harm repeatedly-she's used you worse and meant you harm. Of course, you probably don't believe anything I say. I understand. But the latest round involved sending you after that book, and she arranged it! No doubt she whispered in the One King's ear that he needed the book, so he dispatched the next able warrior who strode into his court to fetch it before-"

The mage stopped himself, but Sunbright caught the implication. The barbarian's eyes were as hard and cold as glacial ice. "Before you could send me, correct?"

Candlemas shrugged. He hoped the young man wouldn't attack him here. Magic shields would be dicey in a spot like this. They might do anything from protect Candlemas to crush him like a cockroach.

But Sunbright's native curiosity overcame his thirst for vengeance-for the moment. "So Ruellana is a lousy mage too. I should have suspected all along. I was too blind to see. But what was that thing that grabbed her, and where have they gone?"

Candlemas bit his lip as he thought of the manner in which Sysquemalyn had left his workshop. "Good questions."

Sliding Harvester home in its scabbard, Sunbright suddenly whirled on Greenwillow. "And you? What are you, really? And who's your master? And what do you get out of… attending me?"

Shocked, the half-elf's conflicting emotions warred on her expressive face. Combining sorrow and rage, she flared, "I'm not anything but what I appear to be! I've been your comrade and friend and… that's all. I don't want anything from you. YOU chose to accompany me to Tinnainen, remember?"

"I know only that I've been used, prodded, steered, and cheated by everyone I've met since leaving the tundra!" roared Sunbright. "But no more! I'm stuffed to the eyes with lying lowlanders, and I'm going home as soon as I can. I'll take my chances at being killed by friends and relatives over skulking, lying fiends the day long."

Greenwillow shrilled once, "Nooooo!"

But Sunbright had hunched at the edge of the platform, stuck his head into the limbo-fog, then planted his hands on the surface and vaulted into the void. There was nothing left to indicate he'd ever stood on the black glass bowl.

Greenwillow blazed hatred at the mage. "This is all your fault! Your backstabbing, traitorous, lying, sneaking, thieving magic ways! I hope you rot in the deepest pit of the Nine Hells until the sun falls from the sky!"

So saying, she leaned over the platform, sprang outward, and was gone.

"That's the problem," Candlemas sighed to the raven. "We just might."

The raven pecked at the black glass, hopped up and down, and clacked its beak at its master. "That's the way the egg breaks."

It squawked as Candlemas booted it off the platform.

Sighing, skidding to his feet, Candlemas leaned gingerly into the fog, then rolled over the edge as if tumbling from a boat.

Greenwillow ghosted through fog that was not solid under her feet, but neither did she plummet. If anything, she swam through the air in slow motion, but that didn't describe it either. She tried to steer for the route Sunbright had taken, but had no real sense of direction.

After a few seconds-or hours-her feet plunked on stone. Two steps broke her free of the fog, which clung in shreds that she brushed off like spiderwebs.

Immediately, she called, "Sunbright?" There was no answer, and without thinking she drew her slim, elegant sword.

She'd landed on flagstones the color of pale moss. Before her was a half-wall of the same material. Behind her was a taller, similar wall. Arching overhead, a bowshot high, was a distant ceiling of green flagstones as wide as rooftops. There were more low walls and tall ones, all marching into the distance. Even the light seemed green, though she couldn't find a source.

There was nothing else in sight,

"Sunbright?"

She'd expected her voice to echo in this cavern, but it seemed to travel a distance and then stop. Hesitant, she laid her hand on the low wall. The stones were as smooth as river rocks and were warm like the back of a lizard lying in the sun. The floor was also warm, despite the shadows.

"Sunbright!"

Movement behind her made her whirl, sword leveled.

But what she saw was herself, reflected in stone.

Wonderingly, she advanced. Her image crept toward her. It was fragmented by cracks and wavy from imperfections in the stone. And hardly natural. She could tell it was magic, for the stones couldn't reflect like mirrors.

And her face was ugly.

Her brows were straight across, almost a bar, not arched like an elf's. Her nose was wide, with flaring nostrils, and stippled with blemishes. Her mouth was fat-lipped and pendulous, her hair thatchy and uneven above rounded ears. Even her slim elven figure had coarsened to thick hips and fleshy arms and huge feet.

With a shock, she realized she looked not like an elf, but like a human.

Horror-stricken, Greenwillow ran her hands over her face, felt her nose and lips. But all were numb, and she couldn't tell if the reflection were true or not.

What was this? she wanted to cry. Had some curse turned her human? Was this a hell for elves, to be degraded to an inferior race? She looked down at her legs and feet, but a mist in her eyes-incipient human blindness? — clouded her vision. Even her hand before her eyes was a blur. Yet the reflection stayed as sharp as before.

A trick, her mind replied calmly. A passing madness in this fragment of hell or whatever it was. Yet her eyes contradicted her thoughts, until she wanted to cry out and beat her brain into submission, or blind herself and spare the misery.

Turning away with a gasp, she banged into the low wall, which had somehow crept up on her right. She hadn't shifted, she was positive: the wall had. But perhaps it sought to engulf her, like a trapdoor spider. Whirling, she jumped for the open space, stubbed her toes on a raised step that hadn't been there just a moment ago.

More flickers to her left. The reflection now had gray hair. The face was wrinkled, the scrawny arm too weak to hold up the sword.

Age, she thought. Humans age too quickly and die, like dandelions living a single season. Was this happening to her? Desperately she ripped at her pony-tail, dragged it before her, but the increasing self-blindness prevented her from seeing if her hair were black or gray.

Blindly, she groped along the wall, but the image followed. Between two high walls she saw twin reflections, like ghosts who sought to drive her mad. Her reflected back was now hunched, her legs trembling.

"Love of Mystryl," she prayed, "if Sunbright saw me like this, he'd-"

He'd what? Reject her? Never love her? He didn't love her now, did he? Or she him?

Suddenly she didn't know anything. Could she love a human? A sweaty, garlic-stinking, sour half-beast that would age almost overnight into a decrepit wreck? Was this her curse, to feel affection for a human and so to become one? Many of her fellows would say loving a human was like marrying an animal. Humans were no better than orcs, equally without worth or honor or use, a plague loosed on the earth by malicious gods to chastise the true folk, the elves.

"No!" she called aloud. Her reflection showed a caved-in mouth empty of teeth.

Then two reflections. No, herself and…

Sunbright, no longer human.

His bright blond topknot was normal, and his rugged, tanned, lean face. But his light eyebrows pulled upward at the ends to almost touch his scalp, and his eyes were slanted, his ears pointed. He looked lean as a whippet, with thin but powerful arms. His tapering torso showed no chest hair.

He was an elf!

How had this transformation occurred? And why now, when she'd been made human… or had she? Did the gods hate them so much that now Sunbright would be acceptable to her people as a lover and husband, yet she'd been reduced to the gutter-level of faded, hairy, grotesque humans? Could any gods be so cruel?

And how much of this was real? Was it her own guilt at loving a human that plagued her? Did she punish herself worst of all?

Something was happening in their reflections. The elf-made Sunbright caught the skinny, saggy arm of the hunched, aged, too-human Greenwillow. The ugly crone tried to turn away, to hide her face, but the elf-man saw her wrinkled, toothless mouth, warts, and chin hairs. Repulsed with horror, the elf-Sunbright staggered back and turned, crying, from the vision.

Shrieking, Greenwillow, too, dashed away from the horrid image. But a low wall rammed her knee and sent her tumbling. Her sword clattered to the green stones, and her clumsy hands seemed too crabbed and numb to grab it.

Below her, more images roiled in the stone. Fascinated, hypnotized like a bird by a snake, the elven-or-human woman watched.

Touching her from underneath, equally on all fours, was another Greenwillow, still human but younger and naked, with a swollen belly showing she carried a child. Her white skin was stretched as tight as a drumhead and enflamed with coarse blue veins, so she looked like a fat-uddered cow too long unmilked. Did she carry the elf-Sunbright's child, a baby half-elf? Would her child be hated by both races? Would the child hate her for birthing it? Would the elven Sunbright desert her for becoming human? Would she die alone and unloved in some empty wasteland?

Crying openly, Greenwillow crawled to her feet. Before her loomed another wall with yet another reflection. A deadly pale, naked Greenwillow staggered as her belly was punched from within. Gory red goblinlike arms split her skin, ripped her open so blood ran in rivers. She was birthing a monster and dying in the process.

Shrieking, she whirled and ran. Another wall had been erected behind her, forming an arch. Running full-tilt, half-blind with tears, she ducked to dash under it.

The arch lowered as she came. Lights exploded in her dark mind as her head slammed stone.

Sunbright floated and swam through fog, dropping slowly until his hobnailed boots chuffed in what he guessed to be dirt. Fog swirled around his shoulders, but a quick shake dissipated it.

Instinctively casting about for the lay of the land, Sunbright concluded this place, wherever it was, didn't seem dangerous, just a tunnel cut through dirt. But instinctively he found Harvester in his hand, for the tunnel hadn't been cut by humans.

Giant earthworms, more likely. No part of the tunnel floor was smooth, but every step was ridged, rippled like the bottom of a shallow stream-or something else. Then he got it. It resembled the guts of a reindeer, tubes ringed with muscles, and he was caught inside like a tapeworm. Nor was any stretch straight, but twisted every inch. Ahead the tunnel rose gradually, then so abruptly he couldn't have climbed the walls. Another sloping branch from an acute angle turned suddenly downward, then leveled again.

His judgment, his decision to jump from the black glass platform, had been foolish and hasty. He might follow turns to dead ends and backtrack for days and never find his way clear to whatever was above ground. He was underground, and yet he could see. Light didn't come from any one source, but seemed to hang in the air, if that made any sense. And the fog he'd dropped from was gone.

Seeking courage, he pronounced aloud, "Well, I can't stand still forever." But the tunnels of guts sucked up the sound of his voice.

Too, they sucked at his courage, like wading in icy water sucked body heat, until all that was left was coldness inside. Sunbright shook his head, but couldn't shake the sensation of dread. Time and again he flicked a glance over his shoulder, trying to catch whatever crept up on him.

Coward, the tunnels seemed to whisper. Gutless. You're afraid of your own shadow, a child frightened of the dark.

Frowning, grip on his sword sweaty, Sunbright turned right and went up the slope. Upward would be his strategy for the nonce. But the trail didn't go up for long; it only flowed over a hump and back down again. He cursed. "What now? Back or ahead?"

Cursing more, he turned back. Perhaps if he returned in the direction from whence came the fog, he'd go "up," since he'd dropped "down." Or had he?

But that, too, failed. He counted as he walked forty paces back, but he couldn't find the fork. Any fork. Just more wavering tunnel.

Now the grip on Sunbright's sword made the weapon slippery. If the tunnels could change when he turned his back, he'd never get out. He'd be lost until he died of thirst and his body rotted to bones.

Despite years of wilderness training and lore, Sunbright panicked and ran. Cursing, gasping, fighting not to cry out in fear, he plunged through the tunnels headlong. Clambering up with clawed hands, sliding down slopes steep enough to break legs, choosing directions willy-nilly, he charged-until he ran out of wind and dropped.

Heaving, retching on air, he fought for control. Perhaps this was good, he thought. Perhaps getting the panic over would leave him cool-headed. Certainly he was ashamed, not that anyone would ever know he'd panicked. Only himself.

And certainly he could blame himself for leaping off the platform and leaving Greenwillow, a boon companion, if an enigmatic one. The feeling of dread turned to bitter sorrow when he thought of her. Surely abandoning her was the worst mistake he'd ever made. He'd die unhappy knowing…

He rapped his skull with the heel of his hand. Flogging himself wouldn't help. Better not to think at all. Stumbling to his feet, the barbarian forced himself to walk, not run, and to try to think his way out of this dilemma. If only he had a landmark to work from, he might…

As if the maze had read his thoughts, a stretch of rippled wall turned dark and craggy. The giant earthworms had cut through something jagged and splintered like a midden of broken brown glass. While some frightened childlike portion of himself wanted to run screaming, his native curiosity made him pause. Perhaps it would provide a clue, point the way out. He studied the lumps overhead and underfoot and at either hand.

They were bones, so old and buried so long they'd taken the color of the earth. Thick, many of them, with knobby joints like those of a lion or bear. A flattened claw was long and hooked like an eagle's talon.

And on one wall was a huge brown beak, much bigger than any eagle's could be, larger than Sunbright's head.

Bears with beaks?

Something stirred in his memory. Hadn't someone somewhere once routed a valley of-what were they called? — owlbears? These people had slaughtered hundreds of them to gain the valley, which held gold or copper or other riches. A few of the creatures had survived, but not many, left to wander the deeper forests, seeking prey and never dying.

Idly he felt the walls. How had owlbear carcasses come to be here? Was this the bottom of a huge kettle, a natural cavity in the forest gouged by a glacier? If he chopped at the ceiling, would he see daylight? Or must he hack through thousands of bones only to find more dirt? If he could find freedom, could he win back Greenwillow? But with her name came the crushing doubt again and heartbreaking sorrow. What was wrong with him?

Under his fingers, something tingled. Snatching back his hand, he found frost crusting his fingernails. What…?

With a splintering, clattering roar, an owlbear broke free of the wall.

Rearing higher than Sunbright, the monster raised long claws like brown glass and slashed at the barbarian. A fearsome beak, like obsidian, clacked and clashed for his face. Yet it wasn't a proper owlbear. The skull was only partly clad in dusty fur. Its coat sported huge rents through which could be seen brittle brown bones. The gaping eye sockets glared empty, and its breath was as musty as an old grave.

Undead. Superstitions overwhelming him, Sunbright's head swam. Lying uneasy, the bones steeped in ghosts had needed only a living touch to come alive and wreak vengeance. The fiend had sucked life-force from his hand, and now it would destroy him and gain company, the living joining the dead.

All these thoughts occurred in seconds; then Sunbright swung. Panic gave him strength, and Harvester chopped deep into the owlbear's side below the powerful forelegs. But he might as well have used a stick to beat a rug. A puff of stone dust rushed around his hands, choked and gagged him.

Backing, clutching his sword as if it were a lifeline, he tried again. Two-handed, he swung high and chopped low, putting all the might of his shoulders into the blow. He aimed for the lower leg, hoping to cut deep and knock the underpinning from the monster.

The sword chuffed into fur, then bone, but failed to bite, for the bone was ancient and as hard as iron-wood. Skipping, the barbarian danced aside, sawed the great parrot-beak arc over the creature's tough limb, and twisted to hook Harvester's crook behind its knee. With a gasp, he yanked on the sword hard enough to rip an oak tree up by the roots.

The hook simply skidded off. Flailing, Sunbright staggered and crashed on his back. Glassy bones and beaks and claws clattered at his elbow. The undead owlbear swung like a juggernaut and slashed the air above him.

Dread returned in a wave. He'd die here, he was sure of it. Sunbright fought an overpowering urge to throw away his sword and run or crawl off into the tunnel, gibbering in fear. No one would know his cowardice, came the whispers.

Yet, clambering to his feet, he couldn't even run. The undead beast had felt nothing of his blows, had never even paused. A maggot-eaten paw swung claws like a fistful of knives. Sunbright dodged and hurled his sword blade at the thing's head. The blade thunked in dry fur, sheared to a dry skull. Did nothing.

Then the fiend's claws scored. Like a giant's pitchfork, the razor talons ripped down Sunbright's arm, ripping meat and arteries and shredding them from his bone.

Red blood spurted on bone-thick walls as the barbarian stumbled. The owlbear's other paw sliced up under his stunned, hopeless defense and raked his side. Sunbright backed away, tripping over his heels, looking frantically for escape, a chance to run for his life. But his spine slammed the rounded wall as the owlbear's paws trapped him on either side. Its claws raked down fragments of comrades that clittered to the dirt around Sunbright's feet.

Gasping, growling like a bear himself, Sunbright managed to jerk his sword up and shove it into the beast's body. He felt only tough skin part; then the blade waggled in emptiness. Desperate to escape, he bashed his forehead against the brute's beak.

It might have driven back a live owl or even a bear. It did nothing to the dead owlbear. Claws from both sides rasped into his sides, splitting skin, shedding blood, seeking his vitals. He felt guts tear deep inside.

He'd never survive now. He was dead but still standing upright. What should be his death song, and where would his body lie? Would he feed grass or worms, or simply rot into shreds of dusty bones like those around him?

Too weak to even sag, Sunbright watched the awful dark glass beak snap. He saw only darkness inside.

The beak swallowed his head whole. The last thing he felt were the points piercing his neck and his forehead. Pressure and pain crashed upon him like a falling tree.

A grinding like an earthquake told him his skull was being crushed. Then nothing.