Sword Play

Chapter 2

Sunbright dreamed, and in his dreams he relived his entire life.

He saw his clan, the Ravens, trekking across the vast and unending tundra, a herd of reindeer driven before them by dogs more savage than snow wolves. He saw their life as a vast circle, moving season by season from place to place by ancient routes and ancient tradition: cutting through ice for seals in winter, craning from weirs to spear salmon in spring, crawling across a plain of brown skull-like rocks to flush ptarmigan in summer, slipping through cedar forests to shoot moose and elk in fall. And then watching the first snow fall, and steering gradually for the ice that hadn't yet formed, but would, as it had for centuries.

He recalled his mother Monkberry, strong but silent and shamed, for she had borne only one child. And his father, Sevenhaunt, a mighty warrior and shaman, returning to the tribe with yellow scalps when the tribe made war.

He saw his mother splicing rawhide reins for dog sleds and braiding her own hair for arrow strings, heard his father discoursing to the men long into the night, citing the old wisdom and his shaman's visions that helped guide the tribe to safety year by year.

Then had come the bad times. His father collapsing, wheezing like a speared seal, so weak he had to be carried to his bed where he lay day after day, sweating and chilled under six musk-ox pelts, wasting away until he died from a curse no one could name. His mother, tamping down the moss on her husband's grave, then lifting his great sword Harvester of Blood in one hand to hang over the door of their yurt, so her husband's spirit might continue to guard his family. For Harvester was a steel sword, the only one among the tribe's arsenal of bronze and iron, won by Sunbright's father in the distant past from a source he would never reveal. And being a mighty sword, and well-nigh unbreakable, the boy could believe something of his father's spirit lived in it.

Sunbright saw himself in his dream, a skinny lad with hair so blond it looked white, reaching for the sword month by month, measuring his height until he was tall enough to cut his finger on the blade and so share his father's blood, then tall enough to take Harvester down and practice with it, though it hadn't yet been granted to him.

He saw himself besting the other boys and girls in combat with swords sheathed in reindeer hide, being first the best fighter in the Raven clan, then the best among all the youths of the Rengarth tribe. He relived the night by the ritual fire, the flames heaped with all his childhood possessions and clothes, and the scalp of an enemy, a hated Angardt tribesman killed by his own hand. At this final test of manhood his mother had granted him his father's sword, Harvester of Blood, and gave him a new name. No longer would he be called Mikkl, for "Scrawny One," but Sunbright Steelshanks, for his hair so bright and legs so sturdy that he could outrun everyone in the tribe, youths and adults alike.

That had been a year ago, but only seconds in dream time, for the past was always with him, as was the scowling face of Owldark, the tribe's new shaman, given to fits of rage when his head throbbed so mightily his eyes bulged and his face turned as red as a sunset. Owldark, who'd watched the boy with envy and hatred, who sensed the youth's shamanism, mighty like that of his father, Sevenhaunt. Owldark, who cried one night that he'd seen a vision of Sunbright standing over the tribe with a bloody sword in hand, fire and smoke filling the horizon, even the livestock slaughtered, and Sunbright the cause of the destruction. How the village elders had conferred then, smoking rank sumac leaves and red willow bark day and night, arguing whether Sunbright should be killed outright or sacrificed to the gods, for Owldark's prophecies always came true.

And so had come the night, only six past, when Monkberry had awakened him, hissing, "They come! Take this and depart!" She kissed him and pushed him out a hole cut in the yurt's leather side, while she remained to face the council and their wolf-masked executioners.

For days Sunbright had fled over the tundra and, coming to the mountains, had crossed them and entered the lowlands. Friendless, clanless, miserable, a burning thirst for revenge was now his only companion.

He tossed in his sleep and would have cried out had not the need for silence been beaten into him during his early years. The pictures, the sights and smells of his people's lonely encampment on the gray, flat, unending tundra, rose and swirled and blurred together. Sounds of shouting, or wood crackling, or bones splintering grated in his ears, came closer, louder…

Sensing an enemy, Sunbright jerked upright.

But it was only a murder of crows, nine or more, winging low over the gorge, cawing and croaking and carrying on.

But a flight of disturbed crows often meant something on the move, and so the barbarian, still sitting, nocked an arrow and waited. And more came. From the south, where the gorge followed a jut of the Barren Mountains and scrub forest continued, a badger scuttled to the top of a flat rock, boldly sniffed the air in front and behind it, then slid around the rock and out of sight. Two snakes, intertwining, spilled over the edge, into holes and out of them, still traveling, a very odd thing. Even an owl winged from the forest, silently, and sought another patch of shadow in which to hide.

What could be pursuing them? A forest fire? Sunbright covered his mouth and sniffed deeply, but sensed no tang of smoke. What else, then? Some magic? A wolf pack? Another orcish patrol?

Debating whether to stay and watch or go, Sunbright detected the faintest of footfalls up on the forest flat. That sound he knew. Leaning forward for a better shot, he drew his bow to half-nock, made sure he could draw fully…

Here they came, bounding over the edge like a river of tawny bodies: roe deer, shaggy and dappled white on their red backs. There were a dozen at least, leaping high but barely skipping as they landed, like stones across water, bouncing like heath hares.

Pulling to full nock, Sunbright instinctively aimed for the longest-bodied animal with the knobby horns. An elder male, past its prime. The gods would not begrudge him that. He aimed for the spot where the buck would land, loosing an arrow at nothing. The string kissed his cheek, the arrow vanished, and the deer leapt full into its path. With a thunk the arrow slapped through the stag's heart. Stalled in its leap, the animal banged its jaw on the earth as it somersaulted. By the time Sunbright was upright, the other deer had disappeared down the gorge.

Running, skidding to a halt, he did a dozen things at once. He whispered a prayer to Moander, beast-lord, for sending him this bounty. He added a prayer to the deer, thanking it for giving old flesh to feed the young, and hoped in the spirit world it was young and healthy and fat, with good teeth and many does to mount. All the while, he was flipping the animal, awkward now in death, over by its long legs and plying his flaked-flint knife to slice out liver and kidneys and lungs, stuffing the bloody gobbets inside his jerkin. He only half-watched himself work, despite the danger of slashing his hands, for he also nervously observed the forest flat to see if whatever marauders had driven the beasts were still coming on.

Yet no one appeared at the lip, nor any more animals. The disturbance couldn't be far off, if only those few had been pushed. Knife in bloody hand, Sunbright crept up the rocky slope and peered over the edge, keeping a tuft of yellow-green grass before his face.

The forest was red pines, thick trees with scabby bark and round clusters of short green needles.

There was little undergrowth amidst the trunks. Only more rhododendron and granite ledge showed. No animals, no monsters, no men. What, then, was out there?

Whatever, Sunbright took advantage of the lull. Returning to the deer, he sliced the hide around the neck and legs, slit it where needed, and with strong fingers yanked the hide off like a sticky sock. Artfully, the tundra native, who'd grown up on reindeer and musk-ox meat, sliced off lean steaks and heaped them into the hide on the fatty white side. Making final slits, he tugged a handful of red hide through itself, forming a pouch and a loop to slide over his shoulder as a makeshift strap. He'd need his hands free for any fights to come.

For he meant to find out what haunted the forest.

Not wasting an opportunity to eat-for any minute he might be fighting or fleeing-Sunbright shaved slices from the deer liver as he set out across the forest floor. The deer had been old, and the liver was tough and shot with worms. He'd have preferred to light a fire and roast it but didn't dare, so he munched as he walked.

If there was one thing his barbarian upbringing had taught him, it was that no matter how bad things were, they could always grow worse, and so he should enjoy any good times. Right now Sunbright had food, was alive and healthy and free, and had mysteries to investigate, so he could have been much worse off. The only thing he really missed was not having someone to talk with. Rengarth tribesmen lived off their herds, which spent the day foraging, so the barbarians had plenty of time for talk and stories and gossip and jokes. Sunbright missed company, and for the first time wished he had at least a dog to talk to.

That he walked into danger made him wary but not particularly afraid. Life was full of hazards, some a man could flee, others he could not. And he had to admit that this time of loneliness and seeking would have come eventually anyway. Young men and women of his tribe went out alone after sixteen summers to seek wisdom, a totem animal, guidance from the gods, and whatever else they could learn. Sunbright, then Mikkl, had done all that, but for him there had always loomed more. Since his father had been a great shaman and medicine-healer, Sunbright would be expected to go forth on another solitary quest to find his own shamanistic powers, else he would never become a spirit warrior.

Perhaps, he realized, this adventure was his spirit journey, and the gods had simply propelled him into it earlier than he'd planned. If so, perhaps he'd learn some of the gods' secrets. Perhaps he could return to his tribe someday and prove Owldark's dream of destruction false, and so take his place among the elders, and be a healer and teacher. Perhaps not.

In either case, he recognized visions when he dreamed them, and signs when they overran his crude camp. Whatever had roused the animals to flee had roused Sunbright's curiosity.

Now, ahead, the forest growth parted. Bushes were ripped up, the pine needles scoured away so that dusty brown earth showed. Here was the disturbance, and he stowed away his bloody breakfast to skulk from tree trunk to tree trunk. Circling, watching both ahead and behind him, he spiraled in toward the spot of churned earth.

Finally, sure he was alone, he crept up on the spot.

He found a hole.

An odd hole, to be sure. It was neat, an inverted cone dug into the earth, as if someone had twirled a great shovel. Dirt and rocks from the hole were scattered evenly around it, as neat as a dike. Earthworms still twitched on the churned soil. Whiskers twitching, a befuddled mouse scuttled along a tiny balcony where its burrow had been shorn in half.

Leaning over the dike, Sunbright laid his hand on the cut soil. It felt warm, but that might just have been the warmth of Earthmother. He sniffed, smelled only dirt. Obviously this was a magical hole, for he knew no beasts that could dig this way, and the hole ended seven feet down at a point. As if, his mind toyed, as if a giant icicle had fallen from the castle of Delia on high, then vanished. Could that be?

Then he started as dirt suddenly spilled down the side of the hole. Under his hand, the earth moved, not in a jump, but uneasily, roiling, like a beast turning in its sleep. Some great earth-spirit was stirring. Sunbright whispered a protection spell and the rumbling subsided, though he doubted he could credit himself for its dying down.

Waiting in the still, eerie forest from which all animals had fled, the boy felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise. Yet still he waited, to see if any guidance came.

He waited until he grew bored. The hole told him nothing, didn't seem to be part of his spirit journey.

To show he wasn't afraid, he checked around for enemies one more time, then pissed into the hole.

Then he pushed on through the forest.

Thousands of feet below, in the blackest cavern, yet only half in Sunbright's dimension, a clutch of strange creatures felt the human's footsteps recede. They returned to their conversation.

Bad, thought one. Words, for it, were useless. Too bad. Dead.

The magic storms come more and more frequently.

More and more the fault of the Above-World.

Neth, they call themselves. Wizards, toying with magic, squandering it. We starve for magic they waste.

We must tell them, warn them not to trifle. We learned long ago.

We cannot tell them. One of us just exploded trying to do so.

Adding its dweomer to the magic storms raging everywhere, and aggravating the problem.

The beings resembled animate tornados, upright cones with stinger tails formed of polished diamond. They were the phaerimm, the oldest race on Abeir-Toril. And as might be expected, there were few of them. A handful.

Men did not know the phaerimm existed, though some had been seen now and then, observers mistaking them for dust devils. Or upon discovering their true identity, being eaten. The phaerimm had slits all the way around their middles, slits lined with ridges harder than diamond, which could gape to suck in nourishment of a wide variety: tree roots, certain rocks, reptiles, insects, groundhogs, humans-all as easy to ingest as a bowl of mush. Phaerimm chose not to reveal themselves, for they feared slavery, though all were more powerful wizards than any humans that dwelt above ground.

Phaerimm could move through their own ancient passageways and chambers, or even through soil and rock almost as easily, for then they slipped into another dimension, leaving only a fragment of themselves behind for a toehold. Yet if one of the phaerimm blundered into a magic storm near the surface, it was immediately-and violently-shunted wholly into this dimension. Where soil and rock already existed, the phaerimm ceased to exist, and left only a cone-shaped crater.

Nothing works. We tried astral visitation and only drove wizards mad. They clawed out their eyes, tore out their hearts, killed their fellows until at last they killed themselves. We tried visions, we tried lifedrain. Now we've tried direct visitation.

And failed.

Maybe more than failed. Perhaps our efforts fuel the magic storms.

Impossible. We know magic. We invented it.

Untrue.

Cease to argue. Back to the reason for this conference. How next shall we experiment to stop the Neth from spinning magic into storms?

We cannot.

Then we will die.

And they.

And the whole world.

I have a suggestion.

Yes?

Let them squander more. Encourage them to squander.

Why?

Humans expending magic have generated magic storms, and the more humans working magic, the more storms, true? Were they to accelerate the pace of magic use, the humans might destroy themselves all the more rapidly.

And us, mushmouth.

Perhaps not. We can move humans hither and thither, we know. Already our lifedrain spells have caused their wheat to rot on the stalk. Starving them sets them moving, searching for food.

Too slow. The high wizards who fritter the magic are the last to suffer hunger.

Still, the spells work lifedrain. And the drain grows, feeding itself to spread and drain yet more life.

But not down here, one hopes.

As I was saying… If we can make the Neth squander magic faster, grow ever more reckless in pursuit of who-knows-what, perhaps only their immediate area will collapse. Perhaps they will destroy themselves in one final cataclysm, a hellfire to scour the earth and leave us masters again! Well?

It… is a thought.

No, it's foolishness.

It is fighting fire with fire, as humans say.

Human wisdom cannot save us.

What can, then?

Well…

Good. Think on my scheme. We have time. A little, anyway…

Candlemas's nose was red from breathing wheat rust. It clung to his skin and covered his robe with a fine coating. The stubby mage had supervised his underwizards all night long and most of the day, but they were still no closer to stopping the blight or finding its cause.

The door blew open and Sysquemalyn flounced in. Today she wore a red sheath from high collar to ankle that split all the way down the front. Much of her was revealed, but not all, for a purple mass, like a jellyfish, pulsed and writhed across her stomach and loins. Another of the grotesques she collected, Candlemas thought. A particularly ugly one, like the world's biggest bruise.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"My, we're touchy. Solve your problem with rye blisters yet?"

"It's wheat blight. And no, I'm not even-"

"Too bad." She didn't listen, but sashayed around his workshop, touching a silver statue, an inlaid box, a glazed porcelain plate, a wreath of silver-gilt holly leaves.

"Don't touch my things!" Candlemas was touchy, not so much from loss of sleep as from frustration. A hurried query to his various substewards had confirmed his fears: wheat rust was everywhere throughout Lady Polaris's lands. There simply was no crop to speak of. "The last time, you threw one of my favorite pieces out the window-"

"And might again, if any of these trashy trinkets suit." Sysquemalyn stood with forefingers at the corners of her mouth, pouting prettily, but the spectacle was spoiled by the purple horror, which wriggled up her flesh and curled a tentacle around her breast. Idly, she scratched. "I've decided to up the stakes. Your mud man is too canny to stumble over the orcs."

"Those orcs bother me too." Candlemas arched his back, found it hurt, and stepped to a small, low table laden with jars and potions. He began to mix a soporific. "Those orcs are remarkably organized, for orcs. They wear uniforms, and all have that red hand painted on the front. I've never heard of-"

"Mud men, all of them." Sysquemalyn waggled purple fingernails in dismissal. "The antics of ants would concern me more, for they might get into the honey in the larder. Ah!"

From a table she plucked up a spun-glass ornament that resembled a crystalline praying mantis. "Since it's your mud man who must fight this, you won't mind sacrificing it."

"I do mind!" Candlemas took a slug of painkiller, grimaced at the taste, and added more blackberry brandy. "I don't come down to your kitchens and paw through your shelves!"

"No, you paw the scullery maids. There was one you stripped and smeared with raspberry vinegar, I'm told. Didn't that make your mouth pucker?" She stroked designs on the black palantir until she had a picture of Sunbright plodding through an icy mountain pass. The barbarian was bent double against an immense head wind. "Perfect!"

Stepping to a window on the western side, Sysquemalyn balanced the crystal on both palms, pushed past the mild shield on the windows, and puffed the glass creature into space. It zipped away from her hands as if launched by a crossbow.

Candlemas stood over the palantir. Ahead of Sunbright by perhaps a quarter mile, the glass object bounced off a wall and hit the icy ground. "Good shot. And it was raspberry jam, not vinegar. But your girls talk too much."

"Shall I have her rip out her own tongue?" Sysquemalyn asked sweetly as she dusted off her hands. "And smoke it for sandwich meat?"

Candlemas looked at her with a mix of disgust and pity. "You can't defame humans enough, can you? You think you're ready to move on to the next plane."

"Let's hope." A bright smile, a poke at the purple slime moving down over her flat stomach. "If I advance quickly enough, I plan to make Lady Polaris my personal chambermaid. She'll shine shoes and empty chamber pots, and no man will lust for her, for I'll slit her nose and slice off her eyelids. I'll make her feel like a lowly groundling."

Candlemas shook his head and tapped the palantir, making the snow scene within jiggle. "Care to watch? This lowly barbarian might surprise you."

"No, he won't. He'll die." Sysquemalyn stepped up beside him. The purple slime plucked a tentacle from her navel and tried to wrap itself around the man's wrist. He moved out of reach. "And I'll laugh, and then collect on the debt. Won't the maids be disappointed to hear of that tragedy?"

"You talk too much, too," Candlemas growled. "Look!"

Head down, Sunbright slipped and slid across lumpy glare ice.

The ice was old, he decided, probably old snowpack left from last winter. He found it hard to believe it had lasted the summer, but this granite-walled pass was deep and the bottom shadowed. And this evil unceasing wind had polished everything as smooth as glass.

He didn't mind the ice so much, for a tundra barbarian lived with it eight months a year. But the screaming wind he couldn't face for long. Thus he trudged, skidding every which way from high to hollow, paused to squint into the wind, seeing little with watery eyes, then moved on. He'd tied his blue blanket around his shoulders and face to better breathe. He kept both hands free in case he fell, so he could land lightly. It would be death to break an arm or even fingers.

Then he did slip, and it saved his life.

He'd been leaning into the gale when suddenly it lessened directly in front of him. Caught off-balance, he stumbled headlong, tried to correct himself, and lost his footing, crashing on his bottom as his long shirt rode up.

Skidding, swirling around like a top, Sunbright had a glimpse of twin columns of icicles flash by. Icicles thicker than his leg, and jointed.

And moving.

The young man fetched up against the second column of icicles, felt them twitch at his touch. Above him, he found, was an arched ceiling, starting at three feet and rising to…

… a round, flattened head as big as a musk-ox carcass, with a snarling mass of glittering icelike teeth and mandibles and whiskers.

And twin eyes like glowing blue lamps that craned down to see him, there under the creature's belly, trapped between columns of jointed legs like a wicker fence.

Remorhaz, the barbarian's mind flickered. Ice worm.

He'd never seen one, only heard adventurers speak of them. They infested ice plains in the far west and north, and crushed entire dog teams and musk-oxen in their clashing jaws. Not formed of ice, really, the stories went, but with a solid carapace like an ant's only white, with blue-white slush churning inside.

But no one had hinted that they moved so fast!

Fumbling his blanket off his head, Sunbright had barely snatched his sword from its back scabbard before the remorhaz drove a bushel of glittering, icy mandibles at his chest. The mandibles were as long as Sunbright's arms, backhooked and jagged so fiercely he could barely tell one end from another. Too, the wicked wind was still sizzling, keening a song of death, hissing between the forest of legs and around his head, making his eyes sting and impeding his vision. He saw no way to shear those mandibles or even deflect them, so he simply whipped the sword directly in front of him, locked his elbows, and hung on.

Harvester's hooked point lodged into that nest of shining evil and fetched tight with a clunk, as if he'd struck cordwood. The beast's immense head brushed the sword backward like a twig, and Sunbright went with it.

As the great jolt struck his arms, his head and back slammed a trio of the beast's legs. The tips resembled ski poles so much that part of Sunbright's brain wondered if man hadn't copied monster. The chitinous legs expanded to mushroom shapes, that the beast might cross snow, but underneath formed points as hard and sharp as ice axes, which they were. Two of these legs gave way before Sunbright's body, and he slid clear of them, out into the open, icy stretch of canyon.

The beast had retracted its head rather than tie itself into a knot. The boy half spun and thumped a granite wall. Instinctively Sunbright scrambled to rise and defend himself, but the ice might have been oiled. Paddling uselessly, he fought down panic, tried to think how to survive.

Use what you've got, screamed instructions burned into his brain.

Ideas flashed. The beast could maneuver; he couldn't. Why? Because it had ice axes for feet. So if he…

Acting, Sunbright juggled Harvester to one hand and with the other snatched out his flint knife. Striking hard, he stabbed the ice enough to gain hold. Gingerly, warily, he scooted his feet on either side of his hand. He might look foolish, he thought, but at least he wasn't sledding on his butt.

Chipping ice, swirling in a circle as gracefully as a dancing horse, the remorhaz turned to face its foe-or meal. Sunbright marveled at the size of it, fully as long as a fourteen-dog team and sled and as many-legged, higher than he could reach with the tip of his long sword. How could he kill something like this? Or even strike it? Given a choice, he would have run, screaming if necessary, but he was a cripple on ice and the beast was at home.

Yet again, his mind shrilled, why was this monster so far from its native land? Were the gods playing with him again? Or was everything he'd heard of the beast wrong?

The one thing he did know was not to strike its back. The old tales agreed that the ice beast managed to funnel all its body heat out a vent behind its head, a slot as scorching as any natural hot springs, hot enough to melt a sword. So…

The warrior watched as the horror rippled, arched its long back like a rainbow, and lunged from on high. The slashing mandibles clashed for his head.

Yet keeping cool, Sunbright managed two things. He kicked at the granite wall behind him while hanging on to the steady flint knife, then released it. He couldn't have done it on earth or grass, but on the slick ice he fairly flew in a full circle. One second he was facing the creature; the next he was sprawled full length pointing toward it, sliding into it.

The great head smashed down where he'd been. Closing mandibles scarred the ice. But Sunbright was skidding on his side toward the first triplet of legs. His sword was ready, and as he closed on the columns he rolled and swung.

Before the keen steel, the sturdy but hollow legs snapped like thick reeds. Three of them were shorn; then Sunbright's feet rapped into the opposing column, which flinched. Clapping his feet around one woody leg, he reached high over his head-blinding himself with his own shoulders-and chopped chopped chopped wherever he felt resistance.

His efforts worked too well.

With half a dozen legs cut from under it, the undulating bulk of the ice worm, its belly as smooth and white as a snake's, sagged to the ice-pinning Sunbright underneath. At the same time, the foot he'd been clinging to lifted and slammed down on his belly.

Smothered by an icy insect carapace, Sunbright still screamed at the pain. The ice-axe foot ground into his guts like the club of a frost giant. And now the blistering cold of the monster's belly stuck to his warm skin, stuck and burned like fury, then ripped skin when it lurched. The barbarian was being suffocated and crushed at the same time, and despite the white-hot agony lancing through him, he knew it would only get worse as the beast settled.

He wasn't going to escape this trap.

Desperately thrashing his arms and legs yielded nothing, for there was nothing to strike but tough carapace. Somehow he retained his sword in a death grip, but could apply no leverage, hit nothing. And his vision was fading, swirling flashes like the northern lights exploding in his eyeballs.

The great weight of the creature settled further, and Sunbright heard his ribs snap, snap, snap, like pine trees freezing and splitting on the coldest winter days. His own screams were loud in his ears.

Then he heard nothing.