Sword Play

Chapter 3

Sysquemalyn slapped the top of the palantir smartly, making the image of the screaming Sunbright jiggle and fade.

Over Candlemas's chirps about his equipment, she cackled, "Done! He's dead! That was too easy!"

"He's not dead," protested the other wizard. "He appears to be dying, I'll grant you, but these barbarians are tough! He may yet live!"

Smug, the female wizard only smirked and backed away from the worktable. When she was six feet away, she laughed again and snapped the fingers of both hands, then pointed at Candlemas. "No, no, no. I win; you lose. Pay up."

The stocky man crossed his arms across his chest. He felt cold, seeing Sunbright die frostbitten and crushed to ice like that. "I still contend- Eh?"

Something had flicked at his sleeve. Something behind him.

Taking his eyes off Sysquemalyn, he turned to see what it was.

A vibrant hiss, like a steam geyser erupting, made him jump. Looming beside him was a monster as skinny as a coatrack, gray-skinned, with a tall head and elongated jaws sporting dripping fangs as long as Candlemas's fingers. Slanted yellow eyes bored into his from above that evil, gap-toothed grin-an evil smile much like Sysquemalyn's.

Gibbering, Candlemas backpedaled from the horror. Fiend, he identified. Lesser fiend, from the outermost rings of the Nine Hells. Not particularly dangerous to a wizard with personal shields in place, but they were known to bite…

Hopping, the fiend grabbed Candlemas, one scaly claw on the human's neck, one grasping his wrist. The wizard uttered a curse, a foolish waste of words. For a blast or banish spell was what he needed. Hurriedly he babbled, "Fiend, I name you, and command-"

Too late. The gaping jaws clamped down on his biceps, biting flesh to the bone. Candlemas screamed, then shrilled as the beast ripped down toward his elbow. Horror-stricken, the wizard saw muscle and arteries stripped from his arm bone like a peel wrenched off an orange. The fiend bit again, and he heard its harsh teeth grate on bone-his.

Then the bone snapped, parted, and the fiend fell back with Candlemas's right arm in its mouth. Far behind him, Sysquemalyn laughed and laughed, the sound a rising shriek of hysteria.

The wizard's vision went black, as black as he imagined Sunbright's had gone only minutes ago. Was this what it felt like, he wondered for a second, for the groundling to die?

It hurt!

Then the pain was everything and crowded out all thought, all feeling.

Again, Sunbright dreamed. If a dead man can dream.

He lay on a sheet of steel that ran to the horizon: the tundra turned metal, he supposed, with a steel-gray sky overhead. He tried to rise, but couldn't lift his arms or legs or head, or even roll over, so he must be bound. Then something dark flickered and filled the sky. Soft wisps of blackness brushed his cheeks.

"Sunbright…"

Someone called his name. He should open his eyes and see who. But his eyes were open, the dream insisted, else how could he see the sky?

"Sunbright, wake up."

He didn't want to wake up, despite being half frozen on his sheet of tundra steel. Oh, frozen! That was why he couldn't rise. Some enemy had come in the night and poured water over him, binding him with ice. Shar, perhaps, night goddess, winter goddess, in his land where nights were months long. Lady of loss, mistress of the night and cold. Would she have black hair?

He opened his dream eyes, saw it was indeed a beautiful woman with black hair who hovered over him. A silver circlet bound her hair at the brow, and her clothes were silver, or else shining black. He couldn't see that far down.

"Sunbright, get up!" she demanded.

The young man peered up at her. She seemed petulant for a goddess, he thought, but they were used to getting their way. Her face was longer and narrower than before, her nose almost pointed. Her eyes were now black on black. Human eyes weren't like that. With an icy white finger she jabbed his chest, again and again. "Wake up, fool! You're in danger!"

At this, the helpless, frozen barbarian chuckled softly, then laughed aloud. "No, no," he gasped, "I'm not in danger anymore. I'm dead now. There's no danger worse than that."

The figure continued to poke, poke at his chest, until the jabs hurt. "But there is! Danger not to your body, but to your spirit!"

"Oh, that." Sunbright gave up laughing, groaned instead. "Smolyn's eyes, there's always something! Who said the dead rest easy? Who wants my soul?"

"You do. You're not done with it."

"Eh?" He peered at the woman, but she was shrinking rapidly, to the size of a yearling pup, then a cat, then a-What was that sitting on his chest?

"Awake?" croaked the bird. "Good. Eat this."

The black bird banged his lip with a black beak that had an extra bend at the bridge. Sunbright yipped in pain, and the bird dropped a berry into his mouth. Instantly his mouth and nose flared at the bitter turpentine flavor. He tried to spit the berry out, but glucked and swallowed it instead.

"Juniper berries are poison!" he gargled.

"Nonsense, eat 'em all the time. Stay here." The raven flew away.

Sunbright watched it go, winging high along the canyon walls, then up into the late autumn sky. The sun was slanting long there, warming the cliffs. To be warm would be nice.

"Stay here?" the young man rasped. "Why should I? I'm cold! I-aah!"

Trying to pick up his head, he learned why he couldn't. Hair from his topknot ripped in a hundred places. The sharp pain made him wrench up his arms, but they too were frozen to the ice, and so lost hair and skin when he spasmed. And that made him gasp, which made his cracked ribs screech and his belly wound howl…

"I said to stay put," croaked a cranky voice.

Sunbright lay gasping on his side, hugging his ribs and gut and head with hands and arms rubbed raw and bleeding. It would take all the fat that could be rendered out of one ox to soothe all these frost blisters. Glumly he rolled over, hissing with pain, and heard rattles and crunches from behind him. Most of his tackle was broken and hung in tatters from his body, like porcupine quills. Head spinning, he saw the outline of his arms had stained the ice red, while a patch of golden hair, like misplaced grass, adorned the ice. Glop like thin ice milk coated him, had wet him and glued him to the ice. "What is this stuff-worm snot?"

"Remorhaz blood," rattled the bird, beak full. "The creature leaked all over you."

"I sheared off its legs. A bunch of legs. Oh." Now that his vision had cleared, he saw the legs lying not three feet off. They looked like hollow birch logs. "Uh, where is the-Ouch!" Turning his head too fast, moving anything in fact, hurt.

"Crawled off north, toward the cold lands. It's going pretty slow. Saw it just now, winging back. Open up."

This time, Sunbright dutifully opened his mouth. The bird hopped to his shoulder and dropped in a half dozen blood-red juniper berries. Their tangy sting set the barbarian's nose running, and he coughed, which racked him from sore head to tingling toes.

Careful not to move or cough, Sunbright munched slowly. The bird flew off and returned with more berries. The young man ate those too. Oddly, they made him hungry. A roast, he salivated at the thought, a roast would be mighty good right now. A roast of anything. With a fire to go under it, like the warmth up high.

"Now," pronounced the bird, standing on the ice before him with fat black toes. Built for arctic climates, even the feathers on its legs came down to brush the thick appendages. "Do you feel worthy?"

"Worthy?" the boy gulped. "Worthy of what?"

"My power."

"Your power?" Then, for the first time, the boy realized he was talking to an animal, and what the animal was. "You're a raven!"

"True. But are you worthy?"

"Worthy?" The questions were tiring Sunbright. He should have paid better attention, he knew. A raven was the totem of his clan. Even the name of the tribe, Rengarth, some said was simply a rendering of "raven" from an ancient tongue. So now, if he of the Raven clan in the "raven" tribe saw a raven, that should be triply lucky.

But really, he just wanted to sleep for a while. It would be night soon, and he could sleep the night away, here on the warm ice that had already sucked up so much of his blood.

The raven interrupted his thoughts. "If you're worthy, prove it. Or else lie here, pity yourself, and die." With a flap of wide wings, it took off toward the south.

"Prove what?" Sunbright groaned. "That I'm worthy of a raven's power? Easy for him to say: he can fly. I don't even have any blood left."

But this test is important, a voice urged. Follow the raven. Perhaps it was his mother's voice, off in the east, or perhaps his father's, speaking from the lands of the dead. Or perhaps it was his own. He was stubborn too, and made demands on himself. But could he follow the raven? He doubted he could walk.

Still, he could crawl. Maybe that would do.

Squinting, he located south, one of only two directions he could go in this narrow canyon. The ice worm had gone north, so south was better. He put out a hand, hissing as skinned flesh stuck to the ice. But the wounds continued to weep their salty tears and didn't stick as badly as healthy flesh might. He put down the other hand, grabbed ice…

No, he was forgetting something. Two hands empty wasn't right.

Sword. His father's sword.

Lurching in a circle on his hip, he found the long steel tool half embedded in the ice. He almost wept as he dug into the ice to free it with fingers that were already raw. But then he clutched it tight. And it worked well, helped him, for when he turned the arched blade down, it bit the polished ice of the canyon floor and gave him a brace to pull on.

He shoved the sword ahead, chunked the edge down, pushed lamely with his toes, pulled with his arms, caught up to it. Did it again. And again.

Hours later, he crawled from the ice shadows, then blinked, blinded. The morning sun, as big as a god's face, rose in the east and bathed him in glorious, life-giving warmth.

Laying his head on a steel pillow, Sunbright slept.

Candlemas limped down a long, long hall wide and high enough for a coach-and-six to run flat out. The floor was black onyx and white quartz, the two colors swirling and interlacing in complex patterns hand-cut and meshed by generations of artisans. The surface of the floor was so shiny it was almost invisible, which made it difficult for the wizard to tell where to place his feet. And further, he limped, because his missing arm set him lurching off-balance.

At the far end of the corridor, he heard maids giggling and chiding one another over some sexual escapade, but when he appeared, they hushed and scurried back to work. Each wore a white cap and short white dress with a black apron: the colors of Lady Polaris, which Candlemas found monotonous. At one time, the maids would have been glad to see him, a welcome distraction in their dull routines here in Sysquemalyn's territory.

But after five months the wizard's arm was still regenerating. It had done so bit by bit, from the inside out, needing to be left in the open air. First the bones had grown, until he had a skeleton's arm rattling alongside, with no muscles to pick it up. Then the arteries had stitched themselves, so he was bothered by the pulsing of his own heart's blood. Then muscle, slowly knitting together. Now came the worst part, the spinning of nerves, like a thousand tiny spiderwebs, every one itching and burning yet sending electric shrieks from his teeth to his toes if he touched or bumped them. He prayed for the skin to grow back soon, for now his tingling arm looked like the work of a clumsy butcher. Maybe, with skin on it, the girls could stand for him to touch them again.

Snarling at the once friendly maids, he learned Sysquemalyn was in the conservatory torturing flowers. So he stumped that way, careful not to brush his raw arm against any obstacles.

Sysquemalyn was deep into the conservatory, which was longer and higher than some wizards' houses and roofed entirely with tiny diamond panes of bull's-eye glass. Green plants poured forth a riot of red and white and purple and yellow flowers, and no less than nine human stoop-backed gardeners bustled about them. Their supervisor tended her own patch at the back of the conservatory. Here in the hot greenhouse, she wore nothing but a short chemise and a frilly apron that looked ludicrous. Especially since, as a collector of grotesques, Sysquemalyn had many weird and sinister plants concealed back where Lady Polaris wouldn't see them on her infrequent visits. The flowers resembled fleshy organs, bilious teardrops, lizards' tongues, finger bones, and more. The female wizard hummed as she snipped liver-colored blossoms and dropped them into a pail.

"Your damned barbarian is still alive!" Candlemas growled without preamble. "You owe me an arm!"

She pretended bemusement. "An arm, dear 'Mas? Why do you need three? A third to comb your beard? Certainly not to comb your head." She laughed gaily at her wit.

Exasperated, exhausted by his long walk-regenerating strained a body-Candlemas nevertheless ran his good hand over his bald pate, evoking another merry trill. "Don't change the subject! And don't mock me! Your barbarian-you started this stupid contest-is still alive! He's been healing in the forest south of the Barren Mountains! He didn't die when attacked by the remorhaz, damn it, and you owe me an arm!"

Sysquemalyn set down her snippers and pouted prettily, as if sympathetic. "Dear, dear Candlemas. You're all tuckered out by your little rebuilding project there. Barbarian? I don't… Oh, the yellow-haired fellow, skinny as a plucked chicken! I remember him!"

"I remember too!" In the greenhouse, the wizard was sweating heavily. Salty drops running down his healing arm stung like wasps. "You cheated, sicced a fiend on me too soon-aargh!" Pained, he lurched backward against a table, knocking a dozen potted flowers to the slate floor with a crash.

Sysquemalyn tsked, but clearly Candlemas wasn't about to go away. With a theatrical sigh, she perched her rump on a tall stool. "Very well. I may have been in error when I conjured the fiend. It could have happened to anyone. You should feel sorry for me, I'm so embarrassed."

"Sorry?" gasped the man. "Em-embarrassed?" He swooned, clawing sweat from his face.

Smirking, Sysquemalyn replied, "You know, this is great fun. I'm so glad we formed this little wager. It was dead boring around here."

Eyes bugging from his head at her audacity, Candlemas couldn't answer. Almost absently, Sysquemalyn picked up a lacquered bladder and gave an experimental squeeze. A thin green stream arced across the space between them and struck Candlemas's red-meat arm.

With a scream, the wizard leaped fully three feet in the air, crashed against a rack of potted flowers, and sent them smashing as he shrieked and clawed and ripped at his new arm as if to tear it off.

"By Tipald, am I careless!" Sysquemalyn tipped a crockery pot to sprinkle cool water over the writhing wizard. "That's liquid fertilizer. My, I'll bet that stings!"

As Candlemas ground his teeth and fought to regain his feet, Sysquemalyn jabbered on. "I'll tell you what, since you feel so put-upon. Let's continue the contest, and up the stakes even further. Let's see… If your barbarian is healthy, we'll dump some more tests on him, hard ones this time. If he survives, you win, as before. If he dies, I win. And the loser this time gets flayed alive!"

"Flayed…" croaked Candlemas. He felt flayed now.

"And just to be fair, you decide the test! I'll stay out of it."

Despite dire warnings and his own pain, Candlemas was intrigued. But one thought intruded that had bothered him for weeks. "No, wait, wait. There's a flaw in the argument, and I should have seen it when we made this bet. To win, you need the barbarian to die. And if we keep piling on tribulations, he will die. Then you'll have won. But for me to win, he must survive, which he won't if we keep-keep-Put that damned thing down!"

"But, dear, it makes things grow." She'd been toying with the bulb of fertilizer again. Now she squirted juice amidst the hanging fronds of a plant that looked like dead snakes wrenched inside out, as if she were giving them a loving kiss. "But I understand your dilemma, and that's why I've turned the contest over to you. Surely, if you control all the tests, and you're fair, your hero will win. Then you can braid a whip from whatever you like and get whichever slave you like, no matter how strong, to beat me until I'm a heap of hash. Now wouldn't that be fun?"

Candlemas groaned, but had to admit the idea gave him great pleasure. He tried to detect flaws in her new arguments, new tricks, but it was hard to think in this steamy den and through the fog of pain. Finally he snarled, "Agreed! And I hope you suffer as keenly as I have!"

"Me, too," came the prim answer. "It will serve me right."

Stumbling, brushing aside slithering greenery, Candlemas lurched down the long rows of plants toward the cool black-and-white halls. He tried not to think about what could go wrong. And its consequence.

Sunbright lay wrapped on a bower of spruce boughs under the tatters of a blanket and heaps of pine needles. The sun was just setting, its beams slanting long through the forest. His bed lay against a rock wall, and a merry but tiny fire banked with rocks reflected heat from the wall and kept him warm on both sides. He'd had a good day, killing a young brown bear in a deadfall, and he'd eaten his weight, almost, in bear fat and liver and steak. The skin would make him a new jerkin, for his goatskin one had long since been sliced into rawhide strips. And the jawbone he might fashion into a club, or at least sink the teeth into a wooden branch to make a jagged edge weapon such as the orcs carried.

Once more, as he did each night, the young man sent up prayers to Chauntea and Garagos and Shar, and marveled that he was still alive. He wasn't sure how he'd managed it, other than by simply waking up every morning and refusing to die. From the high icy pass five months back, he'd crawled into the deepest parts of the forest and set about surviving. At first he could only crawl, and ate grubs and crayfish and frogs and snakes and tree bark and ground nuts. Eventually he could stand and lurch from tree to tree, and had strung rawhide snares across rabbit tracks and eaten well. Gaining strength, he'd ambushed deer from rocky heights, hunted sleepy bears settling for winter, reached into hollow trees to strangle raccoons, and done a thousand other things too reckless to ponder. Then had come the snows, and he'd dug into a cave and piled up rocks to seal the entrance, and had hunkered down hugging himself and whiled away long, dark days whispering stories from the elder times.

The raven had helped. It had scouted from the treetops, located game, warned of approaching orcs, found water and food. Without the raven, he would have died the first week. Though there were times the bird was gone for days, and though it never said why it helped him, Sunbright accepted its help as one of life's mysteries.

He had shaved a new bow and strung it with his own braided hair, fletched three ash arrows with turkey feathers, beaten deer hides to stiff leather, and kept his sword polished bright. Oddly, he'd gained weight, had filled out in the chest and legs and arms. Sometimes he'd used simple healing spells on himself, but since they sapped a user's life-force, that was counterproductive. As a result, he bore scars on his forehead and hands from his battle with the remorhaz, and still ached in one shoulder, but overall he was healthier than he'd ever been.

He was tougher too. Before, young and headstrong, he'd thought he was formidable. Now he'd proven it by surviving what would have killed lesser men. And with this toughness of the body came a toughness of the spirit. No more would he boast of his strength and abilities, like a squeaky-voiced boy. He knew he was a warrior, and it showed, and that was enough.

One day, he promised himself, he'd stride into his tribe's camp and see his mother, older and grayer, and all his cousins and uncles and aunts, and old friends and enemies. He'd be a mighty, battle-scarred hero and would have a thousand wondrous stories to relate, but he'd tell none of them, no matter how much the people begged, would only drop veiled hints of fantastic and desperate struggles in the far reaches of the world.

Someday…

As he clung to life, so too did he cling to thoughts of his tribe, almost torturing himself with them. He loved his people and had been forced to flee because of Owldark's lies. So he thought of revenge and savored the day he'd return and even the score for his father's murder and his own banishment. He knew that time might be years away, for the strength needed to battle his enemies would be great. For now he'd continue to wander, and learn, and grow strong.

And dream.

They came often, these dreams, and confused the hell out of him. Pictures of himself walking black-and-white marbled halls, hearing weird noises and girls giggling and a man and woman squabbling like siblings, and smelling exotic flowers and queer spices or brimstone. There were visions of flying dragons, red against a blood-drenched sunset; white-haired women as cold as ice; talking tornadoes forming icicle-shaped holes; twisted, hellish halls like stone bowels where every step found a new and writhing surface; and glittering cities where unnatural beasts hauled brimming wagons and soldiers in seashell helmets tramped to foreign orders. And much more, even stranger than all this.

Sometimes he wondered if the visions were real, if he could see into the future or another part of Toril. Or if some god or goddess put the dreams in his head so he might… What? Act them out? Maybe someday, when he was a great shaman, he'd be able to interpret these dreams and put them to use. Unless, of course, he'd simply slammed his head too hard against rock walls and rock-hard ice and was fast becoming an idiot.

"Hello, the camp!"

In an eye-blink, Sunbright was out from under his blanket and hunkered down between two spruce trees, sword ready at hand. If his winter alone had taught him one thing, it was to move rapidly when threatened.

Yet the man who came to the camp seemed hardly a threat. He was not tall, but podgy, dressed in a simple sackcloth smock and rope belt and sandals. He was bearded and balding, well tanned except for one arm, which had strange, dead-white skin. The arm seemed whole enough, but hung as slack as a trout on a line and glowed ghostly pale by firelight, as if it weren't real. But the man was real enough, and he seemed friendly, though worried. Under his bald pate, his forehead was etched with deep wrinkles. In his one good arm he carried a lumpy bundle wrapped in red leather.

The chunky man came right into the firelight and squinted around, failing to see Sunbright hunkered nearby, which showed he was out of his element. Undaunted, the man set down the bundle and talked to the fire.

"I'm a friend. My name is Chandler. I'm steward of a castle nearby, east of here. The raven sent me. He said you needed supplies, so I've brought some."

One sign of intelligence was having a great curiosity, and Sunbright's was piqued. Warily, he rose and pushed out of the dark, cedar-fragrant trees. Chandler started when the groundling with the scowling, scarred face and long, shining sword that reflected yellow flames emerged from the shadows.

"Your kind give nothing for free." Sunbright kept his voice flat, neither friendly nor hostile. "What's the price of your supplies?"

"I wish you to do me a favor. I need information and want you to fetch it."

"That's vague enough. Why not dig up this information yourself?"

"I can't." Chandler flapped his useless arm. "I can't travel like this, and I have duties at my master's castle. And it's dangerous on the roads these days. I need a runner who's capable and trustworthy. The raven mentioned you."

"How is it that you can speak to the raven?" Actually, Sunbright wasn't sure why he could himself. Either it was part of the totem magic, or else the raven conversed with every stranger it met.

"I'm a mage," came the simple answer. "Not much of one, just a hedge wizard. I can do simple healings and conjurings. That's why I'm a steward. Talking to animals comes in handy in my position."

That sounded like an unknown joke to Sunbright. All of it sounded queer, but then it was a queer world.

"What have you brought?"

Hiding a smile, knowing his fish was hooked, Chandler squatted with a grunt and, one-handed, untied the bundle. "Useful stuff such as warriors need. No trash." Indeed, the contents sparkled in the firelight and set Sunbright's mouth watering. A steel knife, iron arrowheads, copper rivets, thick needles, a waterskin on a leather strap, a new red shirt, a gray wool blanket, fishhooks, a razor, two candles, flint strikers, a blacksmith-forged file, a handful of silver and copper coins, and squares of rations in waxed paper: jerked meat, dried fruit, lard.

Sunbright would have attacked an army of orcs for even a small portion of such treasure. Still, he fought to stay wary and composed. "What's the information and when do you need it?"

Chandler sighed, held his bad right wrist in his left hand, then sat on a nearby rock. "Do you mind? I tire easily with this wound. To answer your question, I don't know yet. I'm waiting for news from the south before I seek news in the east, if that makes sense. My master wishes to know where best to market his excess crops. If I spend days questioning runners, I might make him a profit of two silver crowns per bushel." Another sigh. "Will you do it? You don't have any other plans, do you?"

Other than simply to survive? the young man thought. No. But work for a wizard? Sunbright tried to think why not, and came up blank. Although mages were uncommon among his people-shamans who could cure ills and find game were of more use in his harsh land than muttering wizards with crocks and stinkpots-they were not considered evil, only different. Sunbright himself had "wizardly" powers, or would have if he continued to seek them and practice. And wild dreams, lately, that might be visions.

Piling up arguments, Chandler went on, "For place, I wish you to trend east, whence come these rumors. You've been moving east, the raven says, albeit slowly, due to the snows and your needing to hunt."

Sunbright frowned. Talk of ravens blabbing his whereabouts sounded like more manipulation, such as he'd suffered from last fall. Now here came a stranger knowing much about him and offering strange pacts in return for remarkable gifts. Of course, Sunbright could merely slay this hedgehopper and take the gifts, as many in his tribe might do, but he wouldn't. Somehow the mage knew this and, oddly, that made Sunbright trust him. And too, the lonely barbarian found it pleasant just to talk to another human being.

And they were wonderful gifts.

"Very well. Leave those and tell me where to go."

Chandler stood up, smiling, but did not offer to shake hands. "Splendid. Why don't you salt away all these goodies and take your time, but hie to Auger-bend on the River Ost. Thirteen leagues due east you'll strike the river, then turn south. My master's fief is not far from there. Check at the inn-there's only one-and I'll send word when I know more. Is that satisfactory? Good. I'll see you there."

And Chandler strode from the camp without a backward glance, to be swallowed up by the forest.

Sunbright watched him go, frowning more at himself than the stranger. If the castle was thirteen leagues distant, he wondered, four days' travel for a healthy man, how had a tired and wounded mage come here?

Clucking his tongue, Sunbright turned to the glittering loot. He'd reaped a fine bounty, but suspected he'd gotten a bad bargain.