Jim Baen's Universe

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Serials - parts and parts.

Blade Light, Episode Five

Written by Michaele Jordan

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tuck was not unaware that the bandywight was working some sort of magic. It was just that he did not particularly care to watch. Dreysa had not warned him that the bandywight was given to working magic—to flashes of unexpected intelligence perhaps, but nothing more mysterious or threatening than that.

Cursing Dreysa bitterly, Tuck shifted his head in the cradle of his arms, searching for that position from which he could best ignore the rhythmic flowing of the shadows moving in time to the bandywight's wailing. She really should have warned him about the wretched creature.

At least there were signs that the bandywight's voice might be giving out. Tuck had come near to doubting his sanity before the shrill squeal had been muted to a husky moan. The relative silence had proved such a relief that he had contrived to fall asleep. True, when he woke, the animal had somehow found fresh reserves of strength and was as loud and as likely to continue indefinitely as ever. Still, the respite had given him hope, and he endured therefore with a fair degree of patience.

So accustomed had his ears become that he detected instantly the faint rasping squeak of a rusty hinge turning. Leaping to his feet, he rushed to position himself behind the slowly opening door. A young woman entered, blond and not unpretty but so drawn and pallid in her appearance that Tuck could not but think she must be ill.

He had not the heart to bash her over the head from behind, but before he could slip discreetly out, she reached back a hand and slammed the door. Tuck stared at the closed portal and reconsidered slugging the lady. Restraining himself with difficulty, he reached a hand to her shoulder, gently, lest he startle her. "Excuse me, Mistress. I'm awfully glad you've dropped in, but could we talk with the door open?"

She seemed not to hear him or feel his touch, and most certainly did not glance his way. Instead, she glared at the bandywight which, in its turn, seemed not to notice her. Shedding her angry look from an apparently invulnerable hide, it howled on unaware. Tiring of the tableau, Tuck interjected, "We are sorry about the racket. I do hope we haven't been keeping you awake."

He did provoke a response but scarcely a satisfactory one. She waved impatiently in his direction, and although she did not actually touch him, he was flung painfully against the wall. Gingerly rubbing his scalp in search of wet spots and exploring his limbs for broken bones, he decided against rising and demanding an explanation. Rather, he crouched warily by the door, permitting the lady to ignore him and trusting that she must eventually depart. After all, on second thought, perhaps remaining inconspicuous would better enable him to exit in her wake.

With her fists on her hips, she strode up to the bandywight. "You can't do it," she announced in a much irritated tone. "You're tied too loosely together. You can't get at the power."

Whatever the bandywight was attempting, it was not sufficiently perturbed by the criticism to bat an eyelash. As for Tuck, while admitting himself to be less than qualified to judge, he deemed the animal to be doing quite well enough. From the twisting shadows, it had summoned about it a pall of gloom, an utter and absolute absence of light that chilled the heart and mind.

Barely visible at the base of its pillar of dread, it sat wailing and motionless while barely a pace behind it the light was harsh enough to glitter in the lady's hair and show up to poor advantage the whiteness of her skin. Even as Tuck watched, the creature's keening spell song shaped the darkness further, sculpting away the ragged edges and deepening the core to an unthinkable blackness that was roughly human-shaped.

The lady waited some while, clearly expecting a reply, before repeating with great indignation, "I said you can't do it.” As she spoke, she waved her hand in a small angry gesture of impatience.

At her movement, the bandywight arched its back, and its voice rose up to a hitherto unimaginable peak, a scream of unendurable anguish and despair. Tuck dropped to his knees and tried to bury his face in the filthy floor, an answering cry of horror and pain rising unfelt in his throat. For a mindless space he huddled in an echoing eternity. Then the bandywight's voice broke into a low and purely animal whimper and died away.

In the weird and sudden silence, the woman remarked conversationally, "Why, however did you manage that? I shouldn't have thought you could.” Tuck opened his eyes, which had unknowingly filled with tears. As the drops trickled down his face, his vision cleared enough for him to perceive that the darkness gathered by the bandywight had so tightened in upon itself as to solidify into the body of an elderly man. For an instant it hung, poised and immobile, and then collapsed. It fell quite neatly, the legs sliding smoothly beneath it so that it assumed a cross-legged posture not unlike the bandywight's save that the head and shoulders slumped forward. And indeed, as if encouraging the resemblance, the bandywight matched its creation by dropping its head into its lap.

Growing expansive in her excitement or perhaps merely bored with so one-sided a conversation, the lady turned to include Tuck rather belatedly in her chatter. "Isn't it the most astonishing thing? Have you ever seen the like?"

"No," admitted Tuck. "I never have."

"You see," she said to the bandywight, quite as if Tuck's support had proved her point conclusively, "you oughtn't to have been able to do it at all. It's really quite extraordinary.” She paused as though listening to a reply, then continued quite as if she had got one. "Well, you needn't go on crowing about it all day. We've all said it was remarkable. And anyway it isn't polite to brag.”

The animal remained utterly motionless, hunched up before the man it had somehow plucked out of the air, so drained by the effort that it seemed, to Tuck, scarcely even to breathe. Having been once included in the talk, he ventured, albeit rather timidly, to remark, "That doesn't look much like crowing to me. Begging your pardon, of course, Mistress."

She gaped at him, fully as if he had started babbling lunacies. "But can't you smell it? I mean, can't you hear it?” She broke off in perplexity and clutched her hair, thinking perhaps she might pull out of her scalp the word she wanted. "I mean, can't you tell?"

Tuck hesitated, not wanting to contradict but warned by some instinct not to prevaricate even for politeness' sake. At last he compromised, "Well, truth to tell, I can't quite see it. Perhaps I should take a closer look."

She beamed and nodded, so he crawled carefully forward toward the limp bandywight. The closer he got to it, the worse it looked. With real concern he extended a hand to stroke its fur. Although the skin was still warm, there was no mistaking the inelastic grating quality in the flesh beneath it. Tuck sharply withdrew the hand. Its balance disturbed by his touch, the small corpse tumbled loosely over.

"Well?" inquired the woman cheerfully. "Surely you can see it now."

Tuck gulped nervously, glancing once to the lady and once to the bandywight. "But it's dead, Mistress," he pointed out, as civilly as possible.

She gaped, quite taken aback, before bursting into a peal of delighted laughter. Tuck watched what happened to the torches when she did so and reminded himself that Dreysa had done as much a dozen times and no harm had come of it. "There, now, you see?" the lady exulted when she had got some of her breath back. "I said you couldn't do it!"

"You did, at that," whispered Tuck. He eyed the stranger seated so inexplicably before him and wondered who it was that the bandywight had gone to such lengths to summon. He wondered also if the animal had known the price it might be called upon to pay and found it bargain enough. He reached out his hand, but tentatively, very tentatively indeed, for he had lastly wondered if this hunched body might also be dead.

The skin was bitterly, unnaturally cold. But it retained a resiliency that in Tuck's mind betokened living flesh. Although the unconscious face, lax and stripped of all authority of expression, aroused no recognition, it occurred to Tuck that he had certainly seen that pale blue robe before. "It's Zhravig, isn't it?"

"Well, of course," the woman replied, surprised he even needed to ask. "Really, such a nuisance. To go to all that trouble just so I shall have to put him back.” Barely were the words out of her mouth when she jerked and clapped her hands to her ears. "You needn't take on so," she whined. "It's nothing to you now, anyway. You're home now. You can just drift and forget all about it."

She remained some seconds in a posture of listening before straightening with a grimace of annoyance. "Oh, very well then, if it matters so greatly to you we'll leave him where he is. But it's no use thinking you can hang about long enough for him to bring you back to earth. You'll lose your way long before he ever wakes. And if my lord Asmodé doesn't like it, that's for you to worry on.” She broke out in a grin at the thought. "He won't like it, at that, will he? Not the littlest bit.” She shared a mischievous look with Tuck. "Best we leave him out, at that."

"I don't suppose he'll be thrilled," agreed Tuck politely. He reflected that Dreysa might be better pleased. And, then again, she might not. Zhravig didn't look likely to be much help to anyone.

She might almost have heard Dreysa's name in his mind for, even as the thought occurred to him, she started, as one that has suddenly recalled an urgent errand. "Why aren't you off fetching the toy?" she demanded sternly of Tuck.

He cast about wildly for some clue as to what she was talking about. "Toy?"

"Well, yes, of course, the toy.” Her face filled with helpless frustration as she sensed his incomprehension, and for a moment she looked quite haggard, her glazed eyes peering unhappily out from a face on which the dry and wasted skin hung too loosely.

Tuck felt a sudden pang of sympathy. Perhaps this strange woman was no more than delirious from her fever. "But, of course—the toy," he murmured. "I'll take care of it on the instant. And perhaps in the meanwhile," he suggested gently, "you might get some rest."

"But surely you know," she protested, not deluded in the slightest by his pretense of understanding her. But she seemed a little warmed by his kindly intent, and briefly her skin took on a healthier glow. It was with a smile almost pretty that she elaborated, “I mean your friend. Her. Aren’t you going up after her?”

Grasping her meaning at last, Tuck replied, “The very thing I had in mind. That he had suffered second thoughts, he chose not to mention. Indeed, he found himself a trifle ashamed of his doubts in the presence of this poor creature who had clearly dragged herself from a sickbed to assist Dreysa. "But you see," he added, with an eloquent shrug, "I seem to be locked in.” He risked a glance at Zhravig and the bandywight. "With them.” He glanced away quickly, not liking the look of them.

She laughed—but softly, so that the torches only flared a little, and there was a pleasing note of relief in her voice. "Oh, you mustn't trouble over them. They're no concern of yours," she assured him. She snapped her fingers and the door swung slowly open. "Now run along and get her."

He shot her an uneasy look, but, for all her magic, she still seemed a pitiable figure in her illness. "I shall," he promised. "And you must go back to bed and get some sleep."

"Sleep?" she inquired in a bewildered tone. Then she shook her head, dismissing the notion. "I'm sorry about the door," she confessed humbly. "Sometimes I forget.” She smiled tentatively.

Tuck supposed himself to understand her, and smiled in return. "There's no harm done, Mistress, and thanks very much.” And at that, her smile grew genuinely sweet... just before she vanished.

He blinked several times but found her still quite undeniably gone. Then he turned to Zhravig and the bandywight and found them most emphatically still present. But they were no concern of his, he reminded himself firmly, and anyway, Dreysa would know better what to do about them than he.

It occurred to him that the sick lady had informed him he must go up after Dreysa, and the thought disturbed him more than a little. He had seen quite enough magic down here, in regions less frequented by Asmodé. And yet it seemed to him also that having come so far, it would be a most appalling waste not to continue. And he felt he owed it, somehow, to the poor strange woman who had not magic enough to keep herself well.

It was only a matter of sneaking up the stairs, after all, for the upper levels of the tower had not looked large enough to require much searching. And Tuck liked to think he was rather an expert at sneaking. Even sorcerers must turn their backs sometimes, and there was not a back in the world, he flattered himself, that he could not slip past unnoticed. And he wanted suddenly, with surprising intensity, to see Dreysa again and ask her what, with all her magical training, she made of the peculiar events he had seen.

So he turned to the door, reassuring himself that the sick lady had kept her wits clear enough to leave it open, and started for the stairs.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dreysa perched in the window, gazing out over a desert so magnificent it had power enough to quiet even her uneasy mind. Across the sky, save in that darker patch where the moon reigned supreme, the stars blazed like so much molten gold, ready to pour down from the sky. Hertha's tears, Zhravig had once called the stars in one of his softer moods, but he had rarely let her study them except on charts. Now they had her mesmerized and half-doubting that the earth was strong enough to hold her back from falling into them.

So rapt was she in beauty's cold peace that she barely heard the sliding of the bar at the door, and it was several instants before the significance of the sound penetrated her thoughts. And then in a heartbeat the quiet of the moment burned away and she flung herself to the opening door. "Vhulf," she cried, half falling into his arms, her heart bursting with a prayer of thanks to Hertha that he had not, after all, betrayed her.

But the shape of him was wrong, and when she looked up, it was Tuck gazing down at her with a wry expression. "Care for another guess?" he offered, laying an arm around her shoulders.

In an entire lifetime afflicted with fair skin, Dreysa had never blushed so hard. So complete was her mortification that she had not even strength enough left to pull indignantly from his arm. She merely stood waiting for the heat to fade from her face, and when she spoke she did so softly, hoping only that she might keep her voice from shaking and unaware that she had assumed an innocent dignity. "I had not thought to see you again, Tuck."

He feigned a look of deep hurt, but a smile broke through his pose. "Well, I could scarcely go off without leaving you some token to remember me by.” He paused to enjoy her astonished countenance before drawing from his sash the crystal sword.

If he meant to surprise her, he'd succeeded. She raised a hand to her temple and swayed like one on the brink of fainting, and when she reached to take the sword, her fingers were so limp that she very nearly dropped it. Once she had it, she turned it over and over as if unconvinced of its solidity. "Where did you get it?" she whispered at last.

"I found it," he replied and, seeing an emphatic contradiction in her eyes, insisted, "But I did, truly. It was lying on a desk, just downstairs. And I little thought you'd go all priggish about my taking it, thanks very much."

"And you simply picked it up and came upstairs?" she inquired with a trace of sarcasm.

"Just so," he informed her a trifle coldly. She stared at the blade in her hands, unable to imagine how Tuck might have got hold of it if his story were untrue. "Vhulf must have arranged it," she concluded at last. Tuck drew in his breath and turned away. "I know you find it hard to credit, Tuck, but think.” She spoke stiffly, as one determined to be reasonable but finding it difficult. "The stairs must be guarded somehow. You can't have just walked up them without some help. I'll not...” She gulped, and the color crept back up her face. "I'll not pretend Vhulf’s been much of a friend to us, but have we a better one here?"

He sighed as if mentally counting to ten, then replied with an air of much-strained patience, "I much doubt he'd have discommoded himself on our account, but it's true I had no trouble on the stairs. But enough of that.” His eyes lit suddenly. "I have news. You'll never guess."

She stared up at him for several seconds before drawing in her breath and replying primly, "No, I don't suppose I ever shall.” He grinned triumphantly, delighting in her discomfiture before condescending to inform her, "I've found Zhravig.” And when she gaped breathlessly, he suggested in his most innocent tones, "You could thank me, perhaps. If it's no trouble, that is."

She moved slightly toward him but found her hands encumbered with the sword, and when she looked down at that, it also spoke to her of gratitude due but as yet unpaid. "I'm sorry, Tuck. I've been so rude.” Hastily she thrust the sword into the empty sheath, which she still wore. "And you've been kind far beyond anything I've ever deserved of you.” She clasped his hand in both of hers and raised it to her lips. "I thank you."

He looked embarrassed, as if perhaps he had not meant his jest to strike so deeply home. "It may be poor service I've done you, at that," he admitted. "Your Zhravig's not well. I think he's under some enchantment.”

She sighed, contemplating how inadequate her skills might prove in counteracting any spell of Asmodé's. "Well, we must un-enchant him then, I suppose," she said aloud.

"Now, whyever didn't I think of that?" murmured Tuck. She shot him an angry look before recalling that she owed him an eternal debt. He watched with satisfaction as she swallowed her retort. "Now, best you stay behind me on our way back down," he instructed her. "There'll be a few small traps I'll have to show you to look out for."

"But surely you said you had no trouble on the stairs," remarked Dreysa with her very sweetest smile.

"Very simple little traps," he assured her airily. "I've have expected better of a hedgerow wizard, let alone some high and mighty master sorcerer."

She shuddered in the wake of a sudden chill. "Don't laugh at him, Tuck," she whispered, and he noted uneasily that she had grown quite pale. "Odds are, he's just below, expecting us."

****

Tuck wished very much that she had kept the thought to herself, and considered for the first time what reasons a girl who could burn down doors might have for staying obediently locked in a room. But he could scarcely just sit on a step until the end of the world. "Then we'd best not keep him waiting," he suggested with an entirely hypocritical boldness.

She nodded and they started down, coming within a few steps to the first of the little traps. As Tuck had predicted, it presented no serious obstacle, being a simple pitfall, easily avoided by anyone wary enough to suspect its existence. And, indeed, although the descent to the dungeons was fatiguing and beset with obstacles, the hazards proved all to be ordinary mechanical devices such as might have been designed when the tower was first built. At no point did they encounter any hint of magic. Tuck even went so far as to attempt a joke on the subject of wizards that stepped out for lunch. Dreysa neglected to laugh.

Upon approaching the appropriate chamber, Tuck paused in the door with a gasp. Dreysa tensed but, when disaster failed to materialize, stepped forward to peer over his shoulder. Zhravig's limp form dominated the room, but beside it lay the skeleton of a small animal. It was not quite entirely decomposed but retained still a few shreds of desiccated flesh. It was not a pretty sight but, after several deep breaths, she assured herself that it posed no threat. "That must have been the very king of rats," she remarked in a less than totally convincing stab at levity. "A bit of luck for us it's been dead so long."

"At least some hours," muttered Tuck. Dreysa glanced sharply at him and refrained from asking what he meant. Instead, she crossed to Zhravig and, with only a grimace for the filthiness of the floor, seated herself before him. She had merely to touch his cold hand to realize that he was not so much enchanted as absent. Disentangling the sword from its sheath while remaining seated proved a complicated maneuver. When it was done, she laid the softly gleaming blade across his knees and gently folded his hands around it.

Behind her, Tuck drew in his breath, expecting miracles. But when he had held the breath so long that he must let it out and draw another or swoon, nothing of any particular moment had yet occurred. He did not care to criticize, understanding as he did exactly nothing of the procedure, but he could not resist the feeling that surely something ought to be happening. "Are you getting on all right?" he inquired nervously. When she did not reply he amended his query to, "Shall we be here a while, then?” Visibly, he would have preferred to continue on out of the tower and out of the palace as well.

He had quite despaired of Dreysa's answering before she spoke. "I can't say. He will cling to the sword if he can find it. But if he has wandered, he may not chance upon it for some time."

"How long a time?"

Again she was silent so long she seemed unlikely to speak at all. But finally she shrugged. "An hour. A day.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Perhaps a century."

Tuck closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then he managed a ghastly smile. "Were you planning to wait?” She turned to look up to him with brimming eyes and an air of utter helplessness. "But surely there's something more you can do," he pleaded. "Yell or wave your arms or some such thing. How far can he go when he's sitting right there?"

****

The uncertainty faded from her face, replaced by reflection. Then she returned her attention to Zhravig. Laying her hands on the sword, which still rested across the magician's knees, she started to sing softly. For some while she attempted no magic, simply testing the pitch of the notes. A thousand times, Zhravig had told her that time spent on shaping the song was never wasted. When she had the mere sound of it perfect she let that part of it which was only her voice fade away.

It might have seemed to Tuck that she stopped but she did not. Rather, she let the music tremble along her skin and ripple through her hair while her heartbeat marked the rhythm. Her mouth freed, she spat on the floor between herself and her teacher. Instantly she heard within the little bit of water an infinite symphony

Slowly and carefully she plucked out the notes she wanted. The trouble was never to find music in water but to screen out all the rivers of music beyond what was needed.

But as she traced the flow of her own song, she opened herself to the singing which was not hers. Water was life, and its power was gentle but rich. Dreysa let herself drown in it and found that her song was made sweet and thrilling by the magnificence of the orchestration.

When the time came that she could take in no more music because she was too small to hold it, she reached out for the world where she was greater and flowed into fire. She did not know that the flames of the torch on the wall leaned in toward her. She only knew the sudden surge of joy as she found herself home. In an instant her song was lost while her every nerve danced out to be welcomed by that element which was utterly hers.

It was painful and full of loneliness to draw herself in, away from the flames that begged only to do her bidding. It was surely impossible to keep herself separate from her heart, not without leaving the realm of fire. She had studied the workings of matter through fire, but those required only that she let herself fuse with the flame. Now she sought for her song that she might bind up the inferno and take it with her to a colder place. She had once, long before, forgotten to take water into fire. This time she meant to remember to take fire into air.

She held herself still to listen, but her song was drowned and indistinguishable in thunderous majesty. There was music here, although nothing like that of water, a never-ending crescendo of power only faintly leashed. She listened for what was surely an age and an eon before hearing a note that was not unlike one of her own.

She reached for it and a whirlwind leaped to her beckoning, so that she was bathed in the cascading flames, and the one little note she had wanted was washed utterly away. She sang, if it could be called a singing—it was more a scream of frustration. And as her voice rose up to a shriek, the fires quailed as if her anger were an awful thing. For an instant the universe poised trembling before her until one little flame that held her note licked out to kiss her feet.

So she howled out her song in tones as violent and careening as the voice of the realm she meant to subjugate. Slowly and almost timidly the music she needed crept out of the infinite conflagration to prostrate itself before her. Even as she summoned it out, she wondered if she had the strength to hold it, wondered if the fire would seem so sweet when her voice failed her and the fires were free to sweep back into the stillness she had created with her song.

But her voice did not fail, although the effort of holding it above the roaring drained her of everything she was, so that there would surely be no Dreysa left to sing when she passed into air. But she had no thought to spare for things to come, consumed as she was in the struggle for mastery over an element that acknowledged no mastery. One by one the flames bowed and whispered that she was not merely one of them but beyond them.

She abandoned the struggle to hold onto herself and satisfied herself with being fire, so long as she was no more of the fire than that part of it which sang her song for her. The surrender brought her strength as though it had been just that futile vanity of claiming her identity that exhausted her resources. When she was no longer Dreysa but only a burning song, the path upward into air seemed to clear itself without her even bothering to will it done.

She ascended and, because she was fire, the fire ascended with her. In some other world that she had long forgotten, the hands of her body still rested on the sword. And in the realm where she now was, her flames clung also to the sword. And beyond the sword was peace. If she had possessed self enough to laugh, she might have done so at the sheer miraculous ease of it, for once she had left her identity behind, she had none to lose. She simply sang.

It was her first great magic, and some dim link to what she had been and had wanted to do warned her not to exceed the limits of her untrained powers. Although it was tempting to let her song expand into intricate arpeggios that would fill the strange and unexpected simplicity of sweet air, she had roots in a memory that dreaded dissolution. Slowly she sensed that the winds she had once feared were not vanished. Rather, they still swept chaotically about, but fire possessed a strength beyond her own to resist the pull.

She guessed that even fire would not prove forever invulnerable, for it was a lesser power than air. Therefore she essayed no complexities that might escape her. She kept her song simple, a mere calling that, had it been framed in words, would have said no more than, "Master, come home.”

She had meant, when she first sat down to sing, to project a bright imperative that would both summon and guide. But the song twisted in her soul to an aching plea shaped by her shattered pride and frightened heart. "Master, come home," she cried, and her fires were a plea and a prayer but