Dangerous Games (28 page)

“Yes.” he agreed. “I’m a shaman.” He smiled, and even his teeth radiated light, so she was reminded again of a paper lantern. “Finally.”

Thrown off-balance, stunned by the magical attack, and trapped by the intervening tree, Wulgreth howled in rage and indignation, leaped into the air to crash down on packed dirt, beat his chest like an ape, and hollered his fury. His great hooked hands flexed as he ripped his lizard skin costume from his breast. Sunbright waited, unmoved and unafraid. Knucklebones clutched her familiar knife and crouched behind the newly-risen shaman.

Sense overcoming fury, Wulgreth saw that his antics didn’t frighten his opponent, and quit. Instead, he stooped and latched onto a great rock with his craggy hands, grunted, and hoisted it high over his head.

Knucklebones shrieked, but Sunbright only snapped his fingertips together. The boulder burst into dust, like the tree limb, aged eons in less than a second. It spattered into dust around Wulgreth’s head.

The lich lord stood stunned, blinking grit from his stone dead eyes. His followers oohed and aahed at the display, marveling that Sunbright could so oppose their invincible leader.

Knucklebones trembled. “We should flee,” she told him. “If you can use magic, you could shift us far away, can’t you?”

“No.” Sunbright didn’t look at her as he spoke, but watched his opponent. “I owe the land here for my salvation. I must repay her, make repairs as I can.” He cast about at the dark woods, as if they were more important than a mere battle.

Talk of repaying the land sounded like mystic mumbo-jumbo to the thief, the vague mutterings of a priest cadging offerings. But she said nothing, only waited to see what he—and Wulgreth—would do.

The lich lord spread his feet wide, arched his back, tilted his head, and screamed. A long, keening undead screech that went on and on, setting Knucklebone’s teeth on edge and making her spine crawl.

Her fear increased as, sprouting from the ground like horrific mushrooms or dropping from the branches or shambling from the dark, crept a handful of monsters awful to look at, painful to behold, for all were dead like him. Dead and deadly.

From the ground oozed a long skeleton, nothing but spine and ribs and a tiny human head with glittering black eye sockets. Cutting its way free of the earth was a small, dumpy man, but with four arms thin as sticks, blind white eyes, and mandibles clicking in his mouth. From the dark floated a pair of bulbous bags like ruby balloons, though with stinging tails that lashed as if eager to poison the living. Humping from the shadows came a short, stinking zombie lacking legs so it hobbled on hands and stumps. Dropping from the trees came a ball of arms and legs and tentacles and branches that grasped and writhed but had no body to speak of. And from the sundered campfire rose a wisp of smoke no wider than a shadow, a tall gangly thing that changed shape constantly as if unsure what it mimicked, though its hands were always long, scythe-like knives.

Knucklebones’s teeth chattered as the undead things clustered around, weaving and bobbing, awaiting their chance. She’d seen horrors, but never anything to compare with these. More than ever she wished she were back in Karsus’s sewers.

But Sunbright was undaunted, even laconic. In an even voice, he told Wulgreth, “These threats will avail you naught. This forest has suffered enough. Banish your fiends and yourself, get hence and begone. This is an abode for the living, not the dead.”

Beside himself with anger, Wulgreth leveled his arm and screamed, “Attack!”

“Candy! Candy!”

Candlemas stumbled down a landing ramp, bruised, bloody, singed, and thoroughly rattled. Who was calling him that silly name? He didn’t know anyone—then a warm bundle bounced into his chest. Soft arms were flung around his neck, his sweaty, sooty face was smothered in plump and delicious kisses. Struggling to stay on his feet, he wrapped his arms around the woman’s broad back and hung on. When she paused for breath, he saw who it was.

“Sita! Aquesita?”

“Oh, Candy, I was so worried, I had to come see you!” she sobbed. Tears of joy and relief spilled down her cheeks. “When Karry told me he’d sent you into battle, I couldn’t believe it. But it was true! Oh, I’m so proud of you, my darling. So glad you’ve come back to me unhurt.”

“I’m not quite unhurt,” his words were mushy, his mouth sore. “I bit my tongue when the ship crashed.”

“Crashed?” The word brought on a new flurry of tears, kisses, and hugs. “Oh, my poor, brave soul!”

Stunned, and not just from knocks in the head, Candlemas hung onto his ladylove and basked in her praise and attention. Her broad back was comforting, her modest bosom, pressed to his dirty uniform, exciting. Awkwardly he kissed her hair, stroking it with smudged hands, murmuring what sweet nothings he could conjure.

This made no sense; his brain whirled. For days, Aquesita refused him an audience, returned his letters and flowers. Now she ran to his arms because he’d been in danger. Was this love madness, woman contrariness, or male thickness? He couldn’t begin to guess, so he just gave into it and let himself be pampered.

The coddling included a ride in Aquesita’s long carriage, plain white but painted with vibrant, intertwined roses and vines. Lolling on red cushions, Candlemas sipped wine that stung his swollen tongue and watched the hustle and bustle of the city pass his window. He’d done his share. War wasn’t so bad, he reflected, if these were its rewards.

He shifted idly, seeking a muscle that didn’t ache. Moving sent a faint whiff to his nostrils: the stink of burned flesh. Rocking forward, he gagged on his wine, spraying it on the floor and the hem of Aquesita’s blue gown. With the smell came the memory of screams as men and women burned to death, hair and flesh igniting. Suddenly his hands trembled so badly the wineglass stem snapped and cut his fingers. That could have been him, crippled and unable to flee the heat ray. He could be ashes fertilizing a forest right now.

Slowly, head down, he breathed deeply while Aquesita cooed and stroked his back. Best to not think about the raid, the disaster. Hollowly, he said, “I’ll be all right. I just need a minute. And a … bath. What’s—” He stopped himself. No, better not ask about her just yet. Their separation might be a sore point. “What’s the latest gossip?”

“Gossip?” Aquesita laughed uneasily. “You know I don’t follow gossip, dear Candy. I’ve no interest in who sleeps with whom, or who’s gambled away his or her fortune, or who’s lashed whom to ribbons. There are finer things in life to consider, and nobler pursuits. No, there’s—wait! There was one unpleasantness that’s newsworthy. Certainly it’s a scandal. Did you ever meet a silver-haired woman named Polaris?”

“Lady Polaris?” Candlemas snapped upright so fast it made him dizzy. Cradling his aching skull, he said, “I know her—knew her. Worked for her once, long ago. She’s a cold thing, a heart of ice, single-mindedly dedicated to her personal pursuits, with no concern for anyone else. She could be empress some day.” If she lays off the food, he added mentally.

He kept thinking of the slim, calculating Polaris of old, not the bloated, preening, self-deluded pig he’d met in this time.

“She’ll never be empress,” Aquesita said. “She was assassinated last night.”

“A-Assassin-Assassinated?” Candlemas sputtered as a fresh stab of pain shot through his head. “Dead? Polaris?”

The plump hand caressed his shoulder. “I’m afraid so,” she cooed. “I never knew you worked for her. Yes, she died in a new and peculiar way. Someone devised a spell that injects a sliver of heavy magic into fruit without a trace. The magic turns the sugars into arsenic, or cyanide, I forget which. It was candied dates did her in. How unfortunate. It’ll throw the empire into a tizzy, everyone fretting over new methods of assassination …”

Her pleasant voice droned on, but Candlemas didn’t hear. He couldn’t fathom the concept. Lady Polaris, once the most beautiful woman in the empire, and perhaps the most powerful—she’d bailed him and Sunbright out of hell with two fingers—dead, snuffed out, fit only for worms. It didn’t seem possible.

And Candlemas was partly responsible. The “splinter of heavy magic poison” idea came from Karsus’s new experimentation with super heavy magic, which in a way, Candlemas enabled by uncovering the fallen star. Of course he wasn’t totally responsible, perhaps not at all. He was a victim of the new magic as much as she.

But he felt sorry and unhappy, though he’d never have believed it… and worried, and fretful. The empire, this war, Karsus’s mad manipulations that brought certain disaster, it had to stop. Or else Candlemas had to leave it behind.

Sunbright was right, he realized suddenly. He, they, should return to their own time. It was the only sensible choice. There was no place for him here, no future, not with the empire hurling itself to destruction. He owned nothing, owed nothing, had nothing to hold him.

Except Aquesita.

Sensing his unease, the woman leaned close, her soft bosom pressing his arm, sending a tingle through him. “Dear?” she almost whispered. “Is something wrong? Shall I stop the carriage, or take you to a healer?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Better, anyway.”

He sat up straight, though the weight of the world seemed to press his shoulders.

“Aquesita, do you … would you … is there…”

Patiently she waited, eyebrows arched, red mouth parted invitingly. Her eyes sparkled, and for a moment Candlemas imagined she thought he was asking to marry her. That couldn’t be, could it?

“Yes, dear?” she waited.

But Candlemas didn’t know what to say, so only enfolded her tightly, and hung on to her softness, inhaled the perfume of her hair, and wept like a lost child.

She patted his back, murmuring, “There, there, love. It’s all right…”

Knucklebones was snatched off her feet by a bronzed hand and plunked in a crotch of the fallen oak. Sunbright’s speed made her dizzy, and he moved faster all the time.

A flash lit the night as moonlight, starlight, and firelight all reflected off the blade of Harvester of Blood. The wide, nose heavy, hooked blade had never burned brighter, the steel polished to a fine luster, the whole glowing with the eerie green-tinged nature magic Sunbright had embraced. Like a winter moon descended from the sky, like white fire, the blade swept after the encroaching snake skeleton. One smash sent brittle bone fragments sailing in all directions so they rained like pointed hail. The blade flashed again, and the floating balloon things were punctured, sheared through. Red smears on the blade were quickly wicked off, leaving only a whiff of marsh gas and stingers that flopped to the ground and writhed like lizard tails.

Wulgreth was hollering, screaming, ranting. Knucklebones didn’t know if he shouted encouragement, orders, or just noise. He thrashed against the fallen oak, furiously splintering branches in his craggy hands, climbing, pointing, and shrieking at the same time. The small thief clutched her elven blade close and waited for an opportunity to strike, but these undead menaces were beyond her capabilities. In Karsus, she’d have run ten blocks by now. And Sunbright held the center of the battle, and nothing could get near him for his whirling blade.

The dumpy manling with mandibles plied short knives in all four hands. He slashed the air and keened like a seagull, distracting Sunbright until others could strike. The shadeling slithered under the tree to circle behind, and the amputee zombie dragged itself up close to strike with a rusty cleaver it wore on a thong down its back. Sunbright watched them all, still calm, but singing the battle anthem of his people.

As she watched and waited, stunned, Knucklebones felt a thrill in her breast, an admiration for this man who possessed not only strength and intelligence, but gentleness and the will to win, to learn, to delve into magic and make it his own. Too, she felt a sudden and surprising yearning to hold him close, a rush that made her belly tingle. Mighty queer feelings for a disastrous battle in a darksome, haunted forest.

The attack coalesced when the knitting yarn tangle of arms and tentacles dropped from a tree onto Sunbright’s head. Immediately limbs began to wrap around his eyes and mouth, to blind and smother him while the other fiends rushed in for the kill.

But Sunbright took it all in stride. Still watching his enemies, he squirmed his left hand up along his neck and cheek, halting the tangled thing’s cruel embrace. Biting through a ropy arm, then wrenching, he ripped the thing off his head. His skin was torn and rasped, for the tentacles were as abrasive as a squid’s. Sunbright wore a mask of his own blood, but as the thing coiled around his bicep, he smashed down hard to grind it against his ribs, crushing it in his armpit.

The four-armed manling scissored pipe stem arms wide, slid them between Sunbright’s legs, and sliced to hamstring and cripple him. But the barbarian snapped his free hand on the juncture of two of the manling’s arms, flicked his wrist, and broke both arms so they dangled and flapped uselessly.

The cleaver-wielding zombie scuttled like a crippled crab to hack at Sunbright’s backside and spine, and here Knucklebones got her chance. Hopping up and skipping along a branch, she might get behind the thing and yet be out of reach of Sunbright’s long, flashing sword, or so she hoped. Crouching, she latched onto the zombie’s tattered robe to jerk it backward and pierce its throat.

The rotten cloth only tore in her grip. Grunting, the zombie spun faster than she would have imagined and the pitted, nicked cleaver came at her. The undead thing grunted, and Knucklebones saw with horror that its tongue was missing, cut out long ago. Up close the fiend was unspeakably repulsive. It stank of the grave and had only patches of skin to cover its yellowed skull, yet a deadly unlife glittered like moths in its eye sockets. Knucklebones wanted to shriek, but that would only get her killed, so she put her energy into striking instead. A short stab with her dagger, and the blade sank to the hilt in the zombie’s neck. With a lurch and wrench, she jerked the blade toward herself and down to sever windpipe and vein. The blade tore free, the dead skin tearing like old, gray leather.

The hideous wound did exactly nothing to the zombie, despite the fact that its head was half severed. The glittering moth eyes only bored deeper into Knucklebones as the cleaver whipped at her head. Still crouched, she stumbled backward, hooked her swollen foot on a branch, and fell. That left her legs exposed to the zombie’s chop. She’d be as legless as it was in a second.