The Wizardwar (3 page)

The water demon shielded its glowing red eyes with a dagger-taloned hand as its gaze swept the room. Red orbs focused upon the necromancer. Hatred burned in them like hellfire.

“Akhlaur,” the demon said in a grating, watery voice, pronouncing the word like a foul curse. It sprung, impossibly quick, its massive hands arched into rending talons.

The wizard dropped his useless weapons and seized the creature’s wrists. He frantically chanted spells to summon preternatural strength and killing magic. Zalathorm’s wizards fell back as evil fought evil like two dark fires, each determined to consume the other.

Arcane power crackled like black lightning around the struggling pair. Akhlaur’s luxuriant black hair singed away and drifted off in a cloud of ash. His handsome face blistered and contorted with pain-pain that fed his death-magic spells.

Suddenly the eels upon the demon’s head shrieked and flailed in agony. One by one, they burned and withered, then fell limp to the creature’s massive shoulders like lank strands of hair. Fetid steam rose from the demon’s body, and green-black scales lifted from its flesh like worn shingles. Too furious to meet death alone, the demon forced Akhlaur inexorably back toward the portal.

The necromancer’s hate-filled eyes sought Noor’s face. He captured her gaze, then jerked one of the demon’s hands, pantomiming a slashing motion. The girl’s head snapped back, and four burning lines opened her throat.

Then Akhlaur was gone. In the mirror, the entwined figures of necromancer and demon rapidly diminished as they fell away from the glowing portal. Kiva felt a surge of triumph, then a sudden, gut-wrenching drop.

To her astonishment, she felt herself sucked into the Plane of Water with the necromancer!

Down she fell, sinking through a sea of magic, falling away from her forest, her clan and kin. Away from her past her heritage. From herself. Falling too far to ever, ever return.

In some part of her mind, Kiva knew she was trapped in a dream. Two centuries had come and gone since Akhlaur’s defeat. She awakened abruptly but not with the sudden jolt that usually followed an interrupted dream.

To her horror, she was falling still, tumbling helplessly through thin mountain air. The vision of Akhlaur’s tower had been only a dream, but this nightmare was very, very real!

The elf flailed and tumbled, clawing at the empty darkness. Wind whistled past her and carried her shrieks away into the uncaring night. Stars whirled and spun overhead, mocking her with the long-lost memories of starlit dances in elven glades. Kiva felt no sorrow over her forgotten innocence-its loss was too old to mourn. As she fell toward certain death, her only regret was the unfinished revenge that had sustained her for two centuries.

A sudden blur of light and color flashed past her, circled, and dipped out of sight. Kiva struck something soft and yielding and felt herself received and cradled as if in strong, silken arms.

For several moments she lay facedown, too dazed to move, too stunned to make sense of either her fall or her rescue. After a while she raised her head and peered into the elaborate, swirling pattern of a carpet. The wind still whistled past her, but its passage no longer felt cold or mocking.

A flying carpet, then. Kiva felt about for the edges of the magical conveyance and rolled toward the safety of the middle. She cautiously sat up and found herself face to face with Akhlaur himself.

Two centuries of exile in the Plane of Water had taken its toll on Akhlaur. Lustrous black hair had given way to a pate covered with fine, faintly green scales. His long fingers were webbed, and rows of gills shaped like jagged lightning slashed the sides of his neck, but his expression of faint, derisive amusement was maddeningly familiar. For a moment Kiva heartily wished she’d left him in his watery prison.

“You are a restless sleeper, little Kiva,” Akhlaur observed in an arch tone.

“Elves do not sleep,” she reminded him, though she wondered why she bothered. Akhlaur was singularly uninterested in elven nature except as it pertained to his experiments.

“I trust you are unharmed by your little adventure?” he asked, his manner a blatant parody of a master’s concern for his faithful servant.

Kiva managed a faint smile, though she suspected Akhlaur had nudged her off the carpet in the first place just to enjoy her fall and her terror!

“It was … exhilarating,” she said, imbuing her words with the dark irony Akhlaur so enjoyed. “All the same, I am grateful for rescue.”

The necromancer inclined his head graciously, accepting her thanks as genuine. He had reason to think Kiva sincere. There was a death-bond between them, forged two centuries past so she could survive the laraken’s birth. Kiva could not harm Akhlaur without slaying herself, and she counted on this to convince the wizard of her sincerity.

“Sleep,” he instructed her. “We have much to do upon the morrow.”

Kiva obediently curled up on the carpet and pretended to drift back into reverie, but dreams of the past dimmed before the great battle ahead.

During this battle, Akhlaur, the wizard who had come so close to conquering all of Halruaa, would fight not as her master but as her deadly and unwitting tool.

A small, swarthy young man glided like a brown shadow through a labyrinth of corridors far below King Zalathorm’s palace. Dawn was hours away, and this deep place was lit only by the small blue globe in the young wizard’s hand.

Moving with the assurance born of experience, he barely glanced at the ancient skeletons moldering in side corridors, silent testament both to the spirit of Halruaan adventurers and the wards guarding the land’s deeply buried treasures.

He made his way to the center of the maze and stepped into a circle ringed with deeply etched runes. As he chanted in the ancient, secret language of Halruaan magic, the stone beneath his feet melted away, swirling downward like dense gray mist and reforming as a narrow, circling stairway.

Down he went, moving deeper and deeper into the heart of the land. With each step he intoned the specific arcane word required. He respectfully avoided treading upon the blackened spots marking the final resting places of wizards whose memories had faltered.

At the foot of the stairs was a great hall, lined on each side by a score of living guards. Here gathered many of Halruaa’s great necromancers, keeping watch over secrets last whispered by lips long ago faded to ash and memory. They nodded to the young man as he passed, giving the deference due to the king’s messenger. None of them suspected the true identity of the black-eyed, brown-skinned youth.

The disguised wizard stopped before an enormous door and bowed to the ancient, cadaverous archmage who guarded it. He handed the old man a scroll.

“A writ from the king,” he said in the lilting accents common to the coastal islands.

The archmage glanced at the missive, then lifted his rheumy gaze to the messenger. “By the king’s command, we must answer your questions with the same candor we would offer him. I swear by my wizard-word oath it will be so.”

The youth inclined his head in respectful thanks. “I would know who raised and commanded the undead army during the battle against the Mulhorandi invaders.”

The guardians exchanged uncertain glances. “The king himself is acclaimed for this victory,” the archmage ventured.

The messenger snorted. “When did the king become a master of necromancy? Tell me who among your ranks could have done such a thing.”

The old man’s lips thinned as if to hold back the answer he was sworn to give. “It is beyond my art,” he admitted at last. “No one in this room could cast such a spell. We can all raise and command undead, certainly, but not in such numbers! If the king did not cast this spell, then his equal did.”

“Who is equal to the king?” asked the disguised wizard, imbuing his voice with a mixture of indignation and concern, such as a faithful young messenger might express.

“I assume you speak rhetorically, as did I,” the archmage hastened to add. “For who could be the king’s equal?”

Who indeed? The wizard swallowed the wry smile that tugged at his lips. The old archmage’s parry was as deft as any swordmaster’s, but in truth many wizards were beginning to wonder if perhaps they might prove to be the king’s equal. The guardian’s question might have been rhetorical, but it would not long remain in the bloodless realm of rhetoric.

The wizard bowed his thanks and gestured toward the door. The archmage moved aside, clearly eager to end this disturbing interview.

Massive, ironbound doors swung inward on silent hinges, untouched by mortal hand. Torches mounted on the walls flared into life, revealing a circular room with several doors but no floor other than a gaping pit. Faint but fearsome howls wafted up from untold depths, carrying a feint charnel scent and the promise of oblivion.

The wizard stepped into the empty air, counted off several paces to the left, and strode confidently across the void. He passed through three other magically trapped rooms before he came to the place he sought.

This final chamber was empty but for the ruby-hued crystal floating in the room’s center. Shaped like a many-pointed star, it burned with its own inner light and filled the room with a crimson glow.

The wizard let his disguise melt away, revealing the mild, middle-aged face of the man who had claimed the crimson star more than two hundred years ago. He dropped to one knee and began the difficult process each visit demanded: emptying his mind of thought, his heart of sorrow and guilt. When at last the silence within matched the profound stillness of the chamber, he rose, lifted his eyes to the gem, and spoke.

“The heart of Halruaa seeks counsel,” King Zalathorm said softly.

In lean words Zalathorm described the battle spells that just two days before had siphoned the fluids from hundreds of living men to create an enormous water elemental, then raised the desiccated men into an undead army.

“What wizard, living or dead, might have cast such a spell?” he concluded.

He tuned his mind’s ear for the silent response, the familiar, elfsong voices of sages long dead. They spoke in a single-note chorus of wordless, overwhelming terror. Waves of emotion swept over him like an icy storm, stealing his breath. Stopping his heart.

Crushing pain enveloped Zalathorm’s chest, sending him staggering back. He fell heavily against the chamber’s only door, unable to move or breathe. For long moments he believed he would die in this room.

Finally healing magic, more ancient even than the sages’ remembered fear, pulsed from the crimson star.

The king’s heart leaped painfully, then took up its normal rhythm. Slowly his agony receded. Once again, the crimson star had preserved its creator.

Once again, it had given Zalathorm an answer he could find nowhere else. The gem was undying history, centuries of experience preserved in eternal immediacy. In all of Halruaa’s long history, Zalathorm knew of only one wizard who could inspire such terror in the time-frozen sages’ hearts. Though no word had been given, Zalathorm had his answer all the same.

Somehow, Akhlaur had returned.

The streets below King Zalathorm’s palace teamed with life, even though the sun barely crested the city’s eastern wall. Matteo stood at the king’s side, listening as Zalathorm received a seemingly endless line of supplicants.

It was Matteo’s first day as King’s Counselor, and already he was fighting off the urge to fidget like a schoolchild. The king had charged him with the defense of Queen Beatrix. Why not let him get on with it?

Matteo could not understand the king’s insistence on honoring his custom of granting daily audience. In these extraordinary times, mundane routine seemed as out of place as a witless sheep among unicorns!

Reminders of the recent battles were everywhere. Laborers still cleared away the debris and rubble cluttering the king’s city. The pyres in the burial gardens outside the city walls burned steadily. Professional mourners sang themselves into rasping silence, then yielded their places to others. Their keening songs soared up into the smoky clouds, commending the spirits of fallen Halruaans to the gods and their bodies to the sky.

The Halruaans were a proud and defiant people who mingled mourning rituals with extravagant victory celebrations. Students at the mage schools were sent home until after the new moon. Merchants and artisans closed their shops before highsun and did not reopen after the sunsleep hours were past. Street performers sang ballads and acted out tableaus; fireworks dazzled the night skies. Somber, hardworking Halruaans, wizards and common folk alike, devoted themselves to defiant celebration, as if to thumb their noses at ubiquitous Death.

Outside the palace, the familiar song of the street began a swift crescendo and took on a faintly dissonant note. Zalathorm nodded to Matteo. Glad for the diversion, the young jordain went to the window to see what was going on.

As always, a throng waited outside, hoping for audience with the king. The scene had a festival air. Street vendors came to display their wares, and wandering performers kept the crowd entertained. Matteo quickly averted his eyes from a young juggler, for the lad’s deft hands and carefree grin reminded him too painfully of his friend Tzigone.

His gaze slid over the dancing bear that plodded and whirled like a corpulent matron, and settled briefly upon the drovers hawking exotic beasts. Beaming parents handed their children up for rides upon camels from the Calimshan deserts or an enormous three-horned lizard from the jungles of Chult or an aged and rather threadbare unicorn. There was even a young elephant, an animal seldom seen in Halruaa. Two small, shrieking children clung to the gaudy red and yellow litter on the animal’s broad, gray back.

Matteo’s eyes darted back to the elephant. Its long trunk lashed back and forth, as if swatting away an attacking swarm. He looked closer and realized this was precisely what the animal was doing. Several people had taken to pelting the unfortunate creature with fruit and morning cakes.

He turned back to Zalathorm. “One of the drovers has brought an elephant. The crowd is attacking it, perhaps because the animal is native to Mulhorand and a reminder of the invaders.”