Villains by Necessity (26 page)

The impact was so powerful it almost knocked him senseless. He was helplessly swept off his horse, his ankle twisting as it was wrenched from the stirrup. The water pushed him down through its depths, smashing him with heavy sodden logs caught up in the flood, and bounced him off the rocky bottom of the Ford, making him gasp; inhaling water. Sam choked and spun, pinned below the water by the rushing force as he felt consciousness and life begin to slip away ...

Kaylana was dashed from her horse as the water hit and her staff was torn from her grasp. The water pulled at her, clinging, drowning, and she was battered by debris, sogged, helpless ... then one of the chunks of wood that struck her felt of familiar. She grabbed it and felt her power returning. She clung to her staff, concentrating her will. An eddy of calm surrounded her, and she spun to the surface, gasping. But the water was under another's magic, strong with the power of light, and she could not regain control of it to calm the flood and save her companions.

Someone surfaced near her, a gasp of breath that was answered by anxious cawing, as the raven tried to grasp Valerie's cloak and hold her head above water. The sorceress had a gash on her pale forehead, and she seemed to have surfaced more by luck than by skill. Kaylana kicked over to her, the eddy surrounding her like a halo.

"Give me your hand!" she shouted.

The black-nailed hand flailed desperately out of the froth, and Kaylana grabbed it, pulling Valerie into the eddy, holding her head above water.

"Where is that stupid assassin?" were the sorceress's first words, as she found she could breathe again. "I can't cast magic enough to save us without my Darkportal!"

Kaylana looked, then lunged out with her staff. A sudden weight rewarded her as the crook on the end of her staff caught a dark shadow that had gone spinning past underwater.

"He is on the end of my staff! I will channel the energy to you!"

"Think cold. then, and help me!"

Valerie gasped a phrase of harsh, prickly words, bitter as the killing frosts of winter. Kaylana felt the evil magic flow from the Darkportal on the assassin, up through her staff, and down her arm into the sorceress. Her own magical powers, woven through her soul and through the staff, strained and trembled at the imbalance of the power they were containing, but Kaylana closed her eyes, thought of cold, balanced cold power, and concentrated on making herself a perfect, neutral channel.

Something bumped against their legs, a huge, smooth, cold, slippery something. They slid and tumbled as a large ice-floe, swirled and sculpted from the spinning waters on the bottom of the river, surfaced. Whorling columns and sweeps rose from the surface and around the edges. Draped over one of these was the huge form of Blackmail, struggling feebly. Sam, unmoving and waterlogged as a drowned rat, lay sprawled on the ice, the hood of his cloak still caught in Kaylana's staff. Valerie rolled over, coughing and gagging as she tried to clear her lungs. A feeble splash next to them, and Kaylana lunged forward to grab a struggling Arcie out of the roaring water with her other hand. The Barigan was heaved up onto the ice, where he lay gasping. The floe rushed along the water, spinning.

"What happened to that idiot centaur?" coughed Valerie.

Kaylana shook her head.

Sam's consciousness returned in a rush, and he rolled over, coughed up what seemed to him to be about half the river, and crawled over to Blackmail. The knight was clinging to a rapidly melting whorl of ice, staring mutely out into the crashing water, holding in his hands the tornaway ends of the black leather reins.

"Come on," wheezed Sam, tugging at him. "Come on."

After a long moment the knight turned and allowed the assassin to help him up onto the ice, where they moved away from the treacherous edge and collapsed near the center. As Sam slipped into unconsciousness once more, he saw the knight sitting with his back against a column, unmoving, and, far beyond, the bank of the Saltangum with the tiny figures of the Verdant Company watching them go. The ice raft floated swiftly as they passed out of the area affected by the spell and the water carried them away from their enemies.

"Blast!" snarled Fenwick, throwing his spyglass down on the ground. "I don't know how they did it, but somehow they managed to raise an ice raft and get away! I saw them! Towser!" he barked. The mage hurried up.

"Yes, Sir Fenwick?"

"Lower the water! We must cross at once!"

"Umm," Towser looked decidedly uncomfortable.

"We, uh, can't, sir. We expended all our magic to get the flood ..."

"Well, when is it going to go down, then?" asked the prince.

"Not 'til this time tomorrow, sir." Towser looked miserable. "And we can't teleport until our power returns ..."

"Blast," muttered Fenwick, staring at the waters.

The waves had washed up the useless part of their quarry on shore. The bodies of a few horses, drowned, broken, and battered to death by the water and waves, necks and legs in a tangle of wrong angles. Even the tack was useless, water-sogged and ruined, and any saddlebags gone or emptied. The vultures and mud-crabs could have it all.

"Well ... at least we got their horses. They won't be too hard to catch now." Fenwick sighed and signaled to his men for rest call.

As the Verdant Company broke down into a comfortable hunting camp at the dry, wooded inland edge of the Saltangum, a long, four-legged figure stepped gingerly up out of the marshes, calling, "Sir Fenwick? It's me, sir! Don't shoot! Me, Robin of Avensdale..."

With a sigh Fenwick went to meet the exhausted centaur, who managed, nonetheless, to doff his battered hat and perform his characteristic double-bow.

"Why didn't you go back to Mizzamir?" demanded Fenwick. "You could have been killed! A battle zone with the forces of evil is no place for games! Lucky for you I instructed my men to keep their shots far away from you. But the marshes are full of quick-mud, and, if you had chosen to go into the Ford ... I"

"I know, sir, I'm sorry, sir," Robin whickered, lopping his furry ears down in humiliation. "I... I just got carried away, that's all..."

"Well, exuberance of youth and all that," Fenwick said cheerfully, patting him on his shoulder. "You'd best go report to Mizzamir now; you'll be seeing us again. I calculate that the villains will wash up somewhere in the Fens of Friat this afternoon, and we will be teleporting there tomorrow morning. Go to Mizzamir, report, and get cleaned off and rest... it's coming on to rain today, you'd best stay warm and dry."

The ice floe, made by magic and unnatural in these places, was melting rapidly in the strong sea waters off the Kwartan coast. The villains passed the time in uncomfortable misery, falling asleep from exhaustion and then waking again when the cold of the floe began to bite through the skin. Kaylana mixed strong medicinal tea, heated by Valerie's cantrips, to stave off the lung-clog that followed the experience of being half-drowned.

Most of their provisions had been lost with the horses, and they ate what few rations they had and were still hungry.

They kept to the very center of the melting raft, not speaking, as the waves splashed burning salt in their eyes and the gulls mewed mockingly overhead.

Robin returned to the shining halls of the Castle of Diamond Magic and made a full report to Mizzamir, as instructed.

The great Elven Arch-Mage sat back in his chair, and steepled his fingers.

"Very interesting, Robin ... was there anything else?"

Robin paused a moment, then blurted, "I had a strange dream, sir..."

The minstrel recounted the tale of the strange mural in the Fa'halee, and his unusual dream that followed. Mizzamir sat straight up in his carved wooden chair and listened intently. When the centaur had finished, twisting his hat in his hands, the wizard sat back again, rubbing his chin in a thoughtful wizardly way.

"Most, most unprecedented," said he at last. "To try to recover the Spectrum Key? To defy the gods? To dare the Tests and the Labyrinth?" For the wizard had seen in Robin's description a pattern and form similar to those he himself had followed in preparing his own Test, as all the Heroes had done by instruction of the gods themselves.

He sat in thought, as Robin stood nervously swishing his tail and flicking his ears. Mizzamir had long ago learned the folly of blindly chasing after things, as Sir Fenwick was still wont to do. The news of Fenwick's attack on the rogues was troubling, but the Prince had been within his jurisdiction. Mizzamir, however, preferred to observe, learn, and think, and then find some way to turn his enemy's actions to his own advantage.

The Test of the Wizard, which he himself had designed, was the extent of his knowledge of the concealment of the Spectrum Key. He did not even know where the Test he had designed had been hidden; the gods had kept that information to themselves. They had shattered and hid the Key because it was an artifact of such power that it could not be destroyed; the very nature of Fate demanded a loophole. Legend had it that the segments of the Key were hidden in the Six Lands, to be guarded by the descendants of the Heroes.

A most unsatisfactory situation, Mizzamir had always felt. The Darkgate must remain closed forever, any chance of it ever opening again should have been removed ... but with the Key indestructible, what was there to do? Now, after years of research in the boundaries of existence, he had found the solution.

The commoners of this world did not call it

"Chiaroscuro," a word that Mizzamir had invented. For after all, there was only one "world," just as there was only one "sun." Or so they thought.

Mizzamir knew otherwise.

By magical folding of the fabric of reality, he had discovered other worlds. To one of these distant worlds had his Elven kin migrated long ago. The border to the lands now walked by his kin were closed fast, but in other lands ... lands of eternal fire, vacuum, or just wild terrain, or of great steel cities with smoking air ... in such a land a small thing such as the Spectrum Key could be hidden, and then the border from that land to this sealed forever ... the Darkgate could never be opened, and Light would rule eternal.

A brilliant idea. His problem had been that he did not have the Key, nor did he know how to get it... but now, if someone else might get it for him...

Impossible, he realized. The young centaur, by luck and courage and goodness of heart, might have managed to win Fen-Alaran's Test, but the villains he traveled with would never be successful. They were dark, cowardly, evil... they would be killed by the Tests. A pity, but that was the way of Fate and gods.

"Do you have the green stone you took from the ... dream, Robin?" asked Mizzamir gently. Robin shook his head.

"When I woke up, it was gone ... I didn't even know what kind it was... A Greenstone? I thought it was just a lump of gray crystal, sir."

"Gray?" Mizzamir asked, arching an eyebrow. Robin nodded, yawning in spite of himself. He was so weary.

His legs were aching from the long run.

"Gray, sir ... a little bit darker than grass in springtime."

Mizzamir saw the minstrel beginning to sway. "Forgive me, Robin. Rest yourself again in my castle, and tonight, if you will, you shall return to your mission. And when you do, continue to ask what it is that they seek to do. Whatever it may be, say that you will follow along and not interfere, because you wish to record their actions.

Be careful! Say whatever you must to convince them to let you accompany them, but do not lie; for if you do, the Druid will know of your falsehood. But that is later. Take your rest now, Robin of Avensdale. You have done well." As the centaur clopped out backwards, bowing respectfully, Mizzamir turned to the stainedglass window and stared out through the tinted panes at the climbing sun.

Late in the afternoon, after a good rest and a meal, Robin was teleported to the coast of Kwart, near where the villains had been expected to land. Robin thought for a moment, then waded into the waters of the channel, and soaked and muddied himself thoroughly before trotting along the shore until he found the remains of an icefloe, and footprints in the marshy ground. He followed them, and at last caught up with the staggering villains as they struggled to higher ground. Wary of the Druid's ability to tell truth from lie, he explained to the suspicious and short-tempered group that he had hidden %behind when the others went into the Ford, escaped being captured by Sir Fenwick, and followed them later. The villains were suspicious, but too exhausted to care much.

They climbed on up into the Fens proper, seeking a hilltop free of mud and brackish water. By the time they stopped, unsuccessful, they were all in rather dangerous moods...

Dusk fell over the Fens of Friat. Gray and white wisps of fog drifted over the scraggly moorland, ancient site of death and battles. It was a place of sorrows, desolate and tragic with its past. Even so, tiny wildflowers that had never been seen here before were scattered among the tufts of damp grass, their petals closed now against a faint mist of rain. The long-gone ghosts of the War seemed to gather here in the sad damp of an acrid bog, with the faint scents of marsh-gas and moss blowing in the wind, carrying the faint call of spindle-legged mudwalkers and the sound of bitter voices. The rain fell softly at first, then began to strengthen, drumming into the pools and drenching the battered and demoralized figures huddled around a small pile of blackened and smoking wood. It was here that the bitter voices had their origin.

"Well, this be just fine, aren't it? Just great," snapped Arcie, trying without success to get mud out of his boots.

"No horses. Only heroes would walk everywhere! And on top of that, mine tobacco's all sogged. Some adventure."

"Oh, to hell with your lung-rot," snarled Sam, drawing his tattered cloak around him, trying to arrange his torn hood as the rain plastered his fair hair to his scalp.

"I could give you a cheerful tune," offered Robin, taking out his harp. Its strings hung limply in the damp.

"You just try it, horse, and I'll send you to the bottom of the bog," hissed Valerie. "I'm in no mood for cheerful tunes."