Swords & Dark Magic (17 page)

The two servants were headed in the door. Merc guards there opened it and let them through.

Let them through, too, Willem thought. Beyond was dark, dark. He didn’t know if Tewk could see it, but he
felt
it crawling through the hallways, as if all the fortress was one great beast.

The door boomed shut. There was spotty lighting, a couple of lamps. The dark was real. It was around them.

Stone steps ahead of them led up. It hadn’t been a main door. Stone steps at the right led down and a smell of cooking wafted up. Meat roasting. Bread baking. That was the kitchens.

Where did dukes live, anyway?

This time it was Tewk who said, “Come on. This way.”

He climbed, keeping up with Tewk. They were two fancy-dressed servants on a mission.

They were two fancy-dressed servants. Tewk was the senior. It was all right. Everything was all right.

They reached an upstairs hall, and it was amazing. Tapestries. Oil lamps. Slit windows that let in white daylight. A carpet on the wooden floor, and then, around a left-hand corner, a bigger room and a stone floor past open doors, and huge hangings and a number of people standing around a man at a little table, who was writing.

But it wasn’t the man who was writing that was best-dressed. It was the dark-haired, glowering man in the middle of the bystanders. That man was dressed in brocade and velvet and chain-mail and he wore a sword low-slung at his hip. He was as big as Tewk, and his glance swept toward them like the look of the biggest, meanest dog in town.

Scary man. Scary. Willem stopped. Tewk didn’t. Tewk kept right on going.

He’s a servant,
Willam thought about Tewk.
He’s supposed to be there.

Something slithered across the floor. It was black and it was like fog and wasn’t just on the floor. It was on eye level and it was fast and it wrapped around the man in brocade as his sword came out.

Tewk looks like that,
Willem thought, and instantly honed that thought like a knife:
Tewk looks
just
like that!

Tewk did. There were two of them, and the man at the table grabbed papers and scrambled and the men around their duke drew swords as Jindus did, as Tewk did—with all that black swirling around and around like smoke in a chimney. The two swordsmen went at it, circling like the smoke, swords grating and ringing—but all the bystanders just stood, swords drawn, but nobody moving, nobody able to see anything but Jindus, twice.

Except Tewk’s better,
Willem thought.
Tewk’s stronger. Scarier.

A sword swung and one of the two went down, blood spurting clear across the room, spattering the men, the pillars, everything. And one Jindus stood there, spattered, too, sword lifted…

And all that smoke whirled around and around and
magic
hit like a hammer, magic aimed at magic. Willem staggered where he stood, and didn’t see what had hit him, just felt it, and shoved
back.
The Alley was where he was. The Alley was here, and men yelled and swore, voices echoing off what wasn’t here at all.

The magic lashed at him like a whip. It was dark, it was angry, and it was scared, and it came from one old man, one old man who stood over in the shadows, over beyond Tewk, who was backing up from the advance of three of Jindus’s men.

Snakes,
Willem thought, and there were all of a sudden snakes in their way.

But that left him open, and the magic that hit made his heart jump, and he was on his hands and knees, trying to get up, trying to defend himself from that old man, from that
thing
that wasn’t here, but almost was. It was hungry for the blood. It drank it. It grew stronger. And stronger.

But it was crazy, too. Crazy, and mean, and mad.

I’m not here,
Willem thought. And that left the old man.
Miphrynes is. He’s right—

An arm like iron snatched him right off the floor, up to his feet, and a length of sword was out in front of him in Tewk’s strong hand, between him and that old man.

We’re not here,
he thought, fast.

The dark reared up above all the room like an angry horse, and then plunged down at the floor, spreading in all directions at once. It broke like a wave against the walls, and crested over, and flowed backward, all the waves headed at each other, with a shriek that racketed through Willem’s bones. The men went down. Only the old man, Miphrynes, was on his feet, lifting a staff that glowed with light the color of which had never been, not in the whole world. The eyes didn’t want to see it. The heart didn’t want to remember it. The ears didn’t want to hear the sound that racketed through the room, and the palace, and the walls.

Tewk’s arm tightened until it all but cut off Willem’s wind.

“Demon,” Tewk yelled in his ear.

It was. And there was one man in the middle of that roiling smoke, and Miphrynes began to scream, and to scream, and to scream.

I don’t hear it,
Willem said to himself. But he couldn’t shut it all out.
Tewk doesn’t hear it. We’re not here.

It stopped finally. The smoke went away. And there were just bones, and black robes, and a charred stick across them. There was a scatter of armed dead men. There was Jindus, staring rigidly at the ceiling, pale as parchment.

There was a great, deep silence—in this room.

Outside, far away, out in the courtyard, maybe, men were shouting. People outside were still alive.

“I take it that was the wizard,” Tewk said, letting up on his grip. “Are you all right, boy?”

It took three tries to say yes.

“Jindus was easier than I thought,” Tewk said, and nodded toward the pile of fresh bones. “That one—that one put up a hell of a fight.”

“Did,” Willem said. He was on his own feet, now, and there was something over there in that pile of bones, something dangerous that as good as glowed when he thought about it. He took a deep breath and went over and got it, a small book on a chain, which came loose from the bones when he pulled on it. He didn’t want to look at it. He knew better. He went over to the fireplace and threw it in.

“Ugh,” he said. And watched it burn.

“That’s not all that’s got to burn,” Tewk said, from where he stood. “Boy. Look at me.”

He wasn’t a boy. Not now. Wanted to be, but even magic couldn’t manage that. Tewk looked at him and something changed in Tewk’s expression, something serious and sober.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tewk said. “Have you got one more trick in you, son? Can you get us over to that signal tower?”

Willem thought about it. A thick fog seemed to have settled in his brain. They were in a safe place at the moment, because everybody was dead. Demons were like that. That was what Master had told him: you could control them by giving them what they wanted, which wasn’t any sort of control at all—it was still what
they
wanted, after all, since they were still in
their
Place. And if you were going to bring a demon all the way into your Place so you could control it, you still had a problem, because you had to give them a shape to live in and if you wanted it to do something for you, you had to find something else it wanted. That meant you had to be stronger than that body was—Miphrynes hadn’t been stronger than Jindus—or smart enough to keep outsmarting the demon.

And Miphrynes might not have been smarter than this particular demon, after all. It had gotten its blood. A lot of it. And a few souls. And it was back in its safe Place. Wherever that was. One hoped it was back in its Place.

He wanted out of here. Right now. But wishing wouldn’t do it. Feet had to.

“Willem!” Tewk caught up at the door, and grabbed his arm. “The place is crawling with mercs. They don’t know Jindus is dead. They might’ve
heard
something going on. But can you—”

“You’re Jindus,”
he said, and Tewk was. It wasn’t even a hard piece of illusion.

Tewk looked down at his hand, which was browner, and scarred, just like that of Jindus, who was dead back there on the floor.

Tewk looked a little uneasy.

“You can do it,” Willem said. “We go down there and you tell them to light the fire.”

“Works if nobody got out of that room,” Tewk said. “Where’s the old man? The scribe?”

The old man at the table. The table was overturned. The papers were scattered, the inkpot spilled on the stone floor.

But the old man was
gone.

The upper halls were deserted. The Jindus illusion was worth holding on to, Willem thought, because not everybody might believe the duke was dead. He half-ran, being a merc, just a plain black-cap, beside Tewk, and they went rattling and thumping down the little side steps that had gotten them into the upstairs in the first place.

They passed the kitchen stairs. They descended as far as the closed outside door and Tewk drew his sword. “Open it,” he said, and Willem drew the latch back and swung it inward.

The guards were gone. Mercs were all over the courtyard, opening storerooms, carrying stuff, like an overturned anthill.

“They know,” Tewk said. “They know he’s dead. The town’s going to be next. Probably they’ve already started looting down there, but the gold’s up here. We’ve got to get Osric’s army in here. Got to get to the signal tower. Fast.”

They tried. But about then some of the looting mercs spotted them and dropped what they were carrying on the spot. One drew a sword, clearly not even trying to explain what they were doing. Jindus was dead. Jindus was alive but his authority was in shambles. And that was trouble the mercs now wanted to solve at sword’s point.

They
needed
Osric’s army. They needed to see Osric’s army coming through that gate.

And Willem did. He
saw
it.
The men on the other side of the courtyard were Osric’s men, all in shining armor and with the king’s dragon on their coats…

He pointed. Even Tewk had stopped dead, sword in hand, looking in that direction. And a couple of the mercs that had been stalking them cast a half-glance over their shoulders and then turned that way, frozen in a moment’s confusion.

The others turned that way, and charged what they saw—startled men, who drew their swords. A battle broke out, one band against the other.

We’re mercs,
Willem thought.
We’re just mercs, standing here.

Tewk shook the illusion, grabbing him by the arm, hard. It hurt, and he almost lost all of it, except there were more mercs charging into the yard with the racket going up.
They
were Osric’s men, too. Willem had no idea what Osric’s men looked like but he knew it was a green banner and a gold dragon, and he put good armor and red hair on all of them.

“Got to get to the tower!” Tewk shouted at him. “Come on!”

Mercs and Osric’s men were dropping wherever the fighting went on. Dead ones just looked like mercs. And he had enough to do just keeping the illusion hopping from one group to the next—whoever won became Osric’s men.

But he couldn’t keep dicing the groups finer and finer forever, with Tewk pulling at him and insisting he get moving. He couldn’t do both. He couldn’t go with Tewk to light the signal and keep the whole lot of mercs in the courtyard from running out of Osric’s men and coming after them. It was the fastest, quickest-changing illusion he’d ever cast, and he was sweating, running out of breath, and Tewk jerked him loose from it and yelled:

“The fire, damn it! They’re getting out the gate—they’ll be sacking the town, next!”

Then he thought:
I want that fire burning. The fire’s burning up there.

And all of a sudden Tewk stopped pulling at him. Tewk was looking up, and there was a fire, a huge fire, for everybody to see. It was the
biggest
illusion he’d ever cast, and he just stood there, as Tewk stood there, both of them being themselves, while the fire roared away on the height of the tower and sent up black smoke to the heavens.

Could Osric’s men see it? Willem wondered. Could it carry that far?

Sword rang against sword. Thunked into flesh, and a dying man fell at Willem’s feet. Tewk flung an arm around him and shoved him into motion, running, running, while Tewk turned and hacked another man down.

If he were Master…if he were even
Almore,
he would have a chance. But he didn’t know where a torch was. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He reached the steps. He climbed for all he was worth, and Tewk stayed behind him, but attackers were trying to come up after them and Tewk stopped to hew away at the men on the steps.

On hands and knees, Willem made it over the crest, made it as far as the top of the wall, and he could see into the signal tower, where wood was piled, and oil jars, but it wasn’t lit, and there was a merc there, the same they’d told to lay the fire. That man drew his sword, and Willem’s mind went momentarily blank. No fire. No torch. No way to light it.

He
wanted
it. Or everybody in the town was going to be dead and King Osric was going to be outside the walls and the mercs in charge of the town, and Master, and Almore, and Jezzy—

He dodged a sword blow. The man saw Tewk as the threat: it was Tewk he was going for, right past him.

Which left him the stack of wood in the stone fire-pit. And the oil, which was still in the jars.

And fire didn’t obey illusion magic. Heat wouldn’t come.

He heard swords meet behind him. Twice. Blows like a blacksmith’s hammer.

Sparks flying. Little sparks.

Be!
he thought.

And the fire came.

The fire took the wood. It blazed up. It broke the jars, which spread fire along the wall, and the great fire roared like a living thing.

Heat flared out. He wasn’t thinking it. It
was.

A master wizard—a
real
master wizard—

Hadn’t Master taught Almore?
And
taught him?

He
felt
that piece of paper he had tucked in his shirt. The one that Master had written, naming
him
master.