Rick Cook - Wizard’s Bane

Cormac shook his head. "You may need me." Then he laid his hand on hers. "Besides, a World without Light is not a World fit to live in."

"Thank you Cormac," she squeezed his hand. "Now stand out of my light while I unravel this puzzle."

Again working partly by magic and partly with her picks and other tools, Shiara carefully pried the secrets from the lock. Cormac stood by nervously, fingering his sword hilt, his head turning this way and that as he searched for tangible manifestation of the danger he sensed here. Finally there was a click and the panel swung smoothly back.

Behind the panel lay another smaller room lit with the same balefire glow as the great hall. It took only a single lantern to light it. The stink of incense and the reek of magic was fully as strong here as it was beyond. But there were fewer pedestals bearing treasures.

"A puzzle within a puzzle," Cormac said as he surveyed their latest find.

Shiara pointed to a pier off to one side of the chamber. "There, I think."

Cautiously she approached and then sucked in her breath at what she saw.

Laying atop the pedestal was a magician’s staff. But it was like no magician’s staff Shiara had ever seen. It was perhaps four feet long and as thick as her wrist, but it was not wood or even metal. Instead it was made of a crystalline substance that seemed to show flickers of an amethyst light deep within itself. Tiny crabbed characters ran inscribed in bands around its surface, save for a space about a hand’s breadth wide near the top. There was no knob or finial on either end. It was more a sceptre than a staff, she realized. A symbol of rule as well as a tool of magical power.

The wizardess passed her wand over the pedestal and smiled at the result.

"This is the key. If I neutralize the spell and move this, we can remove all else in this place."

"Be careful, Light."

"I will my Sun."

Slowly and carefully Shiara began to unravel the spell binding the staff to the pedestal. She made a final sweeping gesture and the spell flickered and died.

In spite of removing the spell and in spite of her urgent desire to finish this business, Shiara was reluctant to touch the evilly-glinting object before her. She had handled such staffs of other wizards before, but there was something about this one that awed and dismayed her.

Finally she placed her hand upon it and felt the waves of magic flow through her. It seemed as if a dark and vastly deep space opened up around her, inhabited by huge shadow things that pressed close, whispering offers of power, the fulfillment of all dreams and the slaking of all lusts. She had but to wield the staff and…

Quivering, Shiara fought the temptation. She lifted the staff and carried it across the chamber at arm’s length as if it were a poisonous serpent.

The waves of magic beat stronger against her, calling to her more and more clearly. In a fit of panic Shiara tried to drop the staff and found she could not. Now it was the staff which was holding her.

All too late Shiara saw the deadly nature of the trap. The demon at the gate, the spells upon the common items were sufficient to ward off an ordinary thief or hedge magician. To penetrate those and unravel the maze of spells within the cavern and ultimately to possess the key would take someone truly skilled in magic. One of the Mighty, or a black-robe wizard of the League.

The whole cavern and all the magics within it existed simply to sort the untalented or the incompetent from the powerful and to lure the powerful to the sceptre. The sceptre was the last and deadliest trap of them all.

No, Amon-Set was not dead, not truly. Within the smoky purple depths of the scepter he had waited out the ages, waiting for one whose body and skill he could use to live again. The snow-white corpse on the crystal bier was indeed dead. But his soul lived within the sceptre; lived, hungered and awaited its prey.

The wizard who was skilled enough to grasp the sceptre of Amon-Set was a suitable vehicle for his reincarnation. And that was the true purpose of everything here. To find such a one and put them in a position where Amon-Set could possess them and so live again.

Shiara could feel herself ebbing away as the alien presence intruded. She twisted and struggled in the grip of the long-dead sorcerer. She fought back with every bit of skill and knowledge at her command.

It was a hopelessly uneven fight. She felt the chamber’s magics convulse and yield under her desperate thrusts, but the core of Amon-Set locked her in an ever tightening embrace.

"Now!" a strange creaking voice cried from the door of the chamber. Shiara realized vaguely that someone else had entered the fray.

Cormac whirled at the voice and saw Jul-Akkan stumble into the room. Shiara could not break Amon-Set’s hold on her, but her struggles had loosed the grip of the guard spells.

Cormac’s sword flickered at the wizard with the speed of a striking snake, but not fast enough; even weakened Jul-Akkan was faster still. His hand flicked out and Cormac screamed and dropped to the floor.

Without pausing, Jul-Akkan leaped across the room and grasped the sceptre with both hands.

For an instant three beings warred. Then with a final mighty effort Shiara was able to let go of the cursed thing. Jul-Akkan fell back with both hands planted on the sceptre and his eyes widening as Toth-Amon took him.

Shiara staggered and shook her head. Through pain-dimmed eyes she saw Cormac writhing in the final agonies of a death spell and the one who was Jul-Akkan writhing in the throes of rebirth. In seconds Cormac would be dead and Toth-Amon would be loosed upon the world again. Her Sun and her World both teetered on the brink of destruction.

Shiara’s eyes locked with Cormac’s as he pleaded silently with her to do something to release him from the awful pain.

Without bothering with the timing demon, Shiara triggered the destruction spell. "Forgive me, love," she whispered as he slumped to the floor.

Magic after magic flared incandescent around the living, the dead and the reborn. The room shook under the force of the spells. The pedestals tottered and toppled. The lanterns crashed to the floor and went out.

Amon-Set struggled to rise, but he did not have full control. The sceptre slipped from his hands and dashed into pieces on the shaking floor. All around them the magic grew in violence as forces contained past their time burst free at last.

And then, in a mighty explosion of magic, the roof fell in. Shiara screamed as she saw Cormac’s body crushed under a falling block. Waves of magic flayed her. Her last sight was of the brilliant blue glow. The after-image burned itself into her brain. Reflexively and in shock, she stumbled from the room.

Above her the top of the mountain blew off. A column of angry orange fire shot high into the smoke-stained sky and bombs of flaming lava arced down into the forest, setting fires where they fell.

Toth-Ra examined the great still demon carefully. Obviously the guardian had been neutralized in some manner. So far, so good he thought. He had the word and sign to pass the demon, stolen from the crypt of the League, but he was satisfied not to use them.

Let us see if anything of use remains here. He walked past the thing and inspected the cavern carefully. It did not take him long to find the coffer. When he opened it, he gasped. The heart of the demon lay within.

Toth-Amon smiled. Here was an auspicious beginning. Obviously the Council’s agents had beaten him here, but they were unlikely to know all the secrets of this place. There were still treasures to be gleaned while they attempted to unravel the mysteries.

Then the ground began to move under him. Toth-Ra ran to the mouth of the cave and reached it in time to see the mountain erupt, taking the treaures of Amon-Set with it.