Alastair Archibald - Truth and Deception

The mage drew his power into his mind for another blast. As he released it, he saw the pasty, tormented face of Tordun and skewed the blast to one side, wasting it on the walls of the corridor. He searched for another, less destructive, spell, finding none; as a Mage Questor, all he really knew was destruction.

"Sorry, Tordun," he muttered. "It's you or me, my friend."

A spangling wisp of blue sparks drifted from the mage's fingers, but no spell came; Grimm's magic was exhausted.

Despite knowing he had lost, the Questor felt calm as he hoisted Redeemer over his right shoulder, ready to strike for the last time.

"All right, boys, who's first?" he asked, expressing a sense of bravado he did not feel.

The mindless mass of muscle surged forward, and Grimm readied himself for his last assault. At least he would be able to take some of them with him before he fell; he felt sorry that the noble Tordun would be among the first to fall.

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To Thribble, the dense, expensive silk of Grimm's pocket seemed as transparent as the finest glass. The demon's sight and hearing were superior to those of any human, and he could detect frequencies of light and sound to which mortals were quite insensitive. As soon as he saw the encroaching fighters, he knew the mage might be in serious trouble; had the warriors been as obliging as to arrange themselves in a neat, linear formation, he had no doubt that Grimm would have been able to destroy the men en masse.

However, the murderous-looking mortals seemed to have no concept of fair play.

At first, the grey imp had regarded the Questor as an interesting but otherwise unexceptional example of humanity. Grimm might be as frail and flawed as all the rest of mankind, but he seemed to have the knack of finding himself in difficult situations that provided the demon with the material for interesting tales with which to regale his netherworld brethren when he returned to his home dimension.

He still revelled in Grimm's adventures, memorising each vocal nuance and mannerism, with the fussy eye for detail of a dedicated archivist, but he had begun to see the young human in a new light.

The Questor seemed to be driven by conflicting forces beyond his control: his fear of failure; his desire for recognition; his raging, adolescent hormones; his burning need to redeem his family name. Sympathy and compassion might be difficult concepts for a demon to grasp, but Thribble had now spent nearly a year in the mortal realm, and he had begun to experience strange sensations he had never known before.

This fragile, overworld creature no longer appeared to him as a quixotic bag of flesh and disgusting humours, a means of providing Thribble's fellow demons with amusing anecdotes, but as a sentient being in his own right, almost heroic in his daily struggle with his troublesome, ever-present emotions and drives.

The demon would never have admitted it to another mortal or demon, or even to himself, but he had begun to regard this human almost as some oversized, clumsy, younger clutch-brother, who needed protection on occasion. The mortal word was 'friend'. Grimm must be saved from his lack of foresight and his mortal inadequacies.

As the Questor took his stand, his staff at the ready, the demon hoisted himself from the confines of his silken prison and slid down the expanse of yellow silk to the floor.

Scuttling through the dense forest of the fighters' legs, Thribble bounded for the blasted Pit entrance. Two more humans stood guard here, but their befuddled eyes were locked on the embattled Grimm. They did not notice the minuscule, grey shadow of the demon as he slipped between them.

The imp's sensitive eyes soon located the other mortals hiding in the bushes abutting the rotunda's walls. Although they might have been well concealed from human eyes, they stood out like white paint on a black sheet to Thribble. Only two of the men appeared to be conscious, and the older of the two seemed in no condition to fight, as blood trickled down his face from numerous cuts and contusions; both the man's eyes were swollen almost shut.

That left the cowardly mage. Under normal circumstances, Thribble would never have considered Numal as a saviour for his friend, but he felt he had little choice.

****

From the shelter of the dense bushes, Numal kept a careful watch for signs of approaching guards. Should any appear, he had no idea what he might do, but he intended to keep his word to Questor Grimm to wait for at least twenty minutes. He had no pocket-watch-such items were beyond the means of all but the very wealthiest-but he had a good sense of the passage of time, gained after long years in the Arnor Scholasticate, where punctuality was paramount.

The battered General Quelgrum tended to the fallen men as best he could, having detailed the squeamish Numal to act as look-out. The mage had never felt as helpless in his life.

Numal felt disgusted with his performance as a Guild Mage; he knew he had succumbed to his baser instincts on all too many occasions. His virtual imprisonment in the House for five decades had ill prepared him for the challenges ahead, and he had been thrust so quickly into the young Questor's violent, dangerous world that he had felt like spindrift in a hurricane; uncontrolled, driven from situation to situation.

Grimm seemed still to have an adolescent's sense of indestructibility, something Numal had long forgotten. The Necromancer knew he was too old for this young man's game, and he burned inside at the knowledge that he had ever mistaken the Questor's friendliness for something deeper. Numal had only the vaguest knowledge of the form of his inner desires; he had been cut off from normal human relationships since the age of seven.

On first discovering that Grimm had a forbidden paramour, the older mage was suffused with mixed anger, astonishment and disappointment. He had even dallied with the idea of exposing the Questor's peccadillo to the Guild hierarchy, but this had soon flown from his mind at his first sight of Drexelica: the first woman outside his family that he had met since his extreme youth. He recognised that she was beautiful, and he had felt his heart twisting. On one hand, he had felt jealous that Grimm was lost to him; on the other, he had been stirred by the young girl's fresh, feminine loveliness.

Did he desire men, or women? The Necromancer had no way of knowing; he sought only the love and affection denied him for so long, with no experience of affection or amatory affairs whatsoever.

Perhaps fifteen minutes had now passed since Grimm had blasted the doors of the Pit, and Numal risked extending his head from the safe concealment of the bushes. He saw nothing, but, straining his ears over the ever-weakening moans of the stricken Guy, he heard the distinct sound of rapturous applause from inside the Pit building. He found this both bizarre and disturbing, but he had no idea of what it might portend; however, he felt sure it could not be good.

Ducking back into the greenery, Numal slapped his brow, trapped in a prison of indecision. If Grimm, a Questor, was in trouble, what could a humble Necromancer hope to do?

As he wrestled with his doubts and fears, he felt something tugging gently at his robe, which caused him to start. Was this a rat, or some other vermin? The Necromancer shuddered, and he shook his right leg in an attempt to dislodge the nagging creature.

"Necromancer, stop! It is I, Thribble!"

The thready, high-pitched voice was at the limit of his hearing, but the words were just clear enough. Against the background of the grey wool of his robe, Numal made out the shape of the small demon climbing up the rough material like a mountaineer scaling a sheer rock-face, blowing out his cheeks with the effort.