Elaine Cunningham - Honor Bound

A withered figure moved through theadept's gallery, his steps sure and silent. A maze of dubioustreasure surrounded him, all of it shrouded in darkness. The onlylight came from the cloud-misted moon peeking through one of theupper windows.

The old man gave the moon anunsentimental glance and, out of long habit, looked for hisshadow.

For several moments, he searched thedark marble floor in vain. A wave of panic crept up his throat andtightened like icy fingers. Had he finally died and not quitenoticed?

No, there lay the shadow, thin andbent and so faint as to be almost imperceptible.

He blew out a sigh and collapsedonto a bench. Rhendish, the adept who owned this manor, had placedthe bench here for those who wished to contemplate a row ofportraits-famous alchemists ranging from ancient Palanir to lastcentury's giant, the lost prodigy Avidan Insa'Amid. Rhendish didnot include his own likeness in this august company, but a carefulobserver could not fail to note that a space had beenleft.

The old man rocked to his feet,tottered, and caught himself on the iron bars surrounding one ofthe displays. When he regained his balance, he found himselfface-to-face with three desiccated imps.

He blinked, certain that age andmoonlight conspired to mock him. But no, the vision remained.Rhendish changed the displays of curiosities frequently, and forsome reason he saw fit to exhibit the monstrous servants Sevrin'ssorcerer lord had used up many years ago.

The surge of kinship the man felt tothese withered fiends surprised him. But then, old age always comesas a surprise, and never did he feel so old as when he contemplatedthe remnants of Eldreath's reign. Fewer and fewer of Sevrin'speople truly remembered that time.

He remembered it. He remembered it all too well.

The crash and tinkle of breakingglass came from a room across the courtyard, a faint sound carriedby night winds and lingering magic. Red light flared in the adept'sworkroom.

Curious, he made his way toRhendish's workroom, moving through passages unknown to most of themanor's servants. In a few moments he emerged from the hiddenbyways into one of the workroom's curtained alcoves. He edged asidethe heavy drapes to watch and listen.

The curtain on a nearby alcove hadbeen swept aside to reveal a long, narrow skeleton, a macabre workof art rendered in pale pink crystal. Before the alcove stood afair-haired man, his attention focused on the elf woman sitting ona tall chair with an attached table. The arm propped by this tablehad been sliced open to reveal not bones but slim metal bars and anintricate mesh of clockwork gears.

"I will restore your sword arm now,”Rhendish said. “The rest you will have to earn.”

The elf stared at him withunreadable eyes. For long moments, the only sound in the room wasthe soft plink ofblood dripping through the table drain to the basinbelow.

The old man studied the elf's face,wondering what lay behind those winter-gray eyes. Once, he mighthave felt her intent as clearly as he experienced his own. He mighthave known how she would respond. He might have been able toanticipate-

The elf leaped from the chair andsnatched a knife from Rhendish's work table. She lunged at theadept.

Rhendish lifted one hand in a swift,sharp gesture. The elf slammed to a stop as if she'd run into aninvisible wall.

The weapon dropped from her hand.She fell to her knees, but her eyes never left Rhendish'sface.

Clanking footsteps grew closer,louder. Four clockwork guards marched into the workroom. Neitherelf nor adept broke their fierce stare. The guards faltered andfroze in mid-strike, adding a sense of tightly coiled menace to thegrim tableau.

The old man could neither see norsense magic, but he could not fail to perceive the silent battlethat raged between the elf and the adept.

He knew a frisson of alarm. Oh, hehad no doubt who would prevail, but the battle itself wasworrisome. It proved the elf knew Rhendish's deepest secret: Theadept was a sorcerer as well as an alchemist. Not much of asorcerer, perhaps, but then, after ten years of alchemicalexperimentation and clockwork "improvements," the elf wasn't muchof an elf, either.

Still, he had to admire astubbornness that outlived flesh and memory. The things the elf hadwithstood over the past ten years should have broken her mind andkilled her a dozen times over. Even now, with her face as bloodlessas moonlight on snow and her arm sliced down to her metallic bones,she put up a struggle that raised beads of sweat on Rhendish'sbrow.

The old man looked around for thesource of the crash. This was an alchemist's lab, and spills couldbe deadly. Shards of glass littered the floor just beyond thealcove, but thankfully no stain marred the carpet, and noalchemical stench rose from the shards.

Old bones creaked as he stooped fora closer view. His eyes narrowed as he noted a shard of glassclinging to a familiar looking hilt. He slid one hand under thecurtain and grasped the hilt.

As he lifted it, a blood-red dropfell from the shard and stained the hem of his tunic. He lifted thefabric to sniff. Blood, yes, but mixed with something else,something acrid and complex and certainly alchemical inorigin.

He brought the glass blade closer tohis face. The break was smooth and regular, as if it traced anatural weakness in the blade. It looked like the curve of a rosepetal.

Suddenly he knew where he'd seenthis hilt before.

He looked at the elf with deepeningconcern. She'd substituted a glass dagger for the Thorn, an ancientelfin dagger rumored to be the conduit for magic that lay beyondthe ambitions of wizards and the imagination of storyspinners. Thesubstitution was a clever trick, but it required more thancleverness. It required the services of both a skilled weapon smithand a talented alchemist.

Rhendish knew about the dwarf in FoxWinterborn's band of thieves. He'd held the dwarf prisoner for ashort time. The old man wondered what Rhendish would do if he knewthat one of his fellow alchemists had thrown in with the CityFox.

This was grim news indeed. The Foxmight be dead, but rebellions could be fueled by martyrs. Any mancanny enough to become an alchemist would know this.

A clatter of metal drew the oldman's attention back to the workroom. Every clockwork guard haddropped to one knee. Moving as one, they lifted mailed fists andthumped them to their chests in an unmistakable-and veryelfin-gesture of fealty.

“Release him, sister-self,” the elfsaid.

The old man followed her gaze andclapped one hand over his mouth to stifle his cry.

Rhendish's eyes bulged. His lips hadturned an unhealthy shade of blue. His hands tugged at the longcrystal fingers wrapped round his throat.

At the elf's command, the crystalarms dropped to the skeleton’s sides. The gentle chiming of boneagainst bone sounded like distant, faintly mockinglaughter.

The silence that followed was brokenonly by Rhendish’s rasping breaths. Uncertainty twisted hishandsome features, but his face did not show the fear that wouldcome with true understanding.

The old man understood all toowell.

Twenty years ago, Sevrin had risenup against their sorcerer lord. For twenty years, the Council ofAdepts had been waging a quieter war on magic. If the other adeptslearned Rhendish's secret, if they knew that one of the seven mostpowerful men on Sevrin's islands was a sorcerer, they would joinforces against him and drag him out to sea. They would find thebiggest glacier within a tenday sail, and they would use weaponsnot seen since the defeat of Eldreath to melt a hole in thatglacier twenty fathoms deep. Then they would drop the sorcerer intothis hole and stand guard until it froze over.