Clayton Emery - Sword Play

He bit his lip as the portal widened, disgorging a rolling ball of fire that splayed open like flaming oil. But this flame ran uphill, swarming over rocks and up a scrawny tree, igniting it like a torch. The flame continued onward, slithering around rocks and, upon touching a pool of water, evaporated it.

Hellfire, he thought. The real thing. But how…?

The globe flickered, revealing another magic source. Here was a field of rye, and above it, another portal. This one widened by hundreds of feet, then disgorged thousands of writhing maggots and grubs that spilled onto the field.

Another flicker, and a ghoulish arm poked from a portal, only to be sheared off as the spasming orifice winked shut. Another flicker, and the sea boiled to steam as more hellfire appeared underwater. Then another, and another, and another.

Never had Candlemas seen so much magic occur in so many different places at once. Toril-the whole world-had sprung hundreds of leaks.

Leaks from the Nine Hells.

Then a face materialized, a female mage whom Candlemas had met in the past, but whose name he'd forgotten. She shrilled, "If anyone can hear, in the name of the gods, send help! My caverns are overrun with trolls by the thousands! They're-" Her face disappeared. Moments later, a lesser mage flickered in, yelled Candlemas's name, and begged him to contact Lady Polaris and inform her that purple slime ran in rivers inside his manor, originating in his workshop.

There were more reports crackling over the ether, more fiendish invasions, more eruptions in the fabric of magic. Some deaths, many losses, boundless destruction.

"May the gods help us all," Candlemas breathed. "Sysquemalyn's cracked the wall to the Nine Hells. The fool, in her blind trifling she's endangered Netheril itself!"

A shriek interrupted his dread thoughts. Running to the door of his workshop, he shouted down a corridor, then froze. A gigantic black bat pursued a screaming maid. More spun up the stairwells, forcing him to slam the door shut. Dashing to the window, he saw thousands more fluttering around Delia, attacking anything that moved for its blood.

The horror had come home.

Candlemas beat his forehead in terror and frustration. Only the greatest archmages of Netheril had ever dared to challenge the Nine Hells, and most of them had never returned. Sysquemalyn had been sucked into its maw, and her and Candlemas's home, indeed their entire world, was under attack. The high mages of the Netherese would come soon to investigate, and they would trace the trail to here.

Their punishment for Sysquemalyn, and himself for not stopping her, was too awful to think about.

He had only one choice.

Standing still, he raised both hands over his head, first and fourth fingers extended.

And raised a high, wailing keen.

And disappeared.

In growing dimness, Greenwillow sat on a stone wall and stared at the space where Sunbright had disappeared. Perhaps, wherever he'd gone, he'd find a way to escape and come back to her. She doubted it, but didn't know what else to do.

A cool evening wind swirled from the mountains and kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear seductively. Elves weren't supposed to fall in love with humans, the message seemed to remind her. The two races stood apart for good reasons. And all along on this benighted quest, her doomed mission to deliver condemnation from a haughty elven council to an undead king, she'd fought to stay aloof, reserved, cool. She'd battled against love harder than any mortal enemy she'd ever fought. In vain. She Who Shapes All had laid the path before Greenwillow's feet, and the half-elf could but walk it.

Until now, when the one she loved had catapulted after a temptress, a trollop, a…

Without any tickle to her keen elven senses, a man stood by her side.

Instinctively she shot up, laid a hand to her sword's pommel, and slid the weapon from its sheath a hair. Certainly there was magic about the human, for he hadn't walked to this spot. That she knew. But too, he looked vaguely familiar, was podgy, bald, and bearded, dressed in a plain linen smock. Then she recalled.

"You… talked to Sunbright that day just before he joined our party of merchants. In the village of Augerbend, it was."

"Did I? Oh, yes, yes." Candlemas was distracted. A lot had happened since then. He stepped across the road to where the portal had materialized.

"But who are you?" demanded the elf. "Sunbright said you were steward of the castle, but that was untrue."

"Hmmm?" The mage studied the wreckage of Tinnainen, the gaps pounded in the walls, the trickles of smoke in a dozen places, the collapsed roofs and gutted palace. He shook his head in wonder at what he and Sysquemalyn had stirred up-all for a silly wager, or was it something more? Now the air reeked with the residue of mighty magics, of dragons and liches and others, power only a Neth could master. But at least that battle was over, the fires out, Wrathburn departed. Within days, Tinnainen would be a backwater again-unless the Nine Hells erupted nearby.

He frowned at the sky. Was his eyesight fading? No, he'd just come so far east the sun had already set here. He felt old, was all. Constant intrigue and tension ground a body down.

"I asked," Greenwillow said, jerking her sword from its scabbard with a steel whisper, "who are you?"

He turned to look at her. Despite smudges and nicks, she was more lovely in real life than when seen through a palantir. Always swayed by feminine beauty, the mage spoke formally. "I'm sorry, my dear. I am a steward, but of another castle, uh, higher up. I'm a friend."

Frowning again, the mage knelt stiffly and ran his fingers over the soil. Still warm. Then he flinched as something black fluttered near his face. But it was only the raven, which said nothing.

Greenwillow did, though. "You're a friend to the raven, too?"

"Eh?" Candlemas craned to see her face. "Oh, ah… What do you know of the bird?"

"That it talks. I followed Sunbright a few times, just to-" Now she hesitated, even blushed. "Just to watch him. He didn't see me, but I saw him converse with the raven. Did you send it?"

Candlemas nodded absently. Lifting his hand palm up, he felt for the exact spot where the portal had been. Waving his hand slowly, he traced the outline: the rift in the fabric of reality. "Good, good. Or very bad. For me anyway."

Rising, extending his hands with fingers spread, he keened again, a long, loud wail.

The portal winked into being. Nothing showed inside it, just a view of the stone wall.

With a cry, Greenwillow jumped up, slapped her sword home, and started to push past Candlemas. But the mage swept her back with a thick arm. "Stand back, young woman. There's nothing you can do."

Sighing, he hiked his skirts and stepped through the portal. The golden shimmer tingled around his legs, then his body, as if he crept into lightning-charged water.

The mage paid no notice to Greenwillow. For too long had Candlemas been steward of a castle, where his orders were obeyed immediately without question.

Greenwillow didn't question him either. She just shadowed the bulky man, hovering inches behind him, and held her breath.

Seconds later, the portal winked out, and the road to Tinnainen stood empty.

Candlemas stepped onto a platform of black glass. Not much wider than a public fountain, it curved up all around, so he slid toward its center. The mage didn't recognize the conveyance, but it resembled the bottom of a palantir, as if he stood inside. Perhaps he did.

Around the platform was nothingness, a blank limbo like fog. Candlemas didn't dare touch it.

Sprawled like a rag doll on the glass platform lay Sunbright, his sword under him. The barbarian was dirty and scraped up, but alive and breathing. For now.