Mickey Reichert - The legend of Nightfall

Edward looked up. "What color is the mud?"

What color is the mud! Incredulity made Nightfall bitter, and he quelled the instinct to become flippant. "Mud-colored, l guess, Master. A brown-green color. With a bit of blue in swirls."

“Blue." Edward returned to his book, flipped a few pages, and read. "Charseusan."

"What?"

"Charseusan blue-green swamp mud. That’s the name of what you’re stuck in."

Oh, well, thanks. It makes things a lot easier now that I’m on a name basis with filth. The irony penetrated despite his predicament. Associations with slime were nothing new to Nightfall.

“It’s called for the charseus plant, a blue-green grass/algae that can live over or under water. The mud’s mostly made up of dying plants and other dead things. The blue-green comes from the live charseus plant." He turned another page. "Oh, interesting. The live plant makes lots of air. That’s why there’re so many bubbles just under the surface of the mud."

I don’t believe this. I don’t, may the Father damn my soul, believe he’s giving a nature lesson while I’m stuck ass deep in swamp mud. Nightfall corrected himself. That’s Charseusan blue-green swamp mud. “Master, this is all very interesting. But my horse and I can’t get out."

Edward did not bother to look up from his book. "Don’t worry. It’s just regular mud. It’s not going to pull you deeper so long as you don’t struggle at random. You do know how to swim, I presume?"

Oh, yes. My governess, steward, and handmaiden taught me while they bathed me. Nightfall had learned the basics of keeping afloat from the paranoia that someone might someday try to drown him. He had perfected his stroke as Marak, frolicking with his sailor buddies when the ship lay in irons. "Well enough, Master. But I worry for my horse. She’s afraid, so she’s fighting crazed and aimless. She’s a lot heavier than I am, too." “Only by your choice." The vaguely familiar voice came from the solid ground to Prince Edward’s right. A figure emerged from the sparse crenyon forest. Curly hair and a well-groomed beard offset soft features betrayed only by the dark, predatory eyes Nightfall knew well enough. Once before, he had studied the face, when this man had steadied him in the town of Nemix and, apparently, learned about his natal talent. The sorcerer wore linens appropriate for travel, though tailored to a rich man’s fancy; and Nightfall cursed the thieving instincts that forced him to notice the two silver rings on his ringers. Looking away from the man’s gaze now would demonstrate fear and feed the murderer’s confidence. At this distance, the hands could not harm him, unless they hurled some magic he had no means of fathoming. "You could weigh more than she if you wished."

Prince Edward returned to his mount and replaced the book in his pack, ignorant of the danger posed by the newcomer.

Nightfall played innocent. "Weigh more than a horse?" He laughed, trying not to let it sound too strained, while his eyes measured the distance to shore. "I’d have to devour a hundred feasts and quickly."

The sorcerer was unamused. Although a slight smile curved onto his features, all gentleness disappeared from his manner.

Edward leaned against his gelding. "Since my squire is indisposed, I will make the introductions. I am Prince Edward Nargol of Alyndar, and this…" He gestured politely at Nightfall. "… is Sudian." He turned his full attention to the newcomer, brows raised for the appropriate response.

Though appalled by his master’s obliviousness, Nightfall appreciated it. The prince’s frivolous conversation might keep the sorcerer distracted long enough for Nightfall to formulate an escape. Cautiously, he eased his leg over the saddle, the movement slow and deliberate, designed not to draw attention. He tried to slip gently from the animal’s back but managed only to bury his own body, chest-deep, in mud sticky as glue and heavy as scale weights. One hand plunged deep into the muck for balance. He managed to save the other by clinging to the cantle. The horse floundered into another bucking attempt at freedom, and a hoof slammed Nightfall’s knee hard enough to incapacitate him. Without the cushion of mud, it would have shattered the bone for certain. He gritted his teeth and waited for the pain to diminish.

The sorcerer’s gaze followed Nightfall’s course. His stance displayed assurance, and his features twisted in obvious amusement. For now, he played along with Edward. "You may call me Ritworth the Iceman. I’ve come for your squire."

"My squire?" Edward glanced briefly at Nightfall, then back at their guest. "My squire has enough to do tending me. His services aren’t for hire."

"It’s not his services I’m after." His grin became more I like a rictus. "It’s his soul."

The words struck Edward dumb, and he frowned in consideration. A chill swept Nightfall, as crisp and painful as the coldest winter night. It made little sense for the sorcerer to reveal himself this way, and he seemed too smart to make such an obvious mistake. Accustomed to reading motives, Nightfall put the pieces together quickly. He recalled the Healer’s description of the sorcerer’s ceremony in Delfor, how pain had driven a dying man’s natal ability to the surface. It seemed a small jump to guess that not just physical agony, but intense emotional trauma, could affect one of the talented in the same fashion. Clearly, Ritworth planned to send Nightfall into a panic, thereby drawing his gift to the surface. The torture would come later, amid the final tearing of soul from body.

The idea brought a rush of the very terror Nightfall knew he had to suppress. Even as he struggled to drive it down, the oath-bond fluttered to noisy, painful life within him, an ear-splitting alarm that made action all but impossible. Nightfall gasped, the agony in his head scarcely bearable. For an instant he wondered if the sorcerer had used a spell to create the pain, but his heart told him otherwise. It came of other, more familiar magic; and he traced the thought that had reawakened Gilleran’s handiwork. It came in an instant. There could be only one reason Ritworth had so casually revealed himself to Edward. The sorcerer planned to kill the prince.

Irony only intensified the excruciating mixture of headache and hysteria. One magic must drive him to chase away the only man who might rescue him from the other. Either way would cost his soul eternal torment, yet one could spare the life of a man he was growing to like. He gathered breath to shout, mud yielding to the expansion of his rib cage. “Master, run! Run! Save yourself!"

The oath-bond receded, allowing thought to trickle in, accompanied by an uncontrollable fear. As his vision cleared, he saw Ritworth shout something uninterpretable, finger pointed at Edward.

"Run!" Nightfall shouted again, flopping into the swamp mud for a desperate run to shore. The muck closed around him, swallowing him into its depths, and he managed to move less than an arm’s length from the horse in the time it took Ritworth to cast his spell.

Prince Edward drew his sword and ducked at once, using the gelding as a shield. Something radiant struck the side of the white’s head, back-splashing in sparks and droplets like iridescent liquid. The horse went still, his eyes locked wide with raw terror and shock. Frost formed on ear hairs and whiskers, then the magically frozen head shattered into fragments on the ground, and blood pooled from a neck that seemed more glass than flesh.

For an instant, time stood still. "Holy Father,” Prince Edward said in awe, and his voice seemed loud in the sudden hush. Nightfall grabbed desperately for any object of substance, groping through the thick, unyielding mud. The daggers in his leg and boot sheaths had become buried beyond hope, and he fished for tunic pockets washed askew. The sorcerer’s head lowered, and he mumbled, apparently tapping captured souls for another spell. The oath-bond became a constant scream that bounced agony through Nightfall’s brain. He touched some object in the sludge, and his fingers winched desperately around it. It gave, nothing more than a fragile stem. Through a fog of disappointment, Nightfall kept his hand tight around the ball of mud. It would not kill, but it might distract. He hurled it at the sorcerer. "Damn it!" he screamed. "Run! Save yourself, or he’ll kill us both. Just run!"