Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

Now he produced a second bucket, gripping the perfectly clean Bront by the back of his neck, and tucking the bucket under his face. “Bront,” he said. “Come back.”

Upheaval shook the mighty frame. His head came up and he began to puke mightily. Endless this disgorging seemed, yet when he was done, the bucket was precisely filled with pigment, and there was not an iota of spillage. Hew had taken up one of his host’s flasks of wine, and now gently offered it to the warrior, whose eyes seemed to be clearing.

“Perhaps you’d like a cleansing draught?” he said.

Disbelief, then outrage entered Bront’s unfocused eyes as he recognized the two solicitous faces gazing down at him. The proffered flask was something he could grasp—he did so, and drank it off. Rose unsteadily and stood swaying, gaping dazedly upon the mountain peaks that marched away from this fastness on every side.

“Drop that over the railing, would you Bront?” the sorcerer pleasantly suggested, indicating the bucket which the warrior had spewed full. The swordsman stiffly picked it up, and carried it to the balcony’s edge as if it weighed a thousand stone. Then set it down and stood gripping the balustrade, and gazing out wild-eyed into the gulf.

“I was dead !” It was a hoarse shout of protest addressed to the universe. Hew came cautiously to his side.

“I can’t tell you how I rejoice in your…recovery.”

“You killed me!”

“No! I prevented you from killing me , and it resulted in your death! Surely you’ll acknowledge there’s an important difference?”

But the gulf distracted Bront’s wild eye. He had, it was apparent, no thought to spare for quibbles over cause and effect. Again he announced to the vast, limpid mountain air: “I was dead !”—wonder now equaled the note of protest in his voice.

“Come, my dear, respected Bront,” urged Kadaster, “drop the bucket off the balcony, and let us take more wine together.”

As the warrior held the bucket poised to drop, he slanted a question to the tintmaster. “What color would you call this here that I drowned in?”

“Mauve.”

Bront released it as he might a striking snake, and shuddered as he watched it—his death there plummeting into the void, dwindling away…

In easy chairs, gazing over the gulf, the three of them drank wine. Bront between swallows sometimes seemed to marvel at the flask itself, and at his own hand that held it, but soon enough he drained the wine, and poured himself some more.

“Gentlemen,” Kadaster said, “your commission is of the highest importance. To understand where I mean to send you, you must first consider that no light is ever lost, or ever will be lost. Second, you must grasp that time is light. No light is ever lost, and every eon’s glow, each intricate detail, is still fleeing through the universe, radiating outward from its moment of origin. Your destination will lie within this swelling sphere of light.”

“Will lie,” Hew added carefully, “within this sphere of time.”

“Precisely. And precisely what you are to deliver is a bit of light. You, estimable Hew, will shortly be given an insight into the details of this delivery, which it falls to you particularly to execute.”

The wizard paused, and seemed to muse. Bront cleared his throat. “What you need done, this man here, this execrable scaffold-monkey, can do. But you’ve gone to the trouble of painting me mauve before the eyes of the town, drowning me in it, and resurrecting me up here, all because I too have some part in this wall-smearing commission?”

“Your assumption is absolutely correct, good Bront, and I sincerely grieve at the understandable pique your words express. We had, perforce, to rely on chance, and chance was dreadfully unkind to you.

“And I fear the same element of chance will govern your execution of our aim where I will shortly send you. We may rejoice, at least, that this mission of yours lies near at hand.” He rose, and invited them back to the parapet. “It lies, indeed, not thirty leagues due south of here. You’ll be there in scarce three days’ march.”

Hew and Bront viewed the Siderion Mountains on whose spine they were perched. It was an awesome range of sharp, snow-crowned peaks which they knew to stretch a hundred leagues due south.

“Thirty leagues as the crow flies?” Hew was amazed. “Scarce three days? You mean a month’s trek, surely.”

Bront’s thoughts seemed to have wandered. “Resurrection…” he murmured. “How strange it feels, this…reacquaintance with the world…”

The wizard smiled his sympathy. To Hew’s question, he said, “You misconceive the mission. When, in an hour or so, you set out yonder, these mountains will be utterly worn away. A gently rolling high plateau—all that will be left of them—is what you’ll tread. But come now, both of you, to my storerooms to be armed and clad.”

Returning alone to the balcony, Bront did not disdain the wine—nor had he refused from Kadaster’s stores a trail cloak and stout new buskins. While the sorcerer’s golden advance had not erased, it had surely moderated his indignation at his sufferings in that cask of paint.

It irked him that the wall-smearer was still closeted with the mage in private conference…Still, his curiosity was undeniably piqued: the distant future was to be their destination.

When the sorcerer and Hew returned, the tintmaster wore a leathern harness which wrapped a row of cylinders across his chest. A jar of pigment was socketed in each of these lidded cylinders, and each jar sprouted the handle of what looked to be a remarkably small brush.

“My friends…” The mage was pouring a round into their cups. “…Forgive me now if my parting injunctions seem spare to you. This is the mage’s hardest task—to stint direction when chance is the magic’s key additive. I must, perforce, describe your task elliptically.

“At the distance I have named due south of here, lies Minion. It is a bustling place, a gamester’s hive of sleepless carnival. Your task lies in the Crystal Combs, a few leagues eastward, but your preparation must commence in Minion. There you will procure the materials good Hew has determined. Engage a jack-haul—a spry one who can run and fight as well as carry—and make up his load with all you will need inside the Combs.

“At some point prior to your departure from Minion, you will have met your third man, precisely how I cannot say. You will know him for your own because he too will be bound for the Combs. These are reached via tunnels beneath them, and in these, you will certainly encounter conflict with the men who sap and chip from below at the crystals. Your third man will know a way into the tunnels.

“Here, Bront, the combative skills that so distinguish you will come into play. But please note that yours is, in essence, a beneficent mission. Where a solid clubbing will suffice, you are not to spill avoidable blood. When you are up in the Combs themselves, you must take particular care not to harm the denizens there, the Slymires, though I am afraid they are dangerous in the extreme, and may be fiercely aggressive.

“When you have reached the primitive Archive of the Slymires—their grotto of runes—you will have a final and most vital task. Hew will need a great deal of help in constructing the scaffolding he needs to ascend the walls of those colossal vaults, and execute that last, most vital act.”

“…I am to help him construct his… scaffold ?”

“Yes.”

Bront shuddered violently. He seemed to be having a full-body memory of his most recent experience on a scaffold. He touched, beneath his cuirass, a pouch of golden lictors—Kadaster’s advance. Registering some comfort from this contact, he shuddered again, more softly.