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

At length, the mine’s mouth opened before them, and the sky beyond where broken clouds, red-litten, drifted through a purple sky. Like a liquid, the Slymires’ legions flooded out, coursed through gullies, surged up bluffs, to fill, with their fluid concourse, a broad plateau dispread a little ways below the Combs.

What a host they were, the Slymires crouched on this plain, their gorgeous eyes abrim with the never-known sky, and its never-known sun sinking swollen to the western horizon!

“They’ve never even dreamed of it before…the sun,” murmured Hew. “I think there was a vague rumor of it, recorded in their runes. It seems, by augmenting these, that we have…awakened their minds.”

“And how will this…” Bront’s voice trailed off, so strange the rapture of that monstrous throng, their fellows joining them in a steady stream still issuing out of the earth, all of them settling down into the same mute awe of the dying sun.

“…how will this save this world?” finished Bront in Hew’s ear.

“I have no idea,” said Hew.

The Slymires sat under the darkening wine of the sky, feeling the breeze which they had never known, watching the sun’s carmine eye slowly lidded by the black horizon. Their own eyes were unearthly gems, entranced in wild surmise. Their foliate plumage bristled and stirred insatiably.

The four stole away from that devout concourse with a courteous, embarrassed stealth, like that of folk who leave a church before the service ends. They picked their way back down to the lichened plain, just as dark began to settle down.

“Gentlemen,” said Hew, “we must make north. I cannot express my gratitude for your stalwart spirits, for your help.”

Cugel resettled his knapsack of crystal. “My friends. I can’t recall a more astonishing or more profitable venture than this we have just shared. I must ask you, without prying I hope, what you gain by what you’ve done. You’ve taken no crystal.”

“Our aim was, ah, altruistic,” Hew answered. “It was, in some way we do not understand, to save this world.”

“You quite astonish me!” said Cugel. “And yet perhaps I am not too amazed, for have not I gained a prize that works a great philanthropy? I bring more power to the Biblionites’ sun-cannons, and haste the selfish Guyal’s fall, and the Biblionites, when they have spread the museum’s gnomens far and wide, will have worked a great service to the world.”

“If indeed they prove the pious altruists they claim to be,” rumbled Jacques.

“Ah well!” Cugel smiled. “Who can see the future?” (Bront and Hew here exchanged a glance.) “I would like to stand you to a fine refreshment back in Minion, and perhaps a bracing little game of chance…but laden with wealth as I now am, night and haste must hide my passage from the common eye. Gentlemen, it has been a privilege, an honor, and an amazement to have made one with you!”

Laden with their warm acknowledgments, Cugel turned away into the dark and made light-foot back toward Minion.

Bront turned to Jacques. “Permit me to say, good sir…that you were worth every lictor of your hire.”

The jack-haul laughed. “Dear Bront—I like you too, and I think you a most excellent fellow. Adieu.” The gloom concealed Bront’s blush, but he was not displeased by the jack-haul’s declaration. As Jacques moved off, Bront cleared his throat in some discomfort.

“Esteemed Hew…”

“Please, most excellent Bront. You are my friend, and I am yours. And I am now, and shall henceforward be, most delighted in our friendship.”

Bront smiled gratefully. “Well then.”

“Well then.”

They turned northward, and at their second stride, found themselves standing on Kadaster’s balcony, the grand sharp peaks of the Siderions marching snow-capped past the edge of sight, splendid beneath a golden sun.

Broadly smiling, Kadaster gestured them toward a table, whereon stood three goblets and a pitcher of wine, and beside which sat two obese pouches of gold specie.

“Hew! Bront! You have done well! You have far exceeded my most sanguine hopes. Sit, and be refreshed!”

“Then your aim has been fulfilled?” asked Hew.

“Oh, yes indeed. Or, technically, it will be.”

They drank, and rested for a space, though the expeditioners eyed the mage aslant, now and again. Bront, at last, could not forbear to ask, “May we know, Kadaster, just how we have helped to…”

“How you have helped to save this world? Why, of course you may! How stupid of me not to explain it at once, now that its eventuation is assured! Now that you have assured it!

“The Slymires, you see, will, not too long after you have visited them, build an array of huge reflecting mirrors of amplificatory crystal. With these they will return to the sun its own tremendously augmented light. I must spare you the rather intricate technical paradoxes—all of them mutually contradictory—involved in this transaction, but by so doing, they will rekindle it.”

Hew blinked. “They will rekindle…the sun?”

“Rekindle the sun. Just so! Another flagon, my dear friends?”

SCOTT LYNCH was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He worked a variety of jobs, including as a dishwasher, waiter, Web designer, freelance writer, and office manager, before publishing his first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora , in 2006. Part of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, concerned with the life of thief and con man Locke Lamora, and set in the world of the shattered Therin Throne Empire, the series is projected to run to seven books. In addition to being a 2007 John W. Campbell Award, William L. Crawford Award, and Locus Award finalist, Scott is a volunteer firefighter, certified in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in the city of New Richmond, Wisconsin.

Laszlo Jazera, aspirant wizard of the High University of Hazar, spent a long hour on the morning of his fifth-year exam worming his way into an uncomfortable suit of leather armor. A late growth spurt had ambushed Laszlo that spring, and the cuirass, once form-fitted, was now tight across the shoulders despite every adjustment of the buckles and straps. As for the groin guard, well, the less said the better. Damn, but he’d been an idiot, putting off a test-fit of his old personal gear until it was much too late for a trip to the armory.

“Still trying to suck it in?” Casimir Vrana, his chambers-mate, strolled in already fully armored, not merely with physical gear but with his usual air of total ease. In truth, he’d spent even less time in fighting leathers than Laszlo had in their half-decade at school together. He simply had the curious power of total, improbable deportment. Every inch the patrician, commanding and comely, he could have feigned relaxation even while standing in fire up to his privates. “You’re embarrassing me, Laszlo. And you with all your dueling society ribbons.”

“We wear silks,” huffed Laszlo, buckling on his stiff leather neck-guard. “So we can damn well move when we have to. This creaking heap of boiled pigskin, I’ve hardly worn it since Archaic Homicide Theory—”

“Forgot to go to the armory for a refit, eh?”

“Well, I’ve been busy as all hells, hardly sleeping—”

“A fifth-year aspirant, busy and confused at finals time? What an unprecedented misfortune. A unique tale of woe.” Casimir moved around Laszlo and began adjusting what he could. “Let’s skip our exam. You need warm milk and cuddles.”

“I swear on my mother, Caz, I’ll set fire to your cryptomancy dissertation.”

“Can’t. Turned it in two hours ago. And why are you still dicking around with purely physical means here?” Casimir muttered something, and Laszlo yelped in surprise as the heat of spontaneous magic ran up and down his back—but a moment later, the armor felt looser. Still not a good fit, but at least not tight enough to hobble his every movement. “Better?”