Anthology - The Realms of the Elves

Frightened as Rhespen was, that insight steadied him, rekindled his anger at Orchtrien, and reminded him of the Tightness of his cause. I slew the green, he told himself, and I can kill this thing, too.

But he'd need protection. He rattled off an incantation and sketched a glyph on the air. Figures identical in every way to himself, three-dimensional reflections created without the instrumentality of mirrors, sprang into existence all around him.

The ghargatula's sting whipped around its massive body and struck one of the images, popping it like a soap bubble. Good. That meant the gigantic fiend couldn't tell the difference between the real Rhespen and the false ones.

Of course, at any given moment, it might still target the genuine article by chance, and even if it didn't, it wouldn't take it long to obliterate all the phantoms. As the ghargatula crouched low, compressing its ungainly form, to destroy a second illusion with its fangs, Rhespen declaimed another spell, whereupon he started shifting rapidly back and forth between the material world and a higher level of reality. During those moments when he was elsewhere, the devil shouldn't be able to touch or even see him.

Like the phantom duplicates, the trick was a useful but less than perfect defense. Rhespen could only hope that, functioning in tandem, they'd prove sufficient. He brandished his staff and hurled a blast of flame at the ghargatula.

As far as he could tell, the attack had no effect. The devil eradicated another illusion with a jab of its claws.

He battered it with conjured hailstones. That didn't appear to hurt it, either. Obviously, like many spirits, it was essentially impervious to certain forces. But he couldn't remember which ones, and could only pray to discover its vulnerabilities by trial and error before it succeeded in landing an attack.

He splashed it with steaming acid, and that was useless, too. It still squatted low, and its gaping jaws leaped at him. He smelled its fetid breath-actually felt the points of gigantic fangs as they snapped shut on his body-then he was a wraith once more, and the teeth passed harmlessly through him. He scrambled clear of the ghargatula's mouth before his body could slip back into the sphere of solid matter.

He pierced his foe with darts of force, and at last it hissed and jerked in pain. He cast such spells for as long as he could, then switched to bright, crackling flares of lightning. The thunderbolts charred it and made it convulse.

Yet when Rhespen expended the last of his lightning, the behemoth was still on its feet. Its flanks heaving, arms and stinger lashing, it lunged forward.

Rhespen retreated. Glancing about, he saw that he only had a single duplicate left. His jumps between planes were slowing as the enchantment that enabled them ran out of power.

If the gods were kind, he might have time for one more spell before the ghargatula plunged its fangs, talons, or stinger into him. But perhaps that was all right. With his weapons-the effective ones, anyway-all expended, he only had one more tactic, one final forlorn hope, to try anyway.

He raised the truesilver staff in both hands, high above his head and parallel to the floor, and declaimed the opening phrases of his spell. He tried to make the cadence and intonation precise, and to invest the words of power with all the concentration and willpower he could muster. To believe that the magic would prevail was the only way to make it perfect, and he was certain nothing less would do.

The ghargatula reared above him, and hurtled down like an avalanche, jaws spread wide. He chanted the final word of his incantation, and green light suffused the devil's form as if it were burning from the inside out. In an instant, its form dissolved, leaving only a luminous haze behind to fade gradually away.

Panting, trembling, Rhespen marveled at his luck.

Killing the ghargatula would have been a considerable feat, but as far as he was concerned, he'd accomplished something even more extraordinary by returning it to its own infernal domain. That had required breaking the enchantment that summoned and controlled it, which was to say, overcoming Orchtrien's mystical power with his own.

It shouldn't have worked. The gold was by far the superior mage. That was the point of the whole lunatic enterprise. But because of the element of chaos intrinsic to sorcery, it was theoretically possible for any magician to break the enchantment of any other, and tonight he'd proven the theory valid.

Which, he realized with a stab of alarm, didn't mean he was out of danger. He'd activated a ward that had unleashed the ghargatula on him. What if the same magic had also alerted Orchtrien that an intruder had entered the library?

Rhespen listened for sounds emanating from elsewhere in the keep, and heard nothing. With his mystical sensitivities, he examined the ether around him. It didn't appear that anyone was about to teleport into the chamber.

So apparently he was all right. He flourished his staff and shifted and molded the ambient patterns of magical force as a painter might swirl and blend paint on a palette, recreating an approximation of the red bands he'd noticed before. They were inert, but if one of the golds glanced around the room with magesight and didn't look too closely, he might think the broken ward was still intact.

Rhespen extracted a series of tiny objects from his pockets and set them on the floor. He waved his hand over them, and they swelled into normal-sized pens, bottles of ink, and blank books. He then called on certain spirits of the air, who revealed their presence by taking up the writing implements and beginning to copy the contents of several of the dragons' grimoires. The quills flew and the pages turned with supernatural rapidity.

Rhespen set his hand on Winterflower's head and whispered words of power that sent the shadows spinning around the darkened chamber. Every magician learned spells to dissolve the works and break the bindings of another, but he felt at once that this one was different. His arm burned with power straining for release.

On the final syllable, it blazed from his flesh into hers. She jerked, but afterward eyed him uncertainly.

Assailed by doubt, he asked, "Do you feel any different?"

"I… think so," she said.

"The counterspell was supposed to break Orchtrien's hold on you. I was certain-"

"By the Winsome Rose, you're right! I'm myself again! It just took a moment for me to realize." She threw herself into his embrace, and for a while, they were too busy to talk. But finally she asked, "How? How did you kill him? Did you take him in his sleep?"

He blinked in surprise. "I didn't have to kill him to liberate you. The magic cleansed you all by itself. I stole his secrets to obtain the proper counterspell. They're right there." He nodded toward the haversack containing the copybooks, shrunken again for ease of transport, where it sat on a chair with his rod leaning beside it.

Now it was her turn to seem nonplussed.

"It will be all right," he assured her. "I now possess all the lore Orchtrien does. I haven't crammed every bit of it into my head yet, but it's in that bag, available for use. That means we can run far away, and he won't be able to track us. I can block his attempts at divination."

She gave her head a little shake, as if to snap her thoughts into focus. "That's wonderful. How will you sneak the secrets-and me, of course-out of the city?"

He grinned. "That's the easy part. I have a spell of teleportation stored in my staff. Grab anything you wish to carry with you, and I'll whisk us both away."

"I only want my jewelry box." She turned to fetch it, and something banged. Rhespen realized it must be the door, flying open and smashing into the wall. Running footsteps pounded toward the bedchamber.