Anthology: The Realms of the Elves

Startled, he hesitated. Dazzling light blazed, filling the air, blinding and disorienting him. When the glare died, his tortured eyes could just make out, through floating blobs of afterimage, Maldur, ivory wand in hand, and the several half-dragon crossbowmen he'd brought along with him.

"These fellows," the human wizard said, "are watching you closely. Start murmuring an incantation under your breath, begin an occult gesture, or ease a hand toward one of your pockets, and they'll shoot."

"How did you know?" Rhespen asked. He didn't really care how, but if he could get Maldur talking, gloating, it would give him time to try to figure a way out of his trap.

He told himself there had to be a way. It was ridiculous to think that he, who had defeated a ghargatula, might prove unable to cope with half a dozen humans. But actually, he knew such could easily prove to be the case. Wizards were mighty, but only when given a chance to bring their powers to bear. When not, they were as vulnerable as anyone else.

"When you came home," Maldur said, "and found out that this damsel had become the king's whore, it broke you. I have made a study of you and could tell, no matter how you tried to hide it. I watched with satisfaction to see you wither away, but you didn't. The iron came back into your nature, and at the same time, you started to betray signs of exhaustion. I inferred that you were visiting Lady Winterflower at times when the king was elsewhere, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch you sneaking in or out. Not until tonight."

"Because," Rhespen said, "I haven't been coming here. I spent my nights in study of new magic. Tendays ago, I sneaked into the golds' tower of magic and copied all the grimoires."

Maldur's eyes widened. "Impossible."

"No, merely difficult. The lore I stole, all the secrets of draconic sorcery, is in that pouch." He nodded at the haversack.

Rhespen was reasonably sure Maldur would turn in that direction. The white-haired man was, after all, a magician, surely avidly curious, jealous of the arcane might of the wyrms no matter how he tried to suppress such dangerous feelings. He hoped the guards would reflexively shift their eyes as well.

Because he only needed to distract them long enough to speak a single word of power. He whispered the first syllable, and crossbows clacked. Pain stabbed into his guts.

His knees buckling, he denied the agony long enough to grit out the remaining syllables. Magic chimed through the air, and his enemies dropped. The half-dragons were quite possibly dead, or failing that, unconscious. But thanks, perhaps, to some talisman or enchantment of protection, Maldur was merely stunned. Shuddering, blood streaming from his nose, teeth bared in a snarl of effort, he shook his head and managed to raise himself to his knees.

He struggled, too, to level his wand.

Rhespen attempted a second spell and immediately botched it. The excruciating fire in his midsection, the trembling of his hands, and the choked rasp of his voice, made precision impossible. But if he could get his hands on his staff, perhaps he could still shift Winterflower and himself away from here before Maldur recovered sufficiently to stop them..

He looked for Winterflower, and rejoiced to see that she'd already had the sense to pick up the staff and the haversack, too. Then she released the teleport spell he'd bound in the rod and vanished.

He goggled after her in astonishment and horror, until a blast of force from Maldur's wand slammed him into oblivion.

Rhespen woke lying on a rack, his wrists and ankles manacled to the torture apparatus and a vile-tasting leather gag in his raw, dry mouth. Such restraints were an effective way of ensuring that a magician couldn't cast spells.

He wondered if he could have cast them in any case. A healer had evidently tended the multiple puncture wounds in his guts. Otherwise, he might well have succumbed to them already, or failing that, remained unconscious or delirious. But they still throbbed so fiercely he could scarcely bear it, and he felt as weak and feverish as he was parched.

He lay alone in the dungeon for what seemed an eternity, until he wondered if a slow, agonizing, solitary death by thirst was the punishment Orchtrien had decreed for him. But finally footsteps sounded on the stairs. Rhespen turned his head to see the king himself, wearing his elf shape, descending.

Orchtrien extracted the gag from Rhespen's mouth.

"Maldur begged me to put him in charge of your interrogation and punishment," said the gold. "I'm considering it."

Rhespen tried to answer, but his voice was inaudible. Orchtrien unstoppered a leather bottle and held it to his lips.

"I'm told you must content yourself with just a swallow at first, lest it make you sick."

Despite his pain and fear, the cold water sliding down his throat gave Rhespen a moment of bliss, the last such he might ever know.

"Thank you, Majesty," he croaked.

"Thank me by answering my questions truthfully. It may go easier for you if you do. You told Maldur you copied my grimoires. I'd hoped it was simply a lie, a distraction, but I've since discovered that something broke my ghargatula's tether, so I suppose it must be true."

"Yes."

"And Winterflower absconded with the texts."

"Yes." Abandoning Rhespen in the process. He could only assume she'd been too panicked to linger long enough to dart across the floor, grab his hand, and carry him along with her.

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know. We hadn't decided on a destination."

"Curse it, anyway! Why did you betray me, Rhespen? Haven't I given you everything?"

"Everything but what I wanted most. When I begged for that, you sent me away to die."

"No!" The gold hesitated. "Well, all right, that possibility was in my mind. I wanted her, and no hunter likes it when someone tries to balk him in the pursuit of his chosen prey. I was annoyed with you, but by no means certain you'd die. I thought it more likely that your exile would simply cure you of your infatuation and your impudence. And that if you succeeded in your mission, the rewards would more than compensate you for the loss of a woman, however fetching."

"If you didn't want me dead, why didn't you respond to my call?"

"If I, or one of the princes, had crossed the river, all the greens, and all their warriors, would have turned out to fight us. I wanted winter raiding, not all-out war."

"And such strategic considerations aside, you were chastising me, even if it wasn't supposed to result in my demise."

"Just so. But when you returned victorious, your punishment was over. I wasn't angry anymore. I meant it when I lavished honors on you. Why couldn't you put the episode behind us?"

"Perhaps I would have," Rhespen said, "in time. But then I learned that Winterflower hadn't yielded to you of her own free will. You chained her mind and spirit with the foulest sort of sorcery."

Orchtrien stared at his prisoner in seeming amazement, then laughed. "My poor friend. My poor fool. Mind you, I'm not much better. She cozened me as well. She convinced me she truly had come to love me." "She… what?"

"I give you my word as a king and a gold dragon, I never cast any sort of spell on the lady, certainly not a coercion as abominable as that." Orchtrien sighed. "In retrospect, it's easy enough to see what happened. When Duskmere and his confederates lured your company into a trap, it was a useless, ill-considered tactic, born of anger rather than guile. But after Bexendral defeated them, they began to exercise their wits, and when I demanded hostages, they sent us a spy and a witch, to accomplish whatever harm she could. To that end, she established a liaison with you."

"No. That can't be. She despised me at first. I had to win her trust and affection."