Элейн Каннингем - The Wizardwar

He tuned his mind's ear for the silent response, the familiar, elfsong voices of sages long dead. They spoke in a single-note chorus of wordless, overwhelming terror. Waves of emotion swept over him like an icy storm, stealing his breath. Stopping his heart.

Crushing pain enveloped Zalathorm's chest, sending him staggering back. He fell heavily against the chamber's only door, unable to move or breathe. For long moments he believed he would die in this room.

Finally healing magic, more ancient even than the sages' remembered fear, pulsed from the crimson star.

The king's heart leaped painfully, then took up its normal rhythm. Slowly his agony receded. Once again, the crimson star had preserved its creator.

Once again, it had given Zalathorm an answer he could find nowhere else. The gem was undying history, centuries of experience preserved in eternal immediacy. In all of Halruaa's long history, Zalathorm knew of only one wizard who could inspire such terror in the time-frozen sages' hearts. Though no word had been given, Zalathorm had his answer all the same.

Somehow, Akhlaur had returned.

The streets below King Zalathorm's palace teamed with life, even though the sun barely crested the city's eastern wall. Matteo stood at the king's side, listening as Zalathorm received a seemingly endless line of supplicants.

It was Matteo's first day as King's Counselor, and already he was fighting off the urge to fidget like a schoolchild. The king had charged him with the defense of Queen Beatrix. Why not let him get on with it?

Matteo could not understand the king's insistence on honoring his custom of granting daily audience. In these extraordinary times, mundane routine seemed as out of place as a witless sheep among unicorns!

Reminders of the recent battles were everywhere. Laborers still cleared away the debris and rubble cluttering the king's city. The pyres in the burial gardens outside the city walls burned steadily. Professional mourners sang themselves into rasping silence, then yielded their places to others. Their keening songs soared up into the smoky clouds, commending the spirits of fallen Halruaans to the gods and their bodies to the sky.

The Halruaans were a proud and defiant people who mingled mourning rituals with extravagant victory celebrations. Students at the mage schools were sent home until after the new moon. Merchants and artisans closed their shops before highsun and did not reopen after the sunsleep hours were past. Street performers sang ballads and acted out tableaus; fireworks dazzled the night skies. Somber, hardworking Halruaans, wizards and common folk alike, devoted themselves to defiant celebration, as if to thumb their noses at ubiquitous Death.

Outside the palace, the familiar song of the street began a swift crescendo and took on a faintly dissonant note. Zalathorm nodded to Matteo. Glad for the diversion, the young jordain went to the window to see what was going on.

As always, a throng waited outside, hoping for audience with the king. The scene had a festival air. Street vendors came to display their wares, and wandering performers kept the crowd entertained. Matteo quickly averted his eyes from a young juggler, for the lad's deft hands and carefree grin reminded him too painfully of his friend Tzigone.

His gaze slid over the dancing bear that plodded and whirled like a corpulent matron, and settled briefly upon the drovers hawking exotic beasts. Beaming parents handed their children up for rides upon camels from the Calimshan deserts or an enormous three-horned lizard from the jungles of Chult or an aged and rather threadbare unicorn. There was even a young elephant, an animal seldom seen in Halruaa. Two small, shrieking children clung to the gaudy red and yellow litter on the animal's broad, gray back.

Matteo's eyes darted back to the elephant. Its long trunk lashed back and forth, as if swatting away an attacking swarm. He looked closer and realized this was precisely what the animal was doing. Several people had taken to pelting the unfortunate creature with fruit and morning cakes.

He turned back to Zalathorm. "One of the drovers has brought an elephant. The crowd is attacking it, perhaps because the animal is native to Mulhorand and a reminder of the invaders."

A scowl darkened the king's face. He rose from his throne and stalked toward the window, gesturing for Matteo to follow. Courtiers parted as the two passed, watching with furrowed brows as the king broke his own unbending custom.

Zalathorm led the way to a hidden stairwell, where narrow, winding steps spiraled down to the street. These he took at an astonishingly brisk pace.

"With respect, sire, may I ask your intentions?" Matteo called as he jogged after the king.

Zalathorm stopped and shot a glance back at his counselor. "The people outside the palace are waiting for me to settle disputes. This particular one isn't going to improve with age."

Matteo would have argued the wisdom of marching into the middle of a street disturbance, but he assumed the king had his reasons. He followed quickly, loosening the peace-ties on his daggers as he went

By the time they reached the street, the situation had devolved into chaos. The elephant whirled this way and that, lunging at its circle of tormenters with short and astonishingly swift charges. Two wizards had cast spells of levitation to lift the terrified children out of the boxlike litter. They were floating, kicking and wailing, toward the frantically outstretched arms of their parents.

Several more wizards advanced on the animal. Small balls of crackling, bluish energy flew from their outstretched hands and exploded against the elephant's hide with sharp, sizzling pops.

Matteo immediately sensed their strategy: Back the elephant into a walled garden, where it could be easily contained. The animal, though, was too panicked to cooperate. Emitting shrill, trumpeting cries, it began to rear and pitch like a bee-stung stallion.

"Idiots," muttered Zalathorm.

Since their miniature lightning shockballs were not putting the elephant into retreat, the wizards began to hurl larger missiles. A small barrage of many-colored lights hurtled toward the terrified animal.

The king lifted both hands and slammed his right fist against his left palm. Immediately the missiles struck an invisible wall and were deflected off at a sharply climbing angle, ascending the sky like festival fireworks.

One of these missiles, a bolt of energy shaped like a slim crimson javelin, glanced off the magical barrier and came around in a tight turn, like a fish changing directions in a swift moving stream. It hurtled directly, unerringly, toward the spellcaster who had disrupted its course.

Matteo's response was part training, part instinct. He leapt in front of the king, his hands lunging for the shaft of the magical javelin. The weapon scorched through his clenched fist-only his deeply inbred resistance to magic kept the thing from burning down to bone.

Even as his fingers closed on the shaft, he twisted his wrist slightly, not trying to stop the weapon so much as to shift it off course. The magic weapon turned broadside but kept its course. Matteo's right arm jerked free of its shoulder joint in a searing, white-hot flash of pain. He hurtled backward, still holding the crimson bolt, and slammed into a courtyard wall.

Matteo tossed aside the dissipating weapon and reached for his left-handed dagger, ready to protect the king if need be, but in the brief moment it took him to blink away the dancing stars from his vision, Zalathorm had moved to stand beside the elephant.

The king stroked the animal's bristled gray hide in a soothing manner. When the drover came up to take the reins, Zalathorm spoke a few quiet words. Matteo could not hear what was said, but he noted how the color leeched from the drover's face. The man backed away, ducking his head repeatedly in quick, nervous bows.