Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

Kistilan fixed his gaze on the speaker—a powerfully built, brightly armored creature slightly larger than most dwarves he had seen. But still only a dwarf. Casually, the wizard muttered a spell and pointed his finger at the insolent creature. But even as he did, the dwarf turned his wide shield, displaying its concave backside. The spell lashed out as a thunderbolt and reflected directly back at Kistilan. The mage stiffened, gasped, and glowed with a greenish light as little lightnings crackled around him. It was over in a second, but he found himself gasping for breath. He glared at the dwarf and snapped, “So that’s what you did earlier? Mirrors? How did you learn that?”

“I have been studying sorcerers,” the dwarf said with a scowl of disgust, as though admitting that he had been mired in manure.

Kistilan’s eyes narrowed.” So you’re the one! Sigamon said a dwarf killed Tantas. That was you.”

“Tantas?” Damon hesitated. “Oh, yes. That one. An evil man. I defended myself against him.”

Kistilan glared at the dwarf. “And now you are interfering with others of my company. How have you brought these . . . No, never mind how. Why have you brought these brothers of sorcery out here to this place?”

“It was the only way I could think of to lure you out here,” Damon told him honestly. “It worked. You’re here.”

“So I am.” The wizard glared at him. “So, what do you want with me?”

“To get rid of you, once and for all,” Damon said. “Will you leave these lands?”

“You . . .” Kistilan hesitated in disbelief. “You think you can threaten me?”

“I just did,” Damon pointed out. “Will you leave, or will you die?”

“You arrogant runt!” the wizard roared. “Des domenet bes! Cha . . .!”

“Kapach!” Damon shouted.

“. . . pak! ” the wizard finished, then gasped as a winged thing with enormous teeth and claws plummeted toward him, coming out of nowhere. “Kapach deset!” he hissed. The winged thing faded into smoke, but blood ran from scratches on the wizard’s cheek where its claws had reached him.

“Another kind of mirror,” Damon explained.

“Pestilence!” Kistilan shrieked. “Dwarf, you will die for this!” Enraged, he raised a hand, opened his mouth, and tumbled a dozen feet to the hard ground. Damon had held his attention so thoroughly that several soldiers of the Roving Guard were able to get beneath the floating throne. With a climbing hook and line, they had snared the chair and jerked it out from under the wizard.

Kistilan was still recovering from his tumble when a heavy dwarf landed on top of him. With powerful hands, Damon rolled the man over onto his stomach, then straddled his shoulders, raising his hammer. For a second, he hesitated.

The instant’s hesitation was all Kistilan needed. Calling on powers that very few mages had been given, or even knew about, he summoned darkness and chaos, and hurled it outward from himself.

One instant, Damon was astraddle the fallen wizard. The next, he found himself tumbling through a murky, stifling nothingness, with unseen terrors tearing at him from every side. His hammer was flung away, and he felt his armor being ripped open. With every ounce of will, he rejected the spell, knowing with dogged determination that it was only magic. But he had never encountered magic like this. Nothing had prepared Damon for the sheer, brutal, evil power of dark forces unleashed. He felt his ribs beginning to break, his spine twisting, his eyes starting to burn . . . and somewhere in his mind a voice said, “Damon! Quickly! Release me!”

“Who—” he tried to ask, but his lungs were being crushed.

“You made me be a horse,” the voice urged. “Only you can undo what you have done. Hurry, before you die!”

Damon felt his mind growing dim. Nothing seemed to make any sense, and he realized that he had stopped breathing. But there was something he needed to do. Something, but what?

“Hurry!” the mind voice urged. “Reverse your spell, and I will try to help you! You know how!”

Faintly, Damon remembered a word. The mirror word. “K . . . Kapach ,” he whispered, as the world went dim and his mind closed its gates. Thorbardin, he thought, feebly. Everbardin, receive this one. . . . And then there was nothing.

Kistilan got to his feet, backing away from the struggling, gasping dwarf who lay now where he had fallen.

Above and around the twitching body, a darkness seemed to hover—a busy darkness full of shrieking, tearing things that were hard to see. Grimly, the wizard concentrated, increasing the power of his torment-death spell. A human would have been dead by now, he thought, yet still the dwarf struggled.

A thrown hammer whisked past the wizard’s face, and he glanced about. The other dwarves were all around him, rushing to attack. Quickly he shielded himself, then resumed his concentration. Hammers and blades drummed at his sorcerer’s screen, some of them nearly reaching him, but he ignored them and increased the intensity of his concentration. It seemed a shadow passed above him, and he heard hooves on the stony ground, but did not turn. There was nothing they could do to him. With fierce willpower, he pressed the spell.

Abruptly, his shield of power seemed to implode upon him, knocking him sprawling. A spinning hammer flashed just above his nose, and he tried desperately to recreate his shield. But it faltered and shredded around him, and he realized that there was another magic at work here.

He looked up. Nearby, just beyond the ring of angry dwarves around him, were two men . . . a powerful-looking Cobar nomad, and another one he recognized instantly. Megistal.

Even as Kistilan realized who it was, Megistal’s hands moved gracefully, and a tangle of thorny vines grew around Kistilan, twining around his legs, around his chest and down his arms, twisting tendrils mingling with his whiskers, clawing at his face.

With a curse, the dark mage tore himself free and hissed a chant. The waving, weaving vines shriveled and faded. A flung sword embedded itself in the ground between his feet, and he cursed, muttering. All around him, dwarves were thrown backward, tumbling and somersaulting. A dozen unconscious wizards were flung after them, as was the barbarian beside Megistal. In an instant, the knoll was almost clear. Only two wizards and a fallen dwarf remained. Damon lay facedown, not moving.

“Megistal,” Kistilan hissed. “So you have come.”

“You knew I would,” the red-strap said calmly, drawing up the sleeves of his coat. “We have unfinished business between us, Kistilan.”

“Your oath to kill me . . . if you could.” Kistilan nodded. “But you gave another oath, Megistal. To hold all else in abeyance until the mountain tower is complete.”

“There will be no tower.” Megistal shook his head. “The dwarves have seen to that. Now you must pay for what you did.”

“What I did?” Kistilan laughed harshly. “The Scions gave me my powers, Lunitarian, just as they gave you yours. I am favored of the Scions.”

“You were,” Megistal admitted. “And of all who learned at their feet, you were the first to betray them. You turned their gifts against them.”

“They refused to give me more!”

“They gave you all they could. Like the rest of us . . . the favored ones . . . it was up to you to go beyond, if you desired.”

“I did!” Kistilan snapped. “What they wouldn’t give, I took.”

“And the Scions are gone from Krynn now. And I have sworn, in the names of our mentors, that you will die.”

“You haven’t the power that I have!” Kistilan shouted, flinging a spell at the buckskin- and fur-clad man. Brilliant lightnings writhed like serpents around Megistal, twining and striking at him, then diminished. The red-moon sorcerer stood unscathed, smiling faintly. With a hiss of rage, Kistilan drew darknesses around himself like a second cloak, and unleashed them furiously, muttering spell after spell.