Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

I say that you’re an ass, Lavim.

Lavim refused to be insulted. “Might be, might be. But I’m an ass with a magic flute.”

Piper’s voice was cold inside Lavim’s head. Aye, and I couldn’t think of anything more foolish or dangerous.

Lavim watched the moons’ light run along the satin-smooth wood.

“You’re mad, aren’t you? Strange, since it’s me who should be mad at you for telling me that I needed to have you tell me how to work the magic.”

He nodded solemnly. “Friends don’t lie to friends.”

Friends don’t steal from friends either, Lavim.

Stung, the kender slid off the rock. “I didn’t steal the flute! You gave it to me!”

I asked you to give it to Tyorl.

“And I said I would. Pretty soon, too!”

Lavim, I don’t know what you have planned, but it had better not involve the flute. There are only a handful of spells you can work with the flute’s magic, and you don’t know what they are.

Lavim chuckled. “I know what two of them are. A smell-spell and a transport spell. And I don’t need a smell-spell now!”

He left the ravine, scrambling up the steep sides, and dashed toward the campsite.

“It’ll be easy!” he crowed. “We’ll just transport to Thorbardin and save Kelida and Stanach and maybe this Hauk fellow, too!”

No! Lavim, no! That spell takes words, too. You have to know them as you play the notes. If you try that spell without the right words, you’ll be standing in the middle of nowhere with three piles of dust who used to be your friends!

Lavim stopped, head cocked and frowning. Then a smile smoothed the wrinkles on his weather-browned face. He had the solution to that problem, too. “That’s all right, Piper. Just tell ’em to me when I have to know ’em.”

Piper, who might as well have been riding a runaway horse down a mountain, wished desperately that he had something to hold on to. He’d need it. There was no way to stop Lavim now.

Tyorl knew he believed in Lavim’s haunting the instant he saw the kender pull out the mage’s flute. Puffing like an old bellows from his run up the side of the ravine, Lavim waved the elf down from the hilltop.

“Tyorl! C’mere! I’ve figured it all out! I can get us to Thorbardin before you know it!”

At once he heard a voice from memory. Stanach’s, low and rough with grief, whispering, “Piper’s known in Thorbardin for his transport spells.”

Piper! Tyorl begged silently, Piper, don’t let him do it! Tyorl scrambled, tripping over a jutting stone and sliding most of the way down the hill on his heels. The gods only knew what would happen if Lavim misinterpreted the instructions for a transport spell. The words and gestures of a spell were delicate things. How much more precise must the notes be when a spell is enacted with a mage’s flute! What manner of spell could be mistakenly loosed?

Tyorl dove for Lavim.

So did Finn.

And so did Kem.

The kender went down in a welter of arms and legs, kicking and squirming, but held the flute with a sure grip.

“Hey! Wait! What’s the matter? Let me up! You don’t understand I—”

Tyorl pulled himself out from under Finn’s knee, keeping his grip on Lavim’s ankle. Finn twisted away from Kern’s elbow and never relinquished his hold around the kender’s middle. Kem tried to haul Lavim to his feet. No one held his hands and no one thought to clamp a hand over his mouth.

Lavim, certain that his companions had somehow misunderstood what he’d said—clearly if they’d understood him they’d all be much happier than they were now—dragged air into his lungs and raised the flute to his lips.

He’d thought, somehow, that the tune for a transport spell would be just a little more exciting than three little notes. As he heard the first of them, Piper bellowed in his head. Lavim thought probably the spell should have sounded more delicate, somehow just a little more gentle, than curses. He seemed to fade, to stretch, and suddenly his stomach twisted around inside him and tied itself in knots.

Very strange, he thought, as all sense of feeling drained out of him. (Through his fingers and toes, it seemed.) I think when I come out of this spell, I’m going to need to find a place to get sick for a minute or two. I suppose I’d better send us outside the city. It would be a little embarrassing to lose your dinner in front of a whole lot of—

Suddenly Lavim felt nothing at all.

Tyorl hit the ground with a teeth-jarring thud. When he tried to catch his breath, smoke filled his lungs. Fire licked across his fingers, and he would have cried out had he the breath to make any sound at all. Damned kender’s set us on fire!

“Get up! Tyorl! Get up!”

That was Finn. Tyorl tried, from long habit, to obey. He dragged a knee under himself and slipped, splashing into cold water.

Damned kender’s put us in the middle of the ocean!

“Tyorl, please get up!” That was Lavim, and though Tyorl was not prepared to swear that he heard fear in the kender’s voice, what he did hear there made him flounder and splash and finally push himself to his feet. He dragged a hand across his face, wiping away thick mud and slimy, clinging grasses. Staggering, he rounded on the kender. Lavim was only a small indistinct form in the smoky night.

“Name of the gods,” he snarled, “where are we?”

“I—I’m sorry, Tyorl. I didn’t mean for us to end up here, really I didn’t. I just wanted to end up outside the city because I was feeling a little, uh, queasy, and I thought it wouldn’t really be polite to turn up in somebody’s house without a specific invitation. And then I kind of didn’t know what to do and there was no one to ask and the whole spell just sort of fell apart about—” He scratched his head and looked around at the flames marching ever closer. “—uh, here. Are you all right?”

“Where’s the flute?”

Lavim shrugged. “I don’t know, I—”

“ Where is the flute ?”

Lavim drew a deep breath then smiled sheepishly “I have it.”

“Give it to me.”

“But Tyorl, I—”

“ Now !” Tyorl roared.

Lavim meekly handed over the flute. “All right. But Piper says—”

Tyorl’s voice was low, dangerous, and challenging. “Piper says what?”

“Not to throw it away. He says we might need it.”

The smoke was thicker now, and, when he looked around him, Tyorl saw Finn helping Kembal to his feet. The four stood in water up to their knees, surrounded by tall marsh weeds. Only a quarter mile away, flocks of cattails, like tiny torches, were ablaze as far west as Tyorl could see. Embers from the fire and clumps of burning grass flew, wind-blown, through the thick black air. He grabbed Lavim roughly by the shoulder and jerked him around hard.

“Look.”

Lavim squirmed. “I see.”

“We’re in the bogs, Lavim, and we’re surrounded by wildfire. Is this your idea of a little way outside the city?”

“No, but—”

Finn slogged through the mud and foul standing water. He grabbed Tyorl’s arm and pointed east. “This way. I don’t know a thing about these swamps, but heading for the clear is about all we can do.” His blue eyes hard, he flicked a glance at Lavim, then back to the elf. “I think we should kill the little bastard and then get out of here.”

Lavim, about to apologize, snapped his mouth shut. He watched as Finn vanished into the smoke and waited until Kem sloshed past before he looked up at Tyorl. “You don’t think he really meant that do you?”

Tyorl didn’t answer but herded Lavim ahead of him.

Piper, Lavim asked silently, you don’t think Finn meant that, do you?