Authors: John Dahlgren
Sagaria (78 page)
Samzing was leaning against the passage wall, his eyes closed, his hands interlinked on his chest, mumbling something slowly and steadily.
All in one movement, Sir Tombin slipped the saddle bag from his shoulder, spun it on its strap, and flung it straight into the face of the leading Shadow Knight. The man let out an
oooof
of surprise and reeled backward, obstructing the path of his two fellows.
Sir Tombin took advantage of their momentary confusion to jab forward with Xaraxeer, taking one of the Shadow Knights in the throat with the weapon’s lethal tip. Blood sprayed from a severed artery. The man let out a bubbling scream and dropped his sword, his metal-gloved hands going to his throat as if he might somehow stanch the flow of blood from the fatal wound. Still scrabbling with his hands, he fell twitching at the feet of his comrades.
The Shadow Knight who’d been hit in the face by the saddle bag soon recovered. He snarled in fury. Shadow Knights were accustomed to slaughtering, not to being slaughtered.
Samzing’s eyes popped open. Perima could see that he was staring at something far distant, something not of this world.
Cheireanna darted from her side. Ignored by the remaining Shadow Knights, the peasant girl pounced on the fallen sword of their dying comrade. She scuttled backward in a curious crouch, almost on her hands and knees, holding the seized weapon in one hand. Reaching up with the other, she grabbed at the waist of Perima’s trousers and hauled herself upright.
“Sword,” she said by way of explanation. Her eyes were alight with a wild excitement. “Kill.”
Perima could understand the words perfectly, but the pronunciation was so strange that they seemed to be in a foreign language.
The two remaining Shadow Knights continued their advance on Sir Tombin. As if synchronized, two silver swords swung from opposite directions toward his head. Surely the single blade of Xaraxeer couldn’t defend the Frogly Knight from this dual attack.
But Sir Tombin’s head was no longer there when the two blades clashed in empty air. He’d dropped to his knees at the last instant and rolled away between the Shadow Knights, leaping to his feet behind them while they were still comprehending that they’d been robbed of their kill. His armor seemed to be hardly slowing his movements at all. He must have trained relentlessly for this form of combat.
“Arkanayzee!
” screamed Samzing, freezing everyone where they stood.
Malevolent magic,
thought Perima with a gasp.
A mass of unfurling spider webs fell from the ceiling. Sir Tombin and one of the Shadow Knights had the presence to fend the gentle snare off with their swords and step clear, but the other Shadow Knight was instantly enmeshed. As he struggled with the silken cords, the last two combatants had eyes only for each other. They circled warily, neither daring to strike first. Then Xaraxeer was swooping forward, its golden metal appearing like liquid with the speed of its sweep.
But the Shadow Knight was a swordsman equal in skill. With a slight apparent clumsiness, he parried the blow. The two weapons shuddered as they met. Perima expected one or both to shatter into a million fragments of metal, but Xaraxeer was unaffected and only a small notch was chipped out of the other blade.
There was a ghastly, rasping belch of noise. The Shadow Knight who’d been stabbed in the throat had finally died.
Webster had abandoned the unconscious Sagandran and was fumbling with the lever beside the cage door. Cheireanna sprang across the passageway and held the point of her captured weapon perilously close to his eyes. He became a statue, petrified by terror. Twice in as many minutes, people smaller than him had struck back. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Dampness spread across the front of his loincloth.
Cheireanna gave a cackling laugh.
Behind Webster, Sagandran was forcing himself groggily up onto one elbow.
“No!” he cried to Cheireanna. “Spare him!”
His elbow gave way beneath him and he collapsed back onto the floor.
Very clearly, Cheireanna spoke another single word. “Perhaps.”
Webster, wisely, didn’t move a muscle.
I might as well play my part,
thought Perima, her mind oddly calm, as if in the eye of some emotional hurricane. She stepped forward to where the fallen Shadow Knight was still struggling to free himself from Samzing’s spider webs, and kicked him in the side of the head with all the force she could summon. He let out a bellow of agony.
But I didn’t do him any real damage. If only his temples weren’t shielded by his helmet. Still, it’s enough to keep him out of the action for a while.
She whirled to see what the others were doing.
Sir Tombin was holding Xaraxeer oddly. It seemed that the jarring collision of the two blades had injured his wrist. Realising his advantage, the Shadow Knight was advancing, an anticipatory grin curling his lips.
“So die all foes of Arkanamon, the Shadow Master,” he said with chillingly gentle satisfaction.
He spoke too soon.
All trace of apparent weakness vanishing from Sir Tombin’s grip, the Frogly Knight spun Xaraxeer in a complicated pattern too swift for the eye to follow and brought the weapon up, point foremost, to drive it through the Shadow Knight’s armored protection straight into the man’s abdomen. While Perima watched with a certain sickened enjoyment, the back of the Shadow Knight’s metal suit dimpled up between the shoulder blades as the tip of Sir Tombin’s blade tried to punch its way out.
The Shadow Knight was dead before he knew it. Sir Tombin put his free forearm under the man’s chin and heaved him clear of Xaraxeer’s blade so forcefully that the Shadow Knight’s armored corpse landed on the far side of the passageway. Then Sir Tombin turned toward Perima, a blood craze in his normally gentle eyes.
No, not toward her. Toward the Shadow Knight who was desperately scrabbling free of the spider webs. Perima’s kick hadn’t done as much damage as she hoped. Still draped with strands of magically toughened gray gossamer, the Shadow Knight faced Sir Tombin and reached for his sword.
It wasn’t there.
Perima was as astonished as he was to discover that she was holding it in her hand.
How in heck did that happen? I must have picked it up without thinking when I was kicking him.
The Shadow Knight’s gaze flickered from the sword in Perima’s hand to the sword in Sir Tombin’s, as if he were having to choose between them. Perima could see him assessing who would be the more likely to kill him where he stood: a girl or a knight in armor. The man clearly decided on the knight in armor.
Stupid of you,
Perima thought. Sir Tombin’s far more merciful than I am. But she stayed still as the Shadow Knight bowed his head toward Sir Tombin.
“I fear you have the better of me, sire. At least finish me off quickly.”
“I cannot kill a man in cold blood,” responded the Frogly Knight. “Surrender formally to me and your life shall not be forfeit.”
“I would rather die here than face my master, Arkanamon, having failed in his service.”
“By the end of another day, Arkanamon will be your master no more.”
“I have your word on that?”
Sir Tombin relaxed a little, lowering the tip of Xaraxeer toward the floor. “I cannot make promises as to what the future will hold, but I give you my vow that either Arkanamon will be dead or I will have died in the trying.”
The Shadow Knight began to kneel in submission. “I believe the words of your vow,” he said in a voice full of humility. Then his voice hardened. “I believe you will die in the trying.”
From somewhere on the leg of his armor, he plucked a thin, evilly gleaming little dagger and in a blur of movement threw it in spinning flight toward Sir Tombin’s face.
The Frogly Knight leapt away, but the dagger still took him in the chest, piercing straight through the metal of his armor.
His eyes glazed instantly and he tottered.
The Shadow Knight gave a cackle of laughter and turned to deal with Perima.
Two swords chopped at his neck, one from either side. His head rolled from his shoulders, his face bearing a frozen grimace of stark astonishment.
Perima and Cheireanna faced each other grimly as the Shadow Knight’s headless torso toppled to the floor, blood spouting from the raggedly severed neck.
“Blood sisters,” said Perima quietly, fighting to suppress her rising gorge.
Cheireanna nodded wordlessly.
“Sir Tombin!” said Perima.
Cheireanna scampered to the side of the Frogly Knight. He was holding the side of his chest and moaning. Perima glanced toward the cage door. Webster had stupidly stayed to watch after Cheireanna had whipped her sword away to deal with the Shadow Knight. Before he’d had a chance to think twice about his decision, Samzing’s bony hand had grabbed him by the throat through the bars. Now he was flailing and floundering, trying to escape the wizard’s grip by pushing despairingly at the metal shafts of the cage, his face purpling.
“Let him go,” said Perima. “He can’t harm us now.”
Grudgingly, the wizard obeyed.
Webster sprang backward and leaned over with his hands on his knees, retching. Nothing came up but air.
“But I still have Sagandran,” he said hoarsely.
He turned, only to find that Sagandran was at last, albeit a bit shakily, back on his feet.
“You don’t learn, do you, Webster?” said Sagandran.
The force of the punch to Webster’s jaw almost rammed the boy’s head clear back through the bars. He crumpled to the floor and didn’t move.
“I think I may have broken my hand,” said Sagandran reflectively, staring down at his dangling fingers. “But that felt so good, I really don’t care.”
“Can you work the lever?” snapped Samzing.
“I still have another hand, don’t I?” said Sagandran with a small display of rancor. Perima nodded approvingly. This was Sagandran’s moment of victory. Not so much victory over Webster as victory over himself, and he didn’t want anything to disturb it.
She turned toward Sir Tombin and hurried over.
A few moments later, she was dimly aware of Sagandran and Samzing behind her. Flip jumped out of the wizard’s pocket and raced to stand beside the Frogly Knight’s face. Perima could hardly see him for the tears filling her eyes. Blood was oozing out of Sir Tombin’s breastplate, and clearly there was far more of it puddling up beneath the metal.
“I think,” said the Frogly Knight in a voice so low and weak that they could barely hear him, “that I’m about to say farewell to the quest.”
“You can’t do that,” said Memo fussily, emerging from another of Samzing’s pockets. “The prophecies say you are by the side of The Boy Whose Time Has Come when he has his final confrontation with the Shadow Master!”
“The prophecies could be wrong,” replied Sir Tombin mildly. The small smile he produced was so poignant that Perima felt it like a knife in her heart. She wiped her eyes clear and dropped to her knees.
“Memo’s right, Sir Tombin,” she whispered urgently. “You can’t die. I won’t allow you to.”
“Far be it from me to defy the wishes of a Princess of the Blood Royal of the Kingdom of Mattani,” said Sir Tombin, that terrible ebbing smile flickering on his lips once more, “but I fear that my own distinctly unroyal blood is deserting me.” He struggled to rally himself, to make himself better heard. “Sagandran,” he said, his voice barely louder than before, “you must lead this party now. I hope I have served you well.”
Perima could see that Sagandran, too, was in tears but trying not to show it.
“You’ll pull through this, Sir Tombin,” he said.
“No, he won’t,” said Samzing after a moment. His fingers were pressed against Sir Tombin’s neck. “My old, dear friend is dead.”
“
No!
” said Perima. No other word would come.
igh, high above where Sagandran and his friends mourned Sir Tombin, a tall figure stood on one of the topmost parapets of the Palace of Shadows.
Arkanamon.
The Shadow Master.
His black cloak fluttered in the biting wind. On his head was an elaborate crown. It was a vanity of his, an affectation, a crown that he had made to symbolize his dominance of all three worlds. The band around his forehead was of sullen gray unpolished lead: the leaden Shadow World. Above that were embellishments in silver: the silvery Earthworld. The topmost decorations comprised three stylized hands with upstretched grasping fingers made of gold: Sagaria, whose silver light near-mirrored that of a bright star.
Two of the grasping hands were filled. The hand on the left side held the midnight-blue Shadow Crystal, dark as a starless sky. The hand on the right held the clear Star Crystal of Sagaria, shining as intensely as the stars that tthe Shadow Crystal yearned for.
But the central hand was empty.
It awaited the Rainbow Crystal, the crystal that would reconcile the other two. The crystal that had been lost in the Earthworld, then rediscovered by the old man currently languishing in Arkanamon’s dungeons. It had been given by that imbecilic dotard to the whelp whom Arkanamon’s Shadow Knights should have long ago captured and delivered to their master.
The chase for the whelp had been arduous and, at times, frustrating, but it would not be long before the Rainbow Crystal rested in its proper place. Arkanamon could feel its presence nearby – if it was not already within his Palace of Shadows, it soon would be. The brat who had eluded him with such extraordinary good fortune and, Arkanamon thought with a grudging shrug, perhaps also some measure of fortitude, was finally being guided here by deception.
A grim smile crossed Arkanamon’s lips. He relished the irony. The boy had done everything to keep away from him, like a fish avoiding the hook. Now the lure of the boy’s grandfather and the guile of the Shadow Master were reeling in the fish, which thought it was coming here of its own volition.
The fish would soon be gutted.
The Rainbow Crystal would soon be Arkanamon’s.
And shortly after that, so, too, would the three worlds.
Surely nothing could stop him now. He would be the supreme ruler of all creation. The three worlds would shake in fear of him, and that fear would make him stronger still.
There was a movement behind him. It was one of his most trusted lieutenants, the Shadow Knight called Tomaq.
“What is it?”
The Shadow Master looked out to where, far beyond the slave mines, his army was being assembled on the plains. When the boy and his ridiculous friends had detoured in that direction before making their way to the mines, the Shadow Master had experienced momentary concern that they might have detected the presence of his mighty host just over the next range of low hills. The companions might have changed their plans had they known of it. But fortunately, they had turned back toward the mines and, oblivious of all his martial preparations, had continued on their pre-ordained way.
He wondered if they knew that it was indeed pre-ordained. Had they yet discovered the truth? His ancient foe Samzing might have told them – the Shadow Master wouldn’t put it past the disgustingly righteous wizard to have learned of the ancient lore. Did it matter? Any knowledge they might have acquired had not affected their subconscious adherence to his scheme.
“The army is awaiting your orders, sire.”
The army. His countless soul-robbed puppets. They crawled at his feet like scurrying ants, and he could just as easily crush them with a stamp of his armored boot. He cared nothing for their fates; they rewarded his callousness with unswerving loyalty, because that was the way he had twisted and manipulated them. He could command them to ascend the cliffs and, rank after rank, throw themselves into the gorge, and they would obey his order without question.
He wished he derived more satisfaction from such power. It would have felt better, a small voice nagged him, if they had still possessed their own independent volitions, rather than being the complaisant spiritual husks he had manufactured.
How he craved to feed on a rebellious soul!
“Let the army wait, for now. I do not wish to launch the final onslaught on
Sagaria until the last of the three crystals is in my hands. I wish to be assured of more than mere conquest. My triumph will be incomplete until I have trampled every living being in Sagaria and the Earthworld into the mud from which they sprang.”
The rising wind made the Shadow Master’s cloak crack like a whip, punctuating his words. “Any news of that craven Earthworld fool, Webster?”
“He failed, sire. The knights you sent to butcher the brat’s allies were themselves butchered. All except one of your foes were unharmed – the ludicrous frog who thinks himself a man.”
“Good.”
“Sire?”
“It was another distraction to our enemies, to keep them from realizing the truth.”
“Should we kill the Webster creature? Or bring him here for you to feast upon?”
“No. He might yet have his uses.”
Tomaq said nothing, just nodded. Arkanamon knew the Shadow Knight had long given up trying to understand the complex workings of his master’s mind.
Time to enlighten him a little.
The Shadow Master turned toward his lieutenant and his eyes blazed with the yellow-white brilliance that is found in the hottest core of the fire.
“There is something, Tomaq, that the brat and his fellows do not know.” Arkanamon gave a blood-chilling chuckle. He beckoned the Shadow Knight closer to him, and continued in a hiss. “For the prophecies to be fulfilled, the boy must seek me out
of his own free will.
”
Sagandran stood over the body of the person who’d befriended and become so close to him, and he found himself unable to absorb the enormity of what had just occurred. Sir Tombin, dead. The two parts of that simple statement didn’t seem to go together. They were like air and heaviness. The concepts meant opposite things.
“Wait!” cried Samzing. “Wait, wait! I feel a pulse! My old friend is fighting death!”
“But for how long?” Perima’s voice was full of the cold of shock.
“Seconds, minutes, forever – who knows?” The wizard swore an oath Sagandran had never heard before. “Curse the rules of the magical ambience in
this benighted world. If only I could—”
“Mitatis,
” said Cheireanna earnestly, tapping the back of his wrist. Her eyes were pleading. “
Mitatis Tamash treoi
.”
“I’ve no time for your nonsense now,” said Samzing bitterly, shaking her fingers away.
“Yes, you do.” Memo’s eyes were bigger than ever behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. “You do, Samzing.”
“What do you mean?”
“What she’s saying is that she can help him with the water blessed by her goddess.”
Samzing’s expression drooled sarcasm. “And you believe her?”
“The old tales say that miracles occur in the hidden temples of Tamash, don’t they? Besides, even if it doesn’t work, it’s not going to kill Sir Tombin any faster than he’s dying already, is it?”
Sagandran decided that it was time he took command. “Memo’s right,” he said loudly. “We’ve got to get Sir Tombin back to the temple somehow.”
It wasn’t going to be easy. Sir Tombin was by far the bulkiest and heaviest of them at the best of times, and clad in a suit of Shadow Knight armor, he was weightier than ever.
“You,” said Sagandran, pointing at Perima. “One leg. I’ll take another. Memo, tell Cheireanna to take an arm. You too, Samzing.”
Just lifting the body of the Frogly Knight off the floor seemed to take every grain of strength they had. Flip and Memo scurried around on the floor, giving advice and making the task more difficult. Samzing, as the weakest of the four, was having the greatest trouble. Sagandran wished he could press-gang Webster into helping, but the betrayer still lay unconscious in the side passage, and besides, he couldn’t be relied upon not to drop his burden at a crucial moment.
“Forward,” grunted Sagandran, taking a dragging step.
The others did their best to move in sync with him.
“Forward!” he cried again.
This time moving his foot seemed a little easier.
“Forward!”
It seemed to take them forever to reach the first bend in the passageway, and when they did so, Sagandran was certain that his arms were going to come right out of their sockets at any moment. But he couldn’t let the others know this. Nor could he tell them that his vision was swimming in the aftermath of the concussion he’d suffered when his head had hit the passage floor. Whatever he did, he mustn’t give away to his companions that his body was threatening to fail him. He must set an example. That was what leadership was about.
To take his mind off his agonies, he started trying to work out why Webster had betrayed them. Why he had led them into the jaws of certain death – well, death for the others, capture and torture for Sagandran. Webster had always been rotten, of course, rotten to the core. Sagandran remembered hearing how Webster’s dad behaved toward his son, and thought that therein lay at least a partial explanation for Webster’s rottenness, but at the moment he was in no mood to be forgiving. Even taking the boy’s innate rottenness into account, Sagandran couldn’t believe Webster would have allied himself voluntarily with the Shadow Master’s evil aims. There must be more than that.
But what?
Let’s look again at that story of his. He was seized by Shadow Knights as soon as he arrived in this realm – yes, that’s plausible enough. They think he must be the boy the Shadow Master is looking for – again, plausible enough, because Webster would have been wearing Earthworld clothing. The only other people outside the Earthworld to be wearing garments like that are Grandpa Melwin and myself, and it’s obvious Webster isn’t Grandpa Melwin. The Shadow Knights hauled him off to the Palace of Shadows and threw him into the dungeons to keep him secure for what they probably euphemistically call “interrogation.” That makes sense as well. It’s only when it comes to Webster making his cunning escape that everything begins to fall apart.
So that’s the crux of it.
Suppose Webster breaks down as soon as the torture begins, or even before it begins. That’s pretty feasible-sounding. I’m not sure I’d have the guts not to do the same myself. Somehow, he convinces his tormentors, or his would-be tormentors, that he’s not me. More than that, he persuades them that he’s prepared to do anything – anything at all – if only they’ll put away their tongs and pincers and racks, or whatever it is they’ve been parading in front of him. Then, he tells them that he’s the ideal person to waylay me and lead me into an ambush.
“After all,” he probably says, “I’m little Frogface’s oldest and best buddy back in the Earthworld.”
So they take him down to the slave mines and they tell all the overseers just to leave him be, to let him do what he wants. So, he waits until I and the others prance into the slave mines assuming no one knows who we are. That whole performance of trying to conceal himself behind the machinery was nothing more than that, a performance. He was trying to make sure we spotted him. He wanted to be caught. If we hadn’t seen him, and Sir Tombin hadn’t snatched him, Webster would have found some other way to intercept us and join our band. He was too stupid to play his role for us completely convincingly. I think we all suspected him in one way or another, but—