Sagaria (84 page)

Perima was tugging at Sagandran’s arm.

Cheireanna knows what she’s doing,
he decided on the spur of the moment. The peasant girl put her foot on the shoulder of a fallen Shadow Knight, the better to drag her mace sickeningly out of his crushed skull.
She’s chosen to stay here and help Sir Tombin fight these thugs so that Perima and I have a better chance of escaping with the crystals. Respect her choice, Sagandran.

Obeying Perima’s urgent entreaties, he scuttled behind her to the balcony where Snowmane was waiting. Seeing them coming, the stallion turned in the air so that his hind legs and tail were just within the balustrade.

Perima vaulted onto Snowmane’s back, then swiveled around to offer her arm to Sagandran, hauling him up behind her. Gasping uncontrollably and gulping down air so fast that he thought he would choke, Sagandran threw his arms around her. She winced as the leaden crown caught under her armpit, but made no complaint.

“Fly, Snowmane!” she cried. “Fly, Snowmane, fly!”

All Samzing could see was the ferociously blazing gaze of his oldest adversary Arkanamon, but through his other senses – those magically derived senses that now enhanced his every perception – he could see so much more. From the bosom of the necromancer a roiling cloud that was a muddy violet billowed toward him.

Arkanamon was taking a risk. Like that day in the arena decades ago, Arkanamon was both overestimating himself and underestimating his rival. Overestimating, because extending the boundaries of his own soul in an attempt to envelop that of his foe was a gambit so risky no sane wizard would essay it,
except as a last, desperate stratagem when all else had failed. Underestimating, because he clearly believed that Samzing lacked the ability to detect something so insubstantial as a soul.

And to assail it in turn.

So Samzing let the grubby cloud of Arkanamon’s soulstuff make its cautious way toward him. Soon it would touch him, and then he could attack.

The rest of his power of will was being devoted –
had
to be devoted – to countering the malevolent spells that the Shadow Master was throwing at him with greater and greater frequency, albeit also with (unless Samzing was imagining this) a gradually declining intensity. Whenever he could, Samzing was giving as good as he got, or even more, he told himself, because Arkanamon was using every last ounce of his skill to ward off the assaults. The two wizards were almost perfectly matched in their skill, power, resourcefulness, stamina and swiftness. Unless the stasis was broken by one or other, they could remain locked in this contest of minds forever.

Samzing was dimly aware of the more physically oriented combat going on at the far side of the chamber. Dodging among the slabs of broken marble crashing down from the ceiling, Sir Tombin and Cheireanna were now moving about their gory task with such speed that Samzing wouldn’t have been able to follow their thrusts, parries and counterthrusts even if he’d had the opportunity to study them at leisure. Though its blade was now only base metal, Xaraxeer was seizing the lives of Shadow Knights at will. The mace Cheireanna brandished with near-preternatural strength and agility was hitting its mark with hideous regularity. Still the Shadow Knights came, new waves of them scrambling over the heaped bodies of their dead and dying comrades. Came to their inevitable doom at the hands of the two wild dervishes whom Samzing was proud to call his friends.

The cloud that was Arkanamon’s magic-imbued soul was within an inch of Samzing’s outstretched hand. Its approach had become ever slowly, ever more cautious, the closer the cloud got. Arkanamon was clearly concerned that Samzing might, after all, be able to perceive the necromancer’s essence.

Deliberately, Samzing withheld any sign that he knew the teeming nebula of soulstuff was there at all. It was easy enough to do. Spells and incantations were flooding through his brain, filling all but the tiniest fraction of his consciousness. There was very little of his mind to spare.

At last the dirty haze touched his skin. Samzing could feel the lightest of psychic tugs on his own soulstuff as his opponent tested to ascertain that contact had indeed been established. In that instant, Samzing did what he hoped was the one thing his adversary least expected.

Arkanamon would have anticipated resistance to the seizure of Samzing’s essence by his own. He would have been mustering the magical reserves he had left for the expected combat, and stripping off what he could of his energies from the spells he was still hurling at his foe.

Rather than resist, Samzing mentally snatched the necromancer’s soulstuff and dragged it into himself with all the power that the could muster.

Arkanamon staggered as if he’d been leaning against a prop that had suddenly been removed. In that instant, all of his spiritual balance was lost to him. His essence surged into Samzing’s, where it was immediately enfolded and imprisoned.

Once started, the process couldn’t be halted by the necromancer. Samzing’s eyes were losing focus from the effort he put into the capture, but within seconds Arkanamon’s magical powers were drained from him, down to the last drop.

Where there had once been the mightiest sorcerer in all the three worlds standing before Samzing, now there was merely a man dressed in a long black robe that looked increasingly silly. Samzing staggered back too, clutching the balustrade behind him for support. His head whirled as his intellect absorbed and nullified all the vileness of Arkanamon’s magical soul. He could see nothing but brilliant traceries of swiftly moving lights, hear nothing but the pounding of his own tormented mind.

He sank to his hands and knees on the balcony, shaking his head vigorously from side to side and trying to regain his clarity of thought. He knew that Arkanamon the man could step up and kill him in a totally mundane fashion where Arkanamon the necromancer could not slay him using the most powerful magic, yet he didn’t care. He half-expected to feel the blow fall.

But it didn’t.

Through the fog, he heard Sir Tombin give a cry of triumph, which was echoed almost at once by a shrill, wordless yell of delight from the peasant girl – whatever her name was, the one with the perpetually grubby face. It seemed that they had succeeded in driving back the marauding Shadow Knights.

Good.

Well done, them.

He’d congratulate them in person later, if there ever was a later.

An armored glove fell on his shoulder.

This was it, then. His old foe was moving in for the kill at last. It would be no problem to force Samzing, limp with exhaustion and mental confusion, up and over the balustrade to plunge to his death. The murder would serve Arkanamon’s purposes not at all, but Arkanamon would be beyond such considerations by now. The man who had, until scant seconds ago, been the
Shadow Master and ready to stamp his ruthless image on the faces of the three worlds, had always been in love with vengeance. That would be all Arkanamon was seeking: revenge.

Samzing didn’t care that he was about to die. He had known before he came on this venture with his old friend, Quackie, that the most probable result would be his own death. He had a moment’s thought for Golma, to whom he would have liked to say farewell, but aside from that, he was totally resigned to his fate.

“Are you all right, dear chappie?” said a voice.

The words seemed to dive straight into the mist of Samzing’s mind, fragmenting the fog into feathery streamers of grayness that soon dispersed. Now he could see the backs of his hands, the palms flat on the balcony’s black marble floor. How could the creases of his knuckles have gotten so unutterably filthy? Samzing was buffeted as complete awareness came jostling its way back. He felt as if a tavern brawl were in full swing inside his skull.

“Just give me a moment,” he blurted thickly, hoping that Sir Tombin could understand the porridge of his words.

“Arkanamon’s fled,” said the Frogly Knight, as if by reporting the latest events, he could lock his anxiety for Samzing into a separate compartment of his mind. “For a reason I can’t entirely fathom, his goons lost all their coordination and control over their actions, just before he did so. They were like puppets whose strings had been cut. This sweet girl and I just stood back and watched them as they dropped. You are listening, aren’t you, Samzing?”

“Yush.” Someone had replaced the wizard’s tongue with a rolled-up bath towel. On second thought, not so much a towel, to judge by the taste, as a pair of emphatically used underpants.

Sir Tombin paused for a moment and Samzing looked up into his friend’s benign eyes.

“The next bit is the yucky part,” admitted the Frogly Knight. “After they’d gone still, the Shadow Knights started … well, the best word I can think of is ‘dissolving.’ Their flesh turned into a slimy brown mush, and then fell in on itself. Quick as that. Just think of a six-month-old pear and you’ll get the general picture. I almost retched from the sight of it, I can tell you. Young Cheireanna here thought it was all jolly interesting. I had to hold her back from taking a closer look.

“Anyway, at the last they became nothing but oily smoke. You can still smell it a bit in the air.”

“I’d rather not,” mumbled Samzing. The contents of his stomach seemed to be planning some kind of
coup d’etat
in the very near future. He didn’t wish
to be around when that happened. Not, he reflected glumly, that he’d have much choice.

“Are you sure you’re all right, dear boy?”

“Give me a hand, will you?”

With Sir Tombin on one side and a phenomenally bloodstained Cheireanna on the other, Samzing succeeded in getting to his feet. The world ebbed and flowed for a few seconds, but soon enough he was sufficiently confident to shrug their hands away and stand unsupported.

“Which way did Arkanamon go?” he asked.

“Why, the only way there is, naturally. Out through the door and down that infernal spiral staircase. Something we’ll have to do ourselves in due course, meaning now.”

Arkanamon is a man who has always been in love with vengeance,
Samzing thought worriedly.

“We must follow him.”

“I tell you, dear fellow, he’s in full flight. He seems to have lost all his powers. He can do no harm to us now.”

Not in full flight. In pursuit of Sagandran and Perima. His plans are in a shambles now. His dreams of conquering the three worlds are nothing but bitter ashes being blown away in the wind. But there is still one last fell deed he can perform. One last petty revenge he can wrest from this. You don’t need magic to kill a person.

“After him!”

“Are you sure? Are you in any condition to exert yourself?”

“Of course I am,” snapped Samzing impatiently. “I have to be.”

He stopped halfway to the door.

“Yes,” he mused. “Perima and Sagandran, yes. But first, the boy’s grandfather.”

CHAPTER 9

N
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nowmane veered and banked in the wind, seemingly just for the pleasure of it. Perima and Sagandran, astride the stallion's back, gazed down in wonderment at the dimly lit landscape beneath them.

“So, now we know why he has those gross scars on his shoulders,” said Perima, the wind almost swatting her words away. “They weren't scars at all, just coverings for his wings.”

Sagandran reached behind him to pat the stallion on the rump. “Good to know he didn't have that long history of abuse we'd feared. I feel a whole lot better knowing that.”

“You'll have to yell,” Perima shouted. “I can hear about one word in three.”

Feeling self-conscious, Sagandran bellowed the same message all over again. Then he said, “Where do we go from here?”

“Anywhere Arkanamon isn't.”

It seemed as good a reply as any. But Snowmane seemed to want to take them sightseeing first. If Perima thought that she were controlling the stallion's flight, she was kidding herself. The great silver winged horse took them low over the mines, where slavemasters and slaves alike put their hands on their foreheads and looked up at this bizarre apparition shimmering in the darkling sky above. Who knew what they thought Snowmane might be? A gigantic owl, perhaps? Or a specter? Then the stallion curved around and headed toward the ridge beyond which they'd seen the Shadow Master's massive horde assembling.

As they flew, Perima spoke again. “I'd feel a whole lot better if you stuck the Rainbow Crystal into its socket in Arkanamon's crown.”

“Why?”

Sagandran had discovered that if he kept his chin on her shoulder he could speak more softly, almost directly, into her ear. Besides, it felt good snuggling up to her back like this. Her hair had a tendency to be blown back into his nostrils by the wind, but that seemed like a trivial disadvantage.

“I don't know why I would. I just would. Do it, could you?”

“Okay, but I'm terrified that I might drop something.” He chuckled unconvincingly. “Or that I'll fall off.”

As if understanding, Snowmane quit executing any fancy banking maneuvers and leveled off into a steady path. Sagandran gripped the horse's sides as tightly as he could with his knees. Still holding onto Perima's waist with the arm onto which he'd hooked the crown, he tugged the stone out of the neck of his T-shirt. Hoping was doing the right thing, he grasped the crystal firmly and gave it a wrench.

“Ow!”

Perima ventured a glance back over her shoulder. “What happened?”

“The chain did its best to cut my head off.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“Get the Rainbow Crystal free of the chain so that I can put it in the crown, like you told me to.”

“Why do that?”

“Because …” It was his turn to not be able to think of a reason. “Because it seems the right thing to do. You can't have a crown with a chain dangling off it.”

“Why not?”

Sagandran let the question rattle around in his skull.
Why not indeed? If the crown is to symbolize the union of the three worlds, then why should it not bear the emblem of a person who worked humbly, bore torment and may have sacrificed his life to help bring that union about? Grandpa Melwin gave me that chain and just as importantly, he gave it to the Rainbow Crystal. The gifts he's given to the three worlds should be commemorated.

The more he thought about it, the more fitting it seemed to him. There was something else that would be just right as well.

“Okay,” he cried.

“Took you long enough to make up your mind. Boys, I ask you!”

He grinned. “Sassy wench.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“It was,” he said very earnestly, wondering if he wanted her to hear.

Getting the chain off over his head was one of the more scary experiences of his life. As fortune would have it, the flying horse hit a pocket of a strong gust of wind just as Sagandran began the exercise, so that he had to complete it while on the back of what seemed to him like a bucking bronco. But, at last, he held the Rainbow Crystal and the coiled chain in his hand.

“Done,” he told Perima.

“Right. Next stop is getting the stone into the crown.”

“That's for you to do.”

“Me?”

“That's what I said. You.”

“But you're the vaunted Boy Whose Time Has, With The Maximum Amount Of Unnecessary Masculine Fuss, Come. Surely those blasted prophecies require you to be the one who does it?”

“I've no idea what the prophecies say. I've never seen them. Have you?”

“No, of course not.”

“We don't have Memo here to give us our instructions,” he said conclusively. “So I guess it's up to me to decide, and I've decided that you should do it. You gave up a throne to help save Sagaria and the rest of the three worlds. It's only right.”

“I'd given up the throne anyway.”

Perima said nothing more as they came up over the crest of the ridge; then he felt her shoulders move as she made a decision.

“Right. Give it here. But you do realize that when I do this it'll mean that I've abandoned that throne for good? There'll be no going back for me. That's what this means.”

Sagandran hadn't thought this through, and he wasn't certain that he followed her logic. Still, if that's what it meant for her, then that was indeed what it meant.

“Do you really think you'll want to go back to being a princess?”

She let out a peal of laughter, a sound so carefree that it made his whole body want to smile.

“You kidding? Give me that jewel.”

He stretched his arm forward. Without any ceremony, Perima took the Rainbow Crystal from his hand and, reaching across to her other side where he held the crown against her, jammed the stone into the vacant metal socket.

Sagandran had expected something momentous to happen to signify the completion of the trio of crystals, but nothing did.

Or did it?

“That means that you and I are bonded forever,” Perima cried back at him. “There's no getting out of this one, Sagandran.”

“What?”

“You, me, the three worlds, your Grandpa Melwin – we're all tied up in the same knot now. I always said that if I ever married at all, it'd be to a commoner.”

“Married? But we're too young!”

“Oh, sure, we'll have to wait a few years.” Her shout took on a knowledgeable tone. “Princesses are always having their troths plighted years before they actually get wed, you know. Comes with the territory, so to speak. You'll get used to the idea. I'll give you your kiss later. I reckon we need to seal the promise with a kiss, don't you? Seems only right and proper. But if I tried to turn my head around, just at this moment, I think I might land right on top of Arkanamon's warrio—oh.”

The last word was spoken in quite a different tone.

For the first time in some minutes, Sagandran thought to look beneath them.

Across the plain stretched the Shadow Master's army – or what had once been an army. The horde was no longer the teeming mass of insects they'd seen from the balcony. The cradle between the mountains was bereft of all movement. Instead, he could see fallen suits of armor scattered in all directions. From the metal shells rose a thin cloud of … of something that was being snatched away by the Shadow World's stiff breeze before it was more than forty or fifty feet above the ground.

As Snowmane circled, the two riders gazed down at the lost army in awe and silence.

At last, Sagandran spoke. “Did we do that? I mean, when we put the crystal into the crown?”

“No,” replied Perima, her voice devoid of all humor. “It's something else.” She began to speak more quickly, and as she did, her words seemed to regain their customary gaiety. “Once the Shadow Master had sucked the life force out of these unfortunates, the only thing left animating them was his own soul – his own magic. In every reasonable sense of the word, they were dead already.” She let out a little whoop. “Someone, somehow, has robbed the Shadow Master of his magic.”

“Or killed him?”

“Yeah, or killed him.” She shrugged. “Even better.”

“Samzing?”

“It has to be. Oh, the fine old codger, I've always had faith in him, you know.”

As Perima burbled on happily, Sagandran felt his own spirits contrarily sink. The talk of death brought to the forefront of his mind the things that he'd been trying, at least temporarily, to forget. Flip's little form, smashed against a marble wall and slithering broken to the floor. Grandpa Melwin, still alive in the dungeons of the Palace of Shadows, according to Arkanamon. But Arkanamon was the master of lies, so who could know if he'd been telling the truth for once?
Even if he had been, might he not have killed Grandpa Melwin out of spite by now? And what of Cheireanna and Sir Tombin? He'd last seen them fighting an impossibly large band of Shadow Knights. Could they have held the armored goons off long enough for Samzing to do his work?

“We must go back,” he said in a sorrowful voice.

Perima's stream of merriment stopped abruptly as she took in the implications of his words. “Yes, you're right. Back to that gloomy castle. This isn't over yet. Not until we've finished it.”

Obedient as always to their unspoken wishes, Snowmane flew in a tight circle until they were heading back toward the Palace of Shadows.

“He'll live,” said Samzing, holding the small form of Flip in his hand. He could feel the heart of his little friend beating. The furry body was still warm. It felt amazingly light to contain the ebullient personality who had become such an integral member of their band. “There don't seem to be any broken bones, and his breathing's unobstructed.” The wizard summoned a thin smile. “He'll be madder than a hornet when he awakens and he'll probably have a headache that makes him wish he were dead, but other than that I think he's going to be fine.”

Cheireanna reached out her cupped hands, and Samzing placed the little sleeper into them. She'd wiped the worst of the gore off her fingers onto her ragged tunic, which looked no filthier than it had before.

“And now,” said Sir Tombin in sepulchral tones, “to the dungeons. I can't help telling you, old chap, that I'm not looking forward to what we might find there.”

Samzing gave him a significant look. Under the green amphibian skin, his old friend looked ashen.

“You've been inside dungeons before?”

“Yes. Not in a very long time though.” Sir Tombin took a deep breath. “Still not long enough. The sights you see in dungeons are never pretty.”

Memo chose this moment to poke his spectacles out of Samzing's pocket.

“I can tell you all about dungeons,” he announced, undaunted by the events of the past couple of hours. “The first thing you need to understand is that—”