The Sellsword (34 page)

“No apologies necessary, Star. We are simply glad that you have come to your senses.”

Star looked at Vanderjack, who was kneeling and trying to stand up all the way. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Never felt better,” said Vanderjack. “Feel like I could go a few more rounds with those gladiators.”

Star suddenly whirled around, and the large feline eyes widened. “Be ready!” he bellowed. “Cazuvel comes!”

“Is that Etharion talking to you? Are the Sword Chorus here?” asked Vanderjack, using Theodenes as support. “Where’s Cazuvel?”

Star looked down at the ground. With a thunderous rumble like the sound of a hundred chariots clattering over rock, a colossal mechanism beneath the arena began its work. The puddles and lakes of water on the surface trembled, ripples disturbing their surfaces. The crowd fell into a hush, and the rain had stopped for the time being. Star said simply, “Cazuvel rises.”

The sucking sound of mud disgorging its contents followed as enormous doors in the arena floor lifted and slid open. Hundreds of gallons of water drained around the doors, but from inside the dark cavity, the rumbling noise grew even louder. A stone platform, clearly designed to lift large numbers of people or animals into the arena, rose from the new opening at the center of the arena. Underneath it, four columns of stone rose, forming a solid foundation for the structure as it climbed into the air above the arena with surprising speed and stability.

Upon the platform was what appeared to be an elaborate cage fashioned from iron. It was the same cage that Star had been locked up in at Castle Glayward. Even from that distance, Theodenes could see that on one
inside wall of the cage a woman’s body was chained up; her wrists and ankles had been secured to the bars.

“Gredchen!” said Vanderjack, pointing. “What in blazes has Cazuvel done to her?

On the opposite wall of the cage was a rectangular object that both Theo and Vanderjack recognized as the painting of the baron’s beautiful daughter.

Cazuvel himself, still dressed in black robes, his hood thrown back and gaunt albino features boasting an exultant grin, stood on top of the cage. His arms were raised in the air. All of the crowd’s eyes were on him, having left Vanderjack, Theodenes, and Star for the magnetic appeal of the new surprise.

“People of Wulfgar!” screamed the wizard, his voice unnaturally loud. “Your time to bear witness has come!”

Theo suddenly remembered the highmaster. His gaze shifted to the balcony. He saw her there, a figure in black and red with a billowing cape and that hideous armored mask she wore. Her gauntlets gripped the balcony railing. Her two thugs were by her side. Theo wondered where her red dragon was, but only moments later, he saw the enormous bulk of Cear ascending the roof of the palace, squatting there with wings folded by his sides, waiting.

“Now that you have reveled in your blood sports and cried out for death, it is time to reflect on the future of Krynn!”

Vanderjack said, “He’s going to give a speech?”

“We need to get onto Star. You have to get up there!”

The sellsword nodded wearily. He looked pretty grimy and bloodied and bruised, from the gnome’s analytic point of view.

But Vanderjack climbed quickly onto Star’s back, joined by Theo. “I have a plan,” said Vanderjack.

“I have a better one,” said Theodenes.

“Would you shut up for once and listen to my idea? Trust me, for once.”

The gnome sighed. “All right.”

“Star,” he said, bending over and whispering instructions to the dragonne. “That was going to be my plan,” said Theo sulkily as Star sprang up from the floor of the arena and sped toward Cazuvel and the cage.

The crowd cheered. Theo cringed. The wizard looked down at the approaching dragonne and laughed maniacally.

“People of Wulfgar!” crowed Cazuvel, gleefully pointing at the dragonne and his riders. “See how even now, facing certain doom, the brave heroes ride upon their mighty winged steed to the rescue of the fair maiden!”

The wizard reached into his robes and withdrew something long and sharp. The heavy clouds above the arena, which had until then permitted only a watery gray sunlight to filter through the rain, split apart. The object in Cazuvel’s hand shone brightly, almost dazzling.

“Lifecleaver!” said Vanderjack. “There’s my sword! Star, where are the ghosts? What’s he planning?”

Star rumbled, “I fear they are not present. There are dark forces I do not fathom at work up on that pedestal.”

Cazuvel was still pontificating. “Behold, people of Wulfgar! You will be the first to see the power of the Abyss made manifest!” With a single swift motion, the wizard drove the sword into the top of the cage, midway between the chained figure of Gredchen and the painting. The sound of metal scraping against metal rang throughout the arena.

Cazuvel intoned,
“Cermindaya, cermindaya, saya memanggil anda dan mengikat anda!”
Almost immediately
afterward, a burst of vivid blue and orange light flashed from inside the cage as ribbons of energy began to dance between Gredchen, the sword, and the painting.

They were almost there. Theo gripped his polearm for an attack, but just as they swung close, to his surprise, Vanderjack shouted, “Take Theo clear, Star!” The sellsword leaped off with nothing but a battered shield.

“No! Vanderjack! Wait for me! Wait!”

“Trust him,” said Star, winging away from the platform. “Vanderjack knows what he is doing.”

Theodenes, looking over his shoulder as the sell-sword closed on the wizard, fumed … and feared for Vanderjack’s fate.

V
anderjack leaped toward certain doom.

The fetch in Cazuvel’s form stood amid a storm of energy, a storm that linked Gredchen and the painting, holding the sword Vanderjack had inherited from his mother, the queen of the pirates.
His
sword—one of the fabled nine-lives stealers and fashioned from unbreakable star metal ore—was undoubtedly the lynchpin of magic holding the storm together.

The wizard below lifted his hands and channeled the surging power filling the cage; it haloed him in alternating coronas of blue and orange. Seeing the sellsword plummeting toward him, he gestured with one hand and directed a bolt of the energy in Vanderjack’s direction. The ribbon of power struck the sellsword full in the chest, holding him there for a moment, surrounding him in the same coruscating light. Cazuvel tugged his arm back sharply, and the stream of magic acted like a fisherman’s line. Vanderjack was flung forcibly down and to the side of the cage, slamming into the stone platform.

The crowd screamed out its disappointment,
although there were some cries in the stands applauding the wizard.

Cazuvel’s stunt with the magical snare had drained Vanderjack, rendered him almost unconscious. He struggled to breathe, but it was as if his lungs were filled with broken glass. The shield had buckled and folded around his left forearm, rendering both it and the arm useless. He couldn’t tell whether or not his hip had shattered, but did it matter anymore? The wizard walked along the roof of the cage and stood on one corner, looking down at him with the light from the magical storm shining in his eyes.

“Get up, get up, get up,” Vanderjack said to himself, speaking what he imagined the Sword Chorus would say if he could hear them. “Ignore the pain; die tomorrow.”

He reached out, the fingers of his right hand wrapping around a bar on the cage, and felt the thrumming power within the cage channel through his arm, his shoulder, up his neck, and into the base of his skull.

“Get up, get up!” cried the Sword Chorus, outside of his mind, coming from somewhere else. They were really speaking to him. He opened his eyes, pulled himself up against the side of the cage, and realized that the cage was acting as a conductor between him and Lifecleaver.

“Glad to … hear your voices,” he said, coughing blood. “Little late to the party, though.”

“The wizard cannot hear us,” said the Apothecary.

“He is distracted,” said the Hunter.

“Vanderjack!” shouted the Cook, whose wavering image seemed to hang beyond the bars, within the cage itself. “Cazuvel is using the link between the painting and Gredchen to open a gateway into the Abyss. You have to stop him!”

“Right. I figured as much. I’ll get … right on that,” he said and flung himself to the left as Cazuvel tossed another bolt of lightning down at him. He almost tore his right arm out of its socket. The pain was intense, but it sharpened his senses, cleared away some of the fog.

“You are broken!” cried Cazuvel. “You are finished! Even now, I draw upon the powers of the Abyss! I wield the power unfathomable! Look at what great works I can accomplish while your life slips away from you!”

Another surge of power came from the cage and flooded the fetch’s mortal body, making him crackle with even stronger mystical forces. He spread his arms, and intoned,
“Mati santet, mati sihir! Mati semuasaya daya!”

In the arena below, motes of orange and blue light winked into existence above the dozens of dead bodies of the gladiators. Threads of light seemed to unwind from those points of light, traveling at great speed toward the center of the arena, toward the cage, toward Cazuvel.

Vanderjack stared, but at least for the moment he felt invigorated by the same power Cazuvel was drawing upon. As long as he remained in contact with the cage, he seemed able to ignore the constant pain setting his nervous system on fire.

“He’s gathering the souls of the dead,” hissed the Conjuror.

“An abominable act!” said the Aristocrat.

“For what purpose?” Vanderjack asked. He moved one step at a time around the cage in Gredchen’s direction.

“To open dozens of smaller portals, using the souls as a bridge to the Abyss,” said the Cook.

Vanderjack winced. Why isn’t Rivven doing anything about this? he wondered. He took another step
and watched as all of the myriad threads from the arena floor made contact with the fetch. It was becoming harder to look at Cazuvel, with all of the violent light radiating out from him. He looked away, toward the palace of the khan. She wasn’t standing there on her balcony anymore. Where had she gone?

The crowd was fleeing again. There was no more cheering, not for the man who had survived the games and the dragonne, nor for Cazuvel. All Vanderjack could hear from the stands was screaming, yelling, people climbing up the benches, scrambling to get to the exits.

“The fetch has expanded upon the basic theories that Cazuvel had once used to create the painting,” said the Philosopher.

“Souls as templates … he’s going to bring more fetches through those portals. Bring them through and into the bodies of the dead. You need to do something quickly!”

Vanderjack would have rolled his eyes if one eye hadn’t swollen almost completely shut and the other wasn’t streaming with tears from the unceasing light. The hand gripping the cage was starting to blister, and the energy flooding into him didn’t feel right anymore. It felt unnatural. He was using the fetch’s own ritual to keep himself going—the very power of the Abyss.

“Gredchen!” Vanderjack shouted above the roar of the magical storm in the cage. He could see her face. She didn’t seem conscious. The ribbons of energy and light leaping from her to the sword and the painting at the other end of the cage formed a rippling afterimage of her, a half-real image that had begun to shift from her body toward the center of the storm.

Vanderjack reached up, felt Gredchen’s wrists, and found that they were securely manacled. The only thing that was close at hand that might cut through those bonds and free Gredchen was his sword, and that meant he would have to climb up on top of the cage and pull it free.

Cazuvel had been so caught up in his necromancy, and so dismissive of Vanderjack, that he hadn’t registered the sellsword moving around the cage toward Gredchen. However, since the web of souls was in place, the fetch turned to his hapless foe and laughed. “Are you still alive, Ergothian? I should take pity on you—put you out of your misery.”

“About time too,” muttered Vanderjack, seeing a series of iron rungs in the cage beside Gredchen. It appeared to be fashioned in such a way as to grant access to the roof of the cage, and that’s where he needed to be. “What are you trying to do with the ugly woman, by the way?”

“I admire your ability to continue with these pointless jokes as you face death,” Cazuvel said. “Gredchen here is the result of the true Cazuvel’s early experimentation with soul magic. While flawed, she is nevertheless living proof that his theories were viable. In fact, had he not overreached his own abilities when plumbing the depths of this magic, he might have perfected the immortality of body and spirit.”

That was interesting—and Vanderjack wouldn’t mind prolonging the discussion with a fiend from the Abyss about one of Rivven Cairn’s pet Black Robes. Keep the braggart talking. Yes, that was the plan, such as it was.

“I have the ghost of the Cook to thank for reminding me of that experiment.” Cazuvel smiled, gathering
power in his palm, holding it there, nurturing it, as if biding his time before delivering the sellsword’s fiery end.