The Plague Knight and Other Stories Page 17

  Dorian pointed the flamelance at the other man's chest. "This is a weapon," he said, his voice cracking. "The 'blade of light.' Lay down your pike --"

  The guard bellowed, leveled his weapon, and charged.

  The war cry jolted Dorian and made him recoil. When he fired the flamelance, he saw that it had also spoiled his aim. The thin red beam streaked past the warrior, who kept coming as if he hadn't even noticed it. In another instant he'd close to striking range. Dorian frantically wrenched himself out of the way. The steel blade missed him by a hair.

  Both the pole arm and the flamelance were too long to use at close quarters in a narrow hallway. As the guard wheeled, he dropped the pike and snatched for the falchion hanging at his belt.

  Dorian realized that if he didn't bother to draw his own sword, he could strike first. Dropping the flamelance, he grabbed the warrior's shoulder and punched him in the jaw. The guard's knees buckled. Dorian kicked his feet out from under him and slammed his head against the floor. The soldier sprawled motionless.

  I did it, Dorian thought, panting. I hurt him. I beat him unconscious. He felt jubilant and sick at the same time.

  Tahmasp peeked warily around the corner. "Are you all right?" "Yes," Dorian said.

  "What about the flamelance?"

  It was a good question. Flamelances were lethal but delicate. One jolt often sufficed to destroy the mechanism. But when Dorian picked the weapon up, he saw it was intact. "It's all right, too." He frowned. "You know, this fellow wasn't impressed when I threatened him with it. Doesn't he know the prophecy?"

  "Perhaps he didn't hear you properly," Tahmasp said. "Or maybe he thought you were lying. As the young lord observed to me, any knave can claim anything. If any case, the important thing is that you bested him. And that we press on, before someone else wanders by and notices he isn't at his post."

  They dragged the warrior inside the iron-bound dungeon door, descended the stairs, and entered a maze of tunnels. The way was even more shadowy than the corridors above. A number of the sockets intended for the crystal lamps were empty, as if some of the devices had broken down and could neither be replaced nor repaired.

  After a while, a muffled sobbing pulsed from up ahead, the sound so expressive of despair that the hairs on the back of Dorian's neck stood on end. He wondered if the Ice Lord was torturing some helpless victim.

  Tahmasp pointed. "The tyrant is in that chamber."

  The two companions crept forward. Holding his breath, Dorian cracked open the door Tahmasp had indicated. Beyond it was a circular room, a sorcerer's laboratory, judging from the bizarre paraphernalia littering the various tables, its floor ten feet below the level of the corridor. A gemlike blue-white sarcophagus rested on a pedestal at its very center. Near the bottom of the stairs stood a muscular, black- bearded man embracing a weeping auburn-haired woman. One of his arms hung in a sling.

  When Dorian spied him, the feeling of wrongness increased tenfold, as if it radiated from the bearded man's flesh. For a moment the sensation was so loathsome that the boy feared he was going to vomit.

  Eager to put an end to it, he aimed the flamelance at the Ice Lord, and then hesitated.

  "Go on!" whispered Tahmasp. "Pull the trigger!"

  Dorian softly closed the door. "He isn't hurting that woman. He's comforting her."

  "So what? She's his advisor, a witch as cruel as he is. It doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to die. You feel the evil inside him, I know you do."

  "Yes," Dorian admitted, "I suppose so. But I won't shoot from ambush. How would that prove my courage and my manhood?" He leaned the flamelance against the wall and drew his sword. The weapon hissed as it scraped clear of the scabbard.

  "But the prophecy! The blade of light!"

  "I brought the flamelance with me. That will have to be enough." "The Ice Lord is a great warrior."

  "His right arm's hurt and his sword is hanging on his left," Dorian answered, "which means that it's his fighting arm that's wounded. I bet I can beat him. And perhaps I'm a fool, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't give him some sort of chance."

  Tahmasp grimaced. "So be it, then. Good luck, young lord."

  Dorian drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he threw open the door, shouted "Hawkmoon!" and charged down the steps.

  The woman goggled up at him and screamed. The Ice Lord released her, whirled, and, forgetting his sling, snatched for his sword. For an instant Dorian thought the fight was already over, that the tyrant would die with his arm entangled and his hand still empty, but then the knot securing the cloth gave way. The Ice Lord got his weapon out just in time to parry his attacker's first cut.

  Over the course of the next few seconds Dorian discovered that his opponent was as able a swordsman as Tahmasp had warned, but also that his injury was as incapacitating as the youth had hoped. The Ice Lord's attacks were cunning, but they lacked force. Dorian had no trouble brushing them aside, while his own thrusts and cuts constantly threatened to smash through the older man's guard. Eventually the Ice Lord tossed his weapon into his left hand, but that was no good, either. It cost him a critical measure of dexterity.

  Dorian drove the older man steadily backward. Their swords rang, the clangor echoing. A red stain bloomed on the Ice Lord's sleeve as his old wound reopened.

  The boy hacked at the Ice Lord's head. The older man parried, but the force of the blow staggered him. Intent on finishing the sorcerer while he was off balance, Dorian began to lunge, then glimpsed movement from the corner of his eye.

  He pivoted to see the red-haired woman rushing him, brandishing a stool. Reflexively he sidestepped and slashed at her, a glancing blow by the feel of it, but enough to gash her brow and knock her down.

  The Ice Lord roared. Dorian turned again. The tyrant charged, his face a mask of rage. Dorian deflected a thrust at his heart, twirled his blade around his foe's weapon, and managed to rip it out of his grasp.

  The Ice Lord tried to leap backward. Dorian stabbed him in the thigh and he fell to one knee instead. As the youth drew back his sword for the coup de grace, his eyes met the wounded man's, and a shock of recognition froze him in place.

  He was looking into his own fey blue eyes. And barring differences of age, complexion, and the shaggy black beard, the features around the eyes were his as well. Mad as it seemed, he'd been dueling himself. And he abruptly felt certain that his doppelganger was no depraved tyrant, nor was his own malaise, the vile sensation that no one else in the castle seemed to feel, a manifestation of evil magic. It was a penalty incurred by breaking some law that forbade any soul to come face to face with itself.

  Why had Tahmasp tricked him? What was really going on? Turning, he saw that at some point the little sorcerer had crept down the stairs, the better, perhaps, to view the combat. Now he squawked, whirled, and scrambled back up the steps.

  Dorian caught him halfway to the door.

  Urlik gazed up at the blond youth with a stunned awe so overwhelming that for a moment it even eclipsed his fear for the injured Khashai. Somehow, the murderous boy was himself. He had no idea how such a thing could be, but he could feel that it was.

  The stranger wheeled and ran at the little man who'd slunk down the steps midway through the battle. Urlik grabbed his fallen sword -- the danger seemed to be over, but he couldn't be sure -- and scuttled to Khashai, his bleeding arm and leg throbbing with every movement.

  As he reached her side, she sat up, groaning and clutching her temple. Her face was ashen beneath the streaks of blood. "Let me see the wound," he said. She took her hand away, and his shoulders sagged in relief. The cut was superficial. "You'll be fine. Just keep pressure on it."

  “I am so sorry," said a voice that hadn't quite finished changing. Urlik's head snapped around. At the bottom of the staircase stood the youth, gripping the fat man's collar, hoisting the prisoner up on tiptoe like a cat dangling a rat. "I thought you were a monster. This man tricked me."

  Once again, peering up at the boy, Url
ik felt dazed with wonder. When he managed to tear his eyes away, he looked to Khashai, but the seeress only shook her head.

  "I recognize the correspondence, too," she said, "but I can't explain it. It's beyond me."

  "Maybe they can explain themselves," Urlik said. He struggled to his feet, made sure his wounded leg would support him, and then helped her up. Turning back to the boy, he said, "This is Lady Khashai, Sibyl of the Frozen Keep, and my name is Urlik Skarsol." He smiled wryly. "I suspect yours is as well."

  "No," said the boy. "I'm called Dorian Hawkmoon. I came from another place, another world, I think, because Tahmasp here" -- he gave his prisoner a shake -- "said you were a wicked tyrant and it would be a noble adventure to kill you." A little awkwardly, because of the length of the blade, Dorian poised his sword at Tahmasp's throat. "And now he's going to tell us why."

  The plump man smirked. "Am I indeed, young lord? Oh, well, why not? You won't remember much of this business anyway. You aren't designed to. As I mentioned, you have a destiny, and so do you, Prince Urlik. Both of you are shells which a certain power will one day inhabit. Acorns shed by a mighty oak which may one day grow into lofty trees themselves."

  “Are you saying that we're two different incarnations of the same spirit?" Urlik asked. The nations of the Southern Ice were familiar with the concept of metempsychosis, though until now he'd had never placed any stock in it himself.

  Tahmasp shrugged. The unraveling coils of his turban slipped over one ear. "That's another way of looking at it. Perhaps it's as good an explanation as any we could pose in human speech. Suffice it to say, the force you embody frequently wars against Chaos" --- the term meant nothing to Urlik, but Khashai gasped -- "and we who serve Her have grown weary of it. Seldom do we manage to best a Champion, and even when we do, another avatar eventually arises. But as a scholar of such matters, I wondered, what if one aspect of the Champion could be induced to murder another? At least we'd be rid of one of you, and a small but definite possibility exists that such a perversion of the will of the Balance would resonate through the multiverse and expunge the whole meddlesome horde of you from every age and plane of existence. Sadly, the experiment isn't working out as planned. But perhaps I can still salvage something."

  "What do you mean?" Dorian growled.

  "Simply that both you young lords are at the beginning of your respective cycles," Tahmasp replied. "Neither of you is the Champion in his prime, and that makes you vulnerable."

  A flash of color dazzled Urlik. Something hurled him backward and smashed him down on the floor.

  Looking up, he realized he'd been slammed back by the sudden expansion of Tahmasp's body. Where the little man had stood now seethed a huge mound of rippling, opalescent flesh laced with veins and pockets of bright light. Countless eyes peered from the solid parts of it, some human, some red with catlike pupils, while twenty tentacles lashed about its core. One of these had looped around Dorian, lifted him into the air, and was striving to crush him.

  Urlik scrambled up, hobbled forward, and hacked at the tentacle. His sword didn't bite deeply enough to sever the arm, but it writhed in pain, and Dorian dropped from its coils. The boy leaped to his feet and slashed at Tahmasp's central mass. Yellow ichor splashed, filling the air with the reek of sulfur. The demon, if that was what it truly was, buzzed angrily. Six more tentacles whipped at the swordsmen, driving them back.

  Through the next desperate moments, Dorian, whirling, ducking, slashing, fighting superbly, bore the brunt of Tahmasp's assault. Recognizing that he was in no condition for this nightmarish struggle, Urlik hung back and guarded the boy's flanks, making sure no tentacles snaked around behind him. And trying to discern a way out of their predicament.

  Sadly, there didn't seem to be one.

  No matter how many tentacles he and Dorian lopped off, Tahmasp simply sprouted more. Though the boy tried with all his might, he never managed to drive through the thrashing members for another strike at the monster's heart. The chamber was buried too deep beneath the keep for anyone to hear the humans cry for help. Nor could they flee; the demon's obscene, heaving bulk blocked the stairs. Behind Urlik, Khashai began to chant in her secret warlock's tongue, but the Prince knew from experience that her genuinely potent magic required hours of preparation. She wouldn't be able to evoke any effect sufficient to destroy a horror like Tahmasp before the creature exhausted and overwhelmed the beleaguered swordsmen.

  Urlik decided that if he and his companions were doomed no matter what, he was done with fighting defensively. He'd rather die attacking. But as he poised himself to charge, he felt a familiar sense of presence. Somehow the Cold Sword had entered the room!

  Lurching around, he saw Khashai standing beside the sapphire coffin, her lovely, bloody face upturned and her arms spread wide in invocation. His accursed weapon, an ebon glaive as tall as a man, carved with runes from its point to its spherical pommel, floated in the air above her. He realized that her conjuration hadn't been intended to kill Tahmasp but to summon the tool that would enable him to accomplish the task himself.

  Dropping his current weapon, he scrambled toward the black blade, hand outstretched. The Cold Sword purred. An instant before he would have seized it, it plummeted and buried itself in Khashai's breast. Gore spattered, staining the sarcophagus. The sorceress collapsed.

  Urlik stared at her body in horror and disbelief. Of all the sorrows the sword had brought him, this was by far the greatest, and he was certain that he simply couldn't bear it. His heart would burst, or his mind would shrivel to nothing.

  At his back, Dorian shrieked.

  Startled, Urlik spun around. With the older warrior gone from the fight, Tahmasp had finally managed to snare Dorian in its tentacles. Now the demon was dragging the youth toward a fanged, vertical maw gnashing in the center of his body.

  Urlik couldn't stand idly by and watch a comrade perish, not even now. Instinctively he reached for the Cold Sword. The weapon seemed to slide itself out of Khashai to nestle in his hand.

  As soon as his fingers closed on the hilt, savage ecstasy overwhelmed him, eradicating both his grief and his physical weakness. Laughing, he whirled the Cold Sword over his head and ran at Tahmasp.

  The demon's tentacles darted at him from all sides at once. Pivoting with superhuman speed, he lopped them in two as if they were no more solid than smoke. He fought his way forward until he was hacking at Tahmasp's jeweled dunghill of a body. Chunks of pulsing flesh flew through the air. Pockets of light flared and went out. Tahmasp buzzed louder and louder, until, abruptly, the noise ceased. The creature's arms flopped to the floor, and its flesh began to melt into steam.

  Urlik turned. Dorian had extricated himself from the tentacles that had bound him. Now he took a wary step backward.

  "Don't worry," said Urlik bitterly. "I'm not berserk anymore. Why would I be? The sword has already claimed its price." Wracked with loathing, he flung the black glaive away. It clanked on the floor like any ordinary weapon.

  Puzzled, Dorian cocked his head. Urlik realized that the boy had been too busy fighting to notice Khashai's death. The Prince gestured at the center of the chamber.

  Dorian let out a cry. His face twisted, making him look like an anguished child. "It's all my fault. I yield myself to your justice. Punish me however you will."

  Urlik wearily shook his head. "I won't blame you. It was the demon who forced her to summon the sword."

  “But if I hadn't agreed to accompany it here, if I hadn't wounded you before it changed form --"

  "Enough!" Urlik snarled. "I still don't comprehend any of this. But if you are me, how can I send you to the block? Return to your own place and live a happier life than mine. Just tell me one thing first. Why did you come? I know, Tahmasp said I was a villain, but I gather that this isn't even your world."

  Dorian swallowed. If possible, he looked even more abashed. "To test my manhood and my sanity."

  Urlik sighed. "Don't be ashamed of that. Most young men feel such needs.
I did myself. For what it's worth, you did prove your courage and your prowess. As for your sanity, I wouldn't worry about it. What does reason mean in a universe where prodigies like this can happen? Now please go. I need to be alone."

  "Very well," said Dorian. He began to turn away, then pivoted back. "Will you be all right?"

  "I don't know,” Urlik said somberly, contemplating the bloodstained sarcophagus and the still, white form beside it. "I'm going to sleep for a long while. A lady far wiser than I told me it's my fate, the fate Tahmasp hoped to prevent, apparently, and in any case, I don't want to stay here anymore. I only hope the demon was right about our memories. Perhaps, as I slumber, I'll forget."

  St. Paul’s Churchyard, New Year’s Day

  Shivering and sniffling, the gangly, fifteen year-old boy limped through the maze of twisting streets. His uneven footsteps crunched the snow. Whenever he encountered anyone--which was seldom, for nearly all London had gone to see the jousting--he averted his face. He was ashamed of his bruises, his chipped tooth, and especially his tears.

  Rounding yet another corner, he found himself before the towering limestone cathedral that he, his foster brother, and his foster father had ridden by the day before. In the center of the now-deserted churchyard stood the marble block, the anvil affixed atop it, and the sword that impaled them both. The weapon's gemmed hilt burned like a torch, even in the wan winter sunlight.

  The boy squinted at it. A wildness came into his battered, starveling face. He glanced about, making certain no one was watching. Then he scurried to the stone, scrambled up on it, gripped the sword by its ice-cold handles, and tried to pull it free.

  Though he strained with all his might, it wouldn't budge. At last, winded, disgusted by his own foolishness, he jumped awkwardly off the pedestal, then slumped down on the frozen ground with his back against it.

  A shadow fell across him.

  Startled, the lad looked up. A tall man with a high, alabaster forehead and dark, deep-set eyes loomed over him. The newcomer's gloves were lined with fur, his belt, adorned with garnets and silver thread. His ermine-trimmed camlet cloak hung to the tops of his soft leather boots.