The Crier’s Sacrifice

The next morn­ing, Nil­rid awoke at the gates of Romi­ra, hav­ing com­plet­ed that part of the jour­ney the night be­fore. It was large ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, but seemed empty for lack of an equal­ly large pop­u­la­tion. The boy was able to walk through the streets with­out the thou­sands of towns­peo­ple breath­ing down his back, which was pleas­ant but more than a lit­tle bor­ing. After all, the only truly large city he’d ever been in was Mallsey, and even that made poor com­par­i­son to places like In­dimer, Il­sonne or Ulist.

He chose not to stay the night, so in­stead, he bought a few more sup­plies and con­tin­ued on his way. As he head­ed south­east on the road to the cap­i­tal of Wys­tarin, he no­ticed that the plains were be­gin­ning to slope up­ward, and the grass was less green. Nil­rid was get­ting close to the Fin­syn Moun­tains that sep­a­rat­ed the old na­tions from the new, the pop­u­lat­ed from the quaint. In the days of the In­dimer War, this nat­ur­al bar­ri­er had been all that kept the rag­ing armies in the east from spilling into Wys­tarin, al­low­ing the lead­ers of that time a lit­tle breath­ing room. Even­tu­al­ly, how­ev­er, the fight­ing spread every­where, and ac­tu­al­ly ended near the east­ern city of Rogilia.

The boy was pon­der­ing these bits of his­to­ry when sud­den­ly, a bush cracked be­hind him. Whirling around, with his mag­i­cal en­er­gy ready for seizure at any mo­ment, he gasped. It was the stone-faced royal guard from the night be­fore, with a pol­ished cross­bow trained di­rect­ly on him!

“Didn’t think you’d ever see me again, hmm?” he grat­ed, smil­ing evil­ly. “Jizir XI was right, you know—never trust any­one. A good les­son, but a lit­tle too late for you. Sur­ren­der your­self peace­ful­ly, and per­haps you’ll get to meet King Bey­nar him­self be­fore you pass.”

“Now lis­ten,” Nil­rid soothed, his heart rac­ing with sur­prise, “sure­ly there must be a way to reach some kind of com­pro­mise...”

“Is that a no?” the in­for­mant asked cold­ly.

“I’m not an un­rea­son­able bar­gain­er, you know, and there is much I have to offer. If you would just give me a chance to...”

“Never!” he cried, and fired the cross­bow.

Nil­rid al­most smiled as he fash­ioned one of the clever­est items he’d ever thought of. It was a huge, in­vis­i­ble wall, that not only re­pelled the metal in the tip of an arrow but sent it bounc­ing back.

The cor­rupt sen­try had no time to react. One mo­ment, his bolt was speed­ing to­ward the boy, and in the next, it was lodged in his own heart. With a stran­gled cry, filled more with shock than with pain, he clutched his check and fell dead. The cross­bow clat­tered to the ground be­side him.

Step­ping gin­ger­ly up to the body, Nil­rid re­trieved the bow and its re­main­ing bolts. Per­haps Tanave­ri­ans were use­ful for some­thing. As he was tak­ing his prize, the boy also no­ticed a small, fold­ed note in the man’s shirt pock­et. Cu­ri­ous, he un­fold­ed the paper and read:

In­for­mant to King Bey­nar of Tanaveri
Notes: Spy Nil­rid
Col­lect­ed 7-1-28 at Sum­mit Green, near Romi­ra, Wys­tarin

• Nil­rid left Sum­mit Green evening of 7-1, head­ed to In­dimer.
• Told King he was rec­og­nized mag­i­cal­ly in Tsati­ra (vil­lage near Ulist?).

Nil­rid gasped. Sup­pos­ing he hadn’t been able to kill his pur­suer? Sup­pos­ing the man hadn’t been so stu­pid as to stalk an or­dained wiz­ard? He could have dashed his hopes—the world’s hopes—of ever de­feat­ing Malthan, in that one fool­ish mo­ment! Sigh­ing with re­lief, the boy promised him­self that he would never open­ly dis­cuss any­thing about his true pur­pose, ex­cept per­haps with Mor­gan or Wekain them­selves. After all, if he couldn’t talk with some­one, he would sure­ly go mad.

Well, there was no use in scold­ing him­self. Get­ting up, he con­tin­ued his jour­ney, feel­ing ex­treme­ly inept but a lit­tle more knowl­edge­able about the trou­bled and cruel world around him.

Now En­ter­ing the
King­dom of Esan­ta
Maltha­ni­ans Will Be Killed Upon Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion

“Oh, thank Gelz!” Mor­gan cried, falling on his face.

Wekain just laughed, his voice lit­tle more than a parched rasp, and lay on the ground be­side his com­pan­ion. The past five days had been noth­ing short of hell for the two wiz­ards, but now that they had left the desert and of­fi­cial­ly en­tered a civ­i­lized na­tion, things could only get bet­ter.

“Do you think we could start eat­ing real food now?” the High Wiz­ard asked. Ever since leav­ing the Palace of Dark­ness, their only sus­te­nance had been mag­i­cal­ly-cre­at­ed ra­tions and water.

“Any­time you’re ready,” Mor­gan replied. “Why don’t you get up and kill some­thing?”

“Never mind,” Wekain mut­tered. “I’m not that hun­gry.”

“Quiet!” the other wiz­ard hissed.

Wekain bris­tled. “Well, if you’re going to be un­pleas­ant...”

“I said quiet!” Mor­gan snapped. “I thought I heard a bush crack­ing, over there.” He point­ed to the first ob­ject of veg­e­ta­tion they had seen in days.

Sud­den­ly, an arrow shot from the bush, whizzing be­tween the sit­ting wiz­ards and lodg­ing it­self in the sec­ond ob­ject of veg­e­ta­tion, an old, scrag­gly tree. Be­fore the High Wiz­ard could blink, Mor­gan had closed his eyes, and turned the enemy’s hid­ing place into a crack­ling in­fer­no.

“That’s the last of my power,” he mur­mured weari­ly, falling again to the ground. “Good luck, Wekain!”

“Thank you so much,” the High Wiz­ard growled, turn­ing to face his op­po­nent. It was a sin­gle short, squat­ty crea­ture, car­ry­ing an over­sized cross­bow and with a small sword at its belt.

“A bog­fiend,” Wekain cooed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of you be­fore. You’re kind of cute, aren’t you?”

The crea­ture grunt­ed and fired an­oth­er arrow. Halfway through its jour­ney, the bolt turned into a pile of glow­ing metal and stink­ing ash. The High Wiz­ard closed his eyes again, prepar­ing to deal the final blow, and then stopped. Sup­pos­ing this un­pleas­ant beast was ed­i­ble? Food was food, and he doubt­ed that Malthan had ever both­ered to make her first cre­ations poi­so­nous.

Quick­ly, Wekain changed his spell to a small block of freez­ing ice, and gen­tly in­sert­ed it into the bog­fiend’s heart. He heard a gasp, and a thud be­fore open­ing his eyes. The crea­ture looked sur­prised, but com­plete­ly un­dam­aged. It had never fin­ished load­ing its third arrow.

“Well, I killed some­thing!” the High Wiz­ard told his com­pan­ion cheer­ful­ly. “And since you were of such great as­sis­tance, you get to gut the pig. Are you lis­ten­ing, Mor­gan? This is no time for sleep­ing!”

“I heard you,” Mor­gan groaned.

“Then get up! The longer you lie there, the worse it smells.”

“All right, all right,” the other wiz­ard con­ced­ed, forc­ing him­self to stand, and ex­am­in­ing the un­touched car­cass.

It wasn’t a bad meal—at least, it was a thou­sand times bet­ter than any­thing they’d been eat­ing. The meat was a lit­tle tough, part­ly be­cause of the bog­fiend’s mus­cu­lar build, and party be­cause of its mo­men­tary shock be­fore it died. Still, Mor­gan and Wekain en­joyed every bite.

The sun had gone down by the time they were fin­ished. Both sat­is­fied with them­selves, they quick­ly fell asleep.

That night, Wekain had a dream. He was float­ing far above the Fin­syn Moun­tains, with the wind rush­ing all over him. Then, very slow­ly, he began to de­scend into the top of one of the peaks. As he was about to run into the sum­mit, it fell in on it­self, kick­ing up a huge cloud of dust. Yet the wiz­ard was un­af­fect­ed, and he con­tin­ued his de­scent into the moun­tain.

After a few more min­utes, he was sur­round­ed by dark­ness. A huge voice spoke to him, echo­ing off every in­vis­i­ble wall.

“You dare to kill one of my ser­vants? You have much nerve, High Wiz­ard Wekain, to chal­lenge my au­thor­i­ty.”

“Who are you?” the High Wiz­ard an­swered. He had been in the busi­ness of mind dis­ci­pline long enough to dis­tin­guish be­tween dream and re­al­i­ty, and he saw no rea­son to show any re­spect to a night­mare.

“You may call me Ry­ovin. I am one of the Great Beasts, sec­ond to Pakil her­self in power and in­flu­ence. So tell me, High Wiz­ard Wekain: who are you to show dis­re­spect and take a life in my ter­ri­to­ry?”

“Oh, so this is your ter­ri­to­ry?” Wekain laughed. “I must have mis­read the bor­der sign.”

“Do not mock me!” the drag­on boomed. “Nei­ther Wys­tarin nor Esan­ta has any con­trol over this area. There is only me, and I think it is time you learned that. What would you and your friend say to meet­ing me in per­son, at ten o’clock to­mor­row morn­ing?”

“Name a place,” the High Wiz­ard replied, but he was be­com­ing more un­easy. The beast couldn’t hurt him here, but the next morn­ing was an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter. Had he just sealed the fate of Mor­gan, him­self and the Rit­u­al of Sum­mon­ing for Malthan’s tem­ple?

“Oh, where you are will be quite ad­e­quate. I look for­ward to see­ing you, my pompous break­fast.”

“Oblig­ed,” Wekain said, as the dream ended.

The next morn­ing, the wiz­ards were both up with the sun. At first, the High Wiz­ard said noth­ing, know­ing how his com­pan­ion’s tem­per could flare after awak­en­ing. It was near­ly seven thir­ty when he fi­nal­ly broke the news.

“Oh, by the way, I don’t think we’ll be trav­el­ing today,” he said sim­ply, as he packed the rest of the bog­fiend in a skin bag.

Mor­gan frowned. “Why not?”

“I’ve made an ap­point­ment with a drag­on for ten o’clock in this very spot. He was quite ego­tis­ti­cal, so I thought we’d get rid of him.”

The other wiz­ard’s eyes grew very wide. “Wekain, you...”

“Shut up,” Wekain snapped. “It’s too late to change any­thing, and every minute we stand here yelling at each other is one less we have to plan. As much as they’d like us to think they’re im­mor­tal, they aren’t, and we’re going to have to prove it. Do you re­mem­ber the time when we had to speak be­fore the Coun­cil, and had twen­ty min­utes to pre­pare a re­port on two years of re­search?”

“Oh, I re­mem­ber,” Mor­gan laughed dryly. “We did fair­ly well, as I re­call. The Chan­cel­lor her­self both­ered to clap.”

“Well, this time we have two and a half hours. What can we do to stand a chance against a beast that would burn us to cin­ders in con­ven­tion­al com­bat? Fire shields, I sup­pose, but they would have to be main­tained and wouldn’t pro­tect us from claws and teeth.”

“No, and White­fire’s out, too,” the other wiz­ard mused. “The shock-wave would bounce right off his scales—maybe back at us! His weak­ness is cold, so we should use some­thing to that ef­fect. What did you do to that bog­fiend?”

“Oh, I froze his heart,” the High Wiz­ard shrugged. “But that wouldn’t work on any­thing as big as a drag­on. Malthan was smart; ac­cord­ing to what I’ve heard, their scales shield them com­plete­ly from di­rect at­tack.”

“Then what about a case of ice?”

Wekain chuck­led. “You want to make a forty-foot cube and hold it for two hours against a fire-breath­ing mon­ster? Go ahead.”

“Never mind. But per­haps there’s a way to spread the nec­es­sary amount of ice around the area, and then bring it up around the drag­on at once.”

The High Wiz­ard nod­ded. “Cre­ative. It might work, too—con­ceal a huge glac­i­er a few inch­es un­der­ground, and then fold it over him when he lands. But what would we do? Hu­mans die much more eas­i­ly than drag­ons.”

“We’ve got a while, don’t we? Plen­ty of time to make an un­der­ground cham­ber, that would be un­cov­ered by our ice trap. We could stay there until he’s en­cased, and then come out to in­spect our re­sults.”

“Bril­liant!” Wekain cried. Im­me­di­ate­ly, they began to hol­low out the ground.

Their sub­ter­ranean hide­out was done in min­utes. Climb­ing in, the wiz­ards sealed off the hole, and bored a hole sev­er­al hun­dred yards to the east for ven­ti­la­tion. Then, they began to make the trap.

It proved to be a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult than they had ex­pect­ed. The glac­i­er was easy to make, and easy to place, but the way Mor­gan had planned it, the ground would come up and trap the drag­on, with the ice be­hind it. So, they had to make a com­pli­cat­ed pro­ce­dure in which the ground lift­ed, re­versed it­self so that the glac­i­er was in front, and then rushed to the largest warm-blood­ed or­gan­ism in the area. All of this had to be com­plet­ed in less than a sec­ond, or else the drag­on would re­al­ize it was walk­ing into a snare and take to the air.

Half an hour after they’d fin­ished, they heard the beat­ing of huge wings. “Here goes!” Wekain mur­mured, crouch­ing down in the cham­ber. Falling mud from where the ground lift­ed up wouldn’t hurt them, but falling chunks of ice was an­oth­er mat­ter. Both the wiz­ards put their hands over their heads, and wait­ed.

“Good morn­ing, High Wiz­ard and friend!” Ry­ovin cried. From the dis­tance of the voice, Wekain could tell their ad­ver­sary was still air­borne, but close enough to the ground that it was prob­a­bly about to land.

“You are here, are you not?” the drag­on con­tin­ued, his voice clos­er. “Even if you are a bit high-strung, Wekain, I was cer­tain you had enough honor to meet your ap­point­ment.”

The beat­ing of wings sud­den­ly stopped, as Ry­ovin began his final de­scent. “If you can hear me, I sug­gest you make some kind of sign. I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate cow­ards, and...”

At that mo­ment, Wekain and Mor­gan were un­cov­ered as their roof swept up fifty feet into the air. Flip­ping around per­fect­ly, it en­cased the star­tled drag­on. They heard claw­ing sounds in­side the bun­dle, and de­cid­ed it was wise to stay where they were, at least until the drag­on’s final strug­gles ended.

A minute or so later, the claw­ing stopped, and the two wiz­ards emerged from their hid­ing place, feel­ing very proud of them­selves. Wekain eyed the gi­gan­tic trap, and chuck­led, “Should we just leave it here?”

Sud­den­ly, a huge, clawed foot stuck out of the bun­dle, and swiped at Mor­gan. With a grunt, the old man fell to the ground.

The High Wiz­ard was caught be­tween panic and com­plete sur­prise. He had heard of the power and en­durance of drag­ons be­fore, but he’d never dreamed that one could break from that icy tomb! No won­der it had taken a full reg­i­ment of the Wys­tarin­ian army and the Fire­disc to fin­ish them off in the In­dimer War.

Wekain paused for a mo­ment. The Fire­disc!

He closed his eyes, shrink­ing down his power, and then opened them again. The spell he was about to cast was one of the few that were out­lawed by the Coun­cil of the Ar­cane. All through his ed­u­ca­tion in Perisan­ta, there had been two rules: never cre­ate non-peo­ple, and never steal using magic. And to cast it on the Tem­ple of the Dawn... this could cost him his medal­lion, even his life!

But when he saw his friend, lying in a shal­low pool of his own blood, he for­got every reg­u­la­tion he’d ever heard. Clos­ing his eyes again, he shaped a per­fect copy of the Fire­disc. Of course, he had gone to the Tem­ple of the Dawn as a young man, and got­ten a fleet­ing glimpse of it there. He had no idea how he re­mem­bered well enough to shape it, but some­how, in his des­per­a­tion, he was able.

Open­ing his eyes, he saw the small, cir­cu­lar ob­ject in his shak­ing hands. Well, Gelz hadn’t struck him down, so he sup­posed every­thing was going well so far. Now, if he could just fig­ure out how to use it!

Ah, yes. He re­called a re­port he’d read on the In­dimer War, which de­scribed every last de­tail of those nine years, in­clud­ing the last bat­tle. It had de­scribed ex­act­ly how King Jizir’s top gen­er­al had held up the disc, said a few words, and brought down the wrath of the skies on the un­sus­pect­ing drag­ons. And while it wasn’t a stormy day, the weapon might work with di­vine in­ter­ven­tion...

Thrust­ing the Fire­disc high in the air, Wekain cried, “Elja Gelz, an­torv nyr tiend!” which meant, in a much older tongue, “Mighty Gelz, hear our cry!”

Just as the words left his mouth, the sky grew as black as night, and a thou­sand forks of light­ning cut into the open­ing trap. There was an un­earth­ly screech from the drag­on in­side, and then the en­tire struc­ture came crash­ing to the ground (thank­ful­ly falling the other way).

As the skies cleared, a voice boomed, “YOU ARE VERY COURA­GEOUS, WEKAIN. YOUR KNOWL­EDGE, IN­GE­NU­ITY AND IN­TRE­PID­I­TY HAVE SAVED YOUR FRIEND’S LIFE, AND CLEANSED DEREN­DA OF ONE OF MAL­THAN’S MOST FOR­MI­DA­BLE SER­VANTS. ORDERS YOU HAVE DIS­OBEYED, BUT ALL WILL BE FOR­GIV­EN IF YOU PLACE THE FIRE­DISC ON THE GROUND AND ALLOW IT TO BE RE­CLAIMED.”

Still trem­bling, and with enough adren­a­line in­side him to kill an ele­phant, the High Wiz­ard gen­tly placed the Fire­disc on the ground, and called out, “Your wish is my com­mand, Ex­alt­ed Lord,” he stam­mered. Im­me­di­ate­ly, the dead­ly weapon dis­ap­peared from sight, and Gelz left with it.

Mor­gan groaned, lean­ing over. “What hap­pened?” he asked weari­ly.

“I’ll tell you later,” Wekain said, rush­ing over. He sup­posed Gelz didn’t have the time to go around and heal every mor­tal­ly wound­ed old man he came across. “I’d bet­ter take care of you first.”