Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

Hew’s mouth opened, without at first producing speech. At length, he said, “I am deeply honored that you should consider my services worth such a sum, and I am of course keen to learn what you have in view. Still, though I would rather die than offend you,” he added, “I must ask if Master Bront’s being, ah, dead, isn’t an obstacle to this project of yours.”

“Ah!” cried Kadaster. “Here’s the terrace—I’ll pour us all some refreshment!”

And indeed, just ahead of them, the tunnel ended at a blaze of sunlight. They stepped out onto the magnificent terrace of a manse that clung to a great gray mountain’s shoulder. Hew stood gazing out into the yawning gulfs of blue air. He realized, finding himself so distant from where he had been mere minutes before, that he was already hired. “Have we come so far? Is that Helix there, barely visible upon the plain? Are we up in the Siderions?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

Hew gazed at Helix, a little cone of brightness on the distant plain that swept down from these mountains’ feet. “Well, great Kadaster, I’m stunned to be so…honored.”

“The honor is mine. But help me with Bront.”

He opened the wain’s tailgate. They hoisted the traces high, and the paint cask toppled, releasing the dead mauve Bront. His corpse was slick as an otter, except for his calves and his feet.

Kadaster made a gesture and the wain sprang off the terrace and tumbled away into the mountain gulfs. He seized up a bucket from somewhere and made an emptying gesture with it at the flood of pigment, and every scrap of color peeled off of the terrace and the corpse and cohered in the bucket, which Kadaster tossed, in its turn, out into the abyss.

Now he produced a second bucket, gripping the perfectly clean Bront by the back of his neck, and tucking the bucket under his face. “Bront,” he said. “Come back.”

Upheaval shook the mighty frame. His head came up and he began to puke mightily. Endless this disgorging seemed, yet when he was done, the bucket was precisely filled with pigment, and there was not an iota of spillage. Hew had taken up one of his host’s flasks of wine, and now gently offered it to the warrior, whose eyes seemed to be clearing.

“Perhaps you’d like a cleansing draught?” he said.

Disbelief, then outrage entered Bront’s unfocused eyes as he recognized the two solicitous faces gazing down at him. The proffered flask was something he could grasp—he did so, and drank it off. Rose unsteadily and stood swaying, gaping dazedly upon the mountain peaks that marched away from this fastness on every side.

“Drop that over the railing, would you Bront?” the sorcerer pleasantly suggested, indicating the bucket which the warrior had spewed full. The swordsman stiffly picked it up, and carried it to the balcony’s edge as if it weighed a thousand stone. Then set it down and stood gripping the balustrade, and gazing out wild-eyed into the gulf.

“I was dead!” It was a hoarse shout of protest addressed to the universe. Hew came cautiously to his side.

“I can’t tell you how I rejoice in your…recovery.”

“You killed me!”

“No! I prevented you from killing me, and it resulted in your death! Surely you’ll acknowledge there’s an important difference?”

But the gulf distracted Bront’s wild eye. He had, it was apparent, no thought to spare for quibbles over cause and effect. Again he announced to the vast, limpid mountain air: “I was dead!”—wonder now equaled the note of protest in his voice.

“Come, my dear, respected Bront,” urged Kadaster, “drop the bucket off the balcony, and let us take more wine together.”

As the warrior held the bucket poised to drop, he slanted a question to the tintmaster. “What color would you call this here that I drowned in?”

“Mauve.”

Bront released it as he might a striking snake, and shuddered as he watched it—his death there plummeting into the void, dwindling away…

In easy chairs, gazing over the gulf, the three of them drank wine. Bront between swallows sometimes seemed to marvel at the flask itself, and at his own hand that held it, but soon enough he drained the wine, and poured himself some more.

“Gentlemen,” Kadaster said, “your commission is of the highest importance. To understand where I mean to send you, you must first consider that no light is ever lost, or ever will be lost. Second, you must grasp that time is light. No light is ever lost, and every eon’s glow, each intricate detail, is still fleeing through the universe, radiating outward from its moment of origin. Your destination will lie within this swelling sphere of light.”

“Will lie,” Hew added carefully, “within this sphere of time.”

“Precisely. And precisely what you are to deliver is a bit of light. You, estimable Hew, will shortly be given an insight into the details of this delivery, which it falls to you particularly to execute.”