Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

The wizard paused, and seemed to muse. Bront cleared his throat. “What you need done, this man here, this execrable scaffold-monkey, can do. But you’ve gone to the trouble of painting me mauve before the eyes of the town, drowning me in it, and resurrecting me up here, all because I too have some part in this wall-smearing commission?”

“Your assumption is absolutely correct, good Bront, and I sincerely grieve at the understandable pique your words express. We had, perforce, to rely on chance, and chance was dreadfully unkind to you.

“And I fear the same element of chance will govern your execution of our aim where I will shortly send you. We may rejoice, at least, that this mission of yours lies near at hand.” He rose, and invited them back to the parapet. “It lies, indeed, not thirty leagues due south of here. You’ll be there in scarce three days’ march.”

Hew and Bront viewed the Siderion Mountains on whose spine they were perched. It was an awesome range of sharp, snow-crowned peaks which they knew to stretch a hundred leagues due south.

“Thirty leagues as the crow flies?” Hew was amazed. “Scarce three days? You mean a month’s trek, surely.”

Bront’s thoughts seemed to have wandered. “Resurrection…” he murmured. “How strange it feels, this…reacquaintance with the world…”

The wizard smiled his sympathy. To Hew’s question, he said, “You misconceive the mission. When, in an hour or so, you set out yonder, these mountains will be utterly worn away. A gently rolling high plateau—all that will be left of them—is what you’ll tread. But come now, both of you, to my storerooms to be armed and clad.”

Returning alone to the balcony, Bront did not disdain the wine—nor had he refused from Kadaster’s stores a trail cloak and stout new buskins. While the sorcerer’s golden advance had not erased, it had surely moderated his indignation at his sufferings in that cask of paint.

It irked him that the wall-smearer was still closeted with the mage in private conference…Still, his curiosity was undeniably piqued: the distant future was to be their destination.

When the sorcerer and Hew returned, the tintmaster wore a leathern harness which wrapped a row of cylinders across his chest. A jar of pigment was socketed in each of these lidded cylinders, and each jar sprouted the handle of what looked to be a remarkably small brush.

“My friends…” The mage was pouring a round into their cups. “…Forgive me now if my parting injunctions seem spare to you. This is the mage’s hardest task—to stint direction when chance is the magic’s key additive. I must, perforce, describe your task elliptically.

“At the distance I have named due south of here, lies Minion. It is a bustling place, a gamester’s hive of sleepless carnival. Your task lies in the Crystal Combs, a few leagues eastward, but your preparation must commence in Minion. There you will procure the materials good Hew has determined. Engage a jack-haul—a spry one who can run and fight as well as carry—and make up his load with all you will need inside the Combs.

“At some point prior to your departure from Minion, you will have met your third man, precisely how I cannot say. You will know him for your own because he too will be bound for the Combs. These are reached via tunnels beneath them, and in these, you will certainly encounter conflict with the men who sap and chip from below at the crystals. Your third man will know a way into the tunnels.

“Here, Bront, the combative skills that so distinguish you will come into play. But please note that yours is, in essence, a beneficent mission. Where a solid clubbing will suffice, you are not to spill avoidable blood. When you are up in the Combs themselves, you must take particular care not to harm the denizens there, the Slymires, though I am afraid they are dangerous in the extreme, and may be fiercely aggressive.

“When you have reached the primitive Archive of the Slymires—their grotto of runes—you will have a final and most vital task. Hew will need a great deal of help in constructing the scaffolding he needs to ascend the walls of those colossal vaults, and execute that last, most vital act.”

“…I am to help him construct his…scaffold?”

“Yes.”

Bront shuddered violently. He seemed to be having a full-body memory of his most recent experience on a scaffold. He touched, beneath his cuirass, a pouch of golden lictors—Kadaster’s advance. Registering some comfort from this contact, he shuddered again, more softly.

“Now gentlemen,” smiled the mage. “Please stand with your toes touching the parapet. I wish you godspeed, and ask you to take one step forward.”

“The parapet impedes all forward motion,” protested Bront, but in reflexively pushing his right foot against the wall, he felt it swing effortlessly forward, and come to rest on level rock, and found himself standing on a vast, rolling plateau, beneath the rosy light of a far redder sun, at high noon…