X
It was dark when I awoke.
There was something soft beneath me. As my eyes fluttered open, I took in the sights around me. I was back in my lab, lying on the straw pallet in the corner where I spent my nights. There were a few candles burning, but it was dim.
Next to my lab table was D'Arden Tal.
No. It was the Arbiter.
Those glittering blue eyes were watching me so intently… I felt like a field mouse, staring into the eyes of the raptor as it approached.
"You're awake," the Arbiter observed.
Gritting my teeth against the pain in my head, I rose. "So it would seem."
"Was that the work of Yzgar the Black?" he asked.
My throat was dry. I tried to swallow, but all I got instead was a hacking cough. "Yes," I breathed, as I slowly recovered. "How did you know?"
"It is important to study history," he said, "So that we may not repeat its mistakes. Wouldn't you agree, sorcerer?"
My enfeebled mind couldn't think of a retort. I stayed silent.
He reached over and picked up the grey leather tome, turning it over in his hands. "I won't ask where you got this, since the answer would be irrelevant. I will simply thank you, Edar Moncrief, for turning it over into my possession."
My lips refused to work. I nodded numbly. He could have the damned book.
Next, he reached into a pocket just inside his tunic and pulled out the heartblade – likely the one he'd taken off my workbench, since it was not in one of the black leather cases. He dangled it before my eyes. "I'll be taking this with me, as well."
Again, all I could do was nod.
He leaned back, sliding the tiny crystal knife back into that pocket inside his tunic. "For invoking an incantation written by one of the most hated and dangerous black sorcerers of the past several centuries, I should simply kill you… or have you dragged back to the Tower to await sentencing," the Arbiter mused. "There's even the possibility that I could simply report you as a magical threat to the town guardsmen… it seems they don't like you very much. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to string you up for me."
"…helped you…" I managed to wheeze.
"Indeed you did," he said. "You helped me locate and eliminate the vampires which I had come here to find. For that, you deserve to be commended."
My eyes flew open wide. He was simply staring at me, his face completely serious… but I could see the mocking laughter in his eyes.
"You knew…?"
"That Gaerton Daen was dead? Most certainly," he said, with a little dismissive wave of one hand. "Unfortunate, but unavoidable, when one sends a mere stripling to do a Master's job. Think on this, sorcerer… what kind of murderer leaves a corpse lying in the street in the middle of the day?"
There it was. As I mentioned, I can be an idiot sometimes… mostly when fear is the predominant emotion in my crowded brain. Add in the joy of a discovery, and reason goes right out the window. "You put it there."
A tiny smile played across his thin lips. "Give the man a gold medallion. I was hoping to lure someone out by placing it in that alley – in fact that was the third place it had been in three days. At last, I found you. Of course, I should have killed you the moment you fed me that line about the 'Sorcerer's Code'… do you think I'm stupid?"
I could have kicked myself. What I thought had been a brilliant discovery, a series of flashes of insight, a series of bold and calculated bluffs that had led to some of the best acting I'd ever done in my life – he'd orchestrated them all.
Never again would I underestimate the Arbiters.
"Why?" I managed. "Why me?"
He broke into a full smile; a heart-stopping expression. "You are not as widely derided as you think, sorcerer. There are rumors, whispers about you, some of them from very dark places. Someone had to determine if you were a threat."
Whispers, about me? That was a chilling thought. "And… am I?"
"That is the question," the Arbiter said, his eyes intent once more on me. "You have invoked a deadly spell, written by a dangerous black sorcerer. You have absorbed more power into you than any man truly ever should… which makes you dangerous, as well. Yet when I gave you the option, you chose to stand against the darkness, rather than run back to your lab and hide away. You are a difficult case, Edar Moncrief."
"That was a test?" I asked. "You were testing me?"
"All men must be tested; it is the fires of danger and the choices we make which forge the soul from cheap ore into shining steel," the Arbiter said, his eyes glittering.
There was no reason to ask what he would have done if I had failed that test. A lump formed in my throat as I considered the grisly demise that my temporary bout of insanity – or heroism, call it what you will – had narrowly avoided.
"So what do you intend to do with me?" I asked, managing to swallow the lump.
"You have seen more than most men ever see, sorcerer," he said, his voice sinking to a low growl. "By all rights you should have died invoking that incantation, and yet you stand before me. If the vampires' power didn't kill you, Daen's certainly should have, and yet here you are."
Silence – uncomfortable, painful silence filled the lab, until I thought I would scream at the agony of it.
At last, he broke it. "The Arbiters do not take chances."
My heart sank.
That was it; I was going to die.
He pushed himself off my lab table with his hands and stalked toward me. I closed my eyes, waiting for the end.
"We do not take chances, and yet somehow… I like you, sorcerer," Tal said, though there was no trace of warmth in the statement. My eyes sprang open in amazement. That sentiment scared me more than anything else he'd said since we met.
"I never saw you here," he continued. "But know this, Edar Moncrief: if I ever see you again – I'll kill you."
The arctic chill of the Arbiter's mass brushed past me, colliding with my shoulder. I lifted a hand and shoved him off me, though my meager strength made little difference against his bulk. My fingers fluttered as I pulled that hand back to me, and then something caught at the back of my throat. A closed fist, the same hand I used to push him away, flew to my mouth and covered a wracking cough that doubled me over.
His words lingered in the air as I expelled the breath from my lungs in a vicious fit of hacking and wheezing.
Slowly, painfully, I recovered, straightening myself at last. I opened my closed hand.
In the center of my palm lay the tiny, fragile, crystalline heartblade – the one he'd hidden away in that tunic pocket.
Simple sleight-of-hand. The things you learn to avoid starvation.
The Arbiter had the book… but I had the incantation. The words seemed to be indelibly written on my brain. There was no possibility that I would ever forget them, now. Together with the heartblade, I held in my hand and my brain the first chance in centuries to unravel the truth behind the secretive Arbiters.
A hysterical part of my brain babbled that I should tell the Arbiter, remind him that even though he might be ready to burn that book and remove its writings from the world forever, that they still lived on in my brain. After all, the "Sorcerer's Code" meant I could never tell a lie… right?
I clamped my mouth shut, to prevent either the howling laughter of a madman or a desperate confession from escaping. At last, his presence disappeared from my lab, and my life, forever.
There was always the chance that he'd discover what was missing, and come riding back for my head, but I was tired of this two-bit town anyway. It was time to move on. As the dawn rose, I would vanish like a shadow.
In the silence that followed, my parched lips cracked in a grin.
My work had only just begun.
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About the Author
Christopher Kellen is an IT specialist who thinks he's got what it takes to spin the occasional swords-and-sorcery yarn. His heroes of literature are those who are fearless in telling an uncompromising sto
ry. He wishes that there were more people who wrote like Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Karl Edward Wagner, and while he knows that that he can never live up to their genius, he hopes to contribute something to the genre that they so loved. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and their monstrous black dog.
Connect With Me Online
My blog: https://christopherkellen.wordpress.com
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