Heal for Dark Power

The road from Ballaruk to Nethrask ran through the ceasefire like a thread through a needle.

It had rained on the second day. Real rain, soft and grey, the kind that soaks into the ground instead of running off it. Juerdon had stood in the courtyard of Ballaruk with his face turned up to the sky and let it fall on him until his robes were heavy. The people of the city had come out of their houses. Children ran through the puddles. Old women held out their hands. Vaeric had declared a feast, then remembered the rationing, then declared a smaller feast.

The Drought had lifted. For seven turns, the wand was quiet.

She had kept her word. Juerdon was not sure why that hurt so much.

Now it was the fourth day, and he was riding north-east under a pale sky with an escort of six knights and one very nervous clerk. He had a letter in his saddlebag, sealed with Vaeric's wheat sheaf. It said yes. Yes, Haldmark would Heal the Dark Elf troops. Yes, Haldmark would accept Dark Power in return, at some future date, terms to be agreed.

Vaeric had laughed when he read Sarrson's message.

"He's begging," he said. "The great Lord of Nethrask is begging me for help. Ogres! He couldn't hold off a pack of ogres!"

"The ogres you hired, my Lord."

"Details." Vaeric waved his hand. "Go, Juerdon. Heal his troops. Smile at him. Find out everything. How many towers, how many soldiers, where he keeps his gold. And find out what he's planning."

So Juerdon went.

* * *

Nethrask was black and beautiful and it smelled of smoke.

The burned warehouses still stood by the river like rotten teeth. Workmen were clearing the rubble. They did not look up as the human riders passed. Dark elves rarely looked at humans. When they did, it was the way a cat looks at a dog: with mild disgust and a certain professional interest.

The Lord of Nethrask received them in a hall of black stone with a ceiling painted like the night sky. He sat on a throne of silver and smiled. Juerdon had met Sarrson twice before, years ago, at treaty signings that had come to nothing. He remembered a cold, sharp, clever man.

The man on the throne was not cold. He was warm. Too warm. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright, and he laughed at things that were not funny, and once, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped and looked at an empty corner of the room as if somebody had spoken to him.

"Archmage Juerdon," he said. "The great Juerdon. The hero of Tereb Bluff. I've heard so much about you."

"My Lord is kind."

"Your Lord is a pig," said Sarrson pleasantly. "But you are welcome."

The knights stiffened. Juerdon didn't. He had been insulted by better lords than this one, and worse ones too.

"Shall I see the wounded?" he asked.

"Gohlein will take you."

A dark elf stepped out from beside the throne. Juerdon had not noticed him until then, which was a skill in itself. He was thin and grey-haired and wore a plain black robe. He had the face of a man who had been awake for a hundred years and expected to be awake for a hundred more.

"Archmage," he said.

"High Dark Wizard."

They looked at each other. Something passed between them. Not friendship. Not yet. More the look that two old soldiers give each other across a crowded tavern, when they both recognise the same scar.

"This way," said Gohlein.

* * *

The wounded lay in a long cold hall under the Barracks. Three hundred of them, in rows on straw. Some were still alive. Many were not. The dead lay in a separate hall, which the dark elves called the graveyard, though it had no graves. It was only a room where the bodies waited.

Juerdon walked among them slowly.

"The ogres hit hard," he said.

"Bloodlust," said Gohlein. "Twice the damage. You'd think the stupid ones would be easy to kill."

"The stupid ones are always the hardest. They don't know when to stop."

Gohlein glanced at him. "Is that from experience?"

"I serve Lord Vaeric."

For the first time, something like a smile crossed the dark elf's face. It was small and quickly hidden, but Juerdon saw it.

He went to the graveyard. He stood at the door. The dead lay in their rows, pale and still, their faces turned up to the dark ceiling.

Healing was a spell of the Life realm. It was not like Resurrection. Resurrection could bring back half the dead in a graveyard, if you were strong enough and the bodies were fresh. Healing was weaker. On your own kingdom it could heal three in ten of the fallen. On another kingdom, only one in ten. And the longer the dead lay in the graveyard, the more mana it cost.

These had been dead for three days. It would cost a great deal.

Juerdon closed his eyes. He reached down into himself, past the tiredness and the stiff knees and the long years, to the warm place where the Life magic lived. He had always found it there, even on the worst days. Even at Tereb Bluff, with the nightspawn howling in the dark.

He opened his hands.

The light came out of him slowly, like honey from a jar. It spread across the floor of the graveyard. It touched the dead. Most of them did not move. But here and there a chest rose. A hand twitched. A young dark elf archer opened her eyes, looked up at the ceiling, and began to cry.

Thirty of them. Then thirty-one. Thirty-two.

When it was done, Juerdon swayed on his feet. Gohlein caught his arm. His grip was surprisingly strong.

"Thank you," said the dark elf quietly.

Juerdon looked at him. He was not thanking him for the Lord. He was thanking him for the archer.

"You're welcome," said Juerdon.

* * *

That evening they put him in a guest room in the Spire. It was beautiful and cold and had a window of violet glass. Juerdon sat on the bed and stared at the window and thought about the wand. About the rain. About seven turns, and what would come after.

There was a knock at the door. He opened it.

A dark elf stood in the corridor. Not Gohlein. This one was handsome and smiling and dressed like a wealthy merchant, with three rings on each hand.

"Archmage," he said, and bowed. "Blackthorn. At your service."

"I know who you are."

"Then you know what I sell." Blackthorn stepped into the room without being invited. He looked around at the violet window and the silk sheets. "Lovely room. They put the important guests here. The ones they want to impress, or the ones they want to poison. Sometimes both."

"What do you want?"

"I want to help you." Blackthorn sat in the only chair. "You carry a heavy load, Archmage. I can see it on your face. A memory, I think. Something old. Something that hurts. I can take it away. Amnesia, very gentle, very precise. You'd never even know it was gone."

Juerdon looked at him for a long moment.

"And the price?"

"Oh, the usual." Blackthorn smiled. "Leprechaun skins."

"I don't have any Leprechaun skins."

"Nobody does. That's what makes them valuable." Blackthorn spread his ringed hands. "But for you I could make an exception. Information, perhaps. Lord Vaeric's plans. The weak places in Ballaruk's walls."

"Get out," said Juerdon.

"That," said Blackthorn, rising, "is what everyone says. And then they come back." He went to the door. "Think about it, Archmage. Some memories are worth keeping. Some are only worth selling."

He was gone.

Juerdon closed the door. He leaned against it. His hand had gone to his chest without him noticing, the place where, long ago, a girl with silver eyes had laid her head.

No. That one he would keep.

* * *

The second knock came near midnight. This time it was Gohlein.

He did not come in. He stood in the corridor with a single candle, and his face in its light was grey and lined and very serious.

"Walk with me," he said.

They went down the stairs and along a corridor and through a door Juerdon would never have found. Beyond it was a library. A small one, old and dusty, with shelves that leaned towards each other like gossips.

Gohlein lit more candles. He went to a table where an old book lay open. Juerdon recognised the drawing at once. Every mage did. A ring. A stone. A crystal. A glove.

Gather the Battlehand and the storm of time answers to you alone.

"A nursery verse," said Juerdon.

"So I thought." Gohlein turned the page. There was a list on the next page, in a newer hand. Four names. Four places. The first was crossed out.

The Ring of Karkaan: Nethrask. HELD.

Thunderstone: the gnomes. Fort Berrycannon?

Focusing Prism: unknown. Narth?

The Golden Gauntlet: must be summoned. Ask B.

Juerdon read it twice. His mouth was dry.

"Sarrson has the Ring," he said.

"He has had it for twenty years. It sat in a box. He never cared about it. Now he cares." Gohlein's voice was very low. "Now he cares about nothing else."

"Why are you showing me this?"

Gohlein did not answer at once. He looked at the drawing for a long time.

"There is something on my Lord's desk," he said at last. "A contract. Written in blood. It speaks to him at night. It makes his chaotic spells reliable, and his eyes very bright, and his smile very wide." He looked up. "You know what the Battlehand does, Archmage?"

"It powers Warp Strike. Warp Strike alone is weak. With the Battlehand..." Juerdon swallowed. "With the Battlehand it can tear down a kingdom. The old texts say it bends time itself."

"And what would a man with a Demon's Pact do with that?"

The two old mages stood in the dusty library and looked at each other. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them needed to.

"Why tell me?" Juerdon asked again. "I'm your enemy."

Gohlein blew out one of the candles. In the half-dark his face was impossible to read.

"Because you healed the archer," he said. "And because you don't look like a man who wants the storm of time to answer to anybody."

He blew out the second candle.

"Go home tomorrow, Archmage. Tell your pig whatever you like. But find the stone and the crystal before my Lord does."

He blew out the third. The library went black.

"And if you can't find them," came his voice in the dark, "destroy them."