Authors: Vox Day

A Magic Broken (8 page)

“That purpose being…?”

“A noble one. One that will shake the earth.”

The elfess stared at the Man. Lodi noticed for the first time that they were of a height. “That may be, but is it in the interest of my people that the earth be shaken?”

“Come, my lady, you are too intelligent and you have lived far too long to believe that things can remain as they are. Kingdoms wax and wane. Peoples rise and fall. Your people broke the Witchkings and nearly broke themselves in the process. Do the three kingdoms still have the strength to resist Zoth Ommog in the west and the growing power of the empire in the south?”

The Man did not, Lodi noticed with pride, see fit to mention the troll kings. It was the dwarves, and the dwarves alone, who had ended that particular threat. The elfess said nothing, and her silence spoke volumes.

“Furthermore, in giving, your people will receive a gift of rare value in return.”

“How so?”

“Through you, they will be the first to know that noble purpose of which I speak. If it can be done, it will be done. Our Immortels shall succeed eventually, with or without elven assistance. What I seek from you is not the gift of power, but rather the gift of time. One hundred years may be little to an elf, but it is two lifetimes to a king of men.”

“I see.” Lady Everbright looked off into the forest. When her gaze returned to the mage’s face, her eyes were hard. “And what else shall I receive, warmage, if I give your king this gift of time?”

“What is your desire?”

“Vengeance,” she hissed. For the first time since she stabbed the naked man, Lodi saw life in her light green eyes. “I want the race of Man to pay for the insult they have done to me, for the injuries and indignities they inflicted upon me, and most of all, for robbing me of my magic!”

The Savonder smiled grimly. “Will you settle for lives of the men who enslaved and abused you?” He gestured toward the two dead men who had accompanied him. “Note the second payment on that debt. They were in the service of Quadras Aetias, the whoremaster who bought you from the slaver.”

“The first payment?”

“The slaver himself. I killed the man from Orontis two moons past.”

The elfess stared at the mage for a long moment, then reached out her hands to take his. “Thank you,” she said. “And will you kill the rest?”

“Aetias will have records of his clients. All who used you, who insulted you, shall die. Then Aetias himself, and, if you wish it, all of his household.”

“I wish it,” she said imperiously.

“Then you shall have it, in the name of His Majesty Louis-Charles, the King of Savondir and Lord of the Seven Seats.”

Lodi winced, but upon reflection, he decided it was likely for the best. The barely controlled fury he could see flickering in her green eyes might well have led her to demand the massacre of everyone in the city, including the dwarves residing there. And whatever it was that the wizard sought, he wanted it badly enough that he might well be willing to give her one.

“Now,” the wizard said, “as it appears we have more than a few horses at our disposal, may I offer you your choice of mount, my lady?”

Thorald and Hodli helped Lady Everbright stow a share of the food supplies on the horse selected to serve as the pack horse for her journey, so Lodi took the opportunity to approach the royal battlemage on the other side of the road.

“You say your king be friend to the dwarves, yes?”

The mage looked down at him with a bemused expression on his face. “I believe he wishes to remain on good terms with your people.”

“Then I got one question. The dwarf king will want to know: What is this thing you want from the elf?”

“You can’t imagine I would tell you that.”

“Maybe. See, if you kill me, or if I make sign to the lads, they kill your elf.”

The Man’s bemusement abruptly vanished. He glanced sharply at the two dwarves closest to the elfess. Thorald winked at him and adroitly twirled the axe in his hand.

“You rescued her. You expect me to believe you would kill her now?”

Lodi snorted. “Why not? Don’t play fool with me, magic man. I know slavers, and I knows a setup when I sees one. How you know what slaver to kill? How you know where he from? I thinks you set this up. You had her catched by the slaver, but he don’t sell her to you. You get outbid by that rich whoremaster in Malkan, and you don’t even know it. That’s why you kill the Oronti: He double-cross you. No wizard know nothing about slavers, but I buys from them many times. They double-cross their mother if they get just one more copper.”

For a moment, the wizard looked nonplussed. Then he shook his head ruefully. “Yes, well, I imagine it would have saved me a considerable amount of trouble to have hired you as an advisor from the start. But what was your interest in her? My understanding is that dwarves customarily have little use for elves.”

“We got lots of interest for an elf they pay gold to get back. I didn’t know she was a cousin to the Forest King, but I knowed she’d be worth something. Now, I want my gold, and I be thinking the dwarf king should be knowing what you Savonders is about. I knows we can’t stop you. I don’t even knows that we want to stop you. We don’t stick our beards in Man business. But we likes to knows what’s going on over our heads. So tell me, give me my gold, and then you can send the elf to the Dark if you like.”

The wizard pursed his lips. Lodi had the impression that he was trying to decide if he could kill them all fast enough and still preserve his long-sought prize. Finally, he shrugged in acquiescence.

“Very well, dwarf. It’s a small enough price and will do no harm. Look to the skies, my inquisitive friend. Not tomorrow, not next year, but I’m told you are a long-lived people. When you see fire in the sky, then you may tell your king under the mountains that the shaking of the earth is nigh.”

Lodi nodded and made a mental note to urge the King of the Underdeep to see that the deep strongholds under the mountain were well-supplied in the years to come. Even a dwarf could see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

The wizard had gone to dangerous lengths in seeking a specific spell used to control flying beasts. Fire. The sky burning and the earth shaking. Dragons! Even the evil witchmen of the north, with all their dark and demonic arts, had never managed to tame dragons! He stifled the urge to laugh at the wizard’s lunatic purpose and somehow managed to limit himself to a knowing nod.

“Do you understand, then? I suppose you must be rather more quick-witted than you look.” The wizard smiled, but there was little humor in his eyes. “Well, my bearded friend, I shall now bid you adieu. To the matter of the gold: As I would not have you suffer any loss for the services you have rendered to the crown, do allow me to compensate you for it.”

Lodi hid a satisfied smile beneath his beard as the mage produced a small, heavy-looking leather bag, which he was certain contained at least ten coins. Gold, he hoped. Any thought of warning the elfess of the Savonder’s role in her enslavement vanished—he’d thought to get only five or six out of the wood elves.

He knew a moment’s pang of shame when the pair mounted horses and the elfess looked back to wave at him and his four companions. But then he recalled another time when he’d seen elves on horseback, a time when he’d watched in utter despair as two thousand elves rode away, and he turned his back on the southbound pair with a clean conscience.

“You didn’t help us at Iron Mountain,” he growled under his breath. “Did you now.”

“What’s that?” Thorald asked him as he reached up to pat a horse’s nose. Besides Lodi, he was the only dwarf who wasn’t terrified of the huge beasts.

Lodi had decided to keep the five remaining horses. They would journey on foot in the same direction as the wizard and the elf had gone, sell the horses at the first Man town along the way, then strike out northeast through the wilds until they reached the safety of the mountains. And he would buy a crossbow or three, he reminded himself.

Lodi grunted. “Get a move on, lads. It’s an evil sign when men are getting to be as devious as bloody elves. We got a long way to walk before we get home, and I want a thousand tonnes of rock over my head before those foolish Man wizards start learning what a bad idea it is to wake a dragon.”

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