At least in this form.
Biting his tongue, Candlemas reached for the only escape he could imagine outside death. Yet it was a form of death, for what he planned would leave him as something else. If he survived.
But pain tore at his mind, and soon he'd lose his reason. Become a babbling horror like Sysquemalyn, hung between the world and sanity.
Reaching deep inside, Candlemas conjured words to a spell he'd never attempted, wasn't even sure he remembered. It was long ago he'd read of it, but now it came back, like opening a cobwebbed drawer to find a diamond sparkling within. Or a scalpel.
Grinding his teeth against pain, he grunted the weird, twisted sounds of Quantoul's selfmorph.
The change was instant. An observer wouldn't have known if Candlemas truly changed, or merely swapped himself with some other-worldly horror. For the thing that suddenly hung in air was a purple granite cone taller than Sysquemalyn. Its bottom was hollow and ringed with savage teeth. Tentacles dangled and flapped. Two blind eyes like milky pearls started from its side.
And hating everything on this plane, the windghost attacked.
The flint monster never recoiled, or even ducked the hideous apparition. Its hate burned just as hot. Flint claws met granite cone, and for a few moments the air was filled with screams, scratching, and scrabbling. Then, quick as thought, the monster Sysquemalyn drove two hands like spears through the windghost's hide. Stone-hard organs and a many-chambered heart were rent like rocks in a crusher. Torn from its body, the tiny brain died.
Candlemas didn't die with it, for the mage's consciousness was gone, obliterated by the polymorph spell. For everything, including that keen brain, had changed with the spell.
Sysquemalyn was left with a stinking heap of purple rubble in a scorched field marred with tar and sulfur and blood. Yet even death could not satisfy her rage, and the gore-spattered monster slashed and stamped and tore at the ruined carcass, screaming, 'I want to kill him again! I want him dead again! Again, again!'
All that remained to mark Candlemas's life and work was the blight-curing spell, quietly percolating at the edges of the valley, quietly dispelling the poisonous rust, then passing over the hill and jumping to other fields. And on and on, to the horizon and beyond.
'We halt this fight!' Thornwing crowed. Beside her, Blinddrum nodded. 'And all others! There is no more need for battle!'
'What?'
'Are you mad?'
'Who made you chief?'
'Get out of the ring!'
Voices rose all around, a cacophony.
'Sunbright challenged every fighter! He-'
'He did, and he fought, and he defeated us!' the swordswoman shouted them down. 'And by beating us, he has defeated the whole tribe!' More noise, objections, calls for quiet and dignity, questions of custom, but Thornwing plowed on. 'Blinddrum and I are the best fighters in the tribe. None would dispute that. Yet Sunbright Steelshanks, son of Sevenhaunt and Monkberry of the Raven Clan, defeated us both. And by that act, he defeated all of us! So he need fight no more.'
Grumbling, growling, cursing, yet many agreed with the logic while others pondered it, weighed it against tradition. Even old Iceborn admitted he'd never thought of a challenge in that light, but it made sense. To beat the best was to beat them all.
Magichunger kept one wary eye on Knucklebones as he bawled, 'What of his sentence of death? Pronounced by Owldark?'
'Owldark is dead,' rumbled Blinddrum, 'and with him his sentence. I don't remember the reason for the sentence anyway.'
'A vision!' crowed an elder woman. 'Owldark saw Sunbright standing over us, a bloody sword in his hand and all of us dead. Smoke and fire filled the horizon, and even the reindeer were slaughtered, and the son of Sevenhaunt the cause of it all!'
Superstitious, Blinddrum deferred to the quicker-thinking Thornwing. She tossed back her horsetail, lifted her thin arm so sweat glistened in the firelight, and called, 'Owldark had many visions, and he had brain madness! Yes, listen to me! We all know he blacked out, fell in the cookfires many times. In the end, he led us here, to misery. Then he wandered the wasteland, and was eaten by wild dogs. Owldark was a good man, but not all his visions rang true! And so I dismiss his vision of Sunbright.'
'And we need a shaman, and have none,' Blinddrum added. 'The sacred fire is out, and we cannot council until our shaman reignites it.'
'Sunbright himself stamped it out!' objected Magichunger.
The big swordmaster had no answer. Thornwing merely waved her hand in dismissal. Despite her attempt at severity, Knucklebones sniggered at Magichunger's indignant glare. She turned one good eye on Sunbright. The pale shaman swayed on his feet, but stood. Her heart swelled in her breast for such a man, who'd risk his own life and dignity to save these people, fickle and ungrateful though many were. Yet she wouldn't have wagered money on how this argument would end.
'If we can't council,' objected Rattlewater, 'then what are we doing now?'
'Talking! So shut up!' old Tulipgrace snapped. That drew a laugh.
'No!' countered Leafrebel. 'If we only talk, not council, then nothing we decide matters! It's just wind off the sea.'
There was more argument, much more, going on so long Magichunger let the borrowed sword point to the ground. Exhausted in body, Sunbright sat at his mother's feet like a child. Yet his spirit sang as his people debated, invoking custom after custom. Sniffing at Magichunger, Knucklebones sat primly by Sunbright and took his cold hand. Others built up the fire, and some fetched pipes with carefully hoarded sumac and willow bark to smoke, as if this were a proper council.
Forestvictory made a speech. She talked at length about similar earth-shaking arguments from the past. Other tribesfolk who'd been driven out decades or centuries ago. Some who'd returned and brought disaster, others who came empty-handed and furthered salvation. She talked a long time, lulling her audience with sonorous words. When she finished, there was long quiet. Children had nodded off, heads pillowed on parents' laps. Even Knucklebones yawned, and covered her mouth, inadvertently clicking her brass knuckledusters against her white teeth.
In the long silence, Thornwing stood up, steel sword in hand. She was framed by a yellowing sky, for the tribe had talked through the night, and when she flung it high, it flashed in dawn light. The swordwoman's raspy voice carried to everyone, mesmerizing them. 'I say this! If Sunbright is driven out again, I shall follow him! He's disrupted our lives by returning, and that is good, for we were useless as seals on ice pack. Chosen by blood and by the gods, Sunbright has recalled what we live for, who we have been, and who we should be. If he goes, I go, as does Blinddrum. A tribe of three living the old ways is better than a herd marching off a cliff because they're too blind to see. I say this with blood!' And she slashed the sword across her palm and held up the dripping hand.
Without a word, Blinddrum took the sword, slashed his palm, and clasped Thornwing's. Forestvictory rose, laid flesh to sword, and clasped. Her lover, Starrabbit, followed. Then Archloft and Mightylaugh, and Goodbell, who carried her sleepy children forward, slit their fingers, and clutched them to her bosom. So many people joined they clasped in a mob. Rightdove joined. Old Iceborn was helped up and joined, though he had to slash his withered hands three times to draw blood. Then Tulipgrace. Rattlewater, Leafrebel, and many others, but not all.
Magichunger and three dozen tribesfolk remained outside the ring. Finally Thornwing called, 'You'll not join us?'
'No. Not yet,' Magichunger hedged. 'But we'll abide by the majority.'
Thornwing nodded in acceptance, lowered her gory hand, as did the rest. 'Then it's decided' she said. 'Sunbright is returned to the tribe, alive and under no sentence. And shaman, for we need one and he has the gift. Sunbright, welcome back. What need we do?'
Painfully, with help from his lover and his mother, Sunbright Steelshanks rose and faced them all, squinting in the now bright daylight. 'Friends, I thank you,' he said. 'As you see, the gods send us a new day for a new beginning, but it is not my place, as shaman, to tell you what to do, but simply to read the signs and advise. To talk,
