The Sellsword

Vanderjack raised his hands again and blurted out, “Wait wait wait!”

“What do you mean you’re working for her?” demanded Theo.

“Up on the roof, earlier this evening,” he said. “She said she and Cazuvel were no longer allies. She decided it was better for me to be alive than him and said I should find Cazuvel and kill him. If I did that, she’d let me live, and I could keep my sword, which the wizard’s got.”

“For a moment there, you jackanapes, we thought you meant you’d been working for her the whole time!” said Theo.

Vanderjack laughed. “No! Are you crazy? This is just a short-term deal. Long-term-we’re still on bad terms.”

“So that’s the confession?” Gredchen said, sitting back in her chair again.

“No. Actually, the confession is related to that. It’s about Lifecleaver.”

Theo cocked his head. “That sword? What is it? A fake? The wizard has a fake! Huzzah! Threw the wool right over his eyes.”

“No,” said Vanderjack, smiling grimly. “The fake is me.”

There was a moment of silence.

“The sword’s haunted. There are seven … eight ghosts now that Etharion’s joined them. The Sword Chorus. Ghosts of people who were killed with that sword before their time to die was upon them.”

Gredchen narrowed her eyes. “Go on.”

“When I’m in a fight, it’s the Chorus that give me eyes in the back of my head. All of that clever maneuvering and leaping about is only possible because they call out the locations of my enemies, suggest tactics, and tell me to duck or to dodge or to weave. It’s always been the ghosts.”

Theo said, “So you’re saying you don’t have any actual skill at arms?”

“That isn’t what I said! I’m a passable soldier. But without the ghosts, without Lifecleaver, I’d be a passable soldier with a sword in my back or a fallen boulder on my head.”

Theo scratched at his beard and exhaled. “So you need the sword back in order for the ghosts to once again tell you how to fight like the legendary mercenary captain you are reputed to be. I see. This is so very typical of you.”

“How is this typical of him?” Gredchen said, exasperated. “This can’t have been very easy for him to confess. I find it very … uh, touching.”

Theo shrugged. “He’s always so secretive.”

Vanderjack closed his eyes again. “Think what you like. I’ve come to the conclusion that Rivven believes I won’t be able to defeat this wizard without my enchanted sword. She’s back in Wulfgar, laughing her pointed ears off, thinking I might just sit it out and sink into depression.”

“But now we’re here,” Gredchen said, “and we can help you.”

“She’s also full of secrets,” said Theodenes.

Vanderjack looked at Gredchen. “Oh, some little secret other than the fact that this whole expedition was a fabrication?”

“That’s just it. It wasn’t. The baron wants his beautiful daughter back.”

“His painting of the beautiful daughter.”

Gredchen shook her head. “No, sellsword. That really is his daughter. A spell has bound her to that painting.”

Vanderjack stood up at that, gaping. “So now you’re saying that’s a real person stuck in a picture frame?”

Gredchen nodded. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but basically, yes.”

“And Cazuvel wants it here why?”

“He’s the mage responsible for the enchantment in the first place,” said Gredchen. “So long as it was kept here, out of harm’s way, the highmaster could continue to hold it over Baron Glayward and he’d be unable to lift a finger against her. But it was a rare enchantment. And the wizard has been studying the magic, trying to duplicate his feat ever since. Without success, or so I’m told.”

“To the Abyss with wizards!” said Theodenes. “And speaking of magical curiosities, I should also note that Gredchen here-”

“I can’t be hurt,” the baron’s aide admitted.

Vanderjack sat down again, rubbed his palm over the stubble of his scalp, and swore. “What? You’re immortal, then? Congratulations. Is that the end of the secrets?”

“It’s really only here at the castle or in the grounds. At least I suppose that’s how it works.”

Vanderjack smiled weakly. “How incredibly convenient for you. Theo? Any heartwarming truths you’d like to air? We’re all having a moment.”

“No.”

Vanderjack clapped his hands together and rose one final time. “Excellent! Well, for your information, Theodenes, I think Star’s alive and well and escaped a short while ago from the cage in the hall. And for you, Gredchen, the highmaster said nothing to me about not taking the baron’s beautiful daughter along with me when I went to Wulfgar, so I believe we can go upstairs right now and fetch the painting and be done with that part of the job.”

Gredchen’s eyes widened. “You’re serious?”

Theodenes perked up. “Star’s escaped?”

“Yes to both. In fact, I think it may make getting to Wulfgar a lot easier if we had Star’s help. You don’t mind a short stop in Wulfgar before we head back to the baron, do you, Gredchen?”

Gredchen nodded. Theo’s eyes narrowed.

“Then it’s settled.” Vanderjack dusted himself off. “I may not be the world’s greatest swordsman, but I know a good plan when I come up with one. Let’s go.”

Vanderjack led them back to the entrance hall’s balcony and up the spiral staircase to the gallery. Gredchen did the honors, stepping forward and pulling on the silken rope. The gallery’s lamps fizzled and popped into radiant life, revealing the painting once again in its place.

Gredchen gasped. Theodenes sighed. Vanderjack clicked his tongue and walked over to the portrait with a frown.

The painting looked as if somebody had taken to it with an axe.

“Why would the wizard have done this?” Vanderjack asked.

“Oh, no!” Gredchen cried, darting forward to trace her hands over the places where the axe head had struck. “Wait.”

“Yes, I see now. Those aren’t actual cuts,” Theodenes observed, folding his arms across his chest. “Those have been painted on. Under the varnish. Clever. But why?”

Vanderjack turned to Gredchen. “Got an explanation for this one?”

Cazuvel swept through the dusty halls of the Lyceum.

Once he had left the highmaster’s presence, he had spoken the words of power that brought him back to his sanctum, the place he had hidden Vanderjack’s sword. His eldritch connection to the wards set up around Castle Glayward had triggered shortly afterward, alerting him to the highmaster’s interference. With Aggurat freed, the highmaster would know that Cazuvel had been acting behind her back. The half-elf was a powerful enough mage that she had somehow untethered the draconian from Cazuvel’s mystic bonds, despite all of the energy he had flooded into them.

Cazuvel did not care. It was just a slightly premature digression from a path he had carefully laid out, the path that had begun months earlier. He had his mirror and its magic. He had the star metal-forged sword of Vand Erj-Ackal, and he suspected there was a great deal of powerful enchantment tied up into that weapon.

The black-robed mage arrived at the grand cloister, the chamber in which the mirror hung suspended within its multiple arcane wards. He walked in and looked to the center of the room. The mirror was exactly as he had left it, so he proceeded over to a narrow table against the far wall, outside of the complex summoning circles and runic labyrinths. Lying upon the table was Lifecleaver.

Cazuvel had not yet drawn the sword. One of the kapak scouts had tried doing just that after he had recovered it from the jungle, and within moments the draconian shrieked and collapsed, catatonic. The mage