wasn’t prepared to have that happen to him, so he’d been careful to relocate the weapon from the baron’s castle to the grand cloister without physically touching it. It was wrapped up in thin layers of magically resistant cloth, preventing whatever effect that had felled the draconian from plaguing him.
Looking over again at the mirror, Cazuvel spoke the incantations that would bring the imprisoned Cazuvel to the mirror’s surface so the fiend who had taken his place could draw additional power.
The surface of the mirror became briefly incandescent, and the brilliant metal swam with an image. It coalesced, and the true Cazuvel, his cheeks sunken and eyes rheumy, appeared within the mirror.
“I have nothing left. Nothing left to give you. You already took it all,” said the weary voice.
Cazuvel snatched up the sword by the hilt, and stalked back to face the mirror, pointing one slender finger at the image of his captive. “Lies!” he shrieked. “I know how the enchantment works. You are a catalyst, an intermediary between me and the limitless powers of the Abyss. I need more power, and you will grant it to me!”
The Cazuvel-image moaned as his captor seemed to claw at the air with his hand, as if clutching something thick and viscous. Arcs of lightning once again leaped from the hammered-steel mirror and into Cazuvel, filling him with the howling forces he demanded. The image screamed, Cazuvel laughed. The noise was so loud and the play of purple and orange electricity so bright that at first the fiend did not notice the eight spectral figures manifesting behind him.
“Cease this!” bellowed the Conjuror above the din.
“Leave him alone!” cried the Apothecary.
“Your dark work is over!” said the Aristocrat.
Cazuvel stopped, and the myriad threads of energy feeding into him abruptly vanished. The man in the mirror looked emaciated, his stark white skin stretched across his skull, eye sockets sunken, lips drawn back in a hideous grimace.
“What is this? How did you get into my sanctum?” demanded Cazuvel to the array of spirits floating before him.
“We are the Sword Chorus,” said the Philosopher.
“You are not of this world,” said the Balladeer.
“You don’t even smell human,” the Hunter sniffed.
“Sword Chorus?” repeated Cazuvel. “So you are the sword’s enchantments?”
“We are the souls of those slain by the sword before their time,” explained the Cavalier.
“Fascinating. And you haunt the bearer of the weapon?”
The wizard splayed his fingers over the blade, invoking the magical forces he’d just drawn from the mirror and using them to peer into the sword’s construction, revealing layer upon layer of eldritch craftsmanship.
“A nine-lives stealer!” Cazuvel said, triumphant. “One of the legendary soul swords, said to have been crafted by the Smith God himself in the Age of Dreams. I should have recognized it, the blue-black star metal blade, and the sigils in ancient Ergothian. How fortuitous! There is magic bound into this blade, magic that the wizard whose form I have taken sought all of his life to master.”
“This sword is not yours,” assured the Aristocrat.
“We’ve been watching you, you know,” said a ghost who had not spoken yet. “Don’t think we don’t know what you’re up to.”
Cazuvel narrowed his eyes at that eighth ghost, who appeared to be dressed in a cook’s apron. “You are but a bound spirit,” he hissed. “And I am-”
“A creature of the Abyss,” finished the Conjuror.
“You’re a fetch!” said the Cook. “Of course! A mirror fiend!”
“Fetches are incapable of taking mortal form,” said the Balladeer.
“Nightmares that strike from the Abyss through reflective surfaces,” said the Philosopher.
“It was the real Cazuvel, wasn’t it?” said the Cook. “Black Robes are always making dark pacts with evil. Did he realize what he was doing?”
“He tried it once before,” said Cazuvel. “The painting in the baron’s castle. An imperfect medium, the wrong subject. He needed a true reflection, a reflection of himself. He-”
“He needed a mirror,” said the Cook. “He’d created that painting of the baron’s daughter, but that was just practice.”
The other ghosts were quite different from the Cook, Cazuvel realized. Cazuvel spoke a word of divinatory magic at the Cook, but it failed, dissipating before it could reveal anything. “You. Ghost. You are the most recent addition to this Sword Chorus, aren’t you?”
“Silence, fetch!” said the Cavalier.
“You shall not gain the sword’s power,” said the Aristocrat.
“Vanderjack will find and defeat you,” said the Hunter.
“I doubt that,” said Cazuvel. “Even now, I would hazard a guess, the highmaster has thrown him into a cell beneath Wulfgar so that he might rot away for his interference.”
“That’s where you’re wrong!” said the Cook.
The other ghosts moved close to the Cook, muttering at him. Cazuvel stared, curious, as they tried to stop the cook from blathering and boasting. Still, he reflected, they were behaving quite oddly for bound spirits.
“I’ve figured it out. You fetches are fiends from the Abyss,” the Cook continued, despite the protestations of his fellows, “servants of the powers of darkness and chaos. You’ve been using this mirror to keep your connection to the Abyss active? Give you power!”
“Yes,” said the fetch, pleased that somebody had noticed his extraordinary work. “It is not perfect power, but it has its definite uses. No other wizard on Krynn has access to it in the way I do. I can use the Black Robe’s imprisoned soul as a template, channel raw power from the Abyss and through him. In doing so, I eschew the magic of the moons, the magic of the gods.”
“Ingenious but aberrant,” the Conjuror said begrudgingly.
“An active conduit like that could backfire,” warned the Cook, “funnel magic back into the Abyss, or worse, open a permanent gate. The consequences could be catastrophic!”
“He speaks the truth,” said the Conjuror. “What you are doing will have far-reaching effects. You cannot do this.”
“He’s right,” echoed the Cook. “That conduit you’re using now, the mirror, is almost expended. The wizard’s just a mortal being, and you’ve been abusing him so much that he’ll be consumed the next time you draw power through him.”
Cazuvel looked toward the mirror, saw the almost mummified visage of the real Cazuvel, and muttered, “Perhaps. But I have his memories, his knowledge. This mirror was to be his crowning achievement.”
The other ghosts had begun drifting slowly away, spreading their circle outward. Cazuvel didn’t notice, focused as he was on the words of the Cook. “And now I have the sword,” Cazuvel continued. “Its soul-draining properties may be just what I need to refine the process, perfect the conduit.”
Etharion’s spirit looked quickly in the direction of the retreating ghosts and back at Cazuvel. “Well, in order to do that, you’ll need a lot of souls. Lots of … people. All in one place. Oh, and … another conduit, like this one, something to replace the mirror, only one that the real Cazuvel didn’t mess up.”
Cazuvel’s eyes widened. “Yes! You have the right of it! A place of great death.”
The Cook egged him on. “And another conduit.”
“The painting! Of course. You are right. I had not planned on using it, believing it to be nothing more than a bargaining chip and an amusing trophy. But it was his first success. It could be improved upon, perfected.”
“I’ve said too much,” said the Cook, raising his spectral hands. The other ghosts had gone. The Cook began to fade also. The wizard waved good riddance to them.
Cazuvel passed his hand before the mirror, once again obscuring his decrepit prisoner behind thick clouds in the polished surface. He returned to the table, gathering up the sword’s scabbard and belt.
“Now, Highmaster,” said the fetch. “In due course, you shall see just how powerful my magic is. When you stand before the great storm of the Abyss, a storm that I conjure forth, you shall know. We shall see who pleases the Dark Queen then, won’t we?”
His laughter echoed throughout the halls of the Lyceum, even after his magic spirited him away.
