Snarling at the once friendly maids, he learned Sysquemalyn was in the conservatory torturing flowers. So he stumped that way, careful not to brush his raw arm against any obstacles.
Sysquemalyn was deep into the conservatory, which was longer and higher than some wizards' houses and roofed entirely with tiny diamond panes of bull's-eye glass. Green plants poured forth a riot of red and white and purple and yellow flowers, and no less than nine human stoop-backed gardeners bustled about them. Their supervisor tended her own patch at the back of the conservatory. Here in the hot greenhouse, she wore nothing but a short chemise and a frilly apron that looked ludicrous. Especially since, as a collector of grotesques, Sysquemalyn had many weird and sinister plants concealed back where Lady Polaris wouldn't see them on her infrequent visits. The flowers resembled fleshy organs, bilious teardrops, lizards' tongues, finger bones, and more. The female wizard hummed as she snipped liver-colored blossoms and dropped them into a pail.
'Your damned barbarian is still alive!' Candlemas growled without preamble. 'You owe me an arm!'
She pretended bemusement. 'An arm, dear 'Mas? Why do you need three? A third to comb your beard? Certainly not to comb your head.' She laughed gaily at her wit.
Exasperated, exhausted by his long walk-regenerating strained a body-Candlemas nevertheless ran his good hand over his bald pate, evoking another merry trill. 'Don't change the subject! And don't mock me! Your barbarian-you started this stupid contest-is still alive! He's been healing in the forest south of the Barren Mountains! He didn't die when attacked by the remorhaz, damn it, and you owe me an arm!'
Sysquemalyn set down her snippers and pouted prettily, as if sympathetic. 'Dear, dear Candlemas. You're all tuckered out by your little rebuilding project there. Barbarian? I don't… Oh, the yellow-haired fellow, skinny as a plucked chicken! I remember him!'
'I remember too!' In the greenhouse, the wizard was sweating heavily. Salty drops running down his healing arm stung like wasps. 'You cheated, sicced a fiend on me too soon-aargh!' Pained, he lurched backward against a table, knocking a dozen potted flowers to the slate floor with a crash.
Sysquemalyn tsked, but clearly Candlemas wasn't about to go away. With a theatrical sigh, she perched her rump on a tall stool. 'Very well. I may have been in error when I conjured the fiend. It could have happened to anyone. You should feel sorry for me, I'm so embarrassed.'
'Sorry?' gasped the man. 'Em-embarrassed?' He swooned, clawing sweat from his face.
Smirking, Sysquemalyn replied, 'You know, this is great fun. I'm so glad we formed this little wager. It was dead boring around here.'
Eyes bugging from his head at her audacity, Candlemas couldn't answer. Almost absently, Sysquemalyn picked up a lacquered bladder and gave an experimental squeeze. A thin green stream arced across the space between them and struck Candlemas's red-meat arm.
With a scream, the wizard leaped fully three feet in the air, crashed against a rack of potted flowers, and sent them smashing as he shrieked and clawed and ripped at his new arm as if to tear it off.
'By Tipald, am I careless!' Sysquemalyn tipped a crockery pot to sprinkle cool water over the writhing wizard. 'That's liquid fertilizer. My, I'll bet that stings!'
As Candlemas ground his teeth and fought to regain his feet, Sysquemalyn jabbered on. 'I'll tell you what, since you feel so put-upon. Let's continue the contest, and up the stakes even further. Let's see… If your barbarian is healthy, we'll dump some more tests on him, hard ones this time. If he survives, you win, as before. If he dies, I win. And the loser this time gets flayed alive!'
'Flayed…' croaked Candlemas. He felt flayed now.
'And just to be fair, you decide the test! I'll stay out of it.'
Despite dire warnings and his own pain, Candlemas was intrigued. But one thought intruded that had bothered him for weeks. 'No, wait, wait. There's a flaw in the argument, and I should have seen it when we made this bet. To win, you need the barbarian to die. And if we keep piling on tribulations, he will die. Then you'll have won. But for me to win, he must survive, which he won't if we keep-keep-Put that damned thing down!'
'But, dear, it makes things grow.' She'd been toying with the bulb of fertilizer again. Now she squirted juice amidst the hanging fronds of a plant that looked like dead snakes wrenched inside out, as if she were giving them a loving kiss. 'But I understand your dilemma, and that's why I've turned the contest over to you. Surely, if you control all the tests, and you're fair, your hero will win. Then you can braid a whip from whatever you like and get whichever slave you like, no matter how strong, to beat me until I'm a heap of hash. Now wouldn't that be fun?'
Candlemas groaned, but had to admit the idea gave him great pleasure. He tried to detect flaws in her new arguments, new tricks, but it was hard to think in this steamy den and through the fog of pain. Finally he snarled, 'Agreed! And I hope you suffer as keenly as I have!'
'Me, too,' came the prim answer. 'It will serve me right.'
Stumbling, brushing aside slithering greenery, Candlemas lurched down the long rows of plants toward the cool black-and-white halls. He tried not to think about what could go wrong. And its consequence.
Sunbright lay wrapped on a bower of spruce boughs under the tatters of a blanket and heaps of pine needles. The sun was just setting, its beams slanting long through the forest. His bed lay against a rock wall, and a merry but tiny fire banked with rocks reflected heat from the wall and kept him warm on both sides. He'd had a good day, killing a young brown bear in a deadfall, and he'd eaten his weight, almost, in bear fat and liver and steak. The skin would make him a new jerkin, for his goatskin one had long since been sliced into rawhide strips. And the jawbone he might fashion into a club, or at least sink the teeth into a wooden branch to make a jagged edge weapon such as the orcs carried.
Once more, as he did each night, the young man sent up prayers to Chauntea and Garagos and Shar, and marveled that he was still alive. He wasn't sure how he'd managed it, other than by simply waking up every morning and refusing to die. From the high icy pass five months back, he'd crawled into the deepest parts of the forest and set about surviving. At first he could only crawl, and ate grubs and crayfish and frogs and snakes and tree bark and ground nuts. Eventually he could stand and lurch from tree to tree, and had strung rawhide snares across rabbit tracks and eaten well. Gaining strength, he'd ambushed deer from rocky heights, hunted sleepy bears settling for winter, reached into hollow trees to strangle raccoons, and done a thousand other things too reckless to ponder. Then had come the snows, and he'd dug into a cave and piled up rocks to seal the entrance, and had hunkered down hugging himself and whiled away long, dark days whispering stories from the elder times.
The raven had helped. It had scouted from the treetops, located game, warned of approaching orcs, found water and food. Without the raven, he would have died the first week. Though there were times the bird was gone for days, and though it never said why it helped him, Sunbright accepted its help as one of life's mysteries.
He had shaved a new bow and strung it with his own braided hair, fletched three ash arrows with turkey feathers, beaten deer hides to stiff leather, and kept his sword polished bright. Oddly, he'd gained weight, had filled out in the chest and legs and arms. Sometimes he'd used simple healing spells on himself, but since they sapped a user's life-force, that was counterproductive. As a result, he bore scars on his forehead and hands from his battle with the remorhaz, and still ached in one shoulder, but overall he was healthier than he'd ever been.
He was tougher too. Before, young and headstrong, he'd thought he was formidable. Now he'd proven it by surviving what would have killed lesser men. And with this toughness of the body came a toughness of the spirit. No more would he boast of his strength and abilities, like a squeaky-voiced boy. He knew he was a warrior, and it showed, and that was enough.
One day, he promised himself, he'd stride into his tribe's camp and see his mother, older and grayer, and all his cousins and uncles and aunts, and old friends and enemies. He'd be a mighty, battle-scarred hero and would have a thousand wondrous stories to relate, but he'd tell none of them, no matter how much the people begged, would only drop veiled hints of fantastic and desperate struggles in the far reaches of the world.
Someday…
As he clung to life, so too did he cling to thoughts of his tribe, almost torturing himself with them. He loved his people and had been forced to flee because of Owldark's lies. So he thought of revenge and savored the day he'd return and even the score for his father's murder and his own banishment. He knew that time might be years away, for the strength needed to battle his enemies would be great. For now he'd continue to wander, and learn, and grow strong.
And dream.
They came often, these dreams, and confused the hell out of him. Pictures of himself walking black-and-white
