in his hand. It was smeary, crossed out repeatedly, highly dubious, but finished. It was a masterpiece, really, though no one would know. He only hoped it worked. If they got home safely, he might never ensorcell again.
To complete the spell, he needed to be touching the star. Before that he had to find Sunbright, and talk to Aquesita, to ask her the most important question of his life. But before that, he needed another look. Mages tinkered with the fallen star day and night. He needed to know its current makeup, size, potency. Or perhaps he was just avoiding Sita. He wished he knew what to do or say, but he wasn't a strong-jawed hero from a chivalric romance, just a tired old mage, awkward with women. There was no magic for knowing the way to a woman's heart. Or perhaps they possessed their own magic. Certainly they were entrancing…
But he was drifting, and here was the chamber, and Karsus's gleeful, manic giggling.
Rounding the corner, Candlemas stopped cold.
Karsus was surrounded by apprentices, as usual, but also a trio of tailors with needles and thread in their mouths. The mad mage wore a startling white gown embroidered with silver thread. Someone had cleaned his face, scrubbed his neck, even combed and trimmed his hair. He stood with arms out as the tailors closed seams and smoothed pleats. Karsus giggled all the while.
'It's not often you dress a god, is it? You'll have something to tell your friends. How you served Great Karsus when he was still human!'
The tailors smiled weakly, but averted their eyes. Their usually nimble fingers shook, and they dropped pins and scissors. Lesser mages and apprentices, some twenty, puttered at the tables or else halfheartedly tapped the gray lump of star-metal with silver hammers. Everyone was uneasy, not giggling and chuckling at Karsus's every remark. It was the first time Candlemas had seen quiet around Karsus.
The pudgy mage was sweating suddenly, his mouth dry, his knees trembling. He was surprised at his calm voice. 'Great Karsus, might you enlighten me, who would learn from the Highest of the High? What exactly are you planning to do? And when?'
'Oh, I decided now's as good a time as any.' Karsus waved vaguely toward the fallen star as he said, 'My helpers think all is ready-not that they really understand what I plan. And the war goes badly, a maid said.
'And I'm tired of being human. So I'll become an avatar, which is a being created from a god's body, in case you don't know. Karsus's avatar, named after myself. I figure to sit on the star, imagine myself ascending to godhood, and draw all the remaining energy through my spine into my brain. I'll use the same spell that temporarily disrupted the magic of this room, for I'll want every iota drawn into my body. But I'll steal it so quickly you'll hardly notice. And who knows what will happen then? I might grow huge, or move to another plane-don't worry, I'll come back to visit-or find myself taking tea with Mystryl and the other gods. We'll talk about how to better tap the Weave, so that privileged individuals-new godlings! — can use it directly! It should be fun! All done there? Good!'
The tailors weren't done, but Karsus pulled away, so one undone sleeve trailed needles and thread. Pushing past his timid apprentices, he climbed on a stool, then up onto the table, circling the fallen star like a child stealing sweets from a cupboard. Spreading his trailing robes like a clown, he perched on the star, smoothed back his hair, and began to chant.
Candlemas stood paralyzed. This was insanity of the purest form. Idiot toadies standing by while their master made ready to tear down a dam holding unfathomable magic. Karsus could unleash a firestorm that could sear the world from horizon to horizon, and everyone just stood gape-mouthed and watched him.
Somehow Candlemas knew this would end in disaster. And at the very least, the magic of the fallen star would be dispelled, and he and Sunbright (and Aquesita?) would be stuck in the self-consuming kingdom of an idiot genius-or mad god. Yet what to do? He couldn't attack Karsus personally. Shields would reduce him to cinders. He couldn't block Karsus's spell. He couldn't Karsus raised bis voice, chanting in earnest now. The air in the room began to shimmer, like heat waves over a blacksmith's forge. Jars and pots on tables began to jiggle. One shattered into redware shards.
Candlemas stopped thinking, and reacted.
Charging, he bowled mages aside and scrambled onto the table. In his panic, he never noticed that he dropped his smeary, crumpled scroll. Diving, he shoved Karsus off the star with both arms.
The little madman squawked as he crashed on his back on the tabletop. Toadies shouted Karsus's name. Three of them grabbed Candlemas's red-striped robe and jerked him back off the table. Frowning, dazed, Karsus lay and shook his head.
It was the first time Candlemas had ever seen him angry. The great archwizard pointed a bony finger and snarled.
Candlemas's world exploded in red fire.
As the odd pair, big barbarian and tiny thief, threaded the nobles' district, they saw increasing signs of devastation and chaos, and a complete breakdown of city authority.
Whole buildings had collapsed, some into cellars and some into the street. Streets had in turn collapsed under the weight of the fallen buildings, so craters revealed sewers. Broken water lines gushed, and Knucklebones whiffed effluvia, the deadly gas piped into homes for heating and cooking. Horse skeletons lay in their traces, stripped of flesh by the starving poor. Garbage was strewn about, and rats feasted. In alleys and behind bushes were glimpsed riddled skeletons of humans while nonhumans-half-elves, gnomes, dwarves-were lynched or nailed to walls and left to rot. Time and again they saw humans wandering in a daze, vacant, haunted looks etched in their faces.
'By the Earthmother,' muttered Sunbright. 'You wouldn't know where to start to help. Where are the guards? The body haulers? The dung shovelers?'
Knucklebones crouched, pointed one way, then shoved Sunbright the other. In a street of shops, most closed, he saw blue and silver guards looting a goldsmith's shop. The owner lay dead on her own threshold. The thief whispered, 'It looks like the end of the end. What the sages have threatened for centuries.'
'I hope we can enter Karsus's compound.' Sunbright said, reaching over his shoulder to loosen Harvester in its scabbard and adjusting Dorlas's warhammer riding on his hip. 'I hope your little charges there, Aba and Zykta and Rolon, keep their heads down. I once promised Rolon I'd take him to the ground-'
'He's there now.'
Knucklebones hunted a certain alley. She knew them all, but many were blocked by rubble or abandoned carriages or garbage.
She answered Sunbright's surprised look by telling him, 'That's why I sent them to Sleeping Gunn. He lives over the warehouses at the docks because he's a smuggler. Since I've disappeared and there's been war here, he'll have ferried the children to a stronghold on the ground.' Her voice sounded wistful, missing them. Sunbright gave her thin shoulder a squeeze, and she touched his broad, scarred hand.
'Come on.' She said choosing an alley. 'We'll go over ground a while, then underground. I know a back way into Karsus's mansions, if it's still open.'
They were blocked repeatedly, and often had to hunker for guards or refugees to pass, but backtracking and retracing eventually brought them into the garden beneath Candlemas's suite. Sunbright boosted Knucklebones, who pronounced a short word and fractured all the glass in one window. Sunbright used Harvester's hook to drag the lead frame down like a gray metal spiderweb. Then they were inside.
Knucklebones signaled to wait while she listened. Then she dashed from the room quick as a hare. A bleat was stifled, and Sunbright tramped after.
The thief sat atop a plump maid jackknifed over the bed. Candlemas's bed was bare to the striped ticking. Fresh silk sheets and blankets awaited. Piled by the door like rubbish lay the mage's plain wool smock, rope belt, and warped sandals that retained the imprint of his broad feet.
Sunbright was in a hurry, but told the terrified maid, 'No harm if you answer. What happened to the mage who dwelt here? Why do you discard his things?'
'He-he's locked in the cellars, sir! He's wounded horrible! They've left him to die! He-I don't know what he did exactly, but he defied Great Karsus and they've-'
Knucklebones tweaked her ear to silence her, said, 'Tell us how to get there!'
'No time!' Sunbright countermanded. He grabbed up fresh sheets, tossed them to Knucklebones, and swaddled himself like a servant buried in laundry. 'Take us!'
Trained to stay out of sight, the gasping maid brought them down servants' stairwells to the cellars. With a
