woman sported blood on her chin where she'd bitten her tongue and lips, other peoples' blood on her fingernails hooked like claws. Her clothing was torn where she'd shredded it herself, and her eyes were wild, inhuman. She screamed like a cougar when she saw Sunbright, and raced to tear him apart with her bare hands.
The barbarian acted instinctively and stabbed straight to keep her back. The madwoman ran her stomach onto his blade. If Sunbright hadn't twisted the blade to hook deep in her liver, she would have slid along it and gouged out his eyes. As it was, she was champing bloodstained teeth and slashing with fingernails when the light faded from her glazed eyes. She fell heavily, and Sunbright had to stamp on her breast to rip Harvester loose. Blood gushed over his boot and ran in a river down the sloping floor.
The barbarian's voice shook as he asked, 'What is this?'
'Berserker spell,' echoed Candlemas. 'Karsus said once that he'd always be protected by those who loved him best. I thought he was just airing his tongue, or joking. But he meant it. He must have enchanted all his mages so that if Karsus were attacked from any direction, they'd go fighting mad, assault whatever they saw until Karsus was safe again.'
Sunbright wiped his forehead. He'd hated to kill the woman, innocent and deadly as a rabid rabbit.
'But who attacks Karsus?'
Candlemas glanced over his shoulder at the gray, roiling sky. The sky woman's monumental features were hardening, growing more defined, despite a hearty wind kicking up. 'Magic attacks him, for he's taken on too much. That and, I suspect, a goddess.'
They saved their breath for running. In the lead, Sunbright had to cut down half a dozen apprentices raving under the influence of the berserker spell. Killing them was no harder than cutting daisies, but it sickened the barbarian, so he found himself hesitating. Yet they were mad dog wild, and so they died, not knowing that Karsus, their beloved master, had betrayed them, used them as pawns.
On they traveled, down sloping corridors, past smashed furniture that had staved in entire walls. Litter and glass splinters and wreckage rattled everywhere, some forming waist high barriers. They helped one another, watched out, and Sunbright killed another dozen apprentices until he was spattered with blood like smallpox.
'How many damned apprentices did Karsus have?'
'Ninety! Or nine hundred!' called back Candlemas.
They knew the star chamber was near because of the heat.
Waves gushed from the room, eye and mouth-drying heat like a blast furnace, until Sunbright felt he'd stumbled into another pocket of hell. But he didn't understand the source until he saw what transpired within.
Karsus was lit like a bonfire.
Caught in some state between man and god, Karsus hung suspended above their heads. He'd grown perhaps twelve feet tall, but looked wider because his hair stuck straight out and his arms and legs were outflung. Skin, eyes, feet, robe, all shone white and silver like an illuminated mirror. He burned with an internal flame that would have melted lead.
The workshop was a madhouse. The stone floor, scorched black in spots, tilted even worse here than the rest of the building, so steeply the heroes couldn't have stood on it. Everything loose soared and whirled and spiraled around the room, including several mages killed by the sheer fury of the magic unleashed. A whistling roar drowned out sounds as jars, chairs, and tables, all ducked and wove in the air in some insane dance. Whirling books and objects and corpses caught fire if they spun too close to Karsus.
But Karsus would soon be a corpse himself, it was obvious, for he burned his life away. The massive infusion of super heavy star magic raged inside him as if he'd swallowed molten gold. His eyes bugged, his tongue protruded, his cheeks were sunken, his fingers clawed the air, his toes curled, but he still fought for control. He shouted chant after chant, a rapid, arcane babble unlike anything they'd ever heard.
Sunbright hung onto the doorjamb, took one look, and let Candlemas pass. 'This task falls to you!' he shouted.
The pudgy mage stared, said, 'I don't know what to do!'
'What is Karry doing?' Aquesita sobbed, clinging to Candlemas's sleeve. 'What's happening to him?'
'I don't know!' the mage hollered. 'He's sucked up immeasurable power, not only from the star but from the mythallars too! That's why the city tilts! The magic generators that keep it aloft are robbed of energy! But he's internalized all that magic and-I just don't know! Is he trying to dispel it without losing all of it, so we won't fall? Or return it to the star? Or is he forging ahead, trying to tame it and become a god?'
'He can't become a god!' Aquesita countered. 'The gods wouldn't allow it! Lady Mystryl herself fills the sky and frowns on us!'
Candlemas scrubbed his bald head with a singed hand. He poured sweat that was instantly whisked away by searing heat. Desperately he tried to think what to do-if anything. Perhaps Karsus could dispel the power, channel it elsewhere, save enough to right the city. But if he opposed the gods, spat in Mystryl's eye and demanded the room for a newcomer, who knew how the gods might retaliate?
In the corridor, Knucklebones gave a yell and whipped out her elven knife. Another berserk apprentice raced around the corner, then tumbled in his stupefied, zombified trance. He rolled, bouncing painfully but not feeling it, then fetched up against a wall. Ignoring blood running into his eyes from a scalp wound, he snarled and swiped for Knucklebones. Latching onto Sunbright's belt with one hand, the thief neatly speared the mad apprentice's throat. He fell and tumbled on down the slanted flagstones like a discarded doll.
But the barbarian barked an alert, for more crazed mages charged, a dozen or more, hands like claws and jaws champing. Shifting Harvester, he tried to find a foothold. Fighting madmen in a tilting city was something new, but maybe mountain fighting tactics would work. He shunted Knucklebones aside so he could block the doorway with his greater bulk. The more nimble thief had to move out into the corridor and cling to flagstones with bare toes as best she could. Over his shoulder Sunbright bellowed, 'Candlemas, do something!'
Candlemas and Aquesita watched Karsus burn like a flare while shouting defiance into the teeth of the wind. They were boxed behind, yet to enter the room would crisp them like stepping into a blast furnace. Candlemas croaked, 'I don't know-Sita, I'm sorry.'
A whirling parchment caught Candlemas's eye, and he stabbed for it. He smoothed the wrinkled folds. It was his scroll, the time travel spell, dropped as litter when he pushed Karsus aside. That event seemed to have happened ages ago.
A blessing, for he finally knew what to do. 'Sita! This scroll! I fashioned it! It can return us-Sunbright and I-to our own time! I can take you too, if you want to go!'
The plump woman stared, and Candlemas's heart plunged into his stomach. Clearly the concept was alien to her. To leave the empire, family and friends, journey to another time and place with a man she barely knew. But he saw the noble lines in her face tighten as she debated, sifted the notion in her mind. Despairing, he guessed her answer before she asked, 'What about Karsus?'
'I can't take him with us.' Candlemas had to shout above the whistling roar, but his voice sounded like a mouse squeak. 'Just you.'
'Candy…' said the woman. 'I… I love you. Truly. But I have obligations. To my family… and the empire.'
'The empire is going to die!' Candlemas shouted in desperation. 'This is the end of the end! You said so yourself!'
'Not if Karsus succeeds!' She gazed at her cousin, who shouted threats at the ceiling as he floated higher. 'He will ascend to godhood and save the city! Save the empire! He's the greatest mage…'
Candlemas only stared, unsure if his lover was trying to convince him, or herself. Then her words were lost as the building's ceiling blew off.
Tons of stone, slate, timber beams, granite, carved cornices, and other elements exploded upward like wheat chaff. Not a speck of dust rained in the roofless room. High up, yet almost close enough to touch, frowned the cloud face of Lady Mystryl, Controller of the Weave, the stuff of all magics. And facing her, still shouting, was the presumptuous mage who would steal her power, usurp her place, walk into the firmament and take the throne of the gods themselves.
The cloud face was not pleased.
The corridor had become a slaughterhouse. Seconds before, Sunbright had killed three berserkers in quick succession. With one hip propped on the door jamb, he stabbed the first one straight through the belly, didn't even hurl the body aside before twisting his thick wrists and jabbing a madwoman from behind to pierce her liver. Despite the sword protruding through his guts, the mage in his face still clawed feebly. The barbarian had to risk his
