larger floating cities, including one in the capital city of Ioulaum. To the tundra-dwelling barbarian, who owned a sword and a blanket, the idea of so much wealth-and the power it brought-was incomprehensible.
And his difficulties with the city-mansion were immediate and irritating. For one thing, in the few days he'd been here, healing, resting, and arguing with Candlemas, he'd consistently gotten lost. Many rooms and hallways had no outside windows, being lit by magically illuminated globes. In such conditions Sunbright had no way to tell north from south, east from west. He felt like an addled child every time he fetched up in some dead-end hallway or dusty cellar, which was often enough. A maid had offered to assign him a boy as a guide, but the barbarian's pride had bristled at the idea. Eventually, he decided to stick to outside hallways to keep his sense of direction, even though the yawning windows with their precipitous drops made his stomach ache and his bowels pinch.
And now he'd told Candlemas he wanted to be on the ground a while, and had sounded whiny. If it weren't for needing to find Greenwillow, he'd climb the Barren Mountains and take up shepherding.
'Here!' The wizard led him around a trio of ornate gold-leafed screens that depicted heroic battles and quests from the distant past. Behind the screen were odd statues and rolled rugs, glass chandeliers hanging from temporary wooden frames and a dozen or more mismatched chests, both plain and fancy. Planting his sandaled feet before one, Candlemas uttered a cantra to spring the lock and flung back the lid.
Sunbright peered. Inside were gadgets and gewgaws, velvet pouches, long wooden boxes, bundles wrapped in cloth and tied with ribbon. Candlemas plucked one up at random. To Sunbright it looked like something cut from a reindeer's guts, bulbous and tubular, but crafted of silver, now tarnished black in the crevices. 'Do you know what this is?'
The barbarian shook his head.
'Neither do I,' snapped the mage in disgust. 'But it's magic. I have three apprentices who do nothing but detect for magic. Everything in these chests is enchanted, and I don't know what any of them do!'
Sunbright watched as Candlemas opened another chest, then another. Most were full. 'Where did you get these things?'
'They're found in odd rooms in the castle, bought in markets, won by Lady Polaris in gambling dens, and from her neverending wagers. She wins a pot of gadgets and sends them to me, and I'm supposed to interpret them!'
Sunbright was mildly interested. 'And do you?'
'Sometimes.' The mage slammed the lid. 'I work on whatever problem or question she hurls at me today, then drop it for tomorrow's emergency. Most I can fob off to underlings, but sometimes I must work nonstop to glean the workings of some piece of arcane junk. I once spent three weeks analyzing a jeweled poker-sort-of-thing. Polaris-excuse me-Lady Polaris insisted it would harden quicksilver to silver. Do you know what it did? It curled one's hair! It came off some fop's vanity table!'
'Why would someone want to curl their hair?' asked Sunbright.
Candlemas rolled his eyes. 'Never mind. That's not the point.' He swept his arms to encompass the jammed chests. 'I had hoped you, with your promise of shamanism, could help me solve some problems. The wheat rust, for one. Blight, actually. One assistant thinks it's attacking rye now. Shamen are supposed to understand growing things. I had hoped that, among other experiments, you could assist me in sorting these gadgets, perhaps find one that cures plant disease. There are enchanted tools here that resemble farm implements. Maybe one deters crop rot. A magic sifter, or wand of rowan wood, or a stone that, buried in the field, sucks up evil influences…'
Idly, Sunbright touched the top of an iron-strapped chest. The glyph protecting it shocked his hand. Sucking a scorched fingertip, Sunbright opined, 'I couldn't even break one of these locks, let alone puzzle out your-gaj-dits. Blight is part of the natural order of things, you know. Plants grow strong, are attacked by disease, but fight it off and grow stronger. Or they die and are replaced. All things scribe the circle eventually, come from earth and return to it. Us too.'
Candlemas rubbed his head, work-roughened, chemical-stained hands rasping on his bare scalp. 'I don't need a lesson in barbarian philosophy. Yes, things pass away. And I'll pass away, and so will thousands of peasants, if we don't cure this blight! Don't you understand? If we can employ magic properly, we can undo all these ills and make the world a better place! The point is not to give in to despair, but to best it! Magic can solve everything given enough time and effort! There's no limit to its power!'
'Everything has limits,' said Sunbright evenly. He fingered the nose of a statue, a bronze beauty holding a two-headed snake across her bare shoulders. 'A touch to this statue wears it away, in a small way. This castle will be dust some day. Trying to stop the decline of things, or to hasten natural ways-hardening quicksilver to silver- never works for long, and usually backfires. If you would cure your blights, burn the crops. That's a natural cure and ends the problem. Let people move elsewhere and eat differently until new, clean crops appear. The land and people will be stronger for it. But to hope that a random tool from a heap of junk will solve your problem is silly. To cure an ill, you need only visit the source. Sit upon the earth, in the field, fast, clear your mind, learn how the grain eats of the earth, and why the disease works its evil.'
'There isn't time.' Candlemas stared out a distant window.
Sunbright continued, 'And another thing. Where's your end of the bargain? You agreed to help me track Greenwillow's soul. How fare those efforts?'
The elder mage only waved his arms. 'Again, there might be something in these boxes. Mirrors are the best thing I know for seeing to other worlds and planes. Telescopes sometimes, or kaleidoscopes. Glass eggs, too. There are probably six of each in these trunks, and more downstairs. And enchanted doors: there are five in the cellar, stacked against the wall. Feel free to fit them to frames and chant over them. By the time you're as old as me…'
The barbarian peered at the trunks, frowning. 'I'd give the same answer. A mirror might show some other world, but only that part desired by whoever enchanted it. So too a glass egg or door. To find Greenwillow, we'd need some part of her: a lock of hair, or a ring she wore for a long time. Shamans can learn the animal by reading a bone, or commune with the dead while sleeping on a skull. But we have no piece of Greenwillow. Only dreams.'
That thought conjured the night's vision, a dark forest, Greenwillow's ghost leading him on to-what?
He interrupted himself. 'I need to go to the forest.'
'Fine, fine. Ask the birds if hollow wheat kernels are bitter, or if groundhogs can gnaw bare cobs.' Candlemas waved a weary hand. 'I'll fetch you at sundown.'
He forked his fingers to invoke a shift spell, but Sunbright stopped him. 'Let me retrieve my tackle.'
'Why? I said I'd fetch you within hours.'
The barbarian didn't answer, only turned for his chambers. Candlemas swore softly and slammed the lid of a trunk.
How proceeds the fire?
The fire amongst the humans? They seek heat, and we heap on coals.
Far below the earth, in chambers that had never seen sun, whirled a score of creatures like tops with diamond tails. Cruel gashes with rock-hard edges were their mouths, for they could eat anything found underground: roots, rocks, moles, hibernating bears, tombstones, and bones. But mostly they fed on magic, for enchantment ran through their very fiber. They were the Phaerimm, unknown to men, seldom seen, and even then invariably mistaken for dust devils. Usually they destroyed the observer, champed his bones and muscles to bits, leaving only scraps and stains in the wilderness.
I like it not. Piling magic on magic puts them at risk of burning out, but it endangers us as much.
We discussed that at length. There is no other way. We shall be safe. Their idiocy shall scour the earth, but not penetrate here.
If we are careful.
We are always careful. We must be, for we are so few.
We are the oldest living things on the planet.
All the more reason to safeguard.
The humans will be undone, have no fear. They are soft and cannot last.
Look how our drain spell sucks the nourishment from their food. Soon they will have naught to eat.
They'll eat each other.
All the better. Their bones will enrich the soil. And we will again hold the worlds above and below.
