Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed (11 page)

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy;
it is not from the strongest that harm comes
to the strong, but from the weakest.

—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Genealogy of Morals

The Dragonmage, Bolverkr, banished pain with a muttered word and a broad sweep of directed Chaos. Once the agony had faded enough for him to concentrate, he mentally explored his body for damage. He discovered a fractured left hip and arm as well as a ruptured spleen and a bruise that ran the length of his side. Calmly, he tapped his life energy, performing the sequence of mental exercises that healed each injury. The glow of his aura faded from its usual fiery white to pewter. Curative spells cost dearly, and he had already tapped considerable life force for a gaping wound, inflicted by Larson’s sword, that would have killed a lesser man.

Bolverkr rose, drawing another sliver of the Chaos-energy that raged within him for a transport spell. The effort brought him to his lookout perch on the main curtain wall. From there, he watched Al Larson maneuver the familiar pattern of wards, Astryd’s limp body bouncing on his shoulder. Ahead, the black-clothed shape of Taziar Medakan dodged along the trail with an effortlessness that made it look like child’s play, the garnet on Astryd’s staff bobbing like a tiny, red sun above his head. Nearly at the forest’s edge, Silme ran in the lead. Her fine blue dress flapped about perfect curves. Her hair streamed in a soft fan, reflecting the sun in highlights that glittered golden through the yellow. Bolverkr filled in the details from memory: high cheekbones chiseled about a straight, aristocratic nose, vast blue eyes, and firm ample breasts.

Desire burned through Bolverkr, grown far beyond simple lust. Silme’s flawlessness went deeper than beauty. Though sorely outmatched, she had once faced Bolverkr with no weapon except her own defiance. Unable to cast spells without harming her developing baby, she had resorted to wit to incapacitate him.
Strong, intelligent, competent, and beautiful. What more could a man want?
Yet there was one more thing. The most powerful living Dragonrank sorceress, Silme had already proven herself capable of understanding and sympathizing with Bolverkr’s situation, if only in her dreams. She could comprehend the loneliness that came of being one of the rare mages in a world where most men believed in sorcerers only as mother’s stories to scare children or as demon spawn to be reviled or feared.

Bolverkr gathered power to him, reveling in the energy roiling through his veins; a Chaos that had once attacked him as an enemy and had now become an integral part of himself. A paralyzing spell came to mind, forming so quickly it might have shaped itself. He aimed it for Larson’s bounding figure. Once stilled, Larson and Astryd could be killed at Bolverkr’s leisure. He knew from past experience that Taziar would come to his friends’ aid, opening himself to any slaying spell Bolverkr might choose.

Yet Bolverkr hesitated, the paralyzation magics locked in limbo. It was not mercy that froze him. Mercy, like belief in the sanctity of life, was an arbitrary construct of man and Law. What stopped Bolverkr was the realization that, to slaughter Larson, Astryd, and Taziar now, while Silme still believed she loved them, would ingrain a hatred so profound even Chaos might not overcome it.
They’re running. I can’t claim self-defense any longer.
Curiosity goaded him to check the slow leak of Chaos between himself and Silme, but he resisted. To draw her attention to its presence might spark her to struggle against its influence.
The unborn baby Silme’s friends insist on protecting will become the means of Silme’s betrayal and their own destruction.

Bolverkr chuckled, releasing his spell and letting his quarry reach the sanctity of the forest without persecution. Once, concern for the foursome’s power had made him cautious. Now he knew they could never stand against him.
They attacked me while I was surprised and crazed, and still I bested them.
He thought of Larson’s broken sword, the beautiful randomness of its destruction, the symbolic slaying of Gaelinar’s soul and the splintering of Larson’s morale. “I am all powerful! I am king!” He had not intended to speak aloud, yet his words knifed through Wilsberg’s ruins, reverberating mournfully back from the huddled forest.

And Bolverkr’s own Chaos rose to answer.
To kill you would annihilate too much Chaos for the Balance to remain. It would destroy the nine worlds and every living creature in them. The Fates, the gods, eternity will work to keep you alive. You are invincible!

Despite having drained a relative avalanche of life energy, enough to have killed him three times over before the Chaos-bond, Bolverkr felt vigor shift through him, as restless and powerful as the tides. He felt giddy, seized by a desire to shape the world to his needs. The creatures of Law served the gods and mankind, but Bolverkr served the older, more primitive power of nature. He knew an elegance that only the finest artists learned, that beauty breeds not from order but from its lack. Chaos’ asymmetry and unpredictability inspired Bolverkr to its tenets: hatred, destruction, pain, and subversion. He knew the pleasure that accompanied a scattered array of fragmented rock and corpses, the music inherent in a panicked scream.

Bolverkr stared out over the ruins of Wilsberg, entwined in a raw blaze of wards. Selecting a tree at the edge of the forest, he called down a blast of lightning from the sky’s only cloud. The bolt lanced from the heavens and slammed into the trunk. A crack filled the air, soft but impending as a snake’s rattle. Split near the base, the tree toppled, its limbs raking through its neighbors in a chorus of swishes and rattles. Branches and smaller trees broke beneath its weight, adding a wild series of snaps to the cacophony. Leaves billowed out in all directions, still floating long after the noise died to silence. Gradually, the odor of charred bark and ozone drifted to Bolverkr’s nostrils, a perfume that bore the name Chaos.

Surrounded by his art, Bolverkr laughed, wondering why he had ever bothered to fight the Chaos within him.

Once beyond the outer circle of Bolverkr’s ward, Larson followed his companions blindly between trunks, and through brush and deadfalls. His shoulder cramped beneath Astryd’s weight, and his brain had gone equally numb. He felt as if the world had crushed in on him, stealing everything worthwhile, revealing Al Larson to be a hopeless incompetent.
What possessed me to think I could take the place of the world’s greatest swordsman? That I deserved Silme’s love or Astryd’s and Taziar’s trust?
Larson straggled onward, accepting the pain of his burden as appropriate punishment for his stupidity.

Deep in an unfamiliar part of the woodlands, Taziar called the retreat to a halt. “Let’s rest. I think we’ve gone far enough.”

“There’s a clearing,” Silme said from in front of him. “With some downed trees to sit on.”

Taziar glanced at Larson, apparently seeking confirmation or opinion, but Larson stared at his feet, avoiding Taziar’s gaze. The Climber narrowed his eyes, studying Larson as if to read his silence. “Be right there,” the smaller man told Silme. Shrugging, he pushed through a set of low branches to the clearing.

Larson ducked beneath the foliage, protecting Astryd from the whipping branches, and followed Taziar quietly.

Silme perched on a deadfall, one leg drawn to her chest, the other dangling over the leaf-strewn forest floor. Her hair fell about and into her face in a frizzy tangle, which did not in the least diminish her beauty. Taziar watched Larson’s approach, gaze fixed on Astryd.

Larson entered the clearing slowly, shifted Astryd to his arms, and gently lowered her to the ground. For all her stillness, she felt warm and alive. Apparently, her limpness as she fell had protected her from injury in the same way a drunkard survives a car accident more often than his victim. This new line of thought made Larson bitter. He had lost his father to an inebriated driver, and his mother’s subsequent financial hardship had forced Larson’s sister Pam into a bad marriage and him to enlist for the war in Vietnam.

A faint crackle of leaves behind Larson sent him spinning into a crouch, sword drawn, gaze tearing through autumn-brown weeds. A bushy tail whisked to the opposite side of a broad oak, another squirrel close on its heels.
Calm, Al. Calm. Jumping at little, furry animals isn’t going to help anyone.
He resheathed the sword.

Ignoring Larson, Taziar knelt beside Astryd, checking frantically for life signs, though her chest rose and fell in deep, sluggish breaths.

“Make her as comfortable as you can.” Silme hitched forward on the deadfall. “She’ll come around.”

Taziar sat cross-legged, sliding his lap beneath Astryd’s head to serve as a pillow. He stroked her short, feathered locks, brushing strands from her face, without bothering to question Silme’s knowledge.

Larson scowled. Standing, he regarded Silme through the speckled shadows of the forest. “How do you know that?”

Silme shrugged. “Dragonrank mages have a visible measure of life energy, an aura that only other sorcerers can see. Astryd’s has a bit of fraying around the edges, probably caused by the spell she tried to throw.” Silme’s gaze settled on Astryd’s inert form. “Life aura reflects a state of health, whether it’s drained by spells, emotional states, injury, or illness. Other than the border, her aura looks bright.”

Silme’s calmness dispelled Larson’s concern for Astryd, allowing frustration to flood in on him. Failure made him curt. “I thought we decided you were supposed to stay in Cullinsberg.”

“You decided.” Silme remained calm, driving Larson to fury. “I never agreed.”

“You followed us, didn’t you?” Larson did not pause for an answer. “You didn’t say you’d follow us. Where I come from, that’s agreement.” It was a half-truth at best, but Larson did not consider his statement too carefully. None of his companions knew enough about twentieth-century America to contradict him.

Taziar continued soothing Astryd, wisely avoiding the argument.

“Without my rocks, you would have been killed. I bought you the time to retreat.”

Larson was shouting now. “If you hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have worried about retreating. I would have killed Bolverkr.”

“Bolverkr would have killed you.”

Though Silme spoke the truth, her words infuriated Larson. “I would have fought until one of us was dead, not worried about getting you and the baby safely away.”

Silme’s face reddened, echoing Larson’s anger. “Nor, apparently, about leaving Shadow, Astryd, and me to face Bolverkr without you.”

“Stop it!” Taziar screamed over the bickering. “We’ve got an enemy at our backs. We can handle him, but only if we work together.”

Larson’s rage died to annoyance. The hopelessness of the situation, Bolverkr’s seemingly infinite power, and the destruction of Gaelinar’s soul would not leave his thoughts long enough to dispel his irritability. “Christ, Shadow. I damn near cleaved the guy in half. Ten minutes later, he’s fully healed, throwing magical grenades and directing lightning bolts like he was playing tiddledywinks. Surely he’s healed the bumps and bruises from his fall by now. He can transport anywhere instantly. He has perfect access to our location through my thoughts. If he’s not here now, slaughtering us like cattle, it’s because he chooses not to be. How can we fight against that?”

Ignoring the sprinkling of English words in Larson’s tirade, Taziar broke into hysterical laughter.

The humor was lost on Larson. “What’s so damned funny?”

“This list of doom from the one who just argued that he would have killed Bolverkr if Silme hadn’t shown up.” Taziar ran a finger along Astryd’s closed eyelids. “The same one, I might add, who killed Loki and helped destroy the Chaos-dragon that slaughtered the original Dragonrank Master and his followers. We can handle this. Everything is impossible until someone proves it otherwise. You know that.”

Larson listened dully. In the past, Taziar’s enthusiasm and confidence had roused him from despair and rallied him to the most difficult of tasks. But this time, even the little thief’s certainty could not penetrate the pall of dread hanging over Larson. Seeing no reason to puncture whatever morale his companions might still harbor, Larson forced a weak smile.

“I think, Allerum,” Silme began, her gaze focused on a forested edge of the clearing, “it might be best if you went home.”

Larson stared, so stunned it took several seconds to realize moisture glazed Silme’s gray eyes. “Home?” He shifted to her side, reaching for her protectively. “What do you mean by home? I haven’t stopped traveling since I came to your world. Home’s a series of forest floors, farm cottages, and primitive inns. I haven’t had a home since I went to Vietnam. I ...”

Silme dodged Larson’s words and his embrace. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Larson broke off, blinking. Comprehension seeped in slowly. “What are you saying?”

Silme stared off into the woodlands, her back to her companions. “When I talked to Bolverkr, he said something I can’t get out of my mind.”

“What!” Larson’s exclamation expressed startlement and disbelief that Silme would contemplate the opinions of an enemy, but Silme accepted it as a question.

“He said you were an anachronism. And an anathema.”

Larson watched Silme’s back, not certain what he was hearing. “Okay. I’ll give you anachronism. That just means I’m in the wrong time, right? The other thing, I don’t even know what it is.”

“A cursed being,” Taziar explained. “An anathema.”

Larson whipped his attention to his small companion.

“You asked.” Taziar shrugged, covering quickly, “Bolverkr was wrong, of course.”

Silme ignored the exchange. “He said that something about your misplacement in time makes the natural forces of our worlds more sensitive to your interference. He said that, eventually, you would destroy it.”

Tired of addressing Silme’s back, Larson drew to her side, caught her arm, and turned her toward him. “Of course, you told him that was nonsense.”

Silme returned his gaze, the first tears dripping from her eyes. “That’s what I told him, but I’m not sure any more. How else can you explain one man, untrained in magic and barely versed in swordcraft, slaying a god, freeing a soul from Hel, and destroying a Chaos-dragon?”