Toughened by a hard and harsh life, Knucklebones could stand almost anything, but this wreck of her companion was beyond endurance. His bones were broken, hair singed off, body seared in half a hundred places.
Yet he was alive, croaking, "Knuck…?"
"Yes, yes!" she sobbed, "I'm here!" She cried real tears for the first time in her life. "But there's nothing I can do!"
"Water… please…"
Weeping, Knucklebones crawled to the hut door. On her knees, she begged her guards for water, using hand gestures. They both laughed, and when she came closer, kicked her in the face. Tearfully she told Sunbright of her failure.
"S'aright… Not to blame… Harmed you?" His words were mushy, for even his tongue had been burned, and he stared at the roof of the hut as if blind. Probably he was.
"No, no, they haven't, but…"
She couldn't believe he, tortured and abused, thought of her safety. Oh, she thought, how cruel the gods were to send her such a man and then snatch him away! Or how cruel were people.
These last few hours had wrought wonderful and awful changes in Knucklebones's breast. Of course she'd had friends in the sewers of the city: Ox and Lothar and Mother, other unlucky souls like herself. And she'd had lovers too. Too many to count when your life was measured in days. Men who'd enjoyed her body but never touched her heart, and then Sunbright had literally dropped upon her like something from a dream. A tall, bronzed man, hard and tough as an oak tree, tough as she was, yet with a gentle and kind spirit even the city couldn't crush. He'd followed her everywhere, looked after her, cared about her, and she hadn't shown him a jot of gratitude or sympathy, for the iron that protected her heart was the hardest part, and she was afraid to open up lest it crack and leave her helpless, snuffed out by the cruelty of the city.
But in the hours she'd hunkered here, she'd prayed to every god she knew, but mostly Mystryl, Lady of Mysteries, Mother of All Magic. Mystryl was the goddess of lovers, and the poor, and those in dire strife. Never had Knucklebones been in worse trouble, nor cared so much to see someone else helped, and been herself so helpless.
And worse than useless, for she had no comfort for him.
She touched his singed scalp, recoiled at the clammy feel of his skin, hot and cold and wet and dry at the same time. He raged with fever while shivering with chills. For lack of anything better, she peeled off her leather vest and laid it gently on his scorched breast. "I don't… What can-"
"Try to…" his voice rasped, "… find knife or stick. Kill… yourself… before start on you…"
"Yes, I will," she whimpered. "I promise. I will, Sunbright."
"Oh!"
She flinched in sympathy with his new pain, but he was shaking his head in wonder.
"Wha-What is it?"
"Never… said my name… before…"
Then he sighed and blacked out again.
It was true. She'd only called him by nicknames. All this time, even "Country Mouse," which she'd never even thought of before meeting him. In her own way, she'd been cruel, for he was as lonely as she was, homesick and far from his home.
He lay still, barely breathing, just a trace of husky whistling.
"I promise you, Sunbright."
She would kill herself, and take Wulgreth with her, though she doubted it was possible. He was a zombie king, a wizard lich, undead, and how to kill one of them? But she'd try. She'd keep herself alive to try. And remain alive while Sunbright lived.
Which wouldn't be long, she sobbed. It was clear Sunbright was dying.
Chapter 16
"Now, watch!" yelled Karsus. "This is one of the cleverest uses of all!"
The mages, Candlemas among them, stood on the balcony of a mansion overlooking a bridge that spanned a canal. A lesser mage waited with a bucket. Karsus waved a hand, and the mage walked onto the bridge, then chanted as she upended the pail. Candlemas didn't see anything happen. The bridge was slate flagstones on a stone foundation, and the bucket's "water" actually super heavy magic, but it left no wetness. The magic just seemed to disappear. Still, the mage crept gingerly along the bridge's railing until she reached solid ground. Candlemas scratched his bald head. He didn't see any effect.
Yet Karsus almost danced with glee, rubbing his hands, giggling. Other mages waited patiently. Karsus gave a call, and down the path from the opposite side a stable boy led a white horse. Karsus waved him on and the boy stopped at the edge, pointed the horse to the bridge, cooing and patting it, then slapped its rump.
The horse tripped across the bridge, got about halfway, and plunged down through the center. It vanished for only a second, then reappeared underneath whinnying in fright, then crashed, half in and half out of the canal. It thrashed and kicked its back legs, shrilling. One of its front legs was bent at an acute angle.
Karsus howled with delight, "See? It's one thing to create a phantom bridge. It's another to pour heavy magic on a real bridge that dissolves the stone and instantly takes its place! You could use it anywhere: a staircase, a street. You could fashion half an acre of a phantom plaza, say, and stampede people into it and drop them right off the enclave! And once you'd made up the magic, you could hurl it in catapults so it dropped out of the sky and mimicked whatever it hit. You'd have invisible potholes and death traps all over the enemy city! Or put it in the privy. Wouldn't that make a rare joke, a phantom toilet seat! Oh, think what you could do!"
Candlemas thought of a few applications, and wanted to apply some to Karsus. That horse had a broken leg. And although he knew horse leeches could do much with magic, repairing a horse's complicated, delicate leg was out of the question. That animal would be destroyed, its throat cut for no reason other than for Karsus's egomaniacal demonstration.
Yet one of Karsus's crawlers offered a more insidious way of killing with heavy magic. Insinuate heavy magic into someone's ear, then call a charm to flip the "magic dagger" at a right angle, tearing a great channel through the brain. Candlemas couldn't help wonder if someone hadn't tested that one already.
There were more deadly tricks in days to follow. One apprentice drew praise when he constructed a block of heavy magic a foot high and six feet long. For the demonstration, the block was colored a very pale yellow, like a box full of sunshine. The block was infused with Aksa's disintegrate spell. The eager youngster picked up a wooden stick and swiped it at the block. At the end of the swipe, he'd lost a foot of wood. This trap, he explained, could be laid across any narrow street or sidewalk. With the yellow dye removed, it would be almost invisible, impossible to see at night by gasglobe. And just lying there would do its work.
"I know," Karsus crowed. "I know how it would work! Only a genius of my stature could discern this. If someone walks into it, his foot would be instantly disintegrated! He'd lose a limb, fall down, and bleed to death. Even someone with working wards might miss it because it's so low to the ground. Oh, and think! You could make two layers, with a dimensional door behind them. If his foot is snipped off and he falls, he'd tumble in and vanish entirely! Oh, very clever, Krikor, very clever! You may sit at my right hand at dinner tonight!"
The youngster beamed. Candlemas rubbed his bald head.
More mayhem was created: incendiary clouds like slow billowing fireballs, masses of bright lights that pulsated fast and slow, able to hypnotize, or blind, or induce seizures. There was a transportable Proctiv's rock-mud transmution spell that could dissolve a whole hillside. "Mice mines": Karsus's green mice, released with tiny packets of heavy magic to infiltrate houses and cause random explosions. Even pointed slivers of heavy magic that could be inserted into fruits and vegetables. Overnight they would convert sugars into natural poisons like arsenic, nightshade, or belladonna.