"I win!" he crowed. The crowd, rife with mixed emotions, gurgled rather than cheered.
"Concede," Sunbright croaked.
"No!" a voice shouted. "No, he must die!"
"No!" someone else yelled, though in agreement or denial no one could tell.
"A challenger can't concede! It is law!" yelled another.
"Is that true?"
Argument spun around and around.
Finally someone prevailed on old blind Iceborn, who guttered sadly, "It is true. A challenger cannot concede, only win or die. It is tradition."
"Finish him!" yelled a bloodthirsty soul.
"No, we need him!" snapped another.
"He must die!"
"Let him live!"
"Hold!" shrilled a voice above the tumult. "I claim right of combat!"
"What?" echoed dozens of voices. A burble of confusion filled the night sky. Even Sunbright was confused, until he saw someone step into the ring.
A small woman, stripped to leathers, barefoot, brass knuckledusters winking on both hands, called in a steady voice, "I am Knucklebones of Karsus. I have listened to the tales of your tribe, and the arguments over custom, but one rule is clear. A person too young or too old or too ailing to fight may choose a champion. I claim the right to fight for Sunbright!"
Tumult, bickering, squabbling. Someone argued, "He is none of those!"
Knucklebones answered, "He was ailing before he began the fight!"
"But she's not one of us!" came a cry.
"No matter!"
More noise, customs, and curses hurled back and forth.
Knucklebones cut to the chase, pointed her finger at Magichunger, and called, "Do you accept?"
"I do!" the man yelled before thinking.
"Then stand aside!"
Stooping, Knucklebones caught Sunbright's arm, levered him up, and passed him to Monkberry and a few willing hands. Sunbright finally found his voice. "You're a miracle… in disguise?"
"A gift from the gods," she quipped. She picked up his sword. "I said I'd help however I can."
Helpless, and knowing protest was useless, the shaman didn't argue. "You'll need a few years' practice to heft that sword," he said.
"This pig iron? This crowbar?" A brittle laugh. "I've all I need here."
Handing the sword past the ring, the tiny thief approached the towering Magichunger. He'd wrapped a hasty bandage around ribs, his only wound. The redhead sneered, "Sunbright sends a half-grown girl to fight?"
"I've seen forty summers, stripling!" the part-elf shot back. Sunbright blinked. He hadn't known she was that old! "And I talk with this!"
Stooping to a knife-fighting stance, she whipped out her long elven blade. Dark, casting no reflection, it seemed invisible in the night.
Magichunger watched as if hypnotized, a chicken staring down a hawk. He muttered, "T'will do you no good. If I kill you, Sunbright has to fight the next duel. If you kill me, t'will do no good either, for you must fight the rest."
"One battle at a time," cooed the veteran of a thousand duels. "First, I'll flay your stinking hide. See if you have a heart."
Despite his long sword, Magichunger gulped, but he grabbed the pommel two-handed, cocked it over a shoulder, and aimed to slice the thief in half. Knucklebones tensed.
"Hold again!" boomed a voice. "I stop this fight, and all others!"
Sagging in his mother's lap, Sunbright lifted his head at the new interruption. Monkberry wept tears of joy. "There," the old woman said, "is our miracle!"
Chapter 10
"Praise Jannath the Golden Goddess! It works! It works!"
Carried away, Candlemas whirled and grabbed the first person at hand, a wispy lesser mage named Jacinta. Two other mages laughed to see the chubby mage dance with the young woman, then laughed harder when he grabbed their hands and swung all three in a circle. Farm hands, gathered to witness the miracle, clapped their hands and hooted and stamped their feet.
The scene was a remote valley amidst steep hills covered with ash and elm trees, bottomed by a trio of jewel-like lakes. At the head of the valley was a small square keep of black stone and a few peasant cottages. The floor of the valley, split by a glistening stream, was not farmed in typically ancient meandering lots, but quartered with geometric precision and planted with every type of grain crop: wheat, barley, rye, spelt, oats, bran, timothy… It was near a small bridge over the stream, at the sharp edge of the wheat field, that magicians capered like children.
"Whew!" Candlemas huffed to a halt. Two hundred and fifteen years old, he was still in his prime, but long hours and good food had slowed him down. Dressed in a plain brown smock and rope sandals, pudgy and bald with a bushy black beard, an observer would never know Candlemas was a leading mentalist of his time. In fact, hardly anyone in the Netherese Empire, archwizard or lowest peasant, knew where Candlemas was, or what he'd been attempting. And after three long years "I've done it! We've done it, for you've all helped, my friends! And you shall reap the rewards, and the ages shall sing praises to your names! But come, let us watch!"
With brown, work-worn hands, Candlemas parted wheat stalks and ran amidst them. Lifting his head high, he could see how, ahead in a wandering line, wheat was stained a bright red like rust. But when he brushed the stalks with his hands, the red dust was knocked free to shimmer down like fiery snow and disappear amidst the yellow stalks. Candlemas laughed at the sight.
"Oh, they will sing praises to my name, just as Sunbright prophesied!"
"Milord?" asked Jacinta, who was thin and colorless as wheat. "What prophecy is that?"
"Eh? Oh, it was-it's a long story," he said. "Never mind. Look ahead! The spell has jumped the line! It's working on the barley!" He let out another fierce howl that almost cracked his throat, then stopped running, and stood puffing and grinning.
"You see," Candlemas told the three gathered mages, "I knew, I mean, a shaman friend of mine… This rust, this crop blight, began-what was it-four years back? From the start I knew it was trouble. Lady Polaris brought it to my attention in Castle Delia, and ordered me to fix it-as if that were simple. The rust ate the heart of the wheat, hollowed the kernels into empty shells, then it spread to other grains, even jumped to apple trees and peaches, which made no sense. A disease stays with its host, usually. It doesn't attack everything living. I thought we'd never figure it out, but a friend of mine, a barbarian shaman if you can believe it, prophesied I would find a cure, and we have!"
The mage's voice trailed off as he remembered his enforced adventuring to the future. How frustrated he'd been as steward to the estates of Lady Polaris, when suddenly he was ripped up and transported to the future, where he witnessed the destruction of the empire.
And he remembered how, returned to his own time, he'd found a new goal in life, and succeeded. This morning, as the sun rose, he'd brought out a potion, one of thousands he'd experimented with. It contained brimstone and antimony, quicksilver and iron filings, fennel and cuckoo's pintel, and lungwort and foxglove. He'd chanted to Mystryl, Mother of Magic; and Jannath, Grain Goddess, She Who Shapes All. He'd invoked spells by the dozen: Prug's plant control, Anglin's wall, Fahren's glitterdust, Shan's web. Then, kneeling, almost weeping with exhaustion, he'd dumped the potion at the roots of the rust-ridden wheat that gleamed like blood in the dawn light.
And performed a miracle. For the earth bubbled and seethed where the potion spilled, and a soft green glow enwrapped the leaning stalks of wheat. Like a green fire, the spell whisked through the field. And where it touched, rust fell away like dust, leaving the young kernels green and healthy and growing, fit food for man and beast. Nor did the spell quit, but took strength from the land itself, and spread out in rippling waves, cleansing all the crops of the blight and moving on to purify more growth.