He started shaping the clay into a crude doll. Suddenly, a pang of weakness shot through him, and his knees buckled. As he continued sculpting, the feeling of debility grew worse, as though his work was draining a measure of his life.
Was this supposed to happen? The grimoire hadn't warned of it.
Don't think about it! Focus on speaking the words with the proper clarity and cadence. On making the passes precisely and exactly when required.
A crazy titter sounded from thin air, the glee of some petty spirit drawn by the scent of magic. Malark raised his wand above his head and shouted the final words of his spell.
A flare of mystic power painted the room with frost. The doll swelled to life-size, becoming an exact duplicate of Malark right down to the wand, ritual chasuble, and the red and maroon garments beneath. The simulacrum drew up his legs and thrust them out again in a vicious double kick at his creator's ribs.
Malark only barely managed to spring back out of range. Grinning with mad joy, his twin rolled off the worktable, dropped into a fighting stance, and advanced.
"Stop!" Malark snapped. "I'm your maker and your master!"
The simulacrum whipped his ebony wand-a sturdy baton designed to double as a cudgel-at Malark's head. Malark swayed out of the way, but once again, it was close. He needed the weakness and sluggishness to go away, because his twin certainly didn't seem to be laboring under the same handicap.
But he did seem wild with fury. Perhaps he could be tricked. Malark raised his foot a little as if preparing a kick, then lashed out with his own wand, beat his opponent's weapon, and knocked it out of his grasp. The cudgel clattered on the floor. It was far from the most effective attack he could have attempted, but he was also hindered by the fact that he didn't want to kill or cripple his other self.
The simulacrum laughed as though the loss of his club was inconsequential, and perhaps it was. Throwing one combination after another, he came at Malark like a whirlwind, and his creator had little choice but to retreat.
As Malark did, though, he watched. No one, not even a Monk of the Long Death, could make so many attacks in quick succession without faltering or otherwise leaving himself open eventually.
There! The simulacrum was leaning forward, ever so slightly off balance, and as he corrected, Malark dropped his own wand, pounced, and gripped the other combatant's neck in a stranglehold.
At once Malark felt his adversary moving to break free of the choke, but he didn't attempt any countermeasures. Now that he was staring straight into the simulacrum's eyes at short range, it was time to stop wrestling and try being a wizard once again. Imagining the indomitable force of his will, embodied in his glare, stabbing into his double's head, he snarled, "Stop!"
The simulacrum convulsed, then stopped struggling. The rage went out of his light green eyes, and he composed his features. "You can let go now," he croaked, his throat still constricted by Malark's grip.
Malark warily complied, then stepped backward. His twin remained calm. Rubbing one of the ruddy handprints on his neck, the simulacrum said, "I'm truly sorry. But being born is a painful, disorienting thing. All those babies would lash out too if they had the strength."
Malark smiled. "I'll have to take your word for it."
"And you have to admit, from a certain perspective, this is a setback. For centuries, my dearest wish has been that there be none of me. Instead, the number has doubled."
"Only temporarily, and in the best of causes."
"Oh, I know. I know everything you do, including your plan. I go west to foil the invasion while you stay here, hide, and set a trap."
A patch of azure flame danced on the muddy, sluggishly flowing water, seemingly without having any fuel to burn. Evidently the Umber Marshes contained a tiny pocket or two of plagueland-territory where the residue of the Spellplague still festered-and Gaedynn had wandered into one of them.
He studied the blue fire with wary interest. Though he'd occasionally visited plagueland, he'd never actually seen the stuff before.
He would have been just as glad to skip the spectacle now. He fancied he'd feel at home in any true forest across the length and breadth of Faerun, but this rust-colored swamp was a different matter. He hated the way the soft ground tried to suck the boots off his feet and especially hated the clouds of biting, blood-sucking insects. Back in the Yuirwood, the elves had taught him a cantrip to keep such vermin away, but it didn't seem to work on these mindlessly persistent pests.
Yes, if there ever was a patch of land that ought to be scouted on griffonback, this was it-except that the thick, tangled canopy of the trees made it impossible to survey the ground from on high. So somebody had to do it the hard way.
He skulked onward, glancing back at the azure flames periodically, making sure they were staying put. So far, so good, but in Aoth's stories they'd raced across the land in great curtains, destroying everything they engulfed.
Gaedynn faced forward again to see a troll charging him, its long, spindly legs with their knobby knees eating up the distance. The man-eating creature was half again as tall as a human being, with a nose like a spike and eyes that were round, black pits. It had clawed fingers and a mouth full of fangs, and its hide was a mottled red-brown instead of the usual green, possibly to help it blend in with the oddly colored foliage of the marshes.
Perhaps that was why Gaedynn hadn't detected it sooner, expert woodsman though he was. Or perhaps the distractions of the blue fire and stinging insects were to blame. Either way, it was a lapse that could easily cost him his life. He snatched an arrow from his quiver, laid it on his bow, and then the troll was right on top of him.
On top and then past. It ran by without paying him any heed, soon vanishing between two mossy oaks.
Gaedynn exhaled. From one perspective, he'd had a narrow escape, but he didn't feel lucky just yet, because it had certainly appeared that the troll was running away from something. If so, what had put such a fearsome brute to flight?
Whatever it was, it could easily pose a threat to Gaedynn and his fellow scouts as well. He whistled a birdcall. Somewhere off to the left, invisible among the trees and thickets, an archer answered in kind. On his right, however, sounded only the tap-tap-tap of a drilling woodpecker and the plop of something jumping or dropping in water. He whistled a second time and still couldn't raise a response.
As Gaedynn paused to consider how to proceed, the scout on his left yelped. Gaedynn waited a moment, then whistled the signal, but this time, nobody answered.
Keeping low, trying to move fast but stealthily too, Gaedynn headed in the direction of the yelp. Listening intently, eyes constantly moving, he promised himself that nothing else would surprise him.
And nothing did, but it was close. Scuttling beside one of the ubiquitous channels, he glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye, pivoted, and found a red mass rearing over him like a wave about to break. The thing was big as a cottage, but its shapeless, essentially liquid nature had enabled it to ooze along under the surface of the murky water undetected.
Gaedynn retreated and shot the arrow he'd initially intended for the troll. It stuck in the middle of his attacker-which gave off the coppery smell of blood-but didn't even slow it down. The creature heaved and flowed after him.
Some of the special shafts Jhesrhi grudgingly enchanted for him might hurt the thing more, but it seemed a poor idea to stand too close while he tried them. He sprinted away from it.
Something tall as the troll but broader, its inconstant shape vaguely human but composed of filthy water, made a splashing leap from an algae-covered pool on his left and half ran, half flowed to intercept him. It reached with enormous hands-the left one had the fingers fused together, as though it wore a mitten-and he felt the cold, poisonous wrongness festering inside them. It was the same sick sensation he sometimes had when obliged to spend time around Mirror, only more intense.