“How?” Varnaythus waved at the chamber about them, and that cold smile grew even colder.
“You aren’t the only one who knows how to create a kairsalhain. But you were kind enough to build your working chamber on top of one of mine.”
Varnaythus’ eyes flickered in shock. Then he shook himself.
“That’s not possible,” he said flatly. “I created this chamber myself. No one else-not even Sahrdohr-knew its physical location, and even if you’d found it, no one could get a kairsalhain inside its wards without my sensing it!”
He heard the outraged professional pride in his own voice and knew vanity was a foolish prop at a moment like this. But professional pride was all he truly had, here at the end of things, and he glared at Wencit, daring even a wild wizard to dispute him.
“You weren’t listening,” Wencit replied. “I didn’t get anything ‘inside its wards.’ I didn’t have to. You built it on top of my kairsalhain. It’s been waiting here for over seven hundred years, Varnaythus.”
The Carnadosan’s eyes didn’t flicker this time; they bulged. Seven hundred years? Wencit had been here-buried a kairsalhain here- seven hundred years before? That was…that was “I said I’ve been looking forward to this,” Wencit said. “As it happens, I’ve been looking forward for quite a long time. And speaking of time, it’s time for me to deliver a message to your colleagues back in Trofrolantha.”
“A message?” Varnaythus felt like a parrot, yet despite himself, he also felt a faint tremble of hope. A message implied a messenger, after all.
“Your friend Malahk will deliver it for me,” Wencit said, watching the hope die in Varnaythus’ eyes. “In fact, he’ll be part of the message.”
“What…what do you mean?” Varnaythus thought of all the inventive ways a wizard’s artistically dismembered body could be delivered-and how long the unfortunate wizard could be kept alive during the dismembering process-and shuddered. Perhaps he was going to be more fortunate than Sahrdohr after all.
“Oh, he’ll be just fine…physically,” Wencit replied, still with that icy smile. “But you and the Council crossed a line this time, Varnaythus. There are some things I will not tolerate, and Malahk will deliver that message. And as an indication that they should take it seriously, I’ve stripped his Gift from him.”
Varnaythus swallowed hard, although he supposed there was no reason one more impossibility should bother him after so many others. Stripping a wizard of his ability to wield the art was the cruelest punishment of all, far crueler than simple physical death, and it could seldom be done without killing the victim. Even when it could, it took weeks of preparation and the shared and focused abilities of at least a dozen other wizards.
“And the message?” he asked.
“It’s very simple.” Wencit’s voice was flat. “You will never- ever — again attempt to attack Leeana Hanathafressa with the art.” Varnaythus stared at him, and there was no smile on Wencit’s face now. “I’ll know of any attack even before it’s launched, just as I knew of this one, and there will be no more warnings. I still control the spells that strafed Kontovar a thousand years ago. At the next attack on her I will not simply destroy the wizard who carried it out, but blast Trofrolantha for a second time. I will leave no stone atop any other stone, and there are no wards so strong, nor working chambers so deeply buried, that I won’t be able to reach them. And should that prove insufficient warning, if any Carnadosan should be so foolish as to attack her a third time, I will lay waste that entire continent in a wall of fire that will dwarf its first destruction. I will burn out my own magic-a wild wizard’s magic-to power that destruction, and it will be ten times a thousand years before Kontovar rises from those ashes.”
Varnaythus was white. It had required the fall of the greatest empire in Orfressan history, the conquest in fire and blood of an entire continent, to drive Wencit and the Last White Council to strafe Kontovar. Yet as he looked into Wencit of Rum’s flame-cored eyes, he knew the wild wizard meant it. Even if it cost his own life, he would scour Kontovar down to clean, bare stone-kill every green and growing thing, every animal-if the Carnadosans dared even to attack, far less kill, a single young woman. What could possibly…?
Those eyes told him that question would never be answered. There had to be an answer, a reason Wencit would make that dreadful promise for Leeana’s sake but not for Bahzell’s or for any other person he’d known and loved in all the dusty centuries of his life. Yet Varnaythus of Kontovar would never know it.
Wencit raised his hand, and a spray of wildfire erupted from it. It reached up, then flowed outward, coating the chamber’s stone walls, enveloping them within a glorious canopy of light that flickered and danced.
“My name,” the wild wizard said in ancient Kontovaran, “is Wencit of Rum, and by my paramount authority as Lord of the Council of Ottovar, I judge thee guilty of offense against The Strictures. Wouldst thou defend thyself, or must I slay thee where thou standest?”
A strange, shivering sort of calm seemed to fill Varnaythus. He wondered, for an instant, how many other wizards had heard that same challenge in that same voice over the centuries. He didn’t know…but none who’d heard it once had ever heard another voice again.
He bowed ever so slightly, then drew his own wand. He raised it, summoning his power, and hurled the most deadly spell at his command. A wrist-thick cable of green lightning that would have given even a creature like Anshakar pause, might even have blasted him back into his own universe, streaked across the scant twelve feet between him and his foe.
It had no effect on Wencit of Rum at all.
The ancient wild wizard simply raised one hand, almost negligently, and that vortex of ravening destruction shattered on his callused palm. It splintered into all the colors of the rainbow, and then it was gone, banished as if it had never even existed.
Varnaythus staggered, sick and emptied of power, and stared at the white-haired old man with the terrible wildfire eyes.
“So be it.” Wencit’s executioner voice was colder than Hopes Bane Glacier. “As thou hast chosen, so shalt thou answer.”
The terrible flash of those flaming eyes was the last thing Varnaythus ever saw.
Epilogue
No one had ever seen a gathering quite like it.
Bahzell Bahnakson and his wife stood on the battlement of East Tower and looked down into Hill Guard Castle’s main courtyard as the next contingent of unlikely visitors clattered through the main gate. The newcomers seemed oddly undersized in comparison to their escort of armsmen in the colors of the House of Bowmaster. Pony-mounted dwarves had a tendency to look that way when they were flanked by Sothoii warhorses, but the visitors’ sartorial splendor and the banners cracking above them in the brisk north wind made up for any deficiencies of stature.
“I see old Kilthan’s after arriving,” Bahzell said. “The bald fellow yonder, in the orange tunic.”
“Under the waterwheel banner?” Leeana asked, and Bahzell nodded.
“Aye, and that’s Thersahkdahknarthas dinha’Feltalkandarnas next to him.” Bahzell had paused for a moment before bringing out the full name of the head of Clan Felahkandarnas. Brandark himself couldn’t have done it better, and Leeana looked up at him and batted her eyes in admiration.
“I hadn’t realized I’d married such a sophisticated man,” she said, and Bahzell chuckled and laid an arm around her shoulders to draw her in against his side.
“Now that you haven’t,” he told her, bending to press a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s naught I am but a backwoods boy from Hurgrum, lass, and you’d best not be forgetting it.”
“I’m sure I won’t, given the pains you take to keep reminding the rest of us what a bumpkin you are. You’re not really fooling anyone, you know.”