Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,128
his chest. A jar of pigment was socketed in each of these lidded cylinders, and each jar sprouted the handle of what looked to be a remarkably small brush.
“My friends…” The mage was pouring a round into their cups. “…Forgive me now if my parting injunctions seem spare to you. This is the mage’s hardest task—to stint direction when chance is the magic’s key additive. I must, perforce, describe your task elliptically.
“At the distance I have named due south of here, lies Minion. It is a bustling place, a gamester’s hive of sleepless carnival. Your task lies in the Crystal Combs, a few leagues eastward, but your preparation must commence in Minion. There you will procure the materials good Hew has determined. Engage a jack-haul—a spry one who can run and fight as well as carry—and make up his load with all you will need inside the Combs.
“At some point prior to your departure from Minion, you will have met your third man, precisely how I cannot say. You will know him for your own because he too will be bound for the Combs. These are reached via tunnels beneath them, and in these, you will certainly encounter conflict with the men who sap and chip from below at the crystals. Your third man will know a way into the tunnels.
“Here, Bront, the combative skills that so distinguish you will come into play. But please note that yours is, in essence, a beneficent mission. Where a solid clubbing will suffice, you are not to spill avoidable blood. When you are up in the Combs themselves, you must take particular care not to harm the denizens there, the Slymires, though I am afraid they are dangerous in the extreme, and may be fiercely aggressive.
“When you have reached the primitive Archive of the Slymires—their grotto of runes—you will have a final and most vital task. Hew will need a great deal of help in constructing the scaffolding he needs to ascend the walls of those colossal vaults, and execute that last, most vital act.”
“…I am to help him construct his…scaffold?”
“Yes.”
Bront shuddered violently. He seemed to be having a full-body memory of his most recent experience on a scaffold. He touched, beneath his cuirass, a pouch of golden lictors—Kadaster’s advance. Registering some comfort from this contact, he shuddered again, more softly.
“Now gentlemen,” smiled the mage. “Please stand with your toes touching the parapet. I wish you godspeed, and ask you to take one step forward.”
“The parapet impedes all forward motion,” protested Bront, but in reflexively pushing his right foot against the wall, he felt it swing effortlessly forward, and come to rest on level rock, and found himself standing on a vast, rolling plateau, beneath the rosy light of a far redder sun, at high noon…
Early on their third day’s march, the weary Bront fell back a bit, and watched Hew’s progress on ahead. The scaffold-monkey, though smallish and squarish, was very tight-knit and nimble. He’d evolved a steady, dancing kind of gait to deal with the terrain, and while Bront had scorned the indignity of it from the first, he’d been forced, at length, to imitate—in a more ponderous way, to be sure—that same half-dancing progress.
The endless plateau received—as they quickly learned—recurrent rains, and this red sun’s more feeble light yet had power to nourish a lush growth of lichens and algaes on the fissured granite. This tough greenish-purplish growth flourished in a springy-clingy carpet, which cushioned one’s boot-soles yet constantly tripped them if they dragged.
Bront disliked this world, the rubescent gloom that was its daylight. What had happened to the sun? Where was its golden fire and fierceness? The landscape seemed not over-populous. They’d seen distant caravans—what looked like men on tall, spindle-legged mounts—seen other solitary journeyers, pairs and trios too. Human-seeming, a good half of these transients. Occasionally, across the furry turf, far flocks of rock-toads moved, batrachian shapes the size of horses grazing the lichens, then drifting on in a lurching, wriggling way to farther pasture. None of these other beings showed any wish to intercept their path. All seemed bent on their own business here on this later Earth, and Bront was vexed that he could not imagine that business. What was everyone doing here?
Irksome too, he found Hew’s endless silence. He had at the outset, of course, told Hew he did not wish to speak to him. But the man might have tried to talk him out of this once or twice! Instead he had marched perfectly