Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,137

a liquid, the Slymires’ legions flooded out, coursed through gullies, surged up bluffs, to fill, with their fluid concourse, a broad plateau dispread a little ways below the Combs.

What a host they were, the Slymires crouched on this plain, their gorgeous eyes abrim with the never-known sky, and its never-known sun sinking swollen to the western horizon!

“They’ve never even dreamed of it before…the sun,” murmured Hew. “I think there was a vague rumor of it, recorded in their runes. It seems, by augmenting these, that we have…awakened their minds.”

“And how will this…” Bront’s voice trailed off, so strange the rapture of that monstrous throng, their fellows joining them in a steady stream still issuing out of the earth, all of them settling down into the same mute awe of the dying sun.

“…how will this save this world?” finished Bront in Hew’s ear.

“I have no idea,” said Hew.

The Slymires sat under the darkening wine of the sky, feeling the breeze which they had never known, watching the sun’s carmine eye slowly lidded by the black horizon. Their own eyes were unearthly gems, entranced in wild surmise. Their foliate plumage bristled and stirred insatiably.

The four stole away from that devout concourse with a courteous, embarrassed stealth, like that of folk who leave a church before the service ends. They picked their way back down to the lichened plain, just as dark began to settle down.

“Gentlemen,” said Hew, “we must make north. I cannot express my gratitude for your stalwart spirits, for your help.”

Cugel resettled his knapsack of crystal. “My friends. I can’t recall a more astonishing or more profitable venture than this we have just shared. I must ask you, without prying I hope, what you gain by what you’ve done. You’ve taken no crystal.”

“Our aim was, ah, altruistic,” Hew answered. “It was, in some way we do not understand, to save this world.”

“You quite astonish me!” said Cugel. “And yet perhaps I am not too amazed, for have not I gained a prize that works a great philanthropy? I bring more power to the Biblionites’ sun-cannons, and haste the selfish Guyal’s fall, and the Biblionites, when they have spread the museum’s gnomens far and wide, will have worked a great service to the world.”

“If indeed they prove the pious altruists they claim to be,” rumbled Jacques.

“Ah well!” Cugel smiled. “Who can see the future?” (Bront and Hew here exchanged a glance.) “I would like to stand you to a fine refreshment back in Minion, and perhaps a bracing little game of chance…but laden with wealth as I now am, night and haste must hide my passage from the common eye. Gentlemen, it has been a privilege, an honor, and an amazement to have made one with you!”

Laden with their warm acknowledgments, Cugel turned away into the dark and made light-foot back toward Minion.

Bront turned to Jacques. “Permit me to say, good sir…that you were worth every lictor of your hire.”

The jack-haul laughed. “Dear Bront—I like you too, and I think you a most excellent fellow. Adieu.” The gloom concealed Bront’s blush, but he was not displeased by the jack-haul’s declaration. As Jacques moved off, Bront cleared his throat in some discomfort.

“Esteemed Hew…”

“Please, most excellent Bront. You are my friend, and I am yours. And I am now, and shall henceforward be, most delighted in our friendship.”

Bront smiled gratefully. “Well then.”

“Well then.”

They turned northward, and at their second stride, found themselves standing on Kadaster’s balcony, the grand sharp peaks of the Siderions marching snow-capped past the edge of sight, splendid beneath a golden sun.

Broadly smiling, Kadaster gestured them toward a table, whereon stood three goblets and a pitcher of wine, and beside which sat two obese pouches of gold specie.

“Hew! Bront! You have done well! You have far exceeded my most sanguine hopes. Sit, and be refreshed!”

“Then your aim has been fulfilled?” asked Hew.

“Oh, yes indeed. Or, technically, it will be.”

They drank, and rested for a space, though the expeditioners eyed the mage aslant, now and again. Bront, at last, could not forbear to ask, “May we know, Kadaster, just how we have helped to…”

“How you have helped to save this world? Why, of course you may! How stupid of me not to explain it at once, now that its eventuation is assured! Now that you have assured it!

“The Slymires, you see, will, not too long after you have visited them, build an array of huge reflecting mirrors of amplificatory crystal. With these they will return to the sun its own tremendously