Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,51

amazing. Tapestries. Oil lamps. Slit windows that let in white daylight. A carpet on the wooden floor, and then, around a left-hand corner, a bigger room and a stone floor past open doors, and huge hangings and a number of people standing around a man at a little table, who was writing.

But it wasn’t the man who was writing that was best-dressed. It was the dark-haired, glowering man in the middle of the bystanders. That man was dressed in brocade and velvet and chain-mail and he wore a sword low-slung at his hip. He was as big as Tewk, and his glance swept toward them like the look of the biggest, meanest dog in town.

Scary man. Scary. Willem stopped. Tewk didn’t. Tewk kept right on going.

He’s a servant, Willam thought about Tewk. He’s supposed to be there.

Something slithered across the floor. It was black and it was like fog and wasn’t just on the floor. It was on eye level and it was fast and it wrapped around the man in brocade as his sword came out.

Tewk looks like that, Willem thought, and instantly honed that thought like a knife: Tewk looks just like that!

Tewk did. There were two of them, and the man at the table grabbed papers and scrambled and the men around their duke drew swords as Jindus did, as Tewk did—with all that black swirling around and around like smoke in a chimney. The two swordsmen went at it, circling like the smoke, swords grating and ringing—but all the bystanders just stood, swords drawn, but nobody moving, nobody able to see anything but Jindus, twice.

Except Tewk’s better, Willem thought. Tewk’s stronger. Scarier.

A sword swung and one of the two went down, blood spurting clear across the room, spattering the men, the pillars, everything. And one Jindus stood there, spattered, too, sword lifted…

And all that smoke whirled around and around and magic hit like a hammer, magic aimed at magic. Willem staggered where he stood, and didn’t see what had hit him, just felt it, and shoved back. The Alley was where he was. The Alley was here, and men yelled and swore, voices echoing off what wasn’t here at all.

The magic lashed at him like a whip. It was dark, it was angry, and it was scared, and it came from one old man, one old man who stood over in the shadows, over beyond Tewk, who was backing up from the advance of three of Jindus’s men.

Snakes, Willem thought, and there were all of a sudden snakes in their way.

But that left him open, and the magic that hit made his heart jump, and he was on his hands and knees, trying to get up, trying to defend himself from that old man, from that thing that wasn’t here, but almost was. It was hungry for the blood. It drank it. It grew stronger. And stronger.

But it was crazy, too. Crazy, and mean, and mad.

I’m not here, Willem thought. And that left the old man. Miphrynes is. He’s right—

An arm like iron snatched him right off the floor, up to his feet, and a length of sword was out in front of him in Tewk’s strong hand, between him and that old man.

We’re not here, he thought, fast.

The dark reared up above all the room like an angry horse, and then plunged down at the floor, spreading in all directions at once. It broke like a wave against the walls, and crested over, and flowed backward, all the waves headed at each other, with a shriek that racketed through Willem’s bones. The men went down. Only the old man, Miphrynes, was on his feet, lifting a staff that glowed with light the color of which had never been, not in the whole world. The eyes didn’t want to see it. The heart didn’t want to remember it. The ears didn’t want to hear the sound that racketed through the room, and the palace, and the walls.

Tewk’s arm tightened until it all but cut off Willem’s wind.

“Demon,” Tewk yelled in his ear.

It was. And there was one man in the middle of that roiling smoke, and Miphrynes began to scream, and to scream, and to scream.

I don’t hear it, Willem said to himself. But he couldn’t shut it all out. Tewk doesn’t hear it. We’re not here.

It stopped finally. The smoke went away. And there were just bones, and black robes, and a charred stick across them. There was a scatter of armed dead men. There