A veil of clouds swallowed the moon and the Master Arcanist of the Crimson Citadel was engulfed in darkness. Wrapped in the sleek hide of a shadowcat, his back was against the side of a massive black bear, half the size of a house. Korak the silverpaw bear was a snorer, and the rumble was as deep and ominous as a distant avalanche. Not to be outdone, Charlot snored with a slow and uneven rasp, like the sawing of an incompetent woodsman. Nothing with any wits would approach, and much the better.
Charlot had laid a deadly trap.
There were four black diamonds hovering inches above the earth in a perimeter around the slumbering magician and bear. Four flawless gems of inestimable value, yet Charlot feared no theft. Before a thief could steal the stones, the black diamonds would steal their life.
Unearthly walls of ebon force rose from the diamonds to terminate at a point some thirty feet above their heads. The misting rain beaded against the black pyramid and ran down it in rivulets, keeping the two sleepers dry.
A snake slithered around the deep bear tracks that had turned into miniature lakes and flicked her violet tongue out, tasting the air. She hissed, her voice was an angry, whistling note. The old ash tree was her lair. What business had men and bears in her territory?
An older, wiser snake would have tasted that strangeness in the air and sought other shelter, but this snake was young and brash, barely two years out of the egg. She had gleaming copper scales, ruby red eyes with black slashes of pupil, and her bite could undo anything that lived, or so she thought.
The viper slithered forward in the rain, sluggish with the two frogs she'd eaten, and crossed the line between two of Charlot's black diamonds. A few inches past the threshold there were dead ants piled in a grisly row, and here is where the snake should have certainly turned back. The serpent felt a sudden fatigue, but she was resolved to slay the intruders. She pushed forward, ready to strike at an instant's notice.
Yet, she was barely a foot into the ward before she felt the sorcery's awful grip. Her gleaming scales, once so bright, grew tarnished, and the angry glow of her eyes grew clouded and confused. With every inch she traveled into the ward, the black diamonds sucked another year of life.
She was not even halfway across the line before her span was done, and she died. She lunged forward with a final bite, but her fangs found only emptiness.
As the serpent died, a shadow crossed the ancient arcanist's face, and he twisted beneath his shadowcat pelt, making a pained noise. All around the inside of the ward there were lines of insects, flies that had not even made it an inch within, here and there a shrew or a mouse that had made it just a few steps. The viper had gotten the deepest, slithering half of her seven foot length.
The black diamonds hummed with power, and Charlot mumbled in his sleep.
* * *
The great raven flew across the valley with a storm at his back, seeping black blood across Adder Vale. The raven's outline passed before the sun and, somehow, it was the sun that was diminished, not the bird.
Noon turned into twilight in an instant, and Charlot dropped the basket of apples. As his heart flickered with dread, his illusion faltered. Now, a middle-aged wizard stood among the other apple-pickers in place of the strapping young dimwit they’d befriended. But none of them noticed, their eyes all skyward.
"Oh, no," Charlot whispered. He left the basket in the dirt and ran. A few men in the orchard perhaps noticed that the man running away was not the one they'd worked with all harvest, but there was nothing to be done for it. The storm was rolling in, and they had to find shelter.
It was a shipbreaker, far out of season. Beneath the twisting wall of clouds, the sky had turned a terrible green. In its center, they could see a great cyclone, and they ran to hide in cottages and barns as the wind whipped around them.
"Leave my vale! Go away!" Charlot screamed at the trees but the storm's roar only grew louder, a howl like the world itself had been wounded. In the east all was black, the raven had stolen the sky. A black mist rolled down the mountain, and its name was death.
The raven’s arcane miasma flowed into a forest of white birch and every tree dropped all its leaves at once with a sound like a great wave crashing against the earth. Squirrels tumbled stiff from the denuded trees, deer perished in mid-leap and crashed to the ground, lifeless and still.
"NO!" Charlot screamed. Even as the miasma swallowed the east, the storm in the west was devouring everything. Gale winds tore trees up by their roots and flattened barns, they blew down houses as his people huddled within them.
He could feel it all through the wardstones he had scattered across the vale. He heard their cries, felt the ground shudder as the storm obliterated his villages. The black fog slipped into his easternmost village, Sourseed. Just ten cottages on the banks of Mill's Gap, but there were sixty people there. They didn’t even last long enough to cry for help.
They opened their mouths to scream, and nothing came out, the black raven swallowed their lives. Through his wardstones, Charlot could feel men toppling to the ground, women slumping in their chairs, children falling to the earth, and even babes twisting in the womb, all extinguished. An entire forest, a whole village siphoned away to feed the black raven's sorcery, and the miasma spread ever outward.
Charlot's scream was like the roar of a volcano, and he rose into the air atop a pillar of twisting flame, the trees below him set ablaze in an instant. All was lost. Charlot felt a great flame burn within him, a fury nothing could ever snuff. He invoked the words that would call down catastrophe.
Stolen novel; please report.
* * *
A giant tongue plastered against the side of Charlot’s face and woke him from the nightmare. Korak saw he’d woken and gave him another lick for good measure.
"Ack!" Charlot cried, and his hands were raised. Alarmed, he saw they were in a summoning form. He'd been trying to cast a spell in his sleep. His mouth fell open, and he yanked his hands away, feeling the potential dissipate. He shook his head at himself.
That was bad, terribly bad, the kind of thing that you led apprentices out into the woods after and silently did away with them. If his magic flew out of his control like that, he was no better than the fools who gave bits of themselves to demons. And the spell he'd meant to cast—utter folly!
"Gods. You've saved us, Korak. Good bear," Charlot said, though surely he would have woken. Surely he would not have cast that spell, he had to believe it. The silverpaw bear seemed pleased with himself. He turned around in a circle, his stubby tail wagging. The ground jolted with every step.
For a moment, Charlot thought it was still night, but he could see the muted halo of the sun, filtering through the black walls of his ward. Charlot squinted in the dim, trying to remember where he was and how he'd gotten here.
The ward had done its job. The ground beneath them was perfectly dry, and he could barely see the serpentine form of the dead viper, and he understood at once why he'd had the nightmare. Drawing its life had channeled a surge of power into the ward that had poisoned his dreams.
The concept behind the black diamond ward was not so different from the murder mist Dandare Ebenflow had used in the battle of Adder Vale. When it was through none of them survived. Sidray the Stormlord and Dandare Ebenflow the Raven were slain, and the man Charlot had been died with them. He was never the same.
The old wizard shut his eyes tightly and balled his fists, willing the memory to stay buried. He knew from bitter experience that no amount of reliving would close that wound.
With a snap of his fingers, he shattered the black pyramid, and the four diamonds shot through the air and collected into his hand, merging into a single perfect diamond. The blessed sun fell on him, and though he could not see well, he could see far more than he could in the ward’s darkness. Seven paces was the limit of his vision. Beyond that, all became foggy and indistinct.
Charlot tucked the black diamond back into his robe, vowing not to use it again unless there was no choice. He had always disliked the black diamond ward, but he’d been too exhausted to compose another ward after all the excitement yesterday. His eyes fell on the dead snake, and he had a lurching feeling in his stomach as he identified it.
A Traypier's Viper. The unlettered called them immolatesnakes. Their venom could set a man's very blood ablaze. It would spill from the eyes, mouth, ears, every hole in the body and catch flame on contact with the air. In a land of awful ways to die, the viper's bite was among the worst.
There was a catch in Charlot’s breath. He'd very nearly decided it wasn't worth the trouble of setting up the ward at the end of the grueling day.
"Now what on the Arc made you so brazen? Surely there’s better eating out there than this tough old bit of magician?" Charlot addressed the dead snake. It had no reply.
To his displeasure, Charlot found the ward's withering magic had spoiled the valuable poison glands. The serpent’s potent fangs had become brittle and useless. What a pity! An immolatesnake wasn't something one stumbled across every day.
The rear half of the creature was unaffected, though, and were Charlot not on a quest, he would have skinned it for the scales. They would take an enchantment well. But he was not traipsing about in the misty morning for his health. He had a young thief to catch.
Charlot stretched with tremendous slowness, trying carefully to feel if anything was injured from the day before, but excepting a profound soreness all over his body and the pain in his shoulder, he felt intact. It was quite fortunate.
His magnificent staff, Flaccaro stood beside the dead tree, and he retrieved it, feeling its warmth as he gripped its copper shaft. Flaccaro was crowned by two winged serpents wound around a gleaming metal eye, with thirty-three rubies ringing its iris and a fabulous fire opal for a pupil.
Oftentimes, when an object was so lavishly ornamented it was only for show, but not Flaccaro. The staff was every bit as powerful as it was splendid.
Korak the bear was doing his morning constitutional. He stretched, arcing his back, and then flattening against the ground and giving a yawn that made the whole clearing rumble. Then he rolled on his back, writhing to scratch himself against the ground and windmilling his legs as if he was swimming. He rolled back onto his feet and shook himself off from head to tail, and then looked at Charlot, sniffing pointedly.
"What! You can't possibly be hungry. You ate four men last night!"
The bear seemed unconvinced. He waddled over to a tree and took a piss against it that could have melted a glacier.
Impressed, Charlot made his own more modest contributions to the woods, and then he walked back up the path they'd come for ten minutes, checking for any sign they'd been followed. It was such a simple thing to do, but it had saved him a dozen times over. He could hear the bear crashing about in the woods, no doubt looking for something to eat. Charlot strolled back to their campsite, possessed of a sudden thought.
Why should the serpent attack a man sleeping beside a silverpaw bear? Animals were seldom so stupid. Unless…
He found a long stick and hunted out the serpent's lair. The ash tree they’d made camp against was dead, perhaps one good storm away from falling over. He located the entry hole and shook his head. If he had only been able to see, he would have never made his camp here.
Very lightly, Charlot prodded in the hole, feeling for the slightest movement. Satisfied there was nothing waiting to bite him inside, he dug out the hole until he exposed the main chamber. As he'd suspected, he found a single ruby red egg there, no bigger than that of a quail. He lifted it up and held it to the light. It was partially translucent, and he could find no crack nor flaw.
Now, he had a quandary. If he left it here, likely the unborn snake would not survive. But if it should somehow hatch, no doubt some villager would eventually feel its bite. They were less than a day’s walk from Fraughten. Furthermore, he did not know if the vipers played some role in the forest. Perhaps like balch beetles, they kept some worse pestilence in check.
At last, he tucked the egg into a pocket of his robe where he hoped it wouldn't get crushed. Perhaps it would hatch, perhaps not. Perhaps it was an act of utter folly to think that he could raise an immolatesnake. But he wanted to know exactly how the venom made blood catch on fire. As ever, the arcanist's curiosity overruled all else.
Charlot whistled for Korak, wondering if the bear knew to come. A moment later, thundering footsteps brought the silverpaw to his side, the bear's slightly-off-kilter eyes bright with excitement. There were beads of dark and sticky juice on his muzzle, he'd found something to get into. Charlot suspected blueberries. Charlot wondered if any were left, but he cast the thought aside, threw the shadowcat pelt over the bear's shoulders and tied it around Korak’s neck as a makeshift saddle.
Korak hunkered down against the ground to allow Charlot to climb up and mount. When he was situated, Korak rose, and Charlot was riding atop a giant bear, his fabulous staff in hand. He couldn’t help but grin. The bear trotted forward down the path, his tail wriggling with excitement.
They had an apprentice to find.