MAGE
By "Heck"



Comments to heck@beadyeye.net

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SHE WASN'T AFRAID to die.

The possibility of death, sudden, violent death, had been her constant
companion for so many years that she almost never considered it any more. Not
that she ever became complacent; she had no wish to die, and relished every
moment of her rich and eventful life. The Spectre of Death walked with her
every day, though, and she faced Him with complete equanimity.

But to die like this, plastered to the wall like a fly in resin, unable to
fight back, unable to move even, it was.well, it was damned annoying, was what
it was.

With eyes that were hooded but unflinching, she glared her contempt at Chaithe
as his wrist cocked and a fatal magical charge gathered in his hand.

A tawny, striped shape launched through the ruined doorway. An angry snarl
sounding deep in her throat, Oudreya slammed into Chaithe and smashed him to
the ground. Her sabre-like fangs were bared to close on his throat as the
charge was flung randomly from his fingers. He screamed in terror as he
covered his face with his arms.

The magick careened and ricocheted through the air with a noise like a swarm
of angry hornets. Brenhya turned her head to the side as it dopplered past,
within inches of her face, and bounced off the wall a handspan from her. It
fired low, singeing fur from Oudreya's back, causing her to rear away from her
prey with a pained yowl. Chaithe rolled away from her, but had the sense to
stay down while the charge completed its erratic journey.

At the last, the ball of magic caromed off the corner of a shelf and shot into
the pillar of veridian light. It struck Shaitan square in the mid- section and
dissipated in coruscating waves across the daemon's body.

It reacted as if gut-punched. Its clawed hands clutched at its belly and it
doubled over, hellish mouth wide and emitting a rumbling scream that was
painfully loud while, at the same time, seeming to come from far, far away.

"You fool!" Chaithe cackled as he backed away from the advancing tigress.
"You've only made him stronger!" His face held a wild expression and his mouth
gaped in mad laughter.

"Take him down, Oudreya!" Brenhya yelled from her helpless position.

The cat roared her approval as her haunches gathered under her. Chaithe spun
on a heel and broke for the door.

Where he was met by a fiercely swung two-by-four spar, wielded by the
newly-arrived Lon, which took him squarely on the forehead and laid him out on
the floor like a pole-axed bull.

Oudreya snarled her frustration as she checked her rush. She looked at Lon
with disgust: she had really been looking forward to ripping Chaithe to
pieces. She contented herself by sitting on the magician's chest.

"Brenhya!" Lon sprinted across the room, carefully avoiding the column and the
still howling Shaitan. "Are you OK?"

"Do I look OK?" She had to yell to be heard over the cacophanous howls. "No! I
look like crap! Get me down!"

"Maybe!" He inspected the juxtaposition of Brenhya's back in relation to the
wall. "Who put you there? Chaithe, or Shaitan?"

"Shaitan, I think! Why? Is that bad?"

"No! It'll actually be easier! You'd think differently, wouldn't you? But you
see Chaithe's magicks, although they're powered through Shaitan, are actually
the stronger at the minute! In this world, anyway! Whereas Shaitan is not
actually in this world just yet, as long as it's contained in the light! So
you see."

"Lon!" Brenhya broke in sharply. "This isn't the time for a lecture! Just get
me down!"

Brenhya wasn't really being pressed against the wall. What the magick had done
was to remove the air in a Brenhya-shaped space behind her, causing a vacuum
and, in effect, sucking her against the stone. The effect was enhanced and
made much more powerful by the application of enchantment, which was why she
couldn't move, but it was basically a natural phenomenon, fiendishly
manipulated.

Lon, looking a little disgruntled that he hadn't been allowed to finish his
explanation, cast about the laboratory. He knew what he wanted, but among the
clutter it was not readily found. Then, behind a cupboard, he spotted what he
required. He took hold of the cupboard with both hands and threw his slight
body into the task of moving it.

It might as well have been nailed to the wall.

"You should be doing this!" he grunted to Brenhya. She smiled, despite her
predicament.

"Oudreya!", she called. "Can you help?"

The tigress got off the unconscious figure of the magician, tail-tip twitching
like a big, irritated bee. She padded across to the young man, lip curling in
what looked like disdain, and hooked her curved claws behind the cupboard. It
took just one heave to haul the heavy furniture away from the wall, to the
accompaniment of crashing sounds as the jars and flasks inside tumbled from
their niches.

The object of Lon's need was exposed, and he picked it up gingerly and
approached Brenhya. She eyed him warily.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Don't worry!" He held up his burden. It was a flat sheet of dirty glass,
about two-and-a-half feet square, that had probably seen service as a mixing
tray but had long since been forgotten behind the cupboard. "I'm just going to
slide it in behind you, to break the vacuum! That should release you!"

"Lon!", Brenhya said patiently. "It's glass! If it breaks."

".it'll rip your back to shreds! I'll just have to be careful! Now hold
still!" He smiled. "Oh, yes! You can't help but hold still!"

Brenhya rolled her eyes upward at his lame joke, but she knew what he was
about. His voice held more confidence than he actually felt. He would have to
use a fair amount of force to insert the sheet between Brenhya and the
slightly rough, uneven wall behind her. If it did break, the consequences did
not bear thinking about. He closed his eyes for a second and swallowed hard as
an image of a jagged shard slicing into her precious flesh flashed across his
mind.

Pushing his fears to the back of his consciousness, Lon laid the glass as flat
as possible against the wall. Brenhya felt the cold touch of its edge against
her side.

"I'm going to do this as quickly as possible", Lon explained. "It may, er..it
may hurt a little!"

"Just get on with it!"

Lon looked up at her and nodded. He placed both his hands against the pane,
and shoved hard. He heard Brenhya's sharp intake of breath as the glass slid
in behind her. There was no crack of breakage, and Lon pushed harder, driving
the pane fully behind the woman.

With sudden, almost violent release, Brenhya lost contact with the stone and
toppled forward. Her arms and legs windmilled crazily as she fought to keep
her balance. Somehow, she managed to fall on her feet and stumbled across the
room, coming to rest quite harshly against the wreckage of the bench on the
opposite side. Lon was at her side in a moment, offering a supporting arm.

"You OK?"

Brenhya's hand went to her lower back. The skin was pitted and scored where
she had been held against the rough stone and was obviously sore, but there
was no major damage.

"I'll be fine!", she reassured Lon. They were still yelling over the
cacophony. "Just give me a minute!"

Like the nearly-skilled healer he was, Lon examined her back carefully.
Oudreya, also concerned, rubbed her heavy head against Brenhya's thigh.

A small movement caught the warrior's sharp eye. Chaithe was coming to, and
raised himself on one elbow. The crazed light of insanity gleamed in his eyes.

"You fools!" he cried. "I didn't intend to release Shaitan, but you force me!"
He raised a hand, preparatory to unleashing another magick. "You force me!"

"Oudreya!" Brenhya yelled. "Get him!"

The tigress leaped.

Too late.

An actinic blue flash of magic shot from the wizard's fingers. The arcane
objects in the points of the geometric floor pattern were swept away. The
daemonic figure in the pillar of light jerked into active life and roared in
satisfaction and devilish delight.

Chaithe laughed, fending off the big cat with a magical gesture. Oudreya
became rooted to the spot.

"Now you will see! Now you will see my power! I am truly a Mage at last! The
most powerful Mage of all!"

His maniacal laughter rang throughout the room. Around the light column an
eerie wind began to howl, pick up a million motes of dust and swirling them
round so they glittered in the green glow. With eyes half closed against the
dust, Brenhya and Lon gripped on to wall brackets to keep from being blown
over, and Brenhya's hair lashed around in the miniature hurricane.

Between the swelling roar of the daemon, the howling of the wind, and
Chaithe's mad laughter, the friends were almost deafened.. Brenhya watched as
Chaithe climbed to his feet to stand before Shaitan, arms raised in
supplication, while the daemon itself pushed and tore at its seemingly
intangible prison. It looked to Brenhya exactly like it was striving against a
tough, invisible membrane.

Brenhya gathered her hair into a ponytail and held it with one hand, shielding
her face against the stinging dust with the other. Lon turned his back to the
wind, and she could see his mouth moving as he urgently tried to tell her
something. She could not make out his words and leaned close, cupping an ear.

"Antagonism!" Lon yelled, right into her ear. "Two sources of magic, one
earthbound, one hellbound! They are antagonistic to each other, and one should
cancel the other out!"

A glance at the daemon told Brenhya there was not much time. It seemed to have
rent a hole in the fabric of its own reality, and was manoeuvering its horns
through. It would enter this world at any moment.

"Where will we find a source of earthbound magic?" Brenhya shouted. For an
answer, Lon pointed at the Mage.

"There it stands!" he yelled. Rather unnecessarily dramatically, Brenhya
thought.

She gave him a curious look, and then the corner of her bruised mouth turned
up in half a smile. She fixed her eyes on the wizard and leaned into the
screaming gale, battling her way toward him.

Shaitan had an arm through the hole, now, and was reaching toward her, black
talons clutching.

Chaithe was oblivious to her progress. Still with upstretched arms, he
continued to rock with insane, hysterical laughter, completely absorbed in his
out-of-control ego.

Step by step, she drove forward until she was right behind him. His laughter
ceased abruptly as he felt the enormous strength of her hand closing on his
collar. Her other hand grabbed his crotch, and he squealed in sudden fear when
he felt his feet leave the ground.

The tremendous muscles of Brenhya's shoulders and arms came into play, coiling
and rolling as she hoisted him high, pressing his struggling body clean above
her head. She staggered slightly as she adjusted her stance, not to his
weight, but against the blast of the rushing, buffeting wind, and took two
steps toward the coruscating shaft of emerald light.

Both its arms were free, now, and the daemon glared in rage as it reached for
her, pushing the membrane back down its body. She was still several feet away.

Brenhya braced herself, flexed slightly at the knees, and hurled Chaithe,
thrashing and screaming, into the light.

The orbiting knives, through some weird serendipity, were about to cross each
others path just as Chaithe entered the light. Six blades thudded into his
body, each one impacting with a wet slap.

There was a searing, brilliant flash of pure, painfully bright white light,
which collapsed in on itself, not like an implosion, but like an explosion in
reverse.

The daemon howled, Chaithe screamed and, together with the green column of
light, they disappeared into the floor. The geometry folded up like the petals
of a nightmare flower and followed, leaving no trace of ever having been
there.

In the sudden, nearly shocking silence, the three companions experienced a
weird sensation of twisting and shifting, and Brenhya knew the same wrench,
like an internal rubber band suddenly released, she had felt once before.

The laboratory was gone. The infinitely variable house was gone. Brenhya.
Oudreya, and Lon found themselves standing, disorientated, on the earth floor
of a single-roomed stone hut, her restored weapons lying nearby.

The strange crackling, gristly sounds of Oudreya morphing back into human
shape, and the breathy noise of Lon laughing quietly to himself in relief,
fell on Brenhya's ears. Like a huge weight lifted from her, Brenhya felt the
flood of relief herself and sank slowly to the floor where she sat
cross-legged, eyes wide open and unblinking.

"Are you both all right?" she asked.

"Fine", they both replied.

"What about you?" Lon added.

"Apart from the aches, pains, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and like that? I'm fine.
Except for one thing". She lifted a hand, groping for Lon's.

"I'm blind".

*

EPILOGUE

THE PATH WAS lined with a cheering throng as Brenhya made her stately way
toward the rebuilt Royal Palace. Flanked by a beaming Oudreya, in human form,
and a wistfully smiling Lon, she struggled to keep her face straight despite a
strong urge to grin broadly.

The ceremony had taken several weeks to organise, especially as some of the
guests had come all the way from the Hall of Themyra. Captain Vara and
Lieutenant Athlo, she knew, were waiting inside the Great Hall of the palace,
together with many local dignitaries and a number from the surrounding
kingdoms, all awaiting her arrival. And, to her delight, Jaliza, in her role
as Sister Serenity, had answered her request to preside over the ritual.

Ahead of her, dressed for once in clean furs, Gurghan marched steadily,
holding her broadsword aloft like a standard. Behind, a young woman carried
the Wheelbow on a plush cushion, a symbol of her power and, behind again,
Brenhya's magnificent mare, Makaar, in full tack, followed on, unled.

Brenhya herself was dressed in an outfit that had been specially designed for
her. Based on her own usual mode of dress, it consisted of a halter and short
skirt made of the softest calfskin, dyed a dazzling white and decorated with
semiprecious stones that set off her golden skin beautifully. A pair of boots,
of the same white leather, reached halfway up her thighs, and a short wine-red
cape trimmed with ermine hung from her wide shoulders. She wore her own brass
headband and wristguards, but these had been cleaned and buffed until they
shone like mirrors. The whole ensemble had been cut so it showed off her great
beauty and superb physique to its best advantage, and with her chestnut hair
brushed until it was shining like the sun, Lon thought he had never seen her
looking so lovely.

She was lucky, she thought, to be here at all. Lucky to have survived the
encounter with the Mage Drosklyn Chaithe and the hellspawn, Shaitan. They all
were.

After she had consigned the wizard and his hellish daemon to the pit and the
strange house had reverted to its lowly, non-enchanted state, Brenhya had
found herself blinded by the flash of white light that had preceded their
demise. Her friends had led her out onto what had been a lawn, but was now
just an overgrown clearing. They sat her on a stump, and while Lon had busied
himself looking for the ingredients for a salve, Oudreya and she had sat in
quiet reflection.

She had to admit, on this particular mission, there had been a few times she
had expected to die, times when she had doubted the ability of her own
magnificent strength and agility to get her out of this one.

Lon collected various herbs and pounded them between two flat rocks, until he
had a smooth paste, a balm, which he slathered all over Brenhya's cuts and
bruises with a cooling, soothing effect. He treated his own and Oudreya's
minor injuries in the same way. Then he chewed a mouthful of certain leaves
and formed them into two wads that he placed on the warrior's eyes, binding
them in place with plaited grasses. The two then led Brenhya down to the
beach, where the dinghy waited.

Battered and bruised though she was, Brenhya was still far and away the
strongest of the three, and most of the rowing on the homeward journey had
fallen upon her. At least one of the others, however, had kept awake at all
times, guiding her with spoken directions.

Both Oudreya and Lon fretted that she may never regain her sight, and that
possibility was very hard for her, but to their surprise she gave no outward
sign that she was doing other than accepting the trauma with total equanimity.
The truth was, through pride or whatever reason, she flatly refused to show
how deeply troubled she was, and successfully disguised the feeling of
near-panic that the loss of this major sense engendered within her.

Finally, they had arrived back in Anusol. Word very quickly reached the king,
and he came personally to the docks to meet them. Although he tried to show a
calm face, Brenhya could tell from his tentative hugs, and the catch in his
voice, that he was deeply shocked by her injuries and her loss of sight.

One of the first things she had done was to visit Makaar in the stables. She
had insisted on greeting the mare alone, and felt her way with outstretched
arms and questing footsteps into the warm, horse-scented building. Her rapport
with the horse was so complete that the animal came to her and, with gentle
nudges that told Brenhya that she understood her mistress' disability,
carefully guided her to a bale on which she could sit. Then Makaar placed her
velvety soft muzzle on Brenhya's broad shoulder, while the powerful warrior
woman wrapped her arms around the mare and sobbed her heart out, letting all
the pent-up emotions of the last few days wash through her.

Now, here she was, walking in regal procession to the palace, surrounded by
her closest friends and being honoured by the crowds. Lon's treatments had
worked well, and she had recovered her vision almost completely. Only a light
veil of haziness hampered her sight, and that was getting better day by day.

As soon as she had felt fit enough, of course, she and Chthord had made love.
Fiercely at first, and then with tender passion, several times, right through
the night. And it was then that he had broached his idea to her.

She had been reluctant, at first, thinking it would encroach upon both her
freedom and her duties as Equerry to the Sisterhood of Themyra. But he had
promised that it would do neither, vowing that he would honour her duty and
respect her freedom to go off on whatever necessary quest she saw fit.

So she had accepted, and here she was, at the entrance to the palace where she
would be joined to Chthord, whom she loved entirely, in matrimony as equals;
there was no way she could countenance anything less than equal status.

As a warrior, she had carved out her own niche in life that afforded her
status in her own right, especially since her appointment as Equerry, and she
could allow no man, no matter how much she loved him, to detract from that.

The ceremony itself was beautiful. Conducted by the Head of her Order, who
also happened to be her oldest and best friend [and occasional lover], in the
company of all the people she loved most in the world, Brenhya was wedded to a
man she loved more than life itself, and was supremely happy.

At the end of the service, she and Chthord processed out of the palace,
preceded by Wallaw in his capacity as Royal Herald. The little man stopped at
the threshold and struck his staff three times against the woodwork, demanding
the attention of the crowd.

"Citizens! It is my honour and privilege to present His Royal Majesty King
Pabloth the Third of Anusol!"

The crowd cheered wildly. Wallaw waited for them to quiet a little, and
continued.

"And Her Royal Highness, Brenhya. Warrior Queen!"

THE END

Copyright "Heck" 2002. All rights reserved.