The Wizard That Did It

[Caden Law]

My name is Caden Law.
My Name is Blueraven.
I am a vagrant scholar and war veteran.
I am a murderer, a liar, and a coward.
Months ago, I took up arms with the people of Raiaera.
Months ago, I was pressed to war and sent to die.
I stood with free Men, with Elves, and with Nature herself.
I hid behind the lines, letting others fall in my place.
I have wielded the arcane for any cause that counts.
I have desecrated lands for my own miserable skin.
I have seen a future that cannot come to pass.
I have seen the future that I cannot undo.
I am a tapestry of scars.
I am living proof of sin.
I was born in Salvar, and I returned seeking to mend my wounds.
I was born in Salvar, and I ran seeking solace for my crimes.
I am a Wizard, alone and unsanctioned.
I am a tool, filthy and broken.

A mountain pass somewhere in northeastern Salvar. There was a blizzard raging, but there always is this far out. Even in times of peace, this was a part of the world too far removed from any seat of power to warrant the efforts of Salvar's weather magi. That the roads remained worthy of travel was nothing short of a miracle, even if you had to trudge through six inches of snow to get to it.

The pass was a nexus of roads, of powers, of intentions. It was one of those unseen henges upon which the fate of the entire nation could pivot from at any moment. Four roads connected here: One that followed an ancient tunnel from the side of a stream, one connecting directly to the capital city of Knife's Edge, one that segued to one of the dozens of villages that called this mountainous region home, and another that lead right through to the untamed wilderness of the Far North. It was kept clearer than most parts of the pass, enough that you could see the rough old stones of an ancient road beneath a thin layer of snow and ice. The anchor for what little weather magic kept snowfall from piling up was a sign standing between the road to the Far North and one of the villages.

It was nothing impressive.

The man standing in front of it was another matter. He wasn't especially tall or broad and in any urban setting or even an ordinary tavern, he would've been easy to write off as Silly Miscreant #3552. Out here, however, was another matter. Out here, where everything was black and white, he stood out and demanded attention whether you wanted to give it or not. Out here, he looked like a true demon: His skin pale as porcelain, his hair one great shock of backswept blond, his ears pointed and his face mostly hidden from the eyes down by a sleekly angled iron mask. He wore a silk scarf, thickly woven and very, very red. He wore a knee-length tabard bearing a red fist upon a very white background. He wore plate armor on his shoulders, his elbows, knees and hands. He wore chainmail and thick cloth beneath. Strapped to each thigh were daggers, fit for throwing or not. Held in his left hand was a strangely curved stick, solid brown with a bronze cap at each end.

He was absolutely motionless, his eyes closed and his expression -- what little of it could be seen above his mask -- serene and restful.

I have done noble deeds.
I have done awful things.
Because I did not have the choice to do anything else.
Because I did not have the courage to do anything else.

Listen closely and you might hear as he hears. Feel as he feels. Know what the Rogue knows.

The sound of hoofbeats crunching through snow, of labored breathing and weary bones. The echo of each impact through hundreds, dozens, and finally just a few feet of dirt and rock. The knowledge that now is the time for him to open his eyes.

Shy away from those cold blue things. They'll be the death of someone.

My crimes are many.
And today, they come for me.

See what he sees now.

A man of twenty-odd years age, wearing both a heavy cape of fur and hide, and a thick blue longcoat. Pale in the sense of being pasty, unattractive, too busy hiding in dark basements and lurking in dank dungeons to ever get more than sunburn from the time spent in transition. A man wearing a tall blue hat with a wide brim and a thick black belt at its base, and yellow-lensed goggles like those of a skyship pilot or a steam racer. A man with a sword on one hip and a red rod dangling from the other, with light blond hair and a thin case of stubble, riding upon a burly Salvic workhorse.

He was a Wizard, and his greeting was a disconcertingly naive, "Hello!" shouted over the roar of nearby winds that somehow failed to bring more than light snowfall to this place. "What are you doing out here?"

The Rogue stared. Comprehension dawned, and the faux naivete bled away like the color from the Wizard's skin. "I am what you think I am," the Rogue declared, with a Voice the Wizard found all too familiar. It defined itself with a spectral echo on the mind and elsewhere, one that always lead to thoughts of the color red, and of the taste of blood, and the scent of decay. A Voice that came bearing gifts of despair, of grief, and of impotent fury.

The Voice of a Death Lord come to Salvar.

The Voice of the Wizard's crimes catching up to him.

My Name is Blueraven.
And today is the day I die.

[Caden Law]

The horse died first. It always did. Blueraven had never been much good at tending to them in his youth and he was no good at keeping them from being slaughtered in his adulthood. The Rogue's opening strike was pure speed and control backed by power that shook him to the core even when he wasn't the victim: Ten, maybe fifteen feet gone by so quickly that Blueraven had no time to blink, and then there was a short-bladed sword with a long handle and the Rogue was airborn beside him and there was a spray of blood all over his face and front.

The horse's head flew off. It had been severed with enough force that it actually struck Blueraven and sent him flying six or seven feet before he finally hit the ground. Not on forgiving snow, but on hard-packed dirt and ice. The Rogue spun twice in mid-air and landed with a crouch and a fluid rise to his feet. He had the sword in one hand, clutched nearer its pommel, and the empty scabbard in the other.

The dead horse collapsed. Its head tumbled to the edge of the road, leaving a quick freezing slick of blood in its wake.

"Ow," Blueraven said as he sat up, experienced enough with the pains of battle to know that he did not have the time to indulge in them. "That hurt," he still made the apparent mistake of saying.

"Stop talking," the Rogue told him with clinical detachment, even as he reduced the distance between them from eight feet to point blank. One foot thrust forward, and the soles of his boots were covered in the medieval version of tread spikes.

"Piss off," the Wizard said back, just as the Rogue ground to a halt in front of him. The air glowed a pale blue, snow fell against the outline of a weak barrier, and the Rogue was undeterred. He took a swing with his sword and Blueraven was ready for it: Wand already in hand, driving one of its metal caps into the sword's blade. Magical alloys clashed, and the result was a spray of red and blue sparks. "I said piss off!"

The Rogue backflipped away. Whether it was the force of Blueraven's spell or the Rogue backflipping off of thin air, the Wizard could not tell. He had no time to worry about it. The Rogue landed on one foot, rose to a queer little stance, and then he as gone.

Footsteps in the snow. Hard to track, but Blueraven saw them and took a wild guess. He pointed his wand, flicked his wrist, and heat lit the air with enough intensity to vaporize snow on contact and boil orange where it struck dirt.

He missed.

The Rogue did not.

The Wizard screamed as a blade pierced his cape and coat, his shirt and his skin all in one go. The Rogue was behind him, scabbard thrusting forward and its metallic tip driving into the small of Blueraven's back. He turned away from the impact but his bones still made an assortment of sounds and sensations that were anything but healthy. His feet slipped on the icy ground, and the Rogue took another swing with his sword. Blueraven parried it off of his wand with another shower of sparks, then threw up his free hand and made a fist of it.

The ground swallowed the Rogue to his chest in an instant. He did not even blink as he took a stab with his sword and pierced Blueraven's thigh. The Wizard shrieked and staggered back, staying upright only through sheer force of will. He hobbled away from the Rogue, spitting obscenities in five or six different languages as he went. If not for the surging pain and the fact that his blood was already freezing all over his leg, Blueraven would have tried to finish it then and there. He could not ignore it this time.

...and it cost him dearly.

"To me."

No flashy effects marked their appearance. There were simply three of them there where there had not been before: All bearing the same clothes and armor and masks as the Rogue, each one armed differently. Two of them bore enormous double-ended swords; thick curving blades joined by a single hilt, covered from without by a buckler shield marked with the same red fist, and the third carried a polearm ending with an enormous axeblade to one side and a rounded hammer's head to the other.

Blueraven ducked by the first as she landed, and the speed of his Wizard's mind was the only reason he recognized her for a Drow. He pushed upright with a scream and threw up another gravity cushion to slow the blade of the third, and for the same reason he was able to conclude that this one was an Elf like the first. The cushion was the only reason that this thought was not his last.

The hammer plowed through it in slow motion, but the force was still there. It slammed into Blueraven's back hard enough that he did not scream. The pain was such that it sent a shock of ice through his veins, and the impact was enough to throw him into his own barrier. Antigravity was an accelerator.

The first Rogue chose that moment to release himself. The earthtrap had never truly held him in the first place. He sprang up out of it with a spin, and the next thing Blueraven was that spiked boot rising up into his chest. The hit came with the same effect of a stone skipping along the surface of a pond: Blueraven bounced, his coat tearing at the right chest, and he kept going with even more speed and less control than before.

The fourth Rogue appeared then. Blueraven tried to stop him (her?). He really did.

He could not even stop himself.

Neither could she (he?).

The Rogue tried to run him through and what remained of his gravity spells slowed her strike just enough for him to unintentionally parry it. The blade still raked him from stomach to shoulder, ripping open his clothes and slitting the brim of his Hat along the way. That was where the fighting ended.

Blueraven tumbled right over the edge of the Pass, and it was a long way down...

[Caden Law]

Caden Law had lived in interesting times, even by the standards of Wizardry. A year or two ago, he had taken that description a step further and made it both plural and literal: Something or someone had plucked him out of his Time and Place during a teleport spell gone awry. Twenty years to the future and back again; he returned with new trauma, new reason, new enemies that he had and had not met, and more besides. He came back both changed and unchanged, and he came back repeatedly at that.

Caden was a living, breathing temporal anomaly. As a consequence of this, he occasionally gained an inch and ten or twenty pounds and a few months of life experience and magical talent that weren't there before. This was usually accompanied by a surge of golden light and a feeling of perfect health and equilibrium, along with an occasionally euphoric high that didn't last nearly long enough. More importantly, at least for now, Caden's mishaps with time travel had left him wth a built-in timekeeping and global tracking instinct that was, usually, accurate. Of late, the location instinct was starting to fade, but the timekeeping was as accurate as ever. It was always there, in the back of his thoughts. A steady little clock beat on the brain; the kind of thing that cost him sleep if he thought about it too much. It was a reminder of the shattered tomorrow he was trying to prevent.

And right now, it was telling him that he had been unconscious for exactly one hour, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds. As he came to, Caden immediately took stock of the situation. He was a trained Wizard after all, clerically sanctioned or not, and a Wizard's mind is always working.

He lay in the narrow, snow-packed crevice between the pass and the side of a neighboring mountain. Or maybe it was just a deep trench lining a single mountain; Caden had never been very good at actually keeping track of geographical standards. He wasn't bleeding anymore, which was good. But that was mostly because the blood had literally frozen on each of his wounds, along part of his face, and all over his clothes, which was bad. Very, very bad. Experience told him that he had an arm and a leg broken, and maybe there was something ruptured in or around his lower spine too. The cold left him numb, and the fall had broken one of his goggle lenses and cracked the other, but he still had his Hat and his broken hand was still clenched in a death grip around his wand.

Caden shuddered and tried to sit up. His body hurt too much. He tried to reach for his magic, but there wasn't much left there either. Not enough to miraculously heal himself, even if he actually knew how. Certainly not enough to fight the good fight all the way back to civilization. There was nothing he could do.

Maybe in a few years, someone would find his body. They'd pick it apart for one reason or another. Someone would, inevitably, find his tomes and open them. Someone older and wiser, or perhaps younger and more foolhardy; a person who could fight the future and in. A hero of time, or maybe just a peasant warrior in the right place at the right time to trigger one of those epic, legendary journeys of...everything. Another Devon dan Sabriel, ready to do what needed to be done, because Caden Law could not.

All he could do was lie there and let the cold seep into his veins, let the weight tug at his eyelids, let inevitability rest on his weary conscience. He had played his part. There was nothing left for him to do.

Caden closed his eyes and tried to smile. He was too tired and his cheeks too numb, but he still tried. Slowly but surely, spots faded from his vision and the world cooled to black...

[Caden Law]

This won't do, said the Sage.

For one so intelligent, you're awfully shortsighted, said the Hermit.

...what would you recommend?

There are those who thinks the Hermitess only cries. They are wrong. She likes that they're wrong. It makes it that much more dazzling when she smiles. Weave a little web with me, and introduce a little anarchy. All it takes is a little reminder...

*****

Your work is not finished, Wizard, said a warmth that began at his belly and spread out from there, bringing with it pain. The pain of life, at first, and then just the pain of suffering. Caden had never been enough of a philosopher to consider the two one and the same, but they were. Right now, they surely were. Have you forgotten your reason so easily?

He wanted to scream, to cry, to kick and flail and throw a tantrum just for the release of it. But he couldn't. Caden was too tired. Too broken.

Open your eyes, Wizard, that you may remember your Why.

"...striking...hate...you," Caden rasped, shaking his head from side to side and feeling pins and needles sew a tapestry of fresh aches and pains from his shoulders to his knees because of it. "Hate you so much," he said.

Why turns to Who turns to What turns to How turns to When turns to Where turns to Why anew, infinitely looping in on itself for as long as the reason holds. A man with a reason can do great things, and a Wizard with a reason can do awful things, and both of them can sleep still in the night without care or sorrow, said the Voice, singsong straight to his brain. It brought a spark to his senses, putting spots of light on the insides of his eyelids. Open your eyes, Wizard Blueraven. Open your eyes, Caden Law. Open your eyes, and see the Reason that has driven you this far, and will drive you further yet.

He wanted to obey.

And so he did.

For the rest of his days, whether they were many or none, Caden honestly wished he hadn't. Not because she was beautiful -- and she was, more so than any woman he had ever met -- but because...

...because of reasons he lacked the courage to say. Because of long nights and young, heartfelt promises. Because of sparse encounters and separate ways; longing looks and tender whispers; sweet nothings, bitter somethings, bittersweet everythings. He regretted it because he knew, right then and there, that his life could not end like this. He could not go peacefully.

There, there, the woman said, caressing his cheek with the tenderness of a lover. Did you honestly think that any Wizard could ever go beyond the veil that easily?

"I hate you," he said, and meant it. "Gods and Saints, whoever you are, I striking hate you."

I know, she said, soft and understanding. It wasn't her likeness that he hated. Caden could never hate the woman she appeared to be; the reason that really had driven him so far, through so much. Do you remember now? she asked.

"Yes," Caden admitted, and he began to cry. Or at least, he would have, if the tears didn't start to freeze as quickly as they'd left his eyes. "Now go away."

She inclined her head, smiling in the way that likeness always did in his dreams, and then she left him there. No flashes of light. No steps away. He had nothing to chase, nothing to reach for, nothing to focus on. Just the memories.

Just the motive.

Just the fury, boiling like hellfire beneath his frostbitten exterior.

Caden lay in the snow for a while longer, staring resolutely at the sky and trying to think of a way out of this. A Wizard's mind cannot rest. His body may break into a million pieces in the rigors of battle, grow weary and weak with the pressures of age, but the mind stays sharp. Wizards don't go senile. Evolution has weeded out the absent minded ones, and only survivors make it long enough to put on the Pointed Hat. Caden was not going to die here. He didn't know how, but he was not going to die here.

"Her name," he said to himself, more to work the blood back into his jaw then anything else. That was his excuse. "Her name was Veshua. Veshua Yakova. She was my first love. My only love..."

Snow crushed. Caden would never be able to explain how he heard it over the roar of winds through the chasm he lay in.

"...and for her sake..."

Snow crushed again, and it was coming closer.

"...I would do anything..."

[Caden Law]

Caden waited, his eyes closed, his mind racing and his heart pounding, as the steps came closer and closer. He had a plan. It wasn't a pretty one. It wasn't something he wanted to do. In better times, it was something he would've found absolutely disgusting. He would've tried to find an alternative to it at any cost. He might even have let himself die anyway. But it was the only choice he had left. He couldn't afford to take a third option. She was counting on him.

The footsteps stopped.

Caden inhaled, opened his eyes, and exhaled. He wiggled one foot, and then he almost grinned. It was the hammer-wielding Rogue, come to finish the job alone. He stopped for a moment, just a single moment, and even though his face was half-covered Caden could still see the surprise written in his pale blue eyes. He committed them to memory. Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't afford not to. Once upon a time, this was some mother's son. An Elf, yes, but he had been a child once. He had grown. He had lived and maybe, if he was lucky, he had loved. Perhaps he had a motive noble enough to do horrible things for as well, and maybe it wasn't just greed that had compelled and seduced him into Xem'zund's service.

Caden wanted to think that. Because it made what he did next that much more difficult. He would've had trouble living with himself if it was too easy.

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it. "I'm so sorry."

The Rogue's head cocked to one side. Maybe he was about to speak, maybe he wasn't. Caden did not give him the chance either way. With his broken hand and his numb wrist, he wiggled the wand and summoned up his reserves and performed the subtle, lethal Geomancy that had saved him so many times before: Spikes shot out of the crevice's walls by the dozen, thin things that went right through armor as easily as they pierced flesh, ripped muscle and broke bone. Shoulders and knees first, and then the elbows and hands, sides of the body and the rest of the legs. Caden shifted the wand again and the spikes moved with his intent, if not with his directions. The Rogue jolted forward, until held aloft just a few feet over Caden's deathbed. He wasn't bleeding. Caden tried not to let that make him feel any better.

A flick of his good wrist, and out it came. His absolute last resort, because it was simply inadequate for any reason but the worst one. It was a scalpel he had purchased all the way back in Scara Brae; an improvised pen that he ordinarily used to write in his own blood when conducting certain spells and alchemy. Caden tried not to hesitate as he took the knife and held it the way he had practiced: Flat across the palm of his index finger, edge down, like some kind of stubby little claw.

He tried not to blink as he took the scalpel and jammed it into the Rogue's eye.

...and above all else, Caden did not look away from what he did next.

All magic eventually boils down to the same concept, no matter how holy or corrupt or amoral it claims to me. It's just energy being moved through force of will and intellect and belief. It's power, to be molded and exploited and moved from place to place as necessary. That was the core principle of both thermal magicks and Geomancy and, as Caden had found out when he used it to kill a huge section of Tembrethnil Forest in Raiaera, Necromancy.

With his scalpel as the medium, Caden reached into the Death Lord Rogue and found the powers that kept him animate and strong. He found them, and it was all too easy to rip them right out and funnel every little bit into his own system. Blackest magic swam through his veins like boiling peppermint tar, registering to each of his senses in turn: His vision abruptly cleared, but for the world taking on a putrid green tint; his pain was overwhelmed by the shock of hot and cold power racing through his skin; his taste and smell were overloaded with peppermint; and he could hear the Rogue's soul -- what little remained of that wretched, tainted, corrupt swirl of identity and energy and life and unlife that made him...

Caden could hear it draining away into nothing.

It took the Rogue twenty minutes to die. He didn't blink from start to finish, and neither did Caden.

When it was over, the rock crumbled, and the Rogue's body was a withered husk wrapped taut around fragile bones within rusted and stained armor. It weighed, maybe, ten pounds when it landed on Caden. For all the blood still frozen and caked to him, he had no trouble pushing the corpse off and standing up. The Wizard dusted snow off. He looked at his scalpel impassively for a moment, then threw it away in quiet disgust.

He left the body there, and hoped the snow would give it the good burial that his reminder had denied him.

[Caden Law]

Salvar is a stranger land than people give it credit for. Look far enough into its mountains, and you will find miracles. Maybe they won't be pretty miracles, or maybe they'll simply be mindblowing, but they'll still be miracles all the same.

The first miracle that Caden encountered that day came almost four hours after he had staggered away from the Rogue's body. The black magic high had worn off by then and although the worst of the damage had been undone, the Wizard was still in awful shape. His clothes were wrecked, there was still blood caked all over, and his vision had returned to its usual blurred state. He was thankful for that last part, of course. It meant that he didn't have to see everything the way Necromancers do. At least the snow had done a good job covering his tracks, even if it was taking all of his remaining energy to keep his temperature above hypothermia. this was actually why he considered the first miracle to be a hallucination.

Because orange orchards simply don't grow in Salvar. And even if they did, the oranges they produce wouldn't be lightly frosted things that still look big and juicy and delicious, as opposed to the withered little chewtoys they should have been. The wood at least looked right; stark gray from decades of frost build-up in its bark, but the leaves were still crisp green and...

Beyond that, civilization. If only in trace amounts. Three small houses, spread out at one side of the orchard around the end point of a mountain road. The biggest was obviously a smithy of some kind, evidenced by the red brick smokestacks coming out of it and the veritable blast furnace of arcane energies that Caden could feel even at this distance. Next to that was a slightly smaller house, probably an actual dwelling. It had no windows, and only one door in or out. There was another red brick smokestack, but this one was smaller; presumably for cooking or warmth. Last, and smallest, was something that looked like a brick igloo with a round wooden door.

Caden stumbled into the orchard and leaned against the first tree he could reach. His breathing was ragged. His vision was starting to get spotty again, and it was all he could do to keep his thoughts in a nice, orderly state of panic and wonder as the cold started to truly overwhelm his remaining magicks.

He looked up in time to see the presumable owner of the homestead exiting the smithy. A short fellow, maybe a little under five feet, with skin that looked like a bruised grape. Stocky in every sense with a thick, coarse black beard and backswept hair to match. He wore nothing but heavy industrial leathers and an apron even in this weather, and carried with him a sheathed sword that looked vaguely Akashiman in its shape. A few seconds later, he walked over to a mangled looking tree stump in the middle of the clearing between what Caden assumed to be his houses.

He took a stance, and this too looked vaguely Akashiman.

He drew the sword, struck with it, and then held it up for a few seconds as a piece of the stump slipped away and fell to the ground. He nodded a bit and took another swing. Another piece fell off, and the man actually laughed. He sheathed the weapon and started back towards the smithy.

Stopped abruptly. He must've seen Caden.

So the Wizard did his best to fake a smile, and then he passed out somewhere between saying, "Hello there," and faceplanting into the snow.

[Caden Law]

It took him three days to wake up. When he did, Caden found himself literally strapped to the floor of what he presumed to be the actual home of the stead. Mostly because there was furniture clustered about at his head and feet, and a bed laying next to him. Admittedly, the walls of most homes aren't lined from corner to corner with axes, swords, daggers and spears. Likewise, most people consider waking up strapped to the floor on top of a bearskin rug in a room lit only by the fireplace to be a bad thing.

For Caden, it was enough of an improvement that he didn't actually mind it when he noticed that someone had stripped him down to his pants and, apparently, spongebathed his leftover wounds. His captor had even been nice enough to leave his head propped up on a relatively soft pillow. Compared to his last jaunt being imprisoned -- when a bunch of lunatic fringe cultist Elves had captured him, seduced him, tried to kill him, seduced him again, and then tried to kill him some more before sending him off to die -- this was downright relaxing.

Caden managed to tilt his head upright enough to get a better look around him. The only new detail was a closed closet or maybe restroom built into two of the walls, sticking out at just the right angle to throw off everything else. He flopped back and sighed. Tried to sleep. Couldn't. Tried not to think about what he had done to survive, and he would've failed at that too if the door leading in and out hadn't swung open with a blast of frigid air and a quick, numbing flurry of snow. Caden shuddered all over where it touched him, and it was all he could do to resist struggling free from his binds.

The door slammed shut. A few seconds later, he heard a simple, "Ah. Good. You're awake now." A few seconds after that, Caden looked over at his savior and captor. "You banged the shit outta this thing," he said, brandishing Caden's sword. It was back in its scabbard now, but even without seeing the blade, Caden could tell that the thing was probably in better condition now than when he had first gotten it.

"What's your Name?" the blacksmith asked.

"Blueraven," Caden answered. "And you?"

"Dueril."

"Blackface?" Caden asked, recognizing it as a Dwarven epithet for Drow...in the Drow's own tongue.

"Family name, birdboy," Dueril answered while politely stepping over the Wizard. He sat down on the bed, reached around under one of the pillows and took out a small leather pouch. From it he drew a notched, oily looking stone that shimmered green in the firelight. "Plynt sharpening stone," he said as an aside.

"Ah." Caden nodded, and then asked, "Is there a specific reason why I'm half-naked and strapped to the floor?"

"Several. Take your pick," Dueril said, though not unkindly. "There's the blood, the fact that you're carryin' enough magic tools to knock out a small platoon, or maybe that hellish look in your eyes. Could just be the stink o' death all over you."

"...I'm a Wizard?" Caden suggested.

"That's an even better reason than the other ones."

Caden considered this, juxtaposed with the reputation of Wizards in Salvar. They were generally weather magi like some of his sisters, arcane hitmen for the Church, or merely sanctioned magical badasses like his own mentor, Greyspine. He had met a few proper enchanters and one of his sisters did double-duty as both Wizard and Cleric, but for the most part that summed them up. And none of those job descriptions included words like pleasant or generous. Most Wizards really were subtle and quick to anger, and almost all of them knew at least a dozen ways to commit murder and get away with it. In his time abroad, Caden had found another ten or eleven to add to the dozen he'd known when fleeing the country some years ago.

"Fair enough," he said. "Can't really argue with that. I wouldn't trust me either, so..."

"Give me your Word and I'll let you up," Dueril told him. "Swear that you'll do nothing to harm or endanger me, nor will you allow harm to come to me under any circumstances."

Caden thought about it. He remembered his comrades in arms, the Bladesinger who stood with him during the Siege of Eluriand, and the Wanderers ho fought alongside him in Tembrethnil. Five hundred people had called themselves his allies, had been under his protection in one way or another. Maybe ten of them were still alive. If he was being optimistic about it.

"I can swear not to hurt you, but protecting you...that's..."

"Then tell me why."

"...I don't think I can."

Dueril stopped sharpening and polishing the sword long enough to give Caden a frank look. "This was one of the worst kept swords I've ever worked on. It had battlescars that took six hours to hammer out. I was one step short of reforging it all together. This is a Raiaeran Conscript's Blade, boy. Its shine was tarnished by run-ins with awful things. You're almost as scarred as this thing, and nothin' I can do would quench the taint outta ya." He looked back to the sword and resumed polishing it. "Been in a war, Wizard. And it don't take a genius to know which one. You don't have to say anything more."

Quiet followed, but for the scraping and the sizzle of the fireplace. After a while spent staring at the ceiling, Caden finally said, "Thanks."

"No worries."

"Offer still open?"

"Best as you can fullfill it."

He nodded. "I swear upon the Name of Blueraven that I will not harm you."

Dueril kept sharpening.

"...so, can you let me out now?"

"Can't rush perfection, Wizard," Dueril told him. Which seemed like a perfectly excuse to leave Caden strapped to the floor for another seven hours. In Dueril's defense, it only ended up being three.

[Caden Law]

Caden spent two days in recovery. For the most part, he spent that time making repairs to his clothes and getting to know Dueril -- who, understandably, refused to tell Caden his full name. Considering what a Wizard can do with names, Caden didn't blame him. Once you got him started, Dueril transformed from mountain man to storyteller, and he was a fine cook too. It was the first time in years that Caden sat down to a homecooked meal without war or death putting a blade at his throat.

"I'm a hundred-and-eleven," Dueril told him one day, all while hauling up a barrel from what Caden now knew to be a basement-level cellar that doubled as a freezer. "Just one of many sons of the Lines of Dueril..."

As it turned out, and Dueril spent the better part of the day explaining this in detail, the Dueril were a clan of half-breeds descending from a mixed population of Dwarves and Drow. Their history dated back to a Dwarf-sided resistance fighter named Dueril Delgadril khesh-Klevak. Delgadril was one of the few successful military leaders on the Dwarf side of the War of Inference; a real diamond mind, as Kachukian scholars would put it. He was the bastard son of an Alerian noblewoman and a Dwarven prisoner of war, spirited away by his uncles and raised to the blade from an early age.

As the War of Inference dragged on, Delgadril established himself as one of the few successful generals on the Dwarves' side, even if his own people distrusted him because of his dark purple skin, white hair and pointed ears. When the war ended, Delgadril was among the final signers of the Treaty of Congruity, joining on only with the condition that he and his men -- pureblooded Dwarves, mostly -- would be allowed to start their own Clan. Dueril: The Blackfaces. While the clan was initially almost as pure as any other, Dueril made it a policy of accepting the unwanted children of Drow and Dwarf unions as its own. Over time, Dueril even began to accept true Drow into its ranks, provided they were outcast by their own people or sincerely in love with a Dwarf.

"Near as I know, Dueril's still going strong back in Kachuk. They're a broker for what happens when magic meets metallurgy; run one of the finest factories arcane in that whole region."

"Why did you leave?" Caden asked just before dinner.

"I was never much for minin', and I only grew to like smithing in my seventies. I left 'cos I wanted to be a soldier." Dueril took a few minutes of eating before picking up right where he left off, "I was a damn good one too. Best axe in my unit, best sword in my platoon, best rifleman in my company."

It took a few hours before Caden finally worked up the nerve to ask the obvious. By then, he was sprawled on the floor and Dueril was laying in bed. "Dueril?"

"What."

"D'you still know how to fight with a sword?"

"Swords, axes, daggers, hammers, spears, guns..."

Caden nodded. "D'you think you could teach me?"

"Was wonderin' when you'd ask that."

[Caden Law]

"There are exactly three rules to usin' a sword, Blueraven. Pointy end goes in the other guy, try not to die, and never let 'em see ya sweat," Dueril explained on the first day of their training. "And we're obviously gonna have a bit of a problem with that first one 'cos o' your promise, but the other two should go just fine."

"I think I've got #3 down pretty well," Caden said, which was technically true. He was literally too cold to sweat.

Dueril grunted something incomprehensibly neutral. Then he wandered back to the smithy and stayed there for a few minutes too long. Caden was left out in the cold, shuddering as feebly as any foreigner despite being back in his Wizarding wares. The cape he'd purchased back in Dendrestok had been beyond repair; too many bits ripped off during the fight or the fall that followed, such that not even alchemy could fix it. Caden's goggles were back to normal, at least. Dueril hadn't begrudged him anything for the old liquor bottle Caden transmuted to repair them. By the Drowf's (Dwow? Drawf?) order, he had to leave his rod and wand in the house. The bowie was fine. The sword was better.

Caden had never actually noticed how lightweight and well balanced it was. Maybe that was a consequence of Dueril's repairs, maybe not. Either way, Caden drew it today and for the first time, he made a convincing job of flourishing it. Didn't even give himself a papercut whn he drew the weapon from its scabbard.

"Ready?" Dueril asked, and Caden looked back to see the Dwarf (Drow?) emerging from his workplace with an oversized quiver filled with axes and swords and a few short spears. He had traded in the apron for a vest covered in dagger sheaths, and even wore what looked like a fisher's cap loaded with throwing knives.

All of which looked very, very sharp.

Caden briefly wondered whether or not this was such a good idea after all, but Dueril cut him off (verbally, which was much better than the two and a half billion pointy things he could've used otherwise) with a raised hand and a simple, "Too late to back out now, birdy."

Caden actually whimpered. Dueril rolled his eyes and went about scattering weapons all over the ground. He threw them everywhere without actually looking, drawing swords and axes at random from the quiver and then chucking them over his shoulder. Even without trying, he still put every single one of them blade-first into the ground. Ten minutes later, he upended the quiver just to be sure, then threw it away as well.

Then he went back into the smithy and did it again. With hammers and maces and morningstars and guns this time.

"Strike me," Caden muttered.

"Zeroeth rule of swordsmanship," Dueril suddenly declared as he threw away the second quiver and drew a true Dwarven blockhammer from the ground at his feet. "Don't ever rely on your sword," he shouted. Caden almost jumped out of his boots. And his sword did jump out of his hands, helped along by a good smack from the Blacksmith's hammer. It landed almost twenty feet away, point down and wobbling with an almost musical sound to it.

"But you said there were only three rules!" Caden shouted.

"Rule negative one!" Dueril replied, then drew a handful of throwing knives from his hat. "There are no rules!"

[Caden Law]

Caden had always been very good at the theory of things. You have to be good at theory in order to qualify for the Pointy Hat of a Wizard, nevermind the fancy name or the badass longcoat (or robes, for the traditionalists). In magic, applying theory is usually about as easy as coming up with it in the first place: You do X, you've got a 99.9% chance of getting Y, which leads you to Z, which is often very flashy and explosive. In swordsmanship, along with armed combat in general, things got messier. Apply theory too stringently and Z comes before Y or X stumbles along after Z or W decides it's had enough of being left out of the metaphor chain and throws V at you like a boomerang.

But not applying theory is equally bad, because then the entire alphabet decides to run a train on you and nobody's gonna give you a towel or the courtesy of a reacharound, and you can bloody well forget a call back the next day.

To start with, Caden had to learn how to fight. And that meant shedding the things that got in his way the most: His Hat and longcoat, because the one was too much of a drag and the other kept tripping him up. But going without those also meant going without the lion's share of his protection from the cold, which meant trying to establish and maintain a heating ward without losing concentration and getting burnt alive or frozen to death or gods-know-what. Caden gave up on the ward by the end of the first hour, and that just meant getting adjusted to Salvar's brutal cold -- something he didn't need to do for almost five years.

He was hypothermic by the end of the first four hours.

"Good," Dueril told him at the end of the day, when Caden almost sent himself into shock trying to use magic to restore his temperature. "You can always work on a cold ward later. This'll teach you to survive without prep time."

By day two, Caden was getting better at ignoring the cold. He was Salvic-born and raised, after all; even if he had been gone for years and come back under too many layers for comfort, the ice was in his blood as much as it had ever been. His swordsmanship was still lousy, but at least he could keep a grip on it this time. He was also getting better at his situational awareness; no longer tripping over the weapons scattered all over the ground, no longer having trouble backpedaling to avoid getting his head chopped off. Half-way through, and he had even gotten the hang of parrying with a Coronian-patterned sword: The trick wasn't to hold it in close like a baseball bat, but to hold it at full extension and flick it like an overlong wand. Don't bash the other guy's weapon, just trip and nudge it. Quickly. To avoid getting your wrist slit or your arm cut off or worse.

By the second day's end, Caden's defenses almost looked like those of an amateur fencer. His attacks were nonexistent: A Wizard's Oath is a binding thing, and Caden had no way to learn how to exploit the openings his defenses made. The closest he could do were a few pretend attacks that did more to make Dueril back off than anything else.

By the thrd day, he worked up the nerve to ask, "This is supposed to be real world training, right?"

"Tomorrow," Dueril told him, and then threw Caden the bowie knife he'd bought back in Scara Brae. Its balance had changed, just a little bit. The weapon was heavier, but its center of weight had been stretched out until it felt the same from handle to tip. Caden had no idea how the Dwarf did it, and he didn't ask. "Today, twins."

"Salvic or Akashiman?" Caden asked.

"Alerian," Dueril said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Sweet," Caden said with a grin.

Which somehow made for the ideal lead-in to Dueril trying to skewer him. (Again.)