by Sean Jones
in Issue 146, March 2024
My heart quickened and bile burned my throat as the door before me shuddered open. From the arena, the roar of the echoing throng, the flickering light of scores of torches, the hostility of the crowd, the dread of facing a potent spellcaster, they penetrated my chamber. Better to remain in the dark and silence, sheltered from whatever thaumaturge I’d be forced to fight? But, then, my foe could fling flame or send some noxious fog, could summon a gaunt or ghast to freeze my bones and suck out my spirit while I shivered and quivered in fear. Could I abandon my boast? Could I walk back my brag and swallow my claim of mystical might?
I could have, maybe – I should have, likely – but I did not, for pride propelled me forward – making a marionette of me? I stepped into the torchlight, onto the circle of sand lain to soak blood – truly a livestock-auction pen converted for combat – I strolled before the eager assembly ringing the fighters’ pit and I strode forward to meet my fate.
He saluted the crowd, did my opponent. He tilted back his pale, bald head, lifted his chin high, his beard in reds and blacks and streaked in blonde and he raised his luminescent hands, sleeves of his scarlet robe falling to his elbows. He threw tiny, shooting stars, miniature meteorites that scurried and scampered among the crowd, drawing cheers, did my enemy, a pyromancer, clearly the spectators’ favorite in this conflict, for wielders of firestorms revel in popularity. For him, the element of flame would be friend, heat and flash brought forth from some plane where stone melted and air burned and conflagration reigned.
As he hurled at me pebbles of lava, gravel of stone molten, glowing and smoking, I demi-turned to present his flamecraft a slimmer target and wished I were an aquamancer, for I’d hold the advantage. I’d be bedecked in some blue-green raiment instead of plain grey and I’d flood his furnaces, extinguish his ovens beneath waves, I’d inundate my rival and I’d send steam and visible vapor to scald the onlookers – aside from two. I’d punish the audience for their impudence, for their insolence at making me prove my mettle in this theater of thaumaturgy – sparing a pair of them. Sea-swell would issue from my fingers, coolness would quench, brine would seethe and surge and drown opponent and observers alike – but buoying the twin belles whom I could not condemn.
Such was not so, though, for my talents did not drift thuswardly. I’d make do with the motley assortment of arcanum at my disposal, self-taught scraps of spellcraft gleaned from glimpses at tomes, snatched from glances at grimoires. I wished I’d not claimed in the tavern to “wield a bit of the talent.” Had I not, I’d stand elsewhere, in some venue less rustic, less bucolic, less backward, less scorching and less perilous.
I dropped prone as flocks of phoenixes flew over me, talons of lava clacking and grasping. I rolled as jets of flame spurted from the very sand underfoot. I strove to breathe as the air heated and heated, kiln-like, foundry-like. Sweat stung my eyes and rained in drops and rose in rivulets to dampen the sand: my sultry regrets parboiled.
In the alehouse, I’d abandoned the truth, my lifelong comrade, my confidant and consort, being so eager to impress a brace of beauties, homespun and rustic, local sirens who wielded no sorcery but were adept in the arts of winsomeness and pulchritude and allure. I’d deigned to paint for their minds’ eyes a conceited self-portrait, tinting my figure in ambers and golds and yellows, the honey-hues of a master enchanter whose legerdemain I could only feign. And, their brothers and cousins had heard my words and had bound me to them, dragging me here, to be scorched by their champion, to have my lies burned from my lips, singed and crisped, to fall like ashes from my face.
As if cued by my reflections, the bumpkins’ fire-summoner sent sheets of inferno to blaze in ribbons of apricot and streams of ginger, tendrils of coals and cinders wafting and writhing toward me, while I ducked and dodged. The skin of my palms blistered as I blocked a blast to my face and I smelled the singed flesh of my neck.
One heard tales of some suzerain-conjurer who’d found solitude in a backwater and would study mighty mojos in peace while dispensing cantrips to ripen the grain, to mend a pail, to heal a broken calf’s leg. Did I face such a supreme sorcerer gone-to-ground? Was he preserving his anonymity from this grey-clad interloper who might expose his true constitution? Shouldn’t he then be showing more discretion, less dramaturgy?
Flame, flame, flame from him.
The question sped to me, “how to fight it?” I shuffled and skittered across the shushing sand in ovals and circles to confound his aim. While the pyre-crafter gestured and chanted, teasing embers from the ether, building a preternatural bonfire, he could not expect what came next, could not anticipate what would flock to the light of his eldritch fever, for I, myself, knew not.
As when I’d been drinking and tale-telling in this thorp’s single, smoky inn that afternoon, spinning yarns to entertain a brace of brown-eyed beauties, Cara and Lyn, I could not anticipate what came from my mouth. Here, in the arena, it was no brag. Rather, a multitude of moths spewed from my lips, grey minions awing, bound for my igneous adversary, the fliers flitting, irritating, distracting, purchasing an interval for me to prepare defenses.
The red-robed one swatted and stomped and I heard titters and guffaws from the congregation. One must not discount the character of the moment: in matters mystical, mood matters and, if my druthers had their fancies, sentiment would sway my way. I welcomed any advantage, overmatched as I was.
Only the most willful become wielders of the searing sort of sorcery, they the most deliberate, the ones who master incendiary work. My foe would show no mercy. With an impregnable sense of self, an unassailable psyche, aspirants such as he endure torture, hot irons that scorch torsos and limbs and necks, they weather desert-deprivations and brave blazing summer suns for weeks without drink or sustenance, they abide molten metals poured between fingers, between toes, into the body’s dark caves and unmentionable crevices. In no unfolding fate could I hope to overwhelm him with potency that would drain his spirit. He’d be too strong.
As if in answer, as if gods arcane and eavesdropping as they strolled amidst my thoughts would confirm my doom, a shimmering nimbus ensconced my rival, cerulean glimmers scintillating in a swirling halo. Cavorting, opalescent irridescence pulsed and throbbed like the undulations of a jellyfish, surely as sinister in its sting. Blue-white beams shot from the magus’ outstretched palms, shining, sparkling and searing. Like the arms of an octopus, they ensnared my arms and legs and neck, like the shocking eel, jolting, jolting.
How could a master of firestorms dispatch arcs and sparks that pierced and seized and held me fast in misery, all the while jerking and joggling me, cauterizing me with burns birthed from a watery-elemental mother, clenching with an agonizing grip that kept me from my enchantments? Why lightning? He knew two maledictions, not only inferno but storm? How puissant was my opponent? In reply, the torchflames shot high and brightened the place, as if the coruscation of his thunderbolts were insufficient illumination to exhort the crowd’s favor, inadequate to limn my death.
And the watchers in the stands wailed and applauded – save for two, I hoped – the crowd’s roar amplifying the din raised by the buzzing prongs of the actinic forks that pinioned me, that drained my resolve, that weakened and exhausted me. The voyeurs standing witness to the spectacle pushed all fondness toward him. So much for sympathy. While my enemy basked in adulation and drew glory from the horde, multiplying and enhancing the aptitude of his dweomers, I gained a moment to rest, to reflect, to react, even if in agony.
Of bewitchments, mine cleaved to a single hue, a lesson I’d learned from attempting particolored theurgies such as the fire, such as the lightning, of my would-be murderer, from my attempting and failing, self-inflicting wounds, raising welts, scribing scars about my body, face, feet and hands. From giddy experiments and sobering experience, I’d learned any conjury I’d create could only be grey.
For the nonce, fog would suffice and I summoned some. Wisps weaved and wended, stretching into silver sprigs that swirled around me, obscuring my outline. Blanketing my person in the cloudy color that indulged me, cocooning my corpus in ashy mist, I secluded myself. Knowing he could not see me, could not continue the blistering torture if he could not witness it, I sidestepped and knelt so I would not be where I’d been, hoping to foil any hexcraft flung my way.
But neither was it flame-tongues, nor was it storm-bolts that shot past my position. A third school of wizardry joined the fray as pinches of sand, grains raised from the earth, whirling devils arisen to twist into tipping cones that swirled and pelted, aeromancy presented itself to the onlookers as my foe now wielded a trio of ensorcellments, such a threesome of vitalities a stark impossibility.
No one possessed such potency. Not a witch or warlock living or legendary could command so many enchantments. I could not believe the slashes of the dunes, the slices and stabs they inflicted, the cuts they made in my clothing, in my flesh. Peering into the audience, I sought the eyes of Cara, of Lyn, wishing they, too, would show expressions of denial, of outrage at the unjust mismatch between a master mage and a traveling troubadour merely bent on brag.
His scouring grit scraped my skin. My grey haze blown away, the magus in crimson could see the gashes his glamours ripped, the blood that dripped, wounds superficial for the moment, but destined to deepen as the winds accelerated and crescendoed. In the dusk, we dueled, for his tempest overcame the torches.
As if to outshout the yowling gale, my opposer screamed. Clear to anyone who could read runes, his voice besmirched the cacophony with certain sigils of force, sundry symbols of power that would augment any sorceries thrown about that gladiators’ circle.
Where he portrayed the showman, I played the survivalist in this bloody opera and the rabble fancied my foe’s antics, throwing passion to him, reinforcing his faculties. For me to triumph was inconceivable; no possibility existed in which I would kneel over his prone form.
But pain, pain, pain: it may produce lucidity and an inkling alit from the heavens to perch in my mind. If he drew his ability to harm from the adulation of the mob, wouldn’t it behoove him to light his exploits? In the gloom, where few viewers would have the sight, he’d have squandered the upper hand. I seized it.
Though I was only a dabbler and solely in the shades of steel and slate, I could call down starlight in pearly pewter. And, I did. Constellations, I cast on the walls. Phosphorescent moonlight, I summoned from celestial sources and watched while blithe motes gamboled in Luna’s beams. Illuminating the arena with rays of argent, painting the pit in dots, sprinkling monochrome mercury in drips and drops, I set the light to dancing, choreographed the myriad spots of radiance, sent them frolicking. From the rows of seats, I heard gushes of admiration, adoration. Clapping and laughing. Mercurial were their moods, those pastoral spectators of wizardly combat, but they rallied to me and lent me their blessing, worth as much as any talisman, any amulet or periapt. Into the eyes of the scarlet-clad spellcaster, I shined bright luster, and he shielded his eyes, beset by such a simple ruse.
Not he, not an archmage, not a demigoddess of dweomers, no one could master a triad of wizardry. His wielding of fire, of lightning, of wind, three flavors of nethermancy, I realized, such a feat might, might be accomplished somewhere, some night, after centuries of study, but not in a backwater battle between mystics promised pittance to entertain a gaggle of yokels.
Injuries he’d inflicted had beguiled me, as he’d wished them to, and the excruciations underpinning the harm, the despondence and the hopelessness he’d wished me to experience, those had succeeded. He’d hoped to kill me through my sentiments, via my perceptions. His maneuvers through the numinous, convincing and lethal though they were – real, they were not. Intimations. Insinuations. Impostors. When molding mirages, the creator, above all, must convince himself. To the caster, the veracity must exceed reality. And, in this backwoods pageant, how inconsiderate, how agrarian, would I be not to oblige?
My carmine-dressed contender segued to necromancy, as if he’d been reading from a scroll that spelled out a sequence of elemental progression, as though consorting with desecrated dead occupied the fourth position on such a list. I knew, for me to triumph, I’d need my foe to succeed and, while my starshine lit the scene, his callings from the grave were destined to disappoint.. I’d have to snuff my scintillations if his specters were to cavort and caper, if they were to drain my vitality – or appear to. I ceased my diablerie and let the ring grow dim enough for his phantoms to thrive in the murk – but I left enough light for the show to be seen – and I prepared my stratagem.
Quicksilver ruled my repertoire-of-the-grey and I turned to the cinereal liquid to save me. In it, I sheathed myself. Mirror-like in appearance, mirror-like in practice, mirror-like to specters, the mercury that covered me reflected all phantasms directed against me, ghost and ghasts, gaunts and ghouls. When my adversary’s revenant attacked, the summoned wraith’s touch frigid and glacial, sepulchral, grim and gruesome, when the shade sought to freeze my soul and slay me through chilling despair, it was not I who suffered. Nay. The illusionist, for whom the authenticity of the arcane assault surpassed the actuality, he felt the effects: he, himself, sustained the wintry bite from the crypt and he screamed, once, twice, and fell to the sand, silent. Quiet, too, the crowd, members of them relighting the torches that wavered in somber, tangerine throes.
Saying that which wasn’t so had placed me here, an ill-advised attempt to impress. Likewise, a reliance on illusion brought about my opponent’s doom. Did I hear irony chuckling? Though I’d believed I would never kneel astride his fallen form, yet, here I did. A meek and placid man, he now seemed, humble, unassuming, striped beard gone to grey, the apparition’s grip having placed a pallor upon his skin, bleaching his very being. Tethered to his neck, a single, golden pendant nestled atop the powdery grains of the ground, its form a glinting, fecund-woman fetish, her lips pouting, her eyes tiny, onyx pentagrams. Seeing her, my earlier question attained its answer: such totems were known to ensnare the innocent into delving deep in occult catacombs, to convince them of their preternatural vitality, to bewitch them to do dark deeds. A fair claim to the demi-idol, I could have staked, if I’d thought I could resist its caress. Let some other churl pick it up and become whatever wizard he’d delude himself into being, aided and abetted by this talisman-trap. I contemplated what remuneration might suffice.
Would I be wise to remain and collect the meager payment in bits of bullion, paltry disbursement compared to the price of my life? Or, perhaps, accept the affections of ebony-eyed Cara and ocher-orbed Lyn? Such were the whispers the stilled hush of the ring murmured in my mind, seductions not dissimilar to those that had delivered me into this pit of slaughter.
In the lull, in my newfound sobriety, my eyes unjaded and unjaundiced, I resisted the susurrus of suggestions.
I deemed any payment would be unsavory, tainted by death, sullied by deception. Pushed here by pride, I decided to depart, the promised compensation coming in a color I’d not accept. I strode from the stage, I quit the arena-turned-mausoleum, I left the hamlet, following a game-trail southward through the starlit and shadowed woods, for bold gold the color of the shining sun would not do. Likewise unsuitable, the mahogany-hued, sparkling globes of a brace of homegrown honeys whom I could never embrace with unbloodied hands. No gilded ingots nor any reward in a warm shade could tint the scene in happy hues.
A wanderer, moody, following the planets and comets across shifting skies, I walked away, for I worked in the cool colors of the coy and coquettish moon, in greys and smokes and silvers and steels.
©March 2024, Sean Jones
Sean Jones writes swords and sorcery and sci-fi stories in and around Golden, Colorado. He is a member of the Northern Colorado Writers’ Workshop, the Boy Scouts of America and the Rocky Mountain Porsche Club. Influences on his writing include Ursula K. LeGuin, Glen Cook and Greek mythology. He has created a post-apocalyptic demolition-derby game called Hovercars that you can check out here. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.