Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [17]
Lume looked at the palm of his hand for a moment. Cy shifted in his chair.
"Cy, I make no apologies for the mistakes of other men. If a man in my party gets himself killed, then it's his own fault."
He looked the younger man up and down then stared him right in the eyes. Cy held his gaze for a moment, then let it fall.
"If I can't remember how long you've been with this group it's only because I've seen hundreds of others just like you get killed. To tell the honest truth, I can't even remember any of their names. To me, they could have all been named Cy."
Lume chuckled at this. Cy did not. The captain became serious and once again looked Cy over. "I'll come to the point, Cy. I have a job for you." "Sir," he said, not sure what else he could say. "You're as good with that dagger as I've seen in a long while, and you managed to keep yourself alive last night. I'm hoping," continued Lume, "that you'll manage to get yourself out of this little project alive as well. Tell me, what do you know about our illustrious leader Olostin?" "Sir, I know he fights to stop the tyranny of the arch-wizards, sir."
"That's a good practiced answer if I've ever heard one." Cy was startled and began to stand to defend himself. Lume raised his hand and started to laugh. "It's all right, son," he said. "You've got the basic idea."
Cy settled back down into the chair. He felt as if he has been scolded by his father.
"Do you want to stop the… tyranny of the arch-wizards?"
Cy just looked at the captain, wondering where all of this was leading. For a man who said he was going to get to the point, he sure had a round about way of getting there, Cy thought, and all of this questioning of his loyalty and teasing about his age was starting to make him angry.
"Well, Cy?" The captain raised his voice. "Do you believe in what we're fighting for?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
Cy gritted his teeth. He didn't think his performance the previous evening had been as spectacular as the captain seemed to believe, but as Lume himself had said, he was still alive. Surely he didn't deserve a reprimand for killing a skilled fighter in the middle of a raid. This meeting had started so well, and now it seemed as if the captain was accusing him of being a spy or something.
"Well, then, son," Lume said, his voice calm, "I need you to assassinate the archwizard Shadow."
* * * * *
The journey to the floating city had taken Cy two days on griffonback. The archwizard Shadow lived in Karsus, a city unlike any Cy had ever seen before. It floated, for one thing, but that was the least of the oddities this bustling town had in store.
The streets were lined with small gutters of running water. Brooms moved purposefully along on their own, sweeping dust and debris into the moving water as they went. Bridges lifted streets up over wider rivers, and passersby walked not only on top of the curved stone structures but on the underside as well. Wizards, carefully carrying parcels of food or armloads of books, passed each other and waved as they casually walked upside down. In a city park, four elderly, robed mages rotated freely through the air, their attention focused on a globe the size of a maidensthigh melon that floated between them. Each took turns moving intricately carved gems across the globe and laughing as the result of their moves changed the pitch, angle, or speed of rotation of one of the other wizards playing the game.
It seemed everyone in Karsus used magic, for everything they did defied what little Cy knew about the world and how it was supposed to work. Children played games on the sides of buildings instead' of on the ground or in a park. Water flowed uphill and in some places through thin air. The strange canals that lined the streets didn't start or end anywhere they just simply continued to flush fresh, clean water through the entire city. People walked adolescent pet dragons through the busy city streets, waving and smiling as they went. Groups of wizards appeared-as if from nowhere-in mid-conversation, apparently