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 ca.n.a.ls 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 unaware that their surroundings had changed. Bags and boxes floated through the air, suspended by nothing, but bound intently for some destination or another.

Cy tried not to gawk as he made his way through the city. Across one bridge and down several blocks, he found a tall, narrow building with dozens of doors stacked one on top of the other all the way up the building's entire facade. A carved wooden sign on street level read: "The Charlesgate Inn," and robed mages floated casually out of the doors on the higher levels, turning around, suspended in midair,to lock the doors behind them.

Cy entered the bottom floor of the inn and rented a room for a few days. He wanted to learn as much about his target as he could before he had to face the man.

Hopefully, Cy thought, Shadow will be so engrossed in his research that he won't see me coming.

It was the young a.s.sa.s.sin's only hope. In open combat, Cy may have been able to defeat that skilled fighter in Kath, but an archwizard was an entirely different story. If he didn't get a quick, clean, surprise kill, he'd be done for. As he settled into his room, he realized he'd get only one chance at this a.s.sa.s.sination. He intended to make the most of that chance.

Before Cy had left for Karsus, Lume had opened the raiding party's store of materials and weapons to allow Cy his pick of equipment. They had racks and racks of swords, armor, and bows, and even some things Cy had never seen used before. The job he had been tasked with would be difficult for sure, but extra gear wasn't going to make it any easier. In the end he simply took with him a small crossbow, some magical leather armor, and his own enchanted dagger. Better to travel light, he decided.

The ornately carved brick tower that Shadow lived in was easy enough for Cy to break into. In fact, there wasn't even a lock on the door. Not wanting to fall prey to overconfidence, the a.s.sa.s.sin moved through the entry hall very carefully, checking every few feet for traps or magical glyphs. It took him almost an hour to creep slowly down the hall and around the corner.

For all of his caution, there were no traps in the long hallway. At least I wasn't blown to bits, he thought. Hounding one corner, he entered a very large, grossly wealthy sitting room. The raider in Cy was in awe. Perhaps Lume should have sent him to simply rob the arch-wizard. The riches held in this one room could have paid for a hundred a.s.sa.s.sins ten times over. High-backed chairs sat around ornately carved wooden tables. Silver sconces with mage-lit stones in them were stationed around the windows, and jeweled candelabras rested on desks, tables, and windowsills. Leather-bound books sat in hundreds of neat rows, arrayed over several dozen large bookshelves lining the walls.

A door swung open on the opposite side of the room. Cy crouched and somersaulted behind one of the high-backed chairs. He pressed himself close to the furniture and held his breath. Heavy footsteps echoed across the hardwood floor. Cy clutched his dagger. So much for surprise.

The footsteps got closer then pa.s.sed the chair. Cy felt a light breeze pa.s.s his cheek, and his vision filled with vivid, swirling colors of magenta, yellow, and silver. The young man blinked, trying to rid his head of the befuddling magic, and the colors pa.s.sed-but they weren't magic. Cy's vision cleared, and he recognized the hem of a lady's skirts. A young blonde woman, wearing heavy, embroidered linens and carrying a silver tray had pa.s.sed Cy's hiding place. She walked swiftly past the chair and out into the hall.

Her heavy footsteps receded.

Cy stood up, and the door swung open again. Ducking his head behind the furniture, he was certain he'd been seen this time. Once again, heavy footsteps traveled across the floor. Cy dodged behind the chair, rolling across the floor, around a table, to pop up behind whoever had entered the room. Bringing his dagger down in a broad arc, the young a.s.sa.s.sin stopped cold. The same blonde, brightly dressed woman who had just pa.s.sed, only a moment before, was again standing in the middle of the room, only this time she was carrying a large silver jug. The woman's skirts rustled as she continued across the floor, unflinching and unfazed by Cy.

The door opened again. Cy spun around, his dagger out in front of him. The blonde woman was coming out into the sitting room for the third time, but now she had a large box in her hands. Her brilliant blue eyes stared straight ahead as she continued to move toward the young a.s.sa.s.sin. Two sets of heavy footsteps echoed on the hardwood, one in front and one behind. Shaking his head, certain that he was under magical a.s.sault, Cy leaped out of the woman's path, landing hard on a plush leather chair and letting it break his fall as he clattered to the floor.

Spinning around and backing into the corner, Cy scanned the room for any way to escape. Two blonde women-both wearing identical magenta, yellow, and silver linen skirts, one carrying a jug, one abox-continued across the hardwood floor. Neither seemed the least bit interested in Cy. They moved through the room and out into the hallway, intent on carrying their packages to their final destination. The young man watched them as he stood in the corner catching his breath.

The door opened again. Two more blonde, brightly dressed women-the same woman Cy had seen three times already-entered the sitting room and proceeded across the hardwood, their footsteps echoing heavily as they crossed. Cy made no attempt to hide this time, and the women ignored him completely.

Picking up a book, the young a.s.sa.s.sin hurled it at one of the women. It struck with a thud and fell to the floor. Still, the women ignored him.

If they aren't illusions, thought Cy, then they must be constructs.

Convinced that he wasn't under a spell, he continued on his mission.

A set of stairs led down one side of the room. Cy crossed and headed down, avoiding the female golems as he went. The stairway was long, and the air grew cooler as he continued down. The old wooden steps were warped in places, so Cy was careful to transfer all of his weight onto each step slowly, so as to avoid creaking. At the bottom, another hallway continued on. A doorway near the end was partly open, and light spilled out into the hall from the opening. Another of the magenta-skirted women came out of the room and walked down the hall. Slipping past the un.o.bservant construct, Cy looked through the opening. He could see a bed and a night stand in half of a nice, if messy, bed chamber. Someone was shuffling around with a drawer and some papers outside of his field of view. Cy pulled his dagger from his sheath, pressed himself up against the wall, and waited. Several moments pa.s.sed. Sweat started to bead on Cy forehead. The shuffling inside the room continued.

A drawer slammed shut, and a figure came into view and sat on the bed. Square jaw, sandy-brown hair, green eyes, small wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, and a tell-tale scar on his left cheek-this was Shadow.

Though younger-looking than Cy had expected, this man matched the descriptions Lume had given him.

The archwizard's attention was focused on a large stack of papers he had in his hands, and he was making marks on them with a piece of charcoal.

Cy took a deep breath and held it. Raising his dagger up to his shoulder, he burst into the room, hurling the enchanted blade at Shadow as he did so. The wizard didn't even look up from his papers. He simply waved his hand, and the dagger stopped in midair. Worse, Cy stood frozen as well, unable to blink or even wipe the ever-increasing sweat from his forehead.

For quite some time, Shadow simply continued to read his papers, leafing through them casually as if he didn't have an a.s.sa.s.sin magically suspended in his bedroom. Eventually, he finished with his work, straightened the papers, and turned his attention to Cy.

"Aren't you a little young to be an a.s.sa.s.sin?" he asked. Cy didn't answer. This had been his first a.s.sa.s.sination, so he really didn't know how the industry worked. He supposed he'd never get the opportunity to find out now.

"No matter," rea.s.sured the archwizard. "Your age isn't important. What is, however, is the fact that you tried to kill me. So?" He looked Cy right in the eye. "What do you suppose we should do about that?"

Cy tried to spit at the man, to show his indignation and contempt for the wizards who mucked around with the powerful, otherworldly magic that he felt certain would be the doom of all the world, but he was stuck. He couldn't move his lips or even his tongue.

"Well?" asked the archwizard. "Aren't you going to answer me?"

The man chuckled, then he put his hands on his knees and stood up from the bed. He plucked the enchanted blade from where it was suspended in the air.

"Very nice, very good indeed," he commented. "Don't have much use for these sorts of toys." He walked over to a chest of drawers and placed the dagger on top of it. "I have a few I keep around as souvenirs of the a.s.sa.s.sins who have most interested me, but I generally don't like to use them. All that blood and such." Shadow wrinkled his nose. "No, magic is much cleaner."

He picked up a wand with a clear stone attached to the end of it by a leather band.

"And," he added, walking back toward Cy, "far more entertaining and punitive. Just think, if I simply poked you with your blade a few times, sure it would hurt, but in short order you'd die, and the agonyyou'd feel would be over. With magic-" he brandished the wand-"I can trap you inside this crystal. There you will die slowly as your predecessors sap your strength and tear at your skin."

He smiled warmly at Cy who was still unable to move.

The best part, however, is that once you've died, your punishment hasn't ended. You will awaken as a shadow, and you'll live out the rest of eternity as an ethereal creature, unable to affect the solid world around you. Doesn't that sound far more horrifying?"

Cy grunted, trying everything in his power to simply move his fingers.

"Yes, I'm sure you'd agree, imprisonment is far worse than simple death."

Shadow turned away from the doorway and started tidying up the room.

Though I don't want you to think my trapping you in this wand is at all an easy feat."

Cy continued to struggle, gaining a modic.u.m of hope from the fact that he could now wiggle his toes and clench the muscles in his jaw.

"It's taken me years to be able to perfect this wand," continued the archwizard. "True, the imprisonment spells are simple enough, as you are now, I'm sure, painfully aware."

Shadow continued to fiddle in the room.

"No, it's the transformation from human flesh to the insubstantial that has proven tricky, though not impossible."

Cy could feel warmth spreading through his aims and chest, and he was able to shuffle his feet a little.

Shadow looked at the wand with reverent awe.

"This little device right here represents most of my life's work. You know," he said, speaking not really to Cy but rather to himself, "I've lived a long time, and it seems to me that as we've grown, things just keep getting smaller and smaller." He chuckled. "I guess that's what we call progress."

Cy almost had control of his body back. If Shadow continued to amuse himself for just a few more minutes, he might be able to make a break for it, and he'd much rather get killed fleeing than just standing there like a stupid jacka.s.s.

"Anyway, enough with the chit chat." The archmage turned his attention back to the young a.s.sa.s.sin and leveled the wand at him. "I suppose I should figure out who hired you to kill me before I dispose of you. I don't suppose you came of your own accord. You're too young for that."

The wall behind Shadow exploded outward into the room. What had appeared to be solid stone was actually a secret door made of wood, and the splinters of stone-colored door sprayed out at the two men. Two gigantic ogres stood at the top of a set of stairs in the s.p.a.ce where the door used to be.

Cy was thrown to the floor next to the bed. Shadow, too distracted with the first a.s.sa.s.sin to protect himself from the two new ones, was also knocked face-first to the floor. The ogres didn't waste any time, and they rushed into the room to clobber the fallen archwizard. Ham-sized fists began to beat the mage.

The two beasts worked together, pummeling the man simultaneously with opposing blows. Then one stopped pounding the wizard and unsheathed a large sword off its back. The blade slid out of the scabbard with an oily grind.

Cy had regained control of his body, and he got to his feet, pulling the larger splinters from his skin.

The ogres were completely ignoring him, but they were pounding Shadow into a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp right in the middle of the doorway. He glanced over toward the pa.s.sageway.

If the ogres got in that way, then there must be a way out, he thought.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. In the -moment he took to compose his thoughts, his mind reeled. What if there were more ogres down there? What if they had used magic to get into the lower chamber? If he went down there, would he be trapped?

"Lift him up," shouted the ogre with the sword.

The other grunted and stopped beating the archwizard long enough to bend down and grab the man by the robes.

Cy turned back toward the doorway, deciding to take his chances with the ogres he knew of rather than whatever could be dwelling down the stairs. While they prepared to behead Shadow, the young a.s.sa.s.sin charged the door, hoping to slip behind the busy brutes and the doomed archwizard on his wayto freedom.

He took two large steps and dropped into a crouch, trying to ram right through. The ogre holding Shadow took a half step back at that precise moment, crashing into the charging human as he barreled across the room. The two a.s.sa.s.sins got tangled in each other's limbs, and they both hit the floor with a crash-Cy tumbling head over feet into the hallway, and the ogre against the doorframe. Shadow came to his feet, being pulled from the floor by the ogre and gaining momentum from the great brute's fall.

Wand still in his hand, he shouted, "Shadominiaropalazitsi" and leveled the crystal end at the standing ogre.

A dark gray stream fired out of the wand in a direct line at the ogre a.s.sa.s.sin. As it approached the ogre's upright form, the stream spread out and began to curve and split. It formed a whirlwind of darkness around the beast, and the gray areas started to separate and take on individual, humanlike shapes. The shadows had narrow, elongated heads, and spindly, malformed limbs, and they flew in ever-quickening circles around the ogre. For his part, the a.s.sa.s.sin stood, his sword poised over his head, and gawked in awe and horror.

The shadows attacked, diving toward the armed figure and tearing at him with claws that seemed to form out of thin air. Cy could hear the beast howl as if he were in great pain, but no blood issued forth.

Instead, the ogre dropped his sword and slowly sank to the floor, landing on the ground with a thud like a sack of horse manure.

Cy gained his feet and turned up the steps. He'd seen enough. As fast as he'd ever felt himself move, he was up the stairs, dodging brightly dressed constructs as he fled out the front door. Never did he turn around and it wasn't until he was on his griffin on the way back to report to Lume that he realized he no longer had his enchanted dagger.

Arriving in camp by sunup the second day, Cy entered Lume's tent at a run.

"Sir, I have terrible, urgent news."

Lume was sitting at his desk eating his morning meal, and the young man's frantic entrance startled the captain, causing him to cough up a mouthful of food.

"In the name of all the G.o.ds, what do you think you're doing," he screamed. Then, abruptly, his tone changed. "Oh, Cy!" Lume stood up. "What is it, lad? Did you kill the archwizard?"

"No, sir, I did not."

Lume slammed his hand on the desk. "Then what are you doing here?"

Cy proceeded to intone to Lume all the details of his a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. He left out nothing, and the captain listened intently to the entire story. Then it was Lume's turn to talk.

"Are you certain they were shadows that came out of the wand?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, I'm absolutely positive."

"G.o.ds. A wand with that kind of power could ..."

Turning around and placing his hands to the sides of his head, he paced out from behind the desk and moved around the tent. After a few moments, he came out of his reverie. He looked at Cy and shook his head.

"But you failed. I should have known that chain-wielder wasn't an adequate challenge to determine if you could kill an archwizard.''

"Sir?"

Lume whirled, blurting out his words. "The chain-wielder, son! I sent him to test you. How else do you think a man of that skill ended up in such a backwater village as Rath?"

"You sent the blond man after me, sir? But, I... I don't understand."

"Are you stupid, boy? I planted the man in Kath and paid him to attack you," replied Lume.

"But... but why? That man almost killed me."

"To see if you were up to this a.s.sa.s.sination," he explained, "but obviously it was a poor test."

Cy stood with his arms limp and his mouth open wide.Lume paced back and forth for a while longer, then he caught sight of Cy. "Child, stop your bemoaning. You lived. All that matters now is that we go back to kill Shadow and get that wand." Lume walked over to the young man and put his hand on his shoulder. "Despite the fact that you failed, you've provided us-provided our great leader Olostin himself-with a real opportunity to reclaim our world from the haughty archwizards."

Cy just stared, fuming at Lume.

"Son, if we get that wand," explained the captain, "we could use it against Shadow and all of his kind. We've been trying to kill that man for years, and now we might finally have an opportunity to use his own research against him. Wouldn't that be beautiful?" He smiled and slapped Cy on the shoulder. "You know something, Cy, I've sent a countless number of a.s.sa.s.sins after Shadow over the years, and you're the first to come back alive. You should take pride in that. You're one in perhaps a thousand, and now you'll get another chance to complete your mission."

Cy pulled away from the captain. "You do what you want, but I'll have no part of it."

Lume narrowed his gaze. "You'll do what I tell you, or you'll be dead." He stepped toward Cy and lowered his hand to his saber.

Cy stood his ground. "You sent me to die once already. I'm not going back."

The captain brought his sword up in a quick arc, hitting Cy squarely under the jaw with the pommel as the blade sc.r.a.ped out of its scabbard.

The young a.s.sa.s.sin fell back, and he held his hand to his face, trying to stop the flow of blood as he stared up at his captain from the floor. Two armed guards came through the tent flap, their swords drawn.

"Take him back to his tent," Lume instructed the men, "and make sure he doesn't go anywhere." He turned back to the young man on the floor. "He'll be needed shortly- to finish his failed duties."

Two days later, Lume sent a group of guards to escort Cy to the party's armory. The captain was there briefing a small group of men on the coming a.s.sa.s.sination.

"I will personally accompany you men to make sure that this time we succeed where Cy failed,"

intoned Lume. He smiled at Cy as the guards untied the younger man's bonds. "Cy will go along, under my personal supervision, to provide the necessary details about Shadow's home and habits." He looked out at the crowd of a.s.sembled a.s.sa.s.sins. "If this man-" he pointed to Cy-"attempts to escape or in any other way avoid his duty to this group, he is to be executed. Do I make myself clear?"

Every head in the group nodded a.s.sent.

Each of the a.s.sa.s.sins was given special boots that masked the sound of their footsteps and special cloaks that made them more difficult to see, and each was issued an amulet that made them less susceptible to the effects of Shadow's magic.

"These won't protect you from the shadows," explained Lume, "but they will make you less of a target for the archwizard."

Cy gritted his teeth. This whole mission might not be necessary had he had one of those amulets on the first attempt.