The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois

not careful enough, because now Thelerion laboriously rose to his feet, leaning on the Shield, and his gaze locked on his missing henchman. His unappetizing features twisted in rage.

      “Ahah! Miscreant! Faithless turd! Slackarse!” He had dropped his emerald-tipped wand. Now he stooped and took it up, and said, “Receive your just punishment!”

      “I would not do that here,” said Aumbraj. “The Sword might not like it.”

      Thelerion focused on Aumbraj just long enough for outrage to expand his eyes and mouth, then all his features contracted and his gaze again bored into his lackey. “You told!” he cried. “The Sword was my great secret, and you told this … this—”

      “Aumbraj the Erudite,” said the object of his inarticulacy, “blue school, ninety-eighth degree. And I advise you to lower that thing you probably think of as a wand before something truly awful happens to you.”

      Thelerion looked from henchman to wizard, then back and forth several times. His mouth made sounds that were neither words nor incantations, and spittle appeared on his lips. Finally, he emitted a noise that came straight out of his lower throat and pointed the wand at Baldemar. He spoke a portentous syllable and the instrument’s tip glowed a baleful green. A vindictive smile spread across his lips and he opened his mouth to speak again.

      At the moment, the trapdoor behind him flew open and struck the rooftop with a heavy slam. Light shot up from a great brightness within the stairwell, and, as Thelerion turned to see, the head, neck, and then the shoulders of a young erb serenely emerged from the glowing rectangle.

      Baldemar’s employer made another wordless sound, this one expressive of surprise and horror. He pointed his wand at the beast that, continuing its rise from the stairwell, now showed its clawed hands—which clutched the Sword of Destiny.

      At this juncture, Thelerion made two decisions: one wise, one not. The wise move was to drop his wand; the unwise choice was to assume that the erb was bringing him the Sword, and that he ought to reach for it. His grasping fingers made contact with the scabbard.

      Another blast of light illuminated the rooftop, though this one entirely conformed to the shape of Thelerion the Exemplary. His person was limned by a glare so bright that his body seemed to be a black silhouette at its center.

      Then the light faded and the seeming became the reality. Where the wizard had been there now stood a figure of deepest black, dull and unreflective. It remained standing just long enough for the shape to be recognized and for its armor and shield to fall away with a clatter. Then the silhouette fell apart into granules of coarse grit that cascaded down to become a cone of stygian cinder. Scarcely had it formed a conical shape before its mass spread out under its own weight to lie as a circular mat of black sand—sand that crunched under the clawed feet of the erb as, still clutching the Sword, it stepped out of the trapdoor and approached Baldemar.

      He whirled to leap onto the flying platform only to find that it was now high above him and moving off, with Aumbraj leaning over the balustrade to observe the scene he had left. A glance to one side told Baldemar that the rope and grapnel he had left on the adjacent building were no longer there.

      He turned back and saw the beast coming on at a steady pace, the Sword now held in its paws so that the jewel-bedecked hilt offered itself to him.

      Baldemar experienced a moment of sharp mental clarity. There were two outcomes to accepting the erb’s offer: in one, he would be instantly, and probably painfully, converted into black grit, as Thelerion had been; in the other, he would rise as a man of destiny, to carve out a kingdom or an empire, and rule by whim and fiat. The momentary appeal of the latter prospect swiftly faded as he recalled the ruler of the County of Caprasecca, Duke Albero.