He felt as if Berridge Lymwich had hit him full with her inquisitrix spell. He was blinded by white. Then the white suddenly swirled with gray. Then black dots emerged from the gathering haze, growing larger and larger until the white was gone and the gray was swallowed up.
Then all was black, and blacker still, until he fell into the blackest pit of all.
Pryce Covington knew he wasn’t dead when his brain started lecturing him.
Apparently it was its way of dealing with the shock of the attack, once it had determined that the assault was not fatal. Seemingly, from what Pryce was distantly hearing, his subconscious was stunned, both physically and mentally, by the blow to the back of his head.
In a land where magic was extolled, the need to strike someone on the back, side, top, or front of the head seemed so unnecessaryeven barbaricthat Pryce’s brain couldn’t decide whether it was more perplexed than hurt.
Later Pryce would call it a draw. Actually, he would have loved to have been more perplexed than hurt, but a blow to the skull in any form had unavoidable consequences of a physical nature. In a word, pain.
As usual, when self-pity wrestled with purpose, the former almost always won out. As soon as he was conscious enough, Pryce found himself thinking, What did I do to deserve this? through a needle-pricking haze. He was so thankful the light seemed to be turned back on again that his relief nearly forced the pain away… but only for a second. Then his mind sent out a series of lightning bolts of renewed pain.
He had once seen a magical crystal ball with a storm inside it. Through its transparent shell, he could see a small cloud from which many dozens of lightning bolts arced out, dancing all over the inside surface of the orb. Now he could well imagine what that ball would have felt like if it had been lined with nerve endings.
He tried opening one eye. The view wasn’t promising. It seemed dark and craggy and hairy. It was also still painful. He squeezed his eye shut again.
Wait a minute, he thought. Hairy? It seemed to be making disconcertingly rabid noises as well.
Pryce’s eyes snapped open. Something was bobbing in his vision. It was black and red and orange and furry. There were two fuzzy half-cones on either side of a hairy half-dome, moving up and down and slavering. Covington dimly remembered seeing that somewhere before..
“Cunningham!” he bellowed. “Get off me, you beast!”
The jackalwere leapt back as Pryce tried to jump up, but the creature knew his surroundings better than the man did. Pryce’s head slammed into a low, rocky ledge that laid him back down hard.
Getting hit on the head was bad enough, but hitting himself on the head was even worse. Pryce felt as if he were sinking into the bay beyond the Lalloreef, but he sensed a jackal turtle waiting for him beneath the surface, its slavering maw opening and closing in eager anticipation. Covington clawed back toward the surface, ignoring the millions of mental lightning bolts that danced around him.
“Cunningham!” he cried. “Don’t you dare gorge on me!” The sharp yellow teeth of the jackalwere filled his vision like a horizon of tombstones. Pryce cried out in spite of himself, making the creature leap back once more into the surrounding gloom. Covington’s cry of surprise turned into a groan of suffering as pain pushed everything else aside. “II don’t feel well,” he managed to understate.
“I have seen you looking better,” Cunningham informed him, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Pryce hoped that by concentrating on the jackalwere he could crawl out of the thicket of agony inside his head. “You were going to take a bite out of me, weren’t you?”
“Oh, my good sir, no!” The jackalwere sounded mortally offended.
“Yes, you were, and then you were planning on drinking my blood. Right?” “Not at all.”
‘You’re hungry, and you’ve got a brood to feed.” “I’ll have you know, sir, that we are subsisting quite well on your kindness.”
That reminded Pryce of how he had complicated his own situation in the disposition of the dead bodies, which pained his spirit as well. He groaned again, gripping the sides of his head to keep it from cracking open like an egg. Moving very carefully, he started to get up.
“Be careful, my good man,” Cunningham warned, stepping forward to assist him.
“You keep your distance,” Covington said sharply.
The jackalwere, now fully returned to his human state, placed a limp hand against his chest. “You injure me, sir.”
“Better I injure you verbally than you injure me physically,” Pryce countered. “Where am I, anyway?”
Cunningham took the chance of leaning over conspiratorially. “We are beneath the city, sir, in a series of tunnels I’ve found quite useful.”
Pryce glanced around, careful not to move too quickly. It was so dark that he couldn’t see much. Cunningham, being part jackal, could probably see as clear as day. “You haven’t been using this lair to claim new, uh… meals, have you?”
“Pardon my familiarity, sir,” the jackalwere replied haughtily, “but have you lost your senses? You especially should know that a creature of my kind on the streets of Lallor would last about as long as a shard of ice in Zzuntal. I am taking a certain risk just by traveling beneath the streets.”
“So why are you?” Pryce asked, hoping to gather enough of his senses to really think by the time the creature finished answering.
‘You truly are addled, good sir,” the jackal-man decided. “Do you not recall the words you left me with on the evening of our initial meeting? No, I have not forgotten your mercy, sir. Imagine, the great Darlington Blade, wasting compassion on the accursed likes of myself and my progeny!” He seemed positively giddy. Such was the fame of the great Darlington Blade.
“If you are truly grateful,” Pryce moaned, massaging his temples, “call me something other than ‘great’ Please? Why can’t I be the decent Darlington Blade, or the fine Darlington Blade, or the fairly convincing Darlington Blade? Why must I always be ‘great’?”
Cunningham shook his head sadly. He answered Pryce’s miserable acrimony with honesty. “You brought it upon yourself, sir,” he informed him. “Even in the short time that I have been privy to your actions, you have more than lived up to your reputation.” He stopped to seriously consider Pryce’s declaration. “Perhaps you would consider not being so great all the time,” he decided. “I’m sure the populace at large would eventually offer you a more fitting sobriquet”
Pryce stopped rubbing his head long enough to look at the jackalwere out of the corner of his eye. “That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”
The jackalwere merely stood there in his somewhat shabby attire, looking for all the world like a butler who had seen better times. “You have truly great insight, sir, but, no. I am being completely forthcoming in my appreciation.”
“Thank you,” Pryce said, finally able to sit up. He looked askance at the jackalwere, realizing that a full belly gave the beast a much greater control over his animal nature. Then Pryce attempted to peer into the darkness again. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir. All I know for sure was when I found you.”
Pryce looked at him patiently. “And when was that?”
“Quite some time ago, sir. At least the time it takes for the moon to travel an eighth of the way across the night sky.”
Pryce touched his head gingerly, carefully trying to find the wound. “You’d think that being out that long would at least give me some night vision,” he complained, then sucked in his breath when his finger found the lump. “Or maybe brain damage.”
“Are you all right now, sir?”
Pryce carefully outlined the damage on his head. “Thankfully the philosopher Sante was also something of a healer,” he said. “According to him, a blow to the front of the head stuns a person. A blow to the back of the head renders one unconscious. A blow to the side means death.” Pryce cautiously noted that his wound was between the back and the side of his cranium. “Apparently my assailant couldn’t make up his mind.”