Ten: Storm Strike
“Moira, wait!” Wiz ran up the path after her. She kept walking, eyes straight ahead.
“Okay,” Wiz said defensively, as he trotted along beside her. “So it got a little out of hand.”
“A little out of hand?” Moira screamed. “A LITTLE out of hand. Ohhh . . . This is beyond all your stupidity. Not only do you learn nothing, you cannot even be trusted to keep your word.”
“Now wait a minute . . .”
“Get back to the keep. You must be kept mewed for your own safety and ours as well.” She threw him a contemptuous glance. “Tomorrow I will destroy your tools before they wreak more mischief.”
“Destroy it? But I was right!”
“Go!” Moira commanded with a hefty shove in the small of his back. Wiz stumbled forward and gave his beloved a wounded look.
“Must I take you by the ear?” she demanded. “Now go!”
###
Shiara was collapsed in a chair with Ugo hovering about her. Her skin was ghastly pale and she was breathing in quick shallow pants.
“Magic,” Ugo said. “Big magic and close pain her.”
Wiz started guiltily. Of course. That much magic must have hurt her terribly. Seeing Shiara was even worse than Moira’s anger.
“It seems that our Sparrow adds untrustworthiness to his other accomplishments,” Moira said tightly. “He has been using your ‘purely theoretical discussions’ to learn to practice magic.”
Ugo threw Wiz a look of poisonous hate.
Shiara clenched her fists on the chair arms so hard her knuckles turned white and levered herself erect. “Go to your room and remain there,” she commanded. “We will decide what is to be done with you tomorrow.”
“I’m getting damned tired of being ordered around,” Wiz said.
“Your feelings and the state of your soul are of very little concern to me right now,” Shiara said. “Now go. Or must Ugo escort you?”
“Look I’m sorry . . .”
“That too is of no concern to me. Ugo!”
“Okay, okay,” Wiz backed off hastily as the wood goblin came toward him with fire in his eyes. “I’m going.” He spun and started for the stairs.
###
“What was that?” The voice of Toth-Set-Ra boomed out in the head of the new master of the Sea of Scrying.
“I do not know, Dread Master. Something to the North . . .”
“Imbecile! I know that already.” Toth-Set-Ra’s mental “voice” settled back into normal tones.
“It appears to come from a quiet zone in the Wild Wood.”
There was a thoughtful pause. “Yessss. I know of the place. Send word that it is to be investigated. I want to know what caused that.”
Toth-Set Ra turned back to the grimore he had been perusing. His hand caressed the elaborately illuminated parchment made from human skin but his eyes would not focus on the glowing runes that squirmed wormlike across the page. The end to you and all yours the demon’s voice echoed tinnily, mockingly, in his ears. A bane, a curse a plague upon the race of wizards. Magic beyond magics.
He slammed the book shut and stalked out of his chamber. “Send Atros to me by the Sea of Scrying,” he flung over his shoulder to the goblin guards.
The watchers around the rim of the great copper bowl bowed low as he swept into the vaulted stone chamber and fell back respectfully as he approached the edge. Toth-Set-Ra ignored them and stared deep into the sea.
The waters within were stained the color of weak tea by the blood of virgin sacrifices but the map graved on the bottom was easy to read. Glowing gems marked the cities of the World. A blood-red ruby, pulsing fitfully with inner light, represented the City of Night on the southern shore of the Freshened Sea. To the north and inland was the blazing blue sapphire which represented the headquarters of the Council. Here and there other gems winked green or blue or red or orange, their depth of hue marking the strength of the magics to be found there.
The effect was breathtaking, like a handful of gem-stones strewn carelessly across the bottom of a rocky pool. But Toth-Set-Ra paid no heed. His trained senses searched for bright spots not marked with precious stones. Those were places of new or unexpected magic.
There, well within the line setting the Wild Wood off from the Fringe was a glowing white pustule on the reddish copper surface. It was fading, the wizard saw as he bent his full attention to the spot, but it had been strong. Very strong and uncontrolled while it lasted. In the center of one of the quietest places in the Wild Wood, too.
He scowled again and reached out, weighing and savoring the magic that marked this place. It was powerful, that he knew almost without bothering to look. He sensed the disturbance in the weather, but he could see no purpose in it. There had been a mighty wind, but nothing seemed to have been accomplished.
His scowl deepened. Strange. Great spells were almost always supposed to accomplish great purposes. The spell itself was strange as well. It was as if a mass of minor spells had suddenly worked in the same direction.
Toth-Set-Ra was reminded of a marching column of army ants. Individually insignificant, they assumed enormous power because they all moved together. He savored the image and decided he didn’t like it at all.
Behind the wizard, the door opened and Atros entered quietly. He spoke no word and Toth-Set-Ra paid him no heed. Heart’s Ease. Yes. That was the place. Heart’s Ease.
Then Toth-Set-Ra’s fist smashed to the rim of the bowl, making the waters within quiver and the magical indications dissolve. He whirled to face his lieutenant. “Storm that place,” he commanded, his brows dark and knit. “Bring me the magician responsible for that magic.”
“Dread Master . . .” Atros began.
“Do it!” Toth-Set-Ra commanded. “Do not argue, do not scruple the cost. Do it!”
The big dark man bowed. “Thy will, Lord.”
“Alive, Atros. I want that magician alive.”
“Thy will, Lord.”
Toth-Set-Ra turned back to the Sea of Scrying, searching it with his eyes, trying to pry more meaning from it. Atros bowed again and backed from the room, considering the ways and means of accomplishing the task.
A purely magical strike was clearly impossible. The Quiet Zone lay well beyond the barriers set up by the Northerners. Magical assault would be detected immediately and countered quickly. If he was willing to spend his strength recklessly he could undoubtedly penetrate the Northern defenses, but he might not have time to find and seize the magician before the counterassault.
Fortunately, thought the big wizard, I have minions in place. The old crow thought always of magic, but there are other ways to accomplish things. This time magic would be the mask, the shield; the cloak flourished in the opponent’s face. The dagger behind the cloak would use no magic at all.
Even as he strode down the corridor, he began issuing orders into a bit of crystal set in his cloak clasp. Before he had reached the end of the hall those orders were being carried out.
###
As Wiz was making his sullen way up the stairs at Heart’s Ease, the City of Night erupted into a hive of activity. Lines of slave porters toiled down the gloomy narrow streets, bent under the burden of provisions and weapons. Apprentices, wizards and artisans all jostled each other and the slaves as they rushed to carry out Toth-Set-Ra’s commands.
In the bay, ships were hurriedly rigged and loaded. In the mountain caves where the dragons and flying beasts were kept, animals were groomed, harnesses checked and packs were loaded.
Within minutes of Toth-Set-Ra’s order, the first flights of dragons were away from their cave aeries high on the mountain that loomed over the City of Night. They issued from their caverns like flights of huge, misshapen black bats. Their great dark wings beat the air as they climbed for altitude and sorted themselves into squadrons under the direction of their riders.
In a tower overlooking the bay, the busiest men of all were the black-robed master magicians who would coordinate the attack and make the magical thrusts. Down in the great chantry beneath the tower, brown-robed acolytes and gray-robed apprentices turned from their magical work and set to preparing the spells the black robes commanded. Astrologers updated and recast horoscopes to find the most propitious influences for the League and those which would be most detrimental to the Council.
Further below, in the reeking pits where the slaves were stabled, slave masters moved among their charges, selecting this one and that to be dragged out struggling and screaming. Whatever the spells, they would require sacrifices.
Far to the North, a spark appeared in a crystal.
“Lord, we are getting something,” the Watcher called out as the pinpoint of light caught his attention.
The Watch Master hurried to his side. “Can you make it out yet?”
The Watcher, a lean blonde young man stared deep into his scrying stone. “No Lord, there is too much background, or . . . Wait a minute! I think we’re being jammed.”
“A single source?” The Watch Master bent over to peer into the crystal.
The Watcher frowned. “No Lord, it is spread too wide.” The Watch Master straightened up with a jerk.
“Sound the alarm. Quickly!”
###
On a cliff overlooking the Freshened Sea, the Captain of the Shadow Warriors reviewed his troops’ dispositions and permitted himself a tiny smile of satisfaction.
For months he and his men had camped undetected on the enemy’s doorstep. They used no magic in camp, save for the communications crystal the commander wore about his neck. Even their great flying beasts were controlled, cared for and fed without magic. Instead their magicians had spent their time listening intently to the world-murmurs of magic from the Northerners.
For months the men had subsisted mostly on cold food. Cooking was limited so the smoke might not betray them. In twos and threes they had penetrated miles inland, observing and sometimes reporting back to their masters in the City of Night.
Thinking on that, the Captain frowned. This was not supposed to be an assault mission. But now his patrols had been hastily consolidated into a strike force and ordered to penetrate a Quiet Zone to assault a castle and capture the magicians laired there.
The message he received was as short as it could be so the Watchers of the North would not intercept it. Burn the keep called Heart’s Ease and bring the magicians there alive and unharmed to the City of Night. That was all, but for his well-trained band that was enough.
He had no doubt his men could do it. The castle defenses were minimal and although his men did not normally use magic, they had it at their call.
In the forest clearing three flying beasts waited. Their gray wrinkled skin bore neither hair nor scales. Their long necks and huge blunt-heads thrust aloft as their great nostrils quivered in the wind. The huge batlike wings were unfurled to their full three-hundred-foot span and the animals moved them gently up and down at the command of their mahouts. Unlike dragons, these creatures were cold-blooded. They must warm themselves up before they could fly. Even from this distance the captain could smell the carrion stench of the animals.
Ritually, the Captain checked his weapons. The long, single-edged slashing sword was over his back with the scabbard muffled with oiled leather at the mouth. His dagger and axe hung at his waist. The contents of the pouches and pockets scattered about his harness: poisons, powders of blindness, flash powders and pots of burning. A blowgun lay alongside his sword and the needles were sheathed in their special pouch. Everything was muffled and dull. There was nothing on him or his men to shine, clink or clatter and almost nothing of magic.
Their enemies might see the Shadow Warriors but even the Mightiest of the Mighty would be hard-put to sniff them out by magic.
The Captain moved to his flying beast and an aide formed a stirrup so he could mount. Behind him the five Warriors of his troop had settled themselves onto the beast’s broad back, their feet firmly placed in the harness.
The animal shifted slightly as the Captain settled in and opened its gaping mouth to honk complaint. But without a sound. Its vocal cords had been cut long ago so it might not betray itself in the presence of the enemy.
The Captain looked over his shoulders. Three other beasts were visible with their warriors aboard and their mahouts holding the reins without slack. To the side one of his sergeants signaled that the beasts out of his sight were also ready. The Captain nodded and raised his arm in signal.
In unison great leathery wings beat the air, raising flurries of dead leaves and dust as the animals clawed for purchase in the sky. Once, twice, three times the animals’ mighty wings smote the air and then they were away, rocking unsteadily at first as each animal adjusted its balance, and then climbing swiftly into a sky only touched by the rising moon. From other clearings on the forested top beasts rose by twos and threes to soar into the clouds. As they climbed they sorted themselves out into four formations of threes. They might have appeared to be on a mass mating flight, save that not even these creatures mated so deep in winter.
The long, snakelike necks stretched forth and the animals squinted to protect their eyes from the searing cold.
The cold bit sharp and fierce at the Captain despite his gloves and the mufflerlike veil wound around his face. He flexed his fingers to keep them supple and otherwise ignored it. Cold, hunger and hardship were always the lot of the Shadow Warriors and they were trained from childhood to bear them. Again he considered the plan and nodded to himself.
A glance behind him showed the Captain that the other warriors on his beast were flat against the animal’s back, partly to cut the air resistance and partly to stay out of the wind.
As the gaggle of flying beasts scudded through the sky, the Captain kept a close watch for landmarks. With the force under a strict ban on magic, he could not use more reliable methods. His trained senses told him there was little magic below or around him to conceal any use of magic by the Shadow Warriors.
Far below a lone, lost woodsman caught a glimpse of the horde as it hunted across the sky. With a whimper he thrust himself back into a bramble thicket and hid his eyes from the sight.
As the Shadow Warriors flew east the other parts of the operation fell into place.
###
The stone hall was boiling with activity. All along the line Watchers called out as new magic appeared in their crystals. Reserve Watchers rushed to their stations. Magicians whispered into communications crystals. Wizards took their stations, ready to repel magical attacks and to add their abilities to those of the Watchers. Finally, from their laboratories and lodgings, the Mighty began to arrive. The room filled with the nose-burning tang of ozone and shimmers of magical force.
Bal-Simba entered with Arianne at his side. He stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying the organized chaos, and then moved to the great chair on the platform overlooking the room.
On the wall opposite a map sprang into existence showing the Lands of the North and much of the Freshened Sea. Already there were six arrowheads of red fire approaching the Southern Coast. Six strikes coming in at widely spaced points, two of them obviously directed at the Capital. Here and there nebulous patches of gray and dirty green glowed on the map where the Sight would not reach.
Bal-Simba leaned forward in the chair to study the pattern of the attack.
“What do you make of it?” he asked his apprentice.
“If half of that is real,” she said, gesturing to the colors on the map, “it is the biggest attack the League has ever mounted. Do you suppose that has something to do with the great disturbance in the Wild Wood this afternoon?”
“No, that was something else.”
“This is powerful, but it seems—disorganized—as if it was hastily put together. Also, we have had no reports from the South to suggest an attack was being readied.”
Bal-Simba waved her to silence. “Let us watch and see if we can find the underlying pattern.”
Down in the pit three sweating magicians worked to keep the map updated. To the right of Bal-Simba’s great chair on the platform five of the Mighty sat in a tight ring around a glowing brazier, mumbling spells. Now and then one or the other of them would throw something on the fire and the smoke and the reek would rise up to fill the chamber. Down in the earth and up in the towers, others of the Mighty worked alone, weaving and casting their own spells to aid the defense.
“Seventh group coming in,” sang out one of the Watchers. “Airborne. Probably dragons.”
Bal-Simba studied the configuration written in lambent script on the wall.
“Launch dragons to intercept. Tell them not to stray over the water.”
“Dragons away, Lord.”
“Time to intercept seventeen minutes,” another talker reported. Others huddled over crystals keeping contact with the dragon force.
“Porpoises report three krakens moving toward the Hook. Formation suggests they are screening something else.”
Around the room crystals glowed green, red and yellow as the talkers contacted the forces of the North and prepared for the struggle. From the most battle-ready guard troops to the hedge witches in the villages the word went out. All the North braced to receive the assault.
But no one thought to tell the inhabitants of a small keep hidden away in the Wild Wood.
###
High above the Capital the Dragon Leader climbed for altitude. Reflexively he checked the great bow carried in a quiver by his steed’s neck. The fight was unlikely to close to a range where arrows would do any good, but it gave him a sense of security to know they were there. Outside the freezing wind tore and whistled about him, but inside his magically generated cocoon a warming spell kept him comfortable. He would have to turn that off as he approached intercept to present minimal magical signature and to make his detectors more sensitive, he knew, and he hated that more than he feared dying.
Echeloned out below and behind him were the seven other dragons of his squadron. He spared them a glance as he checked his communications with the other dragon flights and with the Watchers back in the high hall of the keep.
His dragon’s wings beat air as the beast clawed for height. With each stroke the Dragon Leader felt muscles pulse and jump beneath his thighs. With gentle leg pressure he turned his mount south, toward the Freshened Sea and the swiftly moving misty patch on the magic detectors that might indicate an air attack coming in. Reflexively his head swiveled, seeking any sign of his foes.
The moon was bright and just beginning to wane. The silvery light picked out the surface of the clouds, creating a wonderland of tops and towers, nubbly fields and high streaming pennons beneath him. Here and there the contorted fields of clouds were marked by pools of inky black where an opening let the light stream through to the ground below.
The Dragon Leader took it all in as he scanned the surface. He was less interested in the beauty than in what the clouds might conceal. As the first group off, his troop had drawn high cover—flying above the clouds to seek out the League’s agents. Other troops were at work beneath the clouds while the clouds themselves were searched magically. Somewhere ahead of him was the enemy—or what appeared to be the enemy, he corrected himself. It was not unknown for the League to enhance a bat or a raven to make it look like a ridden dragon. The Dragon Leader bit his lips and kept scanning the cloud tops.
“Time to intercept twelve minutes,” a voice said soundlessly inside his skull. He did not reply.
One of his men waved and pointed below. There silhouetted against the pale cloud tops, were four dragons skulking north. The Dragon Leader did not need to call the Capital to know they were not in the Council’s service.
He rose in his stirrups and looked behind him. The rest of his troop had seen the enemy too and were waiting expectantly for his signal.
The Dragon Leader switched off his warming spell, gestured down at the other dragons and patted the top of his head in the time-honored signal to dive on the enemy. A gentle nudge with the knees, a slight pressure on the reins and his mount winged over to dive on the invading force.
The Dragon Leader was well into his dive when the four dragons below him winged over and scattered into the clouds. The leader swore under his breath and signaled his squadron to break off the attack. We’ll never find them in that, he thought. Sharp eyes in that patrol. It was almost as if they had been warned.
As if they had been warned . . .
“Break! Break!” he screamed into his communications crystal. But it was already too late. The hurtling shapes plummeting down from the moon-haze were upon them and two of his dragons had already fallen to the ambush.
Abstractedly, the Dragon Leader realized he had been suckered. A flight of enemy dragons had snuck in earlier, perhaps laying silent and magicless on the ground until it was time to climb high above the chosen ambush site. Then they had waited until the flight committed to the attack on the decoys. Another part of his mind told him that if they succeeded in eliminating the top cover the lower squadrons would be horribly vulnerable to dragons diving out of the clouds.
But that was all abstract. The reality was the twisting, plunging battle all about him. In the distance he saw the flare of dragon fire. Another circle and he saw a ball of guttering flame dropping into the clouds. A dragon and probably a rider gone. He could not tell whose.
The Dragon Leader leaned forward against the neck of his mount and pressed his body close to cut air resistance. His dragon was diving with wings folded for maximum velocity. Now it was a simple speed contest. If he could plummet fast enough he had a chance of reaching the dubious safety of the clouds. If not, man and beast would be incinerated in a blast of dragon fire or dashed to pieces on the cold earth below.
The clouds reached out for him, first in wisps and tendrils and then as a solid, gray mass. He was in them now and hidden from sight. Magic could find him, but unless the searcher was a wizard, he would need to scan the clouds actively. He doubted his enemies would try. Dragon riders had a saying: He who lights up first gets smoked. The Dragon Leader had no intention of using active magic.
Enough hiding, he thought, and turned his mount in a wide, climbing arc. His attackers had not followed him into the cloud, which meant they had probably gone hunting other prey. Even if they had not, they would be loitering on the cloud tops, without speed or height advantage. Fine with him. The Dragon Leader had lost his wingman in the first stoop and he was spoiling for a fight.
His mount was tiring, but the Dragon Leader urged her up out of the clouds, trying for enough altitude to rejoin the battle.
His magic detector screamed in his ear and he jerked under the impact of the searching spell. Too late he saw his mistake. The enemy dragon had been laying for him, not down on the clouds but well above with no magic showing. Now he was trapped. The other was too close and had too much maneuvering ability to lose in the clouds again and there was no time to turn into the attack.
In desperation the Dragon Leader threw his mount into a tight spiral dive and clawed his bow and a heavy iron arrow free from his quiver. Over his shoulder he could see his opponent hurtling down on him, with speed, altitude and position all on his side.
At the last instant he kneed his mount and jerked the reins hard over and down. The dragon dropped her inside wing and dived even more steeply. A brilliant burst of dragon-fire destroyed his night vision and bathed his face with heat. Then his first opponent hurtled past, so close they could almost have touched, and was lost in the pearly clouds.
His opponent’s wing man had more time to react. He had slowed his dragon, great wings beating mightily to brake his dive and he had used the time to line up. Worse, the Dragon Leader was in the process of recovering from the sideslip and could not maneuver.
But shooting dragon fire is not an easy matter and the wing man was not as skilled as his leader. The blast of blinding, scorching heat only touched the Dragon Leader and his mount. He smelled burned hair and knew it was his. His dragon bucked and roared in pain, but both of them were still in the air. Meanwhile the wing man was diving past, still trying to slow and turn on his opponent.
It was a fatal combination. The Dragon Leader loosed a shaft as the enemy swept by. It was nearly a right-angle deflection shot and the mechanics worked against him as much as they did against the enemy. But he felt a tingle in his hands as the arrow leapt from the bow and he knew the arrow had seen its target.
The shaft sensed the enemy dragon and adjusted its trajectory accordingly. The tiny crystal eyes on either side of the broad barbed head both acquired the dragon and guided the arrow unerringly. The range was so close that the wing man’s magic detector barely had time to begin to sound and he had no time at all to maneuver out of the way.
The shaft struck deep into the dragon’s neck with force that drove it through scales and muscle until it struck bone. The beast arched its neck back and screamed in mortal agony while its rider clung desperately and despairingly to its back. Then the arrow’s spell took hold and the dragon went limp.
Below him the Dragon Leader saw the shape of the other dragon twisting dark against the gray-white clouds. As it disappeared into the cloud bank there was a faint pinkish glow marking the dragon’s last feeble gout of flame.
The Dragon Leader craned his neck, swiveling and searching for others in the night sky. There were none and no sign of battle anywhere. The moonlit cloud field was as quiet and serene as if nothing had happened here.
But it had happened, the Dragon Leader knew. His own scorched skin told him that. Soon there would be pain as the nerves started to complain of destroyed tissue. Now it was merely heat. The wheezy breaming and weary movements of his mount’s great wings told him she too had suffered from the other dragon’s fire. And worst, there would be at least three empty roosts back at the aerie tonight. That hurt more than the burns ever would.
“There will be other days,” the Dragon Leader promised through cracked and blistered lips as he looked to the south. “There will be other days.”
###
It was late and the fire in Wiz’s chamber had long since burned to cold, gray ash. He sat by the fireside, now lit only by the silver moonlight pouring in through the window, watching cloud shadows make patterns on the pier glass.
Damn fools, he thought for the tenth time. Can’t they see how valuable all this is. All right, so I made a mistake. But don’t they see its worth?
“We’ve had this conversation before,” the mirror told him.
“But they’re wrong,” Wiz said. “Damn it, they are wrong and I’m right. I know it.”
All evening he had alternated between anger, chagrin and self-pity. Each cycle was less satisfying than the one before and by now he was just going through the motions.
“That’s not really the issue, is it?” the mirror spoke quietly in Wiz’s mind. “If it was you wouldn’t be telling me all this again, would you?”
“Can’t they see . . . ?”
“Can you? What is really eating at you?”
“They were wrong!” Wiz protested tiredly. They were wrong and he was right and that was all there was to it.
“Is it?” the mirror asked. “Is that all there is to it?”
Wiz didn’t answer. Magic or no, the damn mirror was right. There was more than that.
He had been convinced he was right and he had done what he always did when he believed that he went ahead without worrying about what others thought.
“And this time?” the mirror prompted him.
This time others had been involved, he realized. There was no way they could not be.
Working magic wasn’t like sneaking some extra time on the computer to try a new hack. If this barfed, the results were a lot worse than crashing the system. It wasn’t just his life he was messing with, but theirs as well, and not surprisingly they resented it bitterly.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” the mirror asked. “Do you like having people mess with your life?”
“All right,” Wiz said tiredly. “You’re right. I was right too, but I was wrong in the way I went about it. I should have tried to work with them rather than ignoring them. Maybe I should have convinced them, won them over, before proceeding. But dammit! They didn’t have to make such a big deal of it.”
“But you promised,” the mirror said soundlessly.
That stopped him. To these people promises were something important. You kept your promises here because they had a force more binding than contracts on his home world.
People were so much more sincere, so much more real here. Surrounded by magic and the stuff of fantasy the people were more intensely human than the people he had known at home.
Or was it just that he cared more about them? He did, he realized. Not just Moira, but Shiara and Ugo, too. Even the tiny unseen folk of the forest.
He’d hurt them by betraying their trust and that, in turn, had hurt him. He was unhappy here so he’d tried to do what he always did—take refuge in technical things, to bury himself in not-people. Only this time it had only involved him more closely with the people around him.
Slowly, slowly, William Irving Zumwalt began to think about what it meant to consider other people’s feelings.
Perhaps he was right about the magic language. But that didn’t make what he had done right. Magic wasn’t a computer system where he had the expertise to follow up his idea.
What was it one of his professors used to say? Always use the right tool for the job. The right tool to repair a television set is a television repairman. The right tool for this job was a wizard. He should have talked to Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty and let them follow through. But he had wanted to be somebody here so he had charged ahead like some damn user with a bright idea. And very predictably he had screwed things up and caused a lot of people trouble.
Let’s face it. I’m not a magician and I never will be. I can’t be anything special here. I’m just me and I have to live with that and make the best of it.
Bal-Simba had said that too. The black giant was wise in ways more than magic.
So no more magic, Wiz resolved firmly. I’ll explain my idea and that will be the end of it. Then I’ll chop the wood and learn to live as best I can. Perhaps someday, they’ll forgive me for what I did. In the meantime . . .
He grinned. In the meantime, I accept being a sparrow and quit trying to be an eagle.
He looked at the mirror. But all he saw was the dim reflection of a moonlit window and he heard nothing at all.
Wiz rose from his chair, drained, exhausted and his knees aching from sitting in one place too long. Time for bed, he thought. Way past time. You’ve got a life to build tomorrow.
There was a “whoosh” overhead followed by several bumps on the roof.
A confused bat? He hesitated, then picked his cloak off the chair and went into the hall. It was doubtful anyone else had heard and he wanted to see what the noise was.
His shoes padded lightly on the stone corridor. All the castle was deathly still. He heard no more thumps. At the end of the corridor was a short flight of stone steps to the roof door. Wiz put his foot on the first step up.
The door burst inward with a crash and black-clad warriors poured down on him. Too stunned to shout, Wiz flinched back from the black apparitions.
He found himself staring into merciless dark eyes and felt the prick of a dagger at his throat. He was forced back roughly against the wall and held as the rest of the storming party rushed by, but otherwise he was unharmed.
The Shadow Warriors’ orders were explicit seize the magicians and burn the castle. Whether the other inhabitants lived or died was not in their orders and was thus of little concern to them. Wiz was subdued and silent, so he lived.
The Shadow Captain spared a long searching glance for the prisoner as he went by. The man so expertly pinned against the wall was peculiar, but he was clearly not a magician. There was neither trace nor taint of magic about him.
It never occurred to the Shadow Captain that someone might be working magic second-hand or that there was no more reason to expect a magic sign on such a one than to expect machine oil on the clothes of a programmer who wrote control software for industrial robots. The notion was so utterly alien that Toth-Set-Ra himself had not considered it. The Captain’s orders covered only magicians.
Swiftly and silently, the assault force padded down the stairs. In teams of two and three, warriors checked every room on every level, but the vanguard never slowed. Wiz was dragged along by a knot of Shadow Warriors to the rear of the party.
They were down on the second level when they met their first opposition. It was Ugo, coming up the stairs with a tray balanced on one hand and a branch of candles in a candelabra in the other.
The Shadow Warriors flattened against the wall as the flickering light preceded the wood goblin onto the landing. When he reached the top of the stairs the warriors closed in.
Unlike the human, Ugo did not freeze when the black shapes came out at him out of the shadows. With a roar he threw the tray at the closest men and rushed the others brandishing the heavy brass candelabra. He made three steps before a blade lashed out. The wood goblin gasped, staggered and took two more steps toward the Shadow Warriors. This time three blades licked evilly in the candlelight and Ugo shuddered and fell. The candles flickered out on the cold stone floor.
The door on the landing flew open and Shiara and Moira appeared, outlined by the hearth fire in the room behind them.
“Ugo. What . . . ?” Moira gasped at the sight of armed men in the hall and tried to slam the door, but the warriors bounded forward, pushing the women back into the room.
Instinctively, Wiz tried to break free of the warriors holding him.
“Wiz!” Moira screamed as she saw a knife flash high and then descend at his back, but the warrior had flipped the blade so he struck only with the heavy pommel. Wiz collapsed instantly, held up only by the warriors.
The Captain’s gaze flicked about the room. The one on the floor was not a magician. He knew of the white-haired one and confirmed that she was not practicing magic. That left the shorter red-haired woman and she was definitely a magician. He gestured and his men closed in on her.
If it had been in the Shadow Captain’s nature to question orders he might well have questioned this one. However Shadow Warriors exist to obey, not question.
“Sparrow? Wiz?” Shiara asked plaintively. “Moira what have they done to Sparrow?”
But Moira did not answer. Three warriors closed in on her and Moira screamed and struggled in their grasp. Wiz lay like a sack on the floor and Shiara stood helpless, groping about her. Then one of the warriors broke a seed pod under Moira’s nose. She inhaled the dark, flourlike dust and sagged unconscious.
At a gesture from their leader, the Shadow Warriors turned and filed out of the room. Two of them carried Moira and two more stood in the door menacing the unconscious man and the blind woman lest they should try to follow. Then they too turned and ran fleetly down the stairs.
As they passed through the great hall, the last of the Shadow Warriors tossed small earthen pots in behind them. The pots shattered against the walls and floor and burst into searing, blazing flame that clung and clawed its way up the wooden beams.
The wood was dry and well-seasoned. The flames ran across the painted rafters and leaped into the shingles. The hangings caught and flared up as well.
###
“Lord, they’re pulling back!” the Watcher sang out. Bal-Simba scowled and shifted on his high seat. To his left the magicians continued their mumbling and gestures.
The runes of fire on the wall told the tale. The League forces were veering off, turning away to the south. Here and there the skirmishes continued as forces too closely engaged to break off fought it out. A few Northerners pursued, but cautiously, aware that every league to the south strengthened their opponents’ magics and weakened their own.
Even the clouding magic was ebbing away.
“What damage?” Bal-Simba asked. Down in the pit a talker passed her hands over her crystal again and her lips moved silently.
“Three villages burned, Lord. Alton, Marshmere and Willow-by-the-Sea. A hard fight at Wildflower Meadows where a band of trolls gained the wall and torched some houses. There are others but I cannot see clearly yet. And the battle casualties, of course.” She shrugged. The last were not her concern.
Bal-Simba frowned. “Little. Surprisingly little for such an effort.”
Arianne looked up tiredly. “We were too strong for them,” she said.
“Or they did not push too strongly,” the High Lord said half to himself. He turned quickly to his talker.
“Get reports from all the land. I want to know what else has happened.”
“Isn’t this enough Lord?” asked Arianne.
“No,” Bal-Simba told his apprentice grimly. “It is not nearly enough. I would learn the rest of the price we paid this night.”
###
“Sparrow? Sparrow.” Dimly and faintly Wiz heard Moira’s voice calling from a great distance. He stirred, but his head hurt terribly and he just wanted to sleep.
“Sparrow, wake up, please.” Moira’s voice? No. Shiara’s. He was laying on the floor and there was smoke in the air. He pushed himself to his hands and knees. His head spun from the effort.
Shiara helped him stand. “Quickly,” she said. “We must leave.”
“Moira?” Wiz asked weakly.
“Outside! Hurry.”
“I won’t leave Moira.”
“She’s not here. Now outside.” Wiz clasped her hand in his and started for the door.
As he led the way down the stairs he stumbled on a small limp form in front of the stairway.
“It’s Ugo,” he said, bending down. He gasped as he saw the horrible gaping wound that nearly severed the goblin’s head from his shoulders.
Shiara knelt and moved between him and the body. She gently cradled it in her arms and the ends of her long silver hair turned dark and sodden where they touched the goblin’s breast.
“Oh, Ugo, Ugo,” she crooned. “I brought you so far and for so little.” By the flickering orange light Wiz could see the tears streak her face.
“He’s dead, Lady.” A fierce, hot gust brought choking gray straw smoke and the pungent odor of burning pine up the stairwell. “Come, Lady,” Wiz tugged at her sleeve. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Shiara raised her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes we must.” She picked up Ugo’s body, supporting the nearly severed head with one hand, cradling him as if he were a baby. For the first time Wiz realized how small the goblin had been.
With Wiz leading, they groped down the stairs, gasping in the heat and blinking from the thick smoke. Wiz guided Shiara through the blazing Great Hall, past the overturned furniture and patches where the floor burned fiercely. As they skirted along one wall, they passed the window seat. Wiz saw that the chair he had moved so long ago lay on its side roughly where he had dragged it.
They picked their way over the shattered remains of the door and out into the courtyard. The cold night air was like balm on their faces and they sucked great, gasping lungfuls, coughing and hacking up dark mucus that reeked of smoke.
Behind them the flames consumed Heart’s Ease and shot high into the sky, grasping for the pitiless stars.