5
The sudden shrieks from Velvet and Satin brought Silvas and Carillia out of sleep immediately. The first cry of the cats had hardly begun before Silvas sprang up out of sleep, instantly alert, already rolling toward the side of the bed and starting his response.
“Eyru, reygu mavith. Eyru, sprath tourn.” The first spell of defense was out of his mouth as he started to move. The walls of the bedchamber developed a soft luminescence, a pale silvery glow that would silhouette any foe of flesh or spirit that might intrude while it shielded the beings who belonged in the Glade from the eyes of outsiders.
Silvas quickly pulled on a robe and buckled his knife belt around him, automatic reactions. He ran toward the door and reached out with his mind to gauge the nature of the assault. He had no doubt that the alarm meant an attack. Satin and Velvet ran ahead of Silvas, and Carillia was at his heels. At the door Silvas grabbed a seven-foot quarterstaff. The staff, with a ferrule of silver at one end and one of iron at the other, was useful in certain magics, and it was also handy for dealing with physical enemies.
On the run, Velvet and Satin quit caterwauling. The humans behind them were much slower, but the cats paused at every corner to look ahead and to wait. They knew where to go. They led the way up to Silvas’s conjuring room without instruction. The silvery luminescence was brighter there. The cold white glow of the walls was bright enough to read by. The crystal pentagram in the floor gleamed like icy fire.
Silvas plunged straight to the center of the pentagram, and his arrival there increased the light in the room. His incantations increased as he cast his mind out, his searching thoughts chasing away like ripples in a pond as he sought the source of the alarm and broadened the protective shield around him, and around the Glade. Silvas could sense his soldiers hurrying to their posts. They might have little strength against magic, but sorcerers and demons often came in the company of physical warriors.
Carillia and the cats had steered their way around the pentagram. Even the cats knew that they did not belong within its lines at a time like this. Like Carillia, Satin and Velvet went to protected neutral zones near the walls, into crystal circles laid into the floor like the lines of the pentagram. Unlike the white glow of the pentagram, the circles glowed a light pink. There was a series of these rings around the room. Carillia went to one. The cats moved to circles at either side of her. The animals sat back on their haunches, claws extended, eyes fixed in intense feline concentration, staring past the edges of the pentagram in the center of the room.
When the screams of the cats wakened her, Carillia hadn’t stopped even to put on a robe. She stood naked in her circle, body tensed, leaning slightly forward as if ready to leap at an attacker or meet his charge. Her lips moved quickly as she uttered silent chants of her own. The look on her face was one of single-minded intensity. She stood as ready to defend herself as Silvas and the cats did, and nothing about her suggested any doubt about her ability.
Outside, the thunder started with a soft rumble and grew louder as it pulsed for many seconds before the first bolt of lightning streaked past the window, so close that it seemed certain that it must have actually struck the Glade. More lightning came. The thunder continued to echo off itself. Heavy rain pelted the wall and came in through the glassless window. The lightning and thunder were no mere spectacle. The storm surrounded the Seven Towers, but even so, it served more as a frame to what happened inside. The glow within the conjuring room faded and pulsed with each shock. Another lightning bolt struck close to the keep. Its report was so loud that it momentarily drowned out the sounds of Silvas’s chanting and the renewed screams of the cats.
The brimstone smell of the lightning found its way into the conjuring chamber with a strength that was almost overpowering—too strong, too intense to be only physical. The lights in the room flared and then seemed to reverse themselves: the silvery glow became an inky black luminescence, providing pale silhouettes against the dark glow. But there was no loss of vision for Silvas and his companions.
“It comes,” Silvas said.
Renewed thunder covered his words, but Carillia and the cats either heard him anyway or got the message in more direct fashion. The cats bared their teeth. They no longer bothered to scream their alerts. Now they hissed a warning for whatever was coming.
The storm outside ended—or at least it was blocked from the awareness of those inside the conjuring chamber. The danger was closer now, and much greater than that of lightning.
Silvas raised his staff in both hands, parallel to the floor, chest high, and extended it toward the window. Flickers of light and dark flowed through the window and filled the room, the light bleaker but more intense than lightning. Unaided eyes could never hope to adapt to the strobing of blinding light and eternal blackness that came and went in cycles much faster than the eye could blink. Motion seemed stopped by the rapid alternation of light and dark. Thunder rolled continuously, no longer connected to individual flashes of lightning. It grumbled from the depths, then crescendoed into a deafening roar, with the next wave building over the dying echoes of the last.
Sparkling outlines of demonic figures appeared within the room as burning lines that seemed to mute the storm in the chamber without really lessening its fury. The bodies and faces of the demons became more visible during the dark. The flashes of light could not obliterate their forms, though. A smell of rotten eggs and burning rock built within the chamber. Terror flowed from the figures, a visible effluence, and a new sound of ethereal laughter, intimidating enough to make the soul quaver.
Silvas faced the two demons squarely while he chanted continuously in the language of power. He wove his shields and attempted to weave nets to capture the illusive figures that dared to challenge him in his own lair. Each attempt to snare the demons failed, though, and sparked new peals of their horrible laughter.
“You feeble mouse. Your nets cannot touch us,” one of the demons screamed. Each word was ringed with scorn and echoed with laughter. The faces of the two demons broadened and grew, becoming larger than the bodies. The mouths gaped open to show razor-sharp fangs and gullets full of the fires of hell. Heat flowed out and over Silvas, singeing the hair on his arms.
Despite the heat pouring over his face and arms, Silvas felt ice grip at his feet, locking them in place. A chill breeze blew up under his robe at his command, a shrinking, tightening wind. He touched the iron end of his staff to one intersection of the pentagram, and cold fire flared up, momentarily overriding the strobing of light and dark that had ushered in the demons, chilling the fires they breathed, freezing the flames like the steam of breath on a cold morning. The demons’ laughter faded with the blaze and returned as that cold glare died away and the flickering regained its dominance.
The demons either came closer to the pentagram or grew larger again. Their outlined figures made it impossible for Silvas to judge which. He increased the pace and volume of his chants. The walls of the chamber seemed to fade and disappear, no longer competing with the flashing that supported the manifestations of the demons. Silvas found himself standing on what appeared to be a mountain peak that towered so far above the rest of the world that nothing else was visible. He stood on a small flat area that protruded into infinity. He was barely aware of the presence of Carillia and the cats.
The duel consumed him.
Silvas focused the lines of force that rose from his pentagram. The only constant now was the pattern of glowing crystal around his feet. The lines were clear, bold. The planes of force that rose from them shaded into ultraviolet, beyond the vision of anyone without the magic to see them. In the center of the pattern, Silvas remained conscious of himself and of the long staff in his hands. The quarterstaff was almost part of him now, a bar joining his hands.
Pain reached fiery fingers into his brain, pulling and twisting, stretching his mind out of shape. His body seemed ready to evaporate beneath his tortured head. He heard Bay neigh loudly, a battle challenge, not a cry of fright. For an instant Silvas could see the giant horse rearing in the stable, front hoofs pawing at the dark, caught up in some duel of his own. Bosc was at Bay’s side. The little groom had knives in both hands, and the thin blades had an icy glow of their own.
That image disappeared but not permanently. It kept flickering back, part of the general strobing that continued to surround Silvas. But he could not see the enemy that Bay and Bosc faced.
More visions flashed in to seize Silvas, forcing themselves on him. He saw himself staked out on the ground, tiny insects by the million marching in columns onto his body. Each bug took a single bite of his flesh and marched off the other side. Mote by mote he was being consumed, a meal that would last for an eternity.
Off to the side, Silvas saw a new image of himself appear as the first faded into the dark. Knives raked his body, digging deeper with each pass, turning thin scratches into deep channels of purple blood that flowed and ebbed in tides of their own, growing into sea waves of impossible dimension, drowning him in his own blood, pulling him under.
Silvas felt himself being drawn forward, pulled from the center of his pentagram toward the lacerated vision of his body. The ice around his feet started to crack, stabbing his ankles. He fought the pull, reaching within to focus his chants and energy more tightly. He forced the images of the two demons to reappear, and with them in sight he could hold his position.
The demons came back larger or closer once more. There was detail to them now, dimension. Their horns curved forward, black and sparkling. The teeth in their gaping mouths were long wedge-shaped daggers. In place of the earlier fire, black and purple blood welled up in their throats and overflowed, dripping from their swollen lips. Their laughter was even more grotesque than before, gurgling through the blood. It folded itself around Silvas, pressed in on him.
Once more Silvas dropped the iron ferrule of his staff to an intersection of the pentagram. This time he didn’t just hold it to bring light back to the confrontation. He went down on one knee, his hands sliding along the shaft as he lunged, dipping the silver ferrule toward the demon that seemed to be closer. When the silver of the staff touched the ghostly outline of the demon, bright yellow fire flamed and the demon’s laughter turned, for an instant, into a scream of agony. The demon withdrew and Silvas stood again, bringing his staff back up.
“Eyri, reyqi mavith,” Silvas shouted, turning the tense of his spell. “Eyri, sprith cyclane.” He turned the nightmares that showed him being eaten or sliced to bits and threw them back at the demons, reversing the time flow to show him being reassembled. For a moment more the demons seemed to retreat before his counterattack, but not for long.
Silvas saw himself again, a larger than life figure hurtling toward him. Black claws ripped at his face, reached into his mouth, down his throat. Demon claws pulled him inside out. Bloody innards dripped and flopped as they were hauled out of his mouth. Fires licked at the inverted mess that was supposed to be him.
The wizard felt his body tremble. The clash of power around him was peaking. He had to focus so tightly on his chants that he had little attention to spare for the well-being of his body. This has to end soon, he thought.
A warm breeze started to circle the pentagram, almost too soft to detect at first, hovering at the edge of sensation. More images came and went around Silvas, distracting him long enough that he stumbled and had to scramble to keep from falling.
He saw Carillia and the cats still within their protective circles, but isolated—their circles now cylindrical prison cells. The cats were tense, poised, still ready to spring at any physical enemies who dared to approach. Carillia looked just as intense, as feral as the cats, almost as if she too were ready to leap at any enemy who came within reach. The look on her face was of fury and bloodlust. No trace of her native beauty showed through the battle face.
Silvas saw Bay’s front hoofs strike out again. This time they hit some target that remained invisible to the wizard. Bright sparks flowed from the contact. Then Bosc pounced on another invisible foe. His knives flashed up and down. The blood that spurted out was all too visible.
Silvas took a deep breath, concentrating as fully on that as he did on his spells. He felt the ice form around his feet again, protecting him, reaching up his naked legs to knees and thighs. The warm wind around the pentagram grew in strength and speed. It started to whisper its presence.
The demons moved closer. This time Silvas was sure that they were approaching, not merely expanding … thought they also seemed to be getting larger. The demons slavered blood and continued to laugh, a triumphal sound now. They seemed oblivious to the wind swirling behind them.
“We’ve come for your soul, you pathetic insect,” they screamed in unison. Blood sprayed from their mouths. Their teeth clashed, grinding against each other as they sharpened themselves with every motion.
The laughter of the demons became a physical force that Silvas could feel trying to dislodge him, trying to push him from the protection of his pentagram. The laughter pulsed and swayed, forcing Silvas to lean against it as he might lean into a gale. The laughter hid the sounds of the warm wind contracting around the pentagram, curling in toward Silvas in ever tightening coils, urging the demons forward, edging them closer without their awareness.
At the instant that the demons were pushed within the outer precincts of the pentagram, Silvas erupted into action, chanting words of power that burst the ice from around his feet and legs. He scraped the silver ferrule of his staff across the crystal lines of the pentagram, then picked it up and swung it so rapidly that the line of the staff blurred into a plane. It appeared to catch fire as it passed through both demons, severing their exaggerated heads from their bodies. The outlined figures fell and flamed as they touched the crystal lines of the pentagram. The lines that had formed their figures danced a final agony like fat in a skillet, and shriveled into lines of ash. But their final screams persisted for many seconds after they vanished.
Then there was peace in the conjuring chamber.
Silence.
The strobing of light and dark ended.
The pearly glow returned.
Silvas took a deep breath and let his eyes drop shut for an instant. Only for an instant. But a force too powerful to resist grabbed him. Silvas felt himself being tossed head over heels, spinning into nothingness. He opened his eyes and saw crowds of flaming rainbows spinning in contrary orbits around him. Silvas extended his arms, hoping to slow his spinning and bring some order to … to whatever was happening to him. He noticed that he no longer held his staff. He chanted, but his spells sounded hollow, without the power they should possess. The words were empty, meaningless sounds without their magic.
Is this defeat? Have I fallen to destruction? Silvas turned the questions over in his mind, surprised that he could accept the possibility so easily. That brought a smile to his mind, if not to his face. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.
Slowly, though, fear did rise in him. The spinning journey through a kaleidoscopic sky seemed to continue for an eternity. Silvas fought his way through the fear when it started to press against him.
This doesn’t feel like death. It doesn’t feel like the tortures of hell. The muscles of his face tightened up. Whatever those might feel like. The only vague ideas he had of what those might feel like were those of the Church … and his magic had carried him too close to the center of all power for him to take the public teachings of the material church literally.
Every effort Silvas made to free himself from the trap failed. Worse, his failures were so complete that they offered not the slightest hope that he might be able to extricate himself. He tumbled and twisted, carried by a power he couldn’t even touch to gauge. Time lost all meaning. Silvas watched, and delved within himself to search for any piece of knowledge that might give him a little leverage. Time had to pass, but soon Silvas had no idea how much time might be involved. There was nothing to mark it against.
What of Carillia and the others? he wondered. If he had earned this—punishment?—then what of the others?
He shouted and his words echoed, hollow, mocking. His voice was distorted beyond recognition. His spells and charms were stripped of force and hurled back in his face, as unsettling as the mocking laughter of the demons he had vanquished in his conjuring chamber.
Or did I really vanquish them? Silvas wondered. It had certainly looked as if they were destroyed. Or did they merely disappear because their work was finished, because they had trapped me? He worried at those questions for another time and a half without finding any answer he could have confidence in. It felt like victory when my staff severed their heads. His power had worked then, and that power was reliable.
… At least, it had always been reliable before.
The rainbows started to pulse, growing and shrinking in size and intensity, giving Silvas some measure of elapsing time. He couldn’t be certain of the scale he needed to compare it to, but the pulses did seem closely timed to his heartbeat … or his heartbeat was being tuned to the rainbows.
“It doesn’t feel like demonic force,” he said, but his words still sounded hollow, alien.
Silvas’s tight cartwheels muted into long, rolling tumbles. The rainbows that flashed past his eyes blurred into huge swatches of blues and greens that slowly developed textures and came into focus, if only momentarily. Silvas felt dizzy for the first time. His eyes could hold no target. As his spinning slowed, his stomach felt more ready to rebel than it had when the motion was at its most frantic. He closed his eyes again for a moment, fighting to control the nausea, and he fell.
Up and down had returned, and Silvas knew that he was falling. Before he could open his eyes, he struck the ground—feet first, sending an agonizing shock up his legs and spine, and then he tumbled. His knees went limp and he rolled, ending up on his back, the wind knocked out of him.
Silvas had no choice but to lie still while he caught his breath. There was a brilliant blue sky above him, a clear, sunlit sky. He gradually became aware of a gentle, spring-like breeze, full of the scents of blooming flowers and growing plants. Still his first thought was to conjure his way home … but his chants remained empty, devoid of power. He reached for his belt, for his dagger, but even the knife was gone.
The dizziness was slow to recede. Silvas pushed himself to a kneeling position and had to rest before he could get to his feet. He was at the edge of a forest clearing, looking along the arc where the pine trees ended. He turned, half a step at a time, fighting to keep his balance.
He jumped when he saw an old man sitting in the center of the clearing.
Silvas faced him. The man was fifty yards away, sitting motionless on a rock that seemed to mark the exact center of the clearing. An old man was Silvas’s first impression, but he could find no way to justify it. He stared, trying to focus on the man so he could see him more clearly, but even the gift of telesight was gone. There appeared to be something fuzzy about the stranger’s appearance. Silvas could make out no real details about him—not hair color or how lined and wrinkled his skin might be.
But Silvas retained the impression that the man was old.
The stranger raised a hand and beckoned. The gesture was slow but not tentative. Silvas looked around quickly. There was no one else in sight. The wizard walked out into the clearing, slowly, hesitating often.
The old man, if he was indeed old, let his arm drop to his lap. He wore an undyed robe, too loose to show whether he was stout or thin. Silvas saw no weapon, but the stranger didn’t come into better focus as Silvas approached. His face, his outline remained blurred, as if there were layers of fine gauze between him and Silvas.
“Who are you?” Silvas asked, stopping ten feet from the old man.
“I am me.” The voice was as featureless as the face, leaving no hint of accent or mood. “As you are you, Henry, son of William.”
Silvas felt a chill strangling his spine. He had shared his true name with no one since childhood, had not even spoken it aloud in all the years that had passed since he first entered the Glade. The last mortal to know his true name was Auroreus, and he was long dead.
“Where am I?” Silvas asked.
“Why, here with me, of course,” the stranger said. “Come closer. I mean you no harm.”
“Why am I hear?” Silvas asked, taking only one step closer.
“You are here because I have a story you need to hear,” the stranger said. “Come sit by me.”
“If you mean me no harm, why have you tried to strip me of my power?” Silvas took one more step, debating what he should do. The stranger could not be powerless, not the way his form remained so indistinct. But could Silvas overpower him physically?
The stranger laughed.
“Tried?” He laughed again. “I have done nothing to your power. But power such as yours simply does not work in this place.” He gestured to the grass next to him. Silvas took a deep breath, then sat where the stranger had indicated.
“What kind of story?” Silvas asked. He felt the urge to do something, but there seemed to be no alternative. He didn’t know where he was or who the stranger might be. His power didn’t work. He could do nothing but listen and hope that the stranger would send him home when the tale was ended.
“Would it sound too incredible if I started this with ‘Once upon a time?’—No? Good, because that is how this story should start.” The stranger gave Silvas no chance to offer his opinion.
“Once upon a time there was a loving couple. First love, lasting love. They were so wrapped up in making each other happy that little else ever intruded on their thoughts. Now, you might think that this would make for an ideal life. And it did seem ideal to them too, for the longest time. They were happy and aware of their bliss. Joy radiated in all directions, making life so much more pleasant for everyone who was touched by that happiness. But.”
There had to be a “but,” Silvas thought.
The stranger spoke slowly, softly. Silvas, with nothing better to do, tried to focus on the voice, but the words and intonation were as hazy as the man’s appearance. What manner of power do you control? Silvas wondered. The answer had to lie in the story. Silvas blinked. Staring at the stranger was hard on the eyes.
“This couple had many children over time,” the stranger continued. “Their love was exceptionally fertile. Unfortunately—and here is the tragedy of this love story—they were so consumed by their passion for each other that they had little time for the children their love created. Those children grew up neglected and feeling that their parents did not care for them at all.” He paused. “That was not far from the mark, but it was not a hostile disregard. The parents simply did not make room in their love for the score of children they conceived.
“An even score. Twenty. This parental neglect colored the outlook of the children. In some cases it warped them totally. They were forced upon their own resources much too young. Some of them grew up bitter, filled with a hatred that started with their parents and expanded to take in most of creation.
“Not all were that bitter, but none escaped completely. They were all jealous of each other, interested mostly—or only—in sating their own appetites for pleasure. The children were rivals in everything, trying to prove themselves—to themselves and to the parents who spared them so little thought through the years.
“No matter what the children did, no matter how outrageous or epic their actions, their parents seemed to pay too little attention. The appearance was not deceiving.”
The stranger paused and moved a hand to his face. Silvas couldn’t be certain, there was still the haze obscuring the man’s face, but he thought that the stranger might be wiping a tear from his eye.
What is this all about? Silvas asked himself. He could find no point to the story.
“When the parents finally did begin to notice the competitions among their children, they were so disgusted with what they saw that they withdrew even further, relying only on each other, doing everything but openly disown the children. They were too ashamed to take that step, blaming themselves—with appropriate but belated vision—for the way their sons and daughters had turned out. And the children competed all the more fiercely, until competition became the paramount fact of their existence.”
The stranger paused again and stared at Silvas. The wizard had a fleeting impression of blazing eyes and deep sadness before the veils fell into place again and the stranger resumed his narrative.
“Until death was less to be feared than defeat. By that time the parents could do nothing but stand by while their children fought one another. And once the dying started …” The stranger shook his head slowly.
Silvas squinted. Somehow he’s talking about the gods. But what is the point? What am I supposed to learn from it? Silvas understood that the lesson had to be vital, something that would bear directly on what he was going to face in Mecq.
It did give him some confidence that the old man would return him to Mecq, though.
I have to puzzle this out quickly, Silvas thought. But when he raised his head to ask a question, the old man was gone. There was no trace of him.
Then the green of the forest and the blue of the sky started to spin around Silvas, faster and faster. He felt himself caught up in the whirlwind of nature and there was an instant—or an eternity—of nothingness, and when he opened his eyes again, he was lying in the center of the pentagram in his conjuring chamber.