The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  “There is time and you will do this,” Skan hissed. “I have a prrresssent to deliver to Ma’ar. From Urtho.”

  Snowstar blanched, and his eyes dropped to the box around Skan’s neck as if he had only just this moment noticed that it was there. Skan was gambling on a number of things. The Black Gryphon was known as Urtho’s confidant; Snowstar should assume that Urtho’s request was an order, and that it was not meant to be implemented at some far future date, but now. Snowstar knew very well what kind of shape Urtho was in; he would not risk a single precious moment by going to Urtho or sending a messenger to confirm what Skan had just told him. He might even assume that Urtho had ordered Skan to find Snowstar, knowing that the Adept would be one of the few at full strength and capable of building a Gate that far away.

  Snowstar’s pupils widened and contracted, as all those thoughts—and, likely, a few more—raced through his mind.

  “Right,” he said then, still pale, but grimly determined. “I won’t Gate you into the Palace itself, if that is agreeable to you. I have no idea who or what Ma’ar has stationed where. I could Gate you into the servants’ quarters only to find out that he’s got it full of soldiers or traps. But there’s one place I know very well where you won’t find much opposition, and the little you find, I suspect you can silence.”

  “The stables,” Skan breathed, amazed at Snowstar’s quick thinking.

  “Exactly.” Snowstar shoved at Skan again, but this time to make some room to work, and Skan gladly moved over. “I’ll position the Gate to come out of the last stall in the back; it’s a big loose-box, partitioned off from the rest with floor-to-ceiling walls, and with no outside windows. We never put a horse in it unless it was one that was so sick it needed dark and quiet. No grooms are likely to change that.”

  It sounded perfect, and Skan nodded. “Put it up, and bring it down once I’m through,” he said decisively. “Then get yourself out of here.”

  “What about—” Snowstar began, then saw the look in Skan’s eyes. The rage Skan held bottled up inside must have been blazing. Snowstar grew just a bit paler, then turned away, raised his hands, and began.

  The Adept had decades of practise to refine and hone his craft; the Gate went up with scarcely a ripple in mage-energies. Skan did not even wait to thank him; clutching his precious burden with one foreclaw, he dove through to the other side.

  This is poorly planned, stupid gryphon, but there isn’t time. Urtho can’t die without knowing Ma’ar’s dead and gone. You don’t do helplessness well at all. And if you can’t save Urtho, you can still do something.

  He landed, feet skidding a little in the straw, in the dark and empty loose-box. As Snowstar had guessed, it had not been used in so long that the straw covering the stone floor smelled musty and was full of dust. He suppressed a sneeze, and moved cautiously to the door.

  He listened carefully, all senses straining against the darkness.

  Odd. Lots of voices, and the sound of something struggling. What did they have penned up in here—some kind of feral stallion?

  “Are you sure that’s going to hold the beast?” The voice was doubtful, and very frightened. “I tell you, orders or no orders, if that thing breaks free, don’t think I’m going to stand here and try to stop it!”

  The crack of a hand on flesh, and an exclamation of pain.

  “You’ll do as you’re told, and like it, coward!” a second voice growled. “If I tell you to stand there and let the thing take your arm off, you’ll damned well do it!”

  Not a stallion then. A bull? Some new monster Ma’ar just dreamed up?

  A muttered, sullen curse; the sound of spitting. Heavy boots, walking away. More struggles; chains rattling, muffled thuds, more mutters, a stream of ill-wishes directed against the second voice, his family, and all his progeny to come.

  The thin, high wail of a young gryphon.

  “Faaaather!”

  A voice he knew! Kechara!

  He pushed against the stall door, and it swung wide while he stepped out and mantled. His eyes locked with those of one poor, spotty-faced groom clutching a pitchfork in one hand, a bloody rag held to his mouth with the other. The boy couldn’t have been over sixteen. He took one look at Skan, went pale as milk, and fainted dead away.

  Skan stepped over him, and looked into the stall he’d been guarding.

  There were two canvas-covered bundles there—one thrashing, one whimpering. The whimpering bundle was the smaller, and the whimpers were definitely in Kechara’s voice!

  How did she—never mind. Conn Levas or Shaiknam, or both. Quickly, he squeezed into the stall, but he did not free the little one. Not yet. The larger bundle of the two also smelled of blood and of gryphon, and it was a scent that he thought he recognized.

  “Hold still,” he whispered. “It’s Skan.”

  The bundle stilled, immediately. He took a moment to examine the situation.

  Chains wrapped around the bundle, but they were not fastened to the stall itself. If he could get the gryphon inside to bend a little, he might be able to slip one loop off, and that would give him enough slack to undo the whole thing without having to unlock it.

  “Can you bend this way?” he whispered harshly, pushing down on what he thought was the back of the gryphon’s head. It must have been; the place bent over in response to his pressure, and he was able to work the loop of chain off as he had hoped. Once he had the slack he needed, two more loops followed, and he worked the entire chain down, with the squirming assistance of the gryphon inside.

  Now he could slit the canvas bag and see if the contents were who he thought it was. He ripped open the canvas with a slash of his fist, and a head popped out—a head covered in an enormous version of a falcon’s hood, with the beak tied firmly shut.

  He pulled off the bindings, and the beak opened.

  “Damn it, Skan,” Aubri croaked, in a whisper no louder than his had been, “you took your own sweet time getting here!”

  * * *

  It took both of them to convince Kechara that she had to be quiet, but for once Ma’ar’s men had done them all a favor. They had cut off all the primaries on both her wings and Aubri’s, and in Kechara’s case, that meant she wasn’t tripping over her own awkward wings.

  Kechara wasn’t at all clear on how she had gotten there, but the picture in her mind, projected strongly, was of a blurred Conn Levas offering something that smelled lovely. Skan assured her that he had “gone away” and that Skan had made certain he wouldn’t come back.

  Not in this lifetime, anyway.

  Aubri was a lot clearer on what had happened to him, and kept his explanation down to a terse couple of sentences. He only wanted to know one thing.

  “Urtho?” he asked, with a sideways glance to see if Kechara was listening.

  Skan closed his eyes, letting his grief show for just the briefest of moments, and shook his head.

  Aubri’s beak clamped shut, and when Skan opened his own eyes, the broadwing’s eyes were blazing as red with madness as any goshawk’s.

  “I got Conn Levas,” Skan said, around the lump of rage and grief in his own throat. “This will take care of Ma’ar. If we can get it to him.” He tilted his head to one side. “I have to admit, I was told that I’d have a count of a hundred to get away, and then this thing will make Jerlag look like a campfire.” He shook his head. “If you can think of any way you can get yourself and Kechara out of range…”

  Aubri’s pupils dilated, and he produced a harsh bark of a laugh. “On clipped wings? I don’t think so. Besides, all I ever asked was to go down fighting. I’m sorry about the little one, but this is going to be clean, right?”

  He nodded. “As clean as fire. And I can still send you both into the Light if all seems hopeless.”

  As you’ve done too many times before—Urtho, why must we feel these burdens? Why?

  “Well,” Aubri rumbled. “You need me. Bet we can even find a way Kechara’ll be useful. And if it gets Ma’ar…” Aubri’s s
avage grin and the scrape of his talons on the stone told the rest. “And—ah, demonsblood, Skan, you always were the luckiest son of a vulture I ever saw. Your luck, you’ll find a way out for us. I’ll take my chances with you.”

  Skan let out the breath he had been holding in. “Well,” he said lightly. “That was the hard part. Now the easy part.”

  “Which is?” Aubri asked, as Kechara gave a breathy squeal of glee and pounced on something. She stuffed it in her mouth and looked up innocently, the tail of a rat hanging out of one corner of her beak for a heartbeat, before she swallowed and it vanished.

  Skan looked cautiously around the corner; the doors to the stable stood open wide, and the apparently deserted stable-yard stretched between them and the Palace kitchens. “Oh, it’s nothing much,” he replied, offhandedly. “Just getting into the Palace and the Throne Room.”

  * * *

  The last Tower door had been opened; there were still books and devices here Urtho wished he could save, but the vital things had been carried off. He had persuaded Vikteren and the rest to leave. Now there was only the small matter of hanging on, living every possible second, for every second meant more time to ensure that all of his people who could, would reach safety.

  The Tower echoed with the whisper of air through doors long locked, and the occasional thud of something falling, echoing through stone corridors suddenly more empty than imagination could bear. In all of his life, Urtho had never felt so alone.

  He had never expected to die alone, much less like this. At least the mages and Healers had taken all the pain, blocked the hallucinations and the convulsions, and left him only with growing weakness.

  He was so tired, so very, very tired…

  No! He had to fight it, to stay conscious, awake! Every heartbeat was vital!

  All we have done, and all I have learned, and I cannot slow the progress of my own death by even a candlemark.

  He had never thought much about revenge, but now he burned with longing for it. Revenge—no, I want to protect my people, my children! And when the Tower goes, I want it to be something more than the end, I want it to mean something, to accomplish some purpose! He had always hoped, if it came to that, he would be able to lure Ma’ar, or at least some chief mages of Ma’ar’s, into the Tower-turned-trap. He’d planned for that, all along; a desperate gambit that, if nothing else, would keep Ma’ar so busy cleaning up the damage that his children and his people would be able to get far beyond Ma’ar’s reach or ability to find.

  Now, when he died, the Tower would die in an expanding ring of sound and light, and it would be no more than the most impressive funeral pyre the world had ever seen—

  —wait a moment.

  Something stirred, under the morass the poison had made of his mind. An idea, and a hope. Ma’ar cannot know that Conn Levas succeeded. What would happen if I challenged him?

  There was a permanent Gate, a small one, big enough only for one human at a time, not more than a room away. It would take no effort at all to open it. A moment of clear thought, and it could be set for the Palace, the Throne Room. Urtho had used it to step directly from his own audience-chamber into the King’s—an impressive bit of nonsense that never failed to leave foreigners gaping and a little frightened. That was how he had gotten to the Palace the night that Cinnabar had summoned him; he had opened a larger Gate elsewhere for Skan. He hadn’t been certain what the effect of trying to squeeze through a too-small Gate might be, and that had not been the moment to find out.

  The odds are good that he’ll be in the Throne Room, waiting to hear from his army. What if I opened that Gate and challenged him to come over? A fierce and feral joy flooded him, and for the first time he understood how his gryphons felt at the kill. I open the Gate; he can’t fight me through the Gate, he has to come over. I close it. He can’t re-open it while I keep him busy, and by the time he gets his own Gate up, I’m dead. And so is he. If I were alive, I would never consider it—but I am dead already.

  That terrible joy gave him the strength to rise to his feet, stagger into the next room, and take his place on his own, modest version of a throne. Hardly a throne at all, really, just a large, comfortable chair, raised off the floor on a platform about half a stair-step high. He had never seen any reason to build a dazzling audience-chamber; everything in the small room was made of old, time-mellowed wood. On the few occasions that he had needed to impress someone, he’d transformed the whole place with illusions. Much cheaper, and much easier to clean.

  He gasped with effort as he stumbled up onto the platform and lowered himself down into his throne. The exertion left him dizzy and disoriented for a moment; he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there was a faint haze of rainbow around everything.

  The hallucinations, or what’s left of them. I don’t have much time. If this doesn’t work—at least I tried. And Skan can make his own try, someday. That in itself comforted him, a little. Skan would get to safety, plot and plan with the sharpest minds of the Kaled’a’in, and make his own attempt. Ma’ar had not, and would not, win. Not while there was a single gryphon or Kaled’a’in left to oppose him.

  He stared fixedly at the ornamental arch across the room from him, an arch built right into the wall, that seemed only to frame a shallow, purposeless nook. He wrapped his mind and his fading powers around the mage-energies woven into wood and stone beneath, and twisted.

  Within the frame of the arch, the blank wall writhed, then turned into a swirling haze of colors, like oil on water, for just the barest instant.

  Then the colors darkened, steadied—and Urtho looked across the leagues into the Throne Room of the Palace of High King Leodhan, a massive room constructed of six different kinds and colors of the rarest marbles, a place that seemed vast even when it was packed full of courtiers. Now it held only one man, but that man had presence enough to fill it.

  Ma’ar stared fixedly at the Gate that had suddenly opened up in his Throne Room, a Gate he clearly had no notion ever existed. He had not been born a handsome man, but over the years he had sculpted his body into the image of a young god. His square-jawed face, with precisely chiseled cheekbones and sensuous mouth, framed with a mane of hair of dark copper, topped a body that would be the envy of any warrior in his ranks. All that remained of the old Ma’ar were the eyes: small, shrewd, and of an odd yellow-green.

  “Kiyamvir Ma’ar,” Urtho said genially. “It has been a very long time.”

  Ma’ar recovered his poise much more quickly than Urtho would have credited him for. “Urtho.” He leaned back in his throne, a real throne, and much more impressive than the alabaster bench the King had used. This one might not be solid gold, but it certainly looked as though it was, and the single red-black ruby over Ma’ar’s head, carved in the shape of the head of a snarling cat, was twice the size of the largest such stone Urtho had ever seen. “Have you called on me to offer your surrender?”

  Urtho smiled gently. “Not at all,” he countered. “I recall that you used to enjoy a gamble. I am offering you just that.”

  Ma’ar barked his laughter. “You? And what have you to offer me that I cannot take?”

  Urtho waved, a gesture that made him dizzy again. “Why, this. I’m sure you realize that I’ve had as much carried away as I could—but I am sure you also realize that there is far more than could ever be carried away. I’m sure you also realize that what I did at Jerlag, I can do here.”

  Ma’ar’s face darkened, and his lips formed a soundless snarl.

  “However—” Urtho held up a finger to forestall any reply. “I’m proposing a challenge. The prize—the Tower and everything that’s left. If you kill me, I obviously cannot trigger the destructive spells.” And let’s hope he hasn’t figured out, as Conn Levas did, that it isn’t a spell that does the destruction, it’s the lack of one. “You have the Tower and everything you want. If, on the other hand, I kill you—well, I suspect that your underlings will immediately begin fighting among themselves, and leave me
and mine alone. The bickering is inevitable, and I will have protected my own.”

  Ma’ar frowned; but he was obviously intrigued. “You underestimate what I have done here, Urtho. I took a weak land, torn apart by internal quarreling and wrecked by the greed of shortsighted idiots who thought no further than their own fat profits. I forged it into an Empire that will live long beyond me, and I intend to live a very long time! What makes you think I would risk all that for your stupid wager?”

  Urtho leaned forward in his chair, ignoring another wave of dizziness, and spoke two words. “Knowledge. Power.”

  Then he settled back, and closed his eyes. “Think about it, Kiyamvir Ma’ar. You win, or I do. All the knowledge, and all the power. I can afford to wait, but feel as though I should retire. Your army is on the way, and I prefer to reset this Gate to—somewhere else, somewhere very warm, and leave your army with an unpleasant surprise.”

  He slitted open his lids just a little, and saw to his satisfaction that Ma’ar was staring at the Gate, chewing his lip in vexation.

  He’s going to do it!

  * * *

  “I always said you were the luckiest—” Aubri muttered, before Skan hushed him.

  “It’s not luck,” he muttered back. “It’s memory. Cinnabar used to play with the Princes, and she showed me all the secret passages. I took a chance that Ma’ar wouldn’t have found them all, and that I could take care of the traps he put in the ones he did find.”

  He didn’t like to think of how Cinnabar had shown him all the secret passages; she’d impressed them directly into his mind, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Nor had the circumstances been pleasant—she’d put him in charge of searching the passages for that damned dyrstaf, because he was the only mage there she could do that to.

  She took the human-sized passages, and I took the ones big enough for a gryphon…

  He shook off the memory; it didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was how many guards Kiyamvir Ma’ar had with him in that Throne Room.

  Please, please, please, oh Lady of the Kaled’a’in, make him so arrogant that he does without guards entirely! Please… The gryphons didn’t have a deity as such, and this was the first time he’d ever felt the urgent need to call on one. The gryphons had only had Urtho and themselves.