by Lyndon Hardy
Jemidon ignored the threat and slumped back against the wall. Now that Farnel was back in the competition, he had somehow to figure a way for them to win. Indeed, his very freedom now depended upon it. But the events of the last day were taking their toll. Jemidon's thoughts were fuzzy and dissolving in a muddle. Fatigue pressed down on him like a great stone. He needed sleep before he could be of much use to anyone.
"Then it is settled." Canthor slapped the table for attention. "These two properties to the trader at once, for which he agrees to mention the incident no further. And all the rest to be decided after a meal or two to repair yesterday's excesses." He waited a moment and looked at each master, but no one protested. With a nod to his men, he left; one by one, the others silently followed. In a moment, only Farnel, Jemidon, and Delia remained in the chamber.
"And what is the rest of your plan, quick-witted one?" Farnel growled, "We have done nothing on the battle scene since we abandoned it. There is hardly time to pull it together now."
Jemidon opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. It was probably best if he said no more. In a groggy haze, he followed Farnel and Delia back to the hut.
Jemidon blinked open his eyes. It was evening. He had struggled to keep alert and be of some help when they reached the sorcerer's lair, but finally had succumbed to a deep sleep that had lasted for hours.
He stretched tentatively and then with greater force. He still felt somewhat groggy, but better than before. Slowly he rose to sitting and readjusted the tatters of his tunic over his shoulder. He centered the brandel on his chest and pushed aside his torn cape, which had been balled into a pillow in the corner of the littered floor. Delia saw him stir and stepped between the helmets and maces to his side. She touched his shoulder, radiating concern.
"The swelling is much less," she called out to Farnel, who sat atop a stool on the other side of the hut. "The sweetbalm, despite its age, has done well."
Jemidon reached for Delia's softness, but she gently pushed him away. "There is little time. Even if master Farnel instructs me through the night, we may not be ready." She smiled and slid away. "But he says that I am an attentive pupil, and I think even his spirits rise as we progress."
"Attentiveness is only a part of it," Farnel said. "She has a natural aptitude-an ability for recall as well as enunciation. I have heard of other instances, but never met such a talent before."
"I am the tyro." Jemidon struggled to his feet and tried to shake the iast bit of fuzziness out of his head. "Just a few moments more and I will be able to assist."
"No, it is to be Delia." Farnel's voice was firm. "With her, we just might have a chance after all. Oh, to be ten years younger, lass, with a tyro such as you." He beamed as Delia positioned herself back in the middle of the room. "Gerilac and his followers never would have a chance. Now quickly; the next phrase is but a copy of the previous one with the middle syllables borrowed from the very beginning. Can you feel how it goes?"
Jemidon frowned and tried to figure out what had happened during his sleep. While he pondered, Delia began to rattle off a long string of melody, her voice crisp and pure, like the notes of a harp. Jemidon listened only half attentively at first; then, as she continued, he sagged back to the ground, surprised by what he heard. Most of the charm fragment was familiar, but other parts were new, totally new, phrases that he had never learned in all the months he had studied. Wide-eyed, he looked with respect at the slender form in the center of the room.
"Perfect, perfect," Farnel said. "You know all of the parts. Now we can begin the practice of the complete glamour. Start with Dark Clouds and then slide into Clinton's Granite Spires." He turned and looked at Jemidon.
"She even handles the transition without a flaw. It is a rare talent indeed."
A hint of envy crept into Jemidon's amazement. Farnel had given him no such praise, even after the best of his training sessions. "Why spend time now in instruction?" Jemidon asked. "Should not the master be the one to rehearse for the final performance?"
"My head and stomach are not yet clear," Farnel said. "But it does not matter. With Delia's talent, I am sure she will be able to conduct a winning presentation. And enough of interruptions. Tend to your mending and we will pay attention to the sorcery. After all, I doubt you care to become chattel to either Gerilac or this trader Drandor. It is in your best interest as well that we succeed."
Jemidon started to reply; but before he could, Delia began the charm. Almost involuntarily, he closed his eyes and concentrated on her voice, following the flow, hearing the firm command she gave to the words and phrases. His own chanting, the little vocalizing of fragments he had done, was technically correct, but it was the drone of a scribe compared with the beauty of her song. Even though his eyes were shut, Jemidon felt himself being drawn into the enticing web that she wove with her words. Farnel was right; she was the one who had the talent to achieve their goal. Even if he could perform all that he knew with confidence, his glamours would be pale shadows next to the richness that sprang from Delia's lips.
"How is the effect?" Delia asked when she finished. "I felt none of the increasing resistance that you warned me of. It was no different the third time than it was the first."
"You must have made some small error, as Jemidon did this morning." Farnel frowned. "I detected no fault, but I see no clouds and mountains." He stopped and rubbed his chin. "Perhaps we have proceeded a bit too rapidly. Let me cast the beginning. I think that the churning in my stomach can take on something as simple as that. Listen for a difference, and when I am done, you can continue with the rest."
Farnel climbed down from the stool, Delia replaced him, and the glamour was begun again. Jemidon heard the same words rumble from Farad's throat, heavy with the assurance of a master. But the sorcerer took twice as long to complete the charm, slowing the tempo near the end rather than finishing with a burst of speed. As he said the concluding syllable, a look of puzzlement started to grow on the master's face.
"Strange, I would have expected more resistance," he muttered, "especially with the way I feel." He waved his arm at the far wall. "But at any rate, that is the way the scene opens, and you have heard how it is done. Now, with the setting in place, you can begin to bring in the characters and their emotions."
"I am supposed to see a background on the wall?" Delia asked. "It is the same clutter as before."
"What? Impossible!" Farnel exclaimed. "I have not miscast since I was a tyro. One does not become a master with sloppy technique."
"I see nothing," Delia repeated. "If I squint, then some of Jemidon's scrawls resemble a small ship, but that is all."
"It is the joining." Farnel turned to Jemidon. "Your little theory of patching together the charmlets has a flaw. We must go back to Alaraic's Foreboding and Magneton's Walls of Closure, as I first suggested."
"There is no flaw," Jemidon said. "My analogy with the curves was only a means to see which charmlets to couple together. Once that is determined, the transition proceeds in a standard fashion."
"Then the casting, after all," Farnel said. "The ale has addled my senses more than I thought. I have misremembered some syllable and taught it incorrectly to Delia as well."
"But the charm I tried in the morning was a different one," Jemidon said slowly. "Yet it did not complete either." He frowned and rose to standing, clutching at the coin around his neck and reaching for tendrils of thought that danced just beyond his grasp. There was a puzzle here. He could sense it. And as with Delia's trinket in Drandor's tent, he felt a tantalizing tug, a lure to explore all the facts, to turn them this way and that, and to find the common thread that explained them all.
"No, something else is wrong," he said after a moment. "I can feel it. Somehow, someway, something more basic is at fault. The failures, all of them, are deeply connected. It is not just from lack of precision alone."
He closed his eyes and strained, trying to piece things together, but only incomplete images would form. Miscast spells, whispe
red commands on a rainy beach, competitions for a thousand tokens, an imp in a bottle, and lattices with shiny beads.
"There is not time for another abstract theory," Farnel said after Jemidon did not speak again. "I must recompose the beginning of the presentation and then teach the lass yet another glamour to replace the one that failed."
"No, wait," Jemidon said as a bizarre thought popped into his head. He licked his lips and moved to the center of the room, not quite believing where his logic was leading him. "There is something important here, and it is easy enough to test its limits. Try the first charmlet without the connection. See if it works by itself."
Farnel scowled, then shrugged his shoulders. He turned to face Delia and quickly ran through Dark Clouds. "Well," he said when he was done. "Surely there was no mistake in such a short glamour. Even a beginning tyro can do it."
"Nothing still," Delia said.
"Then the error is in the first," Farnel declared. "Clinton's Granite Spires is the one I remember correctly."
"Cast it as well," Jemidon said. He felt no surprise at the failure. Instead, a cement of conviction began to connect the framework of his ideas.
Farnel twisted his frown even tighter, but carefully recited the glamour. He paused at the finish, as Delia slowly shook her head.
"By the laws, two misremembered!" Farnel pounded his fist against the wall. "Somehow it is Gerifac's doing. He has contrived the whole competition just to get another chance to display his craft against mine."
"Gerilac did not know of Delia and Drandor until this morning." Jemidon shook his head. "No, the explanation lies somewhere else."
"In any case, I must recompose the beginning with some substitutions," Farnel growled. "Do not waste what time remains with irrelevant suggestions."
"And what of the rest?" Jemidon asked with slow de-liberateness, emphasizing every word, his doubts tossed aside. "What of the rest? If the first two have failed, what can you say of the chances of the others?"
"Would you that we fail again? Another prize for Gerilac and more whispers that I can no longer cast a charm?" Farnel snarled in frustration and scooped a dagger from the floor. With a savage fling, he hurled it above Jemidon's head and sent it crashing into the wall. "The hour grows late," he growled, "and it is your glib tongue that has placed us here. By the laws, it is your burden as well to avert the result that surely encloses us in its snares. Stop throwing barriers in the way. If not by charms, then by whatever else shall we enchant the masters?"
"We have a compact," Jemidon said. "I stand by my part of the agreement still. I will help to win the competition, and you will instruct me in sorcery in return." He matched Farnel's angry stare, looking him deeply in the eye. For a long moment, no one moved. Finally the sorcerer turned his glance away, flinging out his arms in disgust.
"And we will accomplish nothing by blind thrashing," Jemidon said. "If we cannot depend upon our charms working, then we must conceive a production that does not use them. We have no choice but to work with what we have."
"A production with no glamours? Impossible!" Farnel snorted.
Jemidon did not reply. His spirits had lifted. He was back in the center of things, part of the solution rather than a hapless bystander, watching others try to unravel problems he had created. If they were to win the competition and save themselves from Drandor or Gerilac, if Farnel were to gain his measure of respect at last, it would be because Jemidon found the key to the puzzle, the means to the end, the plan for their salvation. He was in his element, working with what he enjoyed the best.
Already he had had one flash of insight. Surely another would come soon as well. Slowly he scanned the room, looking for some clue to the way out of their plight. He saw the pikes and long swords stacked in the comer, Delia sitting on the stool in the middle of the room, and, behind her, the walls covered with the outline of their original design. "You said my writing reminded you of a ship," he said to break the tension.
"Over there." Delia pointed. "The one on the left."
"So it does," Jemidon agreed. "But it is quite out of place with the effect we are trying to achieve."
"And an accidental sketch is hardly of sufficient quality for a presentation designed for a high prince," Farnel muttered.
"Although this time it will be for the masters only," Jemidon said. "And they also will know by heart the words that will be-" He stopped suddenly and studied the rough pen strokes that hinted at a galleon on the high seas. Then he smiled. The way to proceed was floating gently in his mind.
"Seascapes, castles, interiors of a palace." He whirled toward Farnel. "Other settings. Can we quickly assemble such properties as well?"
"I have a few stored at the hall from previous years." Farnel shrugged. "And so do my peers. We trade them back and forth as we have need."
"Then let us go and select the best." Jemidon waved at the outline on the walls. "We have until morning to find a substitute for them all."
"But there is no time for me to learn a whole new set of charms," Delia protested. "And they might fail just as surely as the few that I know."
"Practice only what Farnel has taught you," Jemidon said. "You need worry about no more. Your performance tomorrow still must be flawless. Indeed, it remains our hope for winning the prize and keeping our freedom."
CHAPTER FIVE
The Purging Flame
JEMIDON flung open the door to Farnel's hut. Even though he had not stopped to rest since he had instructed Delia to get some sleep, everything was still not quite ready. He looked anxiously at the brightening sky and hurried through the debris that littered the floor between him and the sorcerer's bed. Gently he shook Delia awake.
"It took longer than we thought," he said. "Some of the other sorcerers did not take kindly to Farnel's requests in the middle of the night. He is at the hall trying to put into order what we have already collected."
Delia rose to sitting and stretched. "The list I made for master Farnel before you left," she said after a long yawn. "Did you use it to ensure that a scene was found for each charmlet?"
"Farnel worried about the details." Jemidon shrugged. "For my part, the basic concept was enough."
"Without a plan and attention as things progress, the most brilliant insight produces nothing." Delia shook her head. "My fear of Drandor was overwhelming, yet I did not attempt to flee until I had decided exactly what I would take and knew when he would be preoccupied."
"But despite that, if I had not been on the cliff, you would not have the chance you do now," Jemidon said.
"If not you, then I would have found some other."
Jemidon frowned. Delia laughed as his face clouded over. She stood and smiled. "Indeed you were the one. And please do not think that I am ungrateful."
With a fluid motion, she suddenly clasped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Jemidon blinked in surprise, but then felt his pulse quicken. He stepped forward and drew her close. For a long moment they embraced. Jemidon's thoughts of sorcery faded away. Bodies pressed together, he pushed her toward the bed.
Delia teetered for half a step and then suddenly stiffened. "No," she whispered, "that is not what I meant."
Jemidon stroked his hand down her back, pressing her tighter. He thrust his legs against hers, forcing her another step backward.
"No!" She wrenched her face away and pushed down on his entwining arm. "I have given you all I meant to offer."
Jemidon stopped. He backed away as she smoothed the front of her gown. He looked at the hard lines that had replaced her smile and shook his head. "With the bracelet of iron, surely there have been many," he said. "And after your invitation, what was I to think?"
Delia opened her mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. Jemidon saw the anger that flared out of her eyes and twitched the muscles in her cheeks.
"Gambling in the token markets was a choice I made freely," Delia sputtered at last. "And I admit that I knew what the consequences could be." She waved her arm with t
he bracelet in Jemidon's face. "But despite this, I am still more than a toy to be pawed by an owner and then passed to another when he grows tired. That is my past, not what I will be."
"I have no legal claim over you," Jemidon cut in quickly.
"Nor am I some doxy from the sagas who swoons to do every bidding of her rescuer in boundless gratitude," Delia rushed on, "I am free-willed as much as you. I asked for your help. You gave it without qualification. And I have thanked you. My obligation goes no further."
"A weakness of the moment," Jemidon said thickly, turning away his eyes. He felt foolish that he had misjudged her intent and relied too strongly on some ill-defined feeling that now he could not quite describe. And what would she think of him? Probably as a bumbling tyro from the wheatlands, who thought with his loins rather than his head, or an apprentice puffed with vanity, so sure of his attractiveness that he did not bother to ask.
Jemidon frowned at the direction of his thoughts. And if she did, why was it so important? If Farad's production won the competition, she would be free to go her own way. After that, could it any longer matter?
For a long moment, there was a heavy silence. "Perhaps if I did not indeed wear the bracelet," Delia said at last, "then the feelings that mold me might be different. But the ring of iron is the reality; I cannot deny all the rest that has happened because of it. I feel a bonding to you, Jemidon, but not like that." Her cheeks colored slightly. "At least not now, not yet."
"We still have business together." Jemidon looked back after a moment, trying to speak as if nothing had happened. "For now, our fates are intertwined. And we must rush. Gerilac has already started. Drandor is ready to be second. And the other masters have made it quite clear: if we are not prepared in time, our chance will be forfeited."
"Then let us be off," Delia said. "A meal can come later."
Jemidon started to say more, but hesitated. The moment had passed. There was too much yet to be done. Without speaking, he turned for the door. In a short while, they were on the path of crushed white stones, walking swiftly to the presentation hall.
