The Gate . . .
Just as I remembered it, from Pol’s dreams and from my own fast passage, the Gate loomed huge, threatening and fortunately, closed. It had never been opened upon this plane, I guessed, though its ghostly version had been ajar many times, permitting the passage of sendings, essences, spirits. Had its physical self stood so, it might not be possible to close it again, for I could see how an interpenetration of the worlds would begin, the strangely structured, more ancient forms of that other with its vastly stronger magics flowing through to dominate this younger, magically weaker land, changing it into something of its own image, revivified by the raw, natural forms of this newer place. Stronger in magic, weaker in general vitality. The magic would dominate, I was certain . . .
Pol deposited his burden upon the stone with the aura of death about it. His movements were slow, irresolute, as if he were walking in his sleep. I reached out carefully then, more carefully than anything I had ever done before, and I touched his mind, just skimming his surface thoughts.
He was bewitched. He was not aware of it, but the flame had him in thrall.
I saw no way that I might interfere successfully. I knew without knowing how I knew that the thing was stronger than me. I felt totally helpless as it led Pol about, as it directed him to produce the statuette. I was more than a little pleased when Pol’s power failed and the project had to be abandoned. The flame’s frustration gave rise to the closest thing to joy that I had ever known.
I watched them depart. I doubted that Pol was in any immediate danger, and I wanted to explore the chamber a little further. A large, rectangular piece of morning decorated the wall to my left. I began to feel a fresh premonition, concerning this room.
XV
Pol was awakened from a dreamless sleep by the sound of his cell door being unbarred. At first he felt leaden-limbed, hung over, ragged about the edges of his mind, almost as if he had been drugged. But then, within moments, before Larick had even set foot in his cell, the dragonmark began to throb wildly, heavily, in a way it had never done before, sending an adrenalinlike shock through his entire system, clearing his head instantly, informing him with a sense of wild power unlike anything he had known previously.
“Get up,” Larick said, approaching him.
Pol felt that he could strike the man dead with a single gesture. Instead, he complied.
“Come with me.”
Pol followed him out of the cell, adopting the cumbersome, lumbering gait suitable, he’d judged, for a disguised monster. Through the first window they passed, Pol saw that full daylight now lay upon the world, though he could not see the sun to judge the hour. They took a different route than that upon which he had magically followed Larick the previous evening—different, too, than the way upon which the flame had led him.
“If you cooperate,” Larick said almost casually, “it is possible that you will be released unharmed.”
“I do not consider myself unharmed,” Pol said, mounting a stair.
“Your present situation might be remedied.”
“What’s in this for you?” he asked.
The other was silent for a long while. Then, “You would not understand,” Larick said.
“Try me.”
“No. It’s not for me to explain things to you,” he finally answered. “You will have your explanations shortly.”
“What is the price for betraying the trust of the initiation committee?”
“Some things are more important than others. You’ll see.”
Pol chuckled softly. The power continued to spiral within him. He was amazed that the other could not feel its presence. He had to restrain himself from lashing out with it.
They traversed a lengthy corridor, mounted another stair, crossed a wide hall.
“I would like to have met you under different circumstances,” Larick said then, as they reached a downward stair.
“I’ve a feeling that you will,” Pol replied.
He recognized an area through which he had passed during the night. He realized then that they had come into the northeastern wing of the building. They approached a dark, heavily carved door. Larick moved ahead and knocked upon it.
“Come in,” came a voice slightly higher in pitch than Pol had expected.
Larick opened the door and stepped across the threshold. He turned.
“Come along.”
Pol followed him into the room. It was a study in rough timbers and stone, with four red and black rugs upon the floor. There were no windows. Ryle Merson was seated at a large table, the remains of his breakfast before him. He did not rise.
“Here is that Madwand we discussed,” Larick said. “He is completely docile in all but spirit.”
“Then you’ve got the part that counts,” Ryle replied. “Leave him to me.”
“Yes.”
“I mean it literally.”
Pol saw the look of surprise which widened Larick’s eyes and parted his lips. “You want me to go?”
Ryle’s broad face was expressionless.
“If you please.”
Larick stiffened.
“Very well,” he said.
He turned toward the door.
“But stay within hailing distance.”
Larick looked back, nodded curtly and departed the room, closing the door behind him.
Ryle studied Pol.
“I saw you at Belken,” he said at length.
“And I saw you,” Pol said, returning the older man’s stare. “On the street, talking with Larick, in front of the cafe where I sat.”
“You have a good memory.”
Pol shook his head.
“I can’t recall giving you cause for abduction and abuse.”
“I suppose it must look that way to you.”
“I suppose it would look that way to anybody.”
“I don’t want to start off with you on the wrong foot—”
“I didn’t want to start off with you on any foot. What do you want?”
Ryle sighed.
“All right. If that is the way it must be. You are my prisoner. You are in jeopardy. I am in a position to grant you any discomfort, up to and including death.”
The fat sorcerer rose, moving around the table to stand before Pol. He made a simple gesture and followed it with another, his movements similar to those Larick had used. Pol felt nothing, though he realized what was occurring and he wondered whether the disguise within the disguise would hold.
It did.
“Perhaps you have grown fond of your present condition?”
“Not really.”
“Your face is masked by your own spell. I will leave it in place, since I already know what you look like. I suppose we could start with that.”
“You’ve a captive audience. Go ahead.”
“Last year I heard a rumor that Rondoval was inhabited again. A little later, I heard of the battle at Anvil Mountain. By magical means, I summoned up your likeness. Your hair, your birthmark, your resemblance to Det—it was obvious that you were a member of that House, and one of whom I had never heard.”
“And of course you had to do something about it, since nobody likes Rondoval.”
Ryle turned away, padded across the room, turned back.
“You tempt me to agree and let it go at that,” he said. “But I have reasons for the things that I do. Would you care to hear them?”
“Of course.”
“There was a time when Det was a very good friend of mine. He was your father, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Where did he have you hidden, anyway?”
Pol shook his head.
“He didn’t. As I understand the story, I was present at the fall of Rondoval. Rather than slay a baby, old Mor took me to another world, where I grew up.”
“Yes, I can see that. Interesting. For whom did he exchange you?”
“Mark Marakson, the man I killed at Anvil Mountain.”
“Fascinating. A changeling
. How did you get back here?”
“Mor returned me. To deal with Mark. So you knew my father?”
“Yes. We engaged in a number of enterprises together. He was a very accomplished sorcerer.”
“You speak as if there was a point where you ceased being friends.”
“True. We finally disagreed on a very fundamental issue concerning our last great project. I broke the fellowship at that time and sent him packing. It was then that he initiated the actions which led to the conflict and the destruction of Rondoval. The third party to our enterprise left him when things began looking bad on that front.”
“Who was that?”
“A strange Madwand of great power. I don’t really know where Det found him. A man named Henry Spier. Odd name, that.”
“Do you mean that if you both hadn’t deserted him Rondoval might have stood?”
“I am sure that it would have, in a cruelly changed world. I prefer thinking that Det and Spier deserted me.”
“Of course. And now you want some extra revenge on the family, for old times’ sake.”
“Hardly. But now it is your turn to answer a few. You say that Mor brought you back?”
“ ‘Returned me’ is what I said. He did not accompany me. He seemed ill. I believe that he went back to the place where I had been.”
“The exchange . . . Yes. Were you returned directly to Rondoval?”
“No. I found my own way there, later.”
“And your heritage? All the things that you know of the Art? How did you come by this?”
“I just sort of picked it up.”
“That makes you a Madwand.”
“So I’ve heard. You still haven’t told me what you want.”
“Blood tells, though, doesn’t it?” Ryle said sharply.
Pol studied the man’s face. Gone now was the bland expression which had accompanied most of their earlier exchanges. Pol read menace in the narrow-eyed look now focused upon him, in the rising color and the tightness about the mouth. He noted, too, that one pudgy hand was clenched so tightly that its rings cut deeply into the flesh.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Pol said.
“I think you do,” Ryle replied. “Your father tipped the Balance which prevailed in this world, but did not succeed in his attempt. I stopped him here and Klaithe’s forces finished him at Rondoval. There had to be a reaction sooner or later. Mark Marakson brought it into the world at Anvil Mountain, where you stopped him. Now it must tip in the other direction again—your father’s way—toward total sorcerous domination of the world. It can be stopped for good at this point, or it can go all the way—your father’s dream realized. I have been waiting all these years to stop it again, to end it, to see that it does not come to pass.”
“I repeat. I don’t know what—”
Ryle came forward and slapped him. Pol fought down an impulse to strike back as he felt a ring cut his cheek.
“Son of a black magician! You are one yourself!” he cried. “It can’t be helped! It’s in your blood! Even—” He grew silent. He stepped back. Then, “You would open the Gate,” he said. “You would complete your father’s great work for this world.”
Pol suddenly felt that this was true. The Gate . . . Of course. He had forgotten. All those dreams . . . They began phasing now into his consciousness. With this, a certain wiliness came over him.
“You say that you were party to the entire business, at its beginning?” he asked softly.
“Yes, that is true,” Ryle admitted.
“And you were talking about black magic . . . ”
Ryle looked away, walked back to the table, drew the chair farther back and lowered himself onto it.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes directed toward the remains of his breakfast, “in both senses, too, I suppose. Black because it was being used for something that was morally objectionable, and black in the more subtle sense of its deepest meaning—the use of forces which must warp the character of the magician himself. The first is always arguable, but the second is not. I admit that I was once a black magician, but I am no longer. I reformed myself long ago.”
“Employing Larick to perform the actual spells for you hardly seems to avoid the spirit of black magic. As in my case . . . ”
His words trailed off as Ryle raised his eyes and fixed him with them.
“In your case,” he said, “I would—and will, if necessary—do it myself. It would at worst be an instance of the first sort—employed to prevent a greater evil.”
“On the general theory of morals—that others need them?”
“I am thinking of more than the two of us. I am thinking of what you would do to the entire world.”
“By opening the Gate?”
“Exactly.”
“Excuse my ignorance, but what will happen if the Gate is opened?”
“This world would be flooded, submerged, by the forces of a far older world—in our terms it is an evil place. We would become an extension of that land. Its more powerful, ancient magic would completely overwhelm the natural laws which hold here. This would become a realm of dark enchantment.”
“The evil may well be relative then. Tell me what objection a sorcerer could have to something which would make sorcery more important.”
“You use the argument by which your father first swayed me. But then I learned that the forces released would be so strong that no ordinary sorcerer could control them. We would all be at the mercy of those others from beyond the Gate and those few of our own kind to whom it would not matter, in league with those others.”
“And who might those few of our own kind be?”
“Your father was one, Henry Spier another; yourself, and those others like you—Madwands all.”
Pol repressed a smile.
“I take it that you are not a Madwand?”
“No, I had to learn my skills the hard way.”
“I begin to understand your conversion,” Pol said, instantly regretting the words as he saw Ryle’s expression change again.
“No, I do not believe that you do,” he answered, glaring, “not having a daughter bound by the curse of Henry Spier.”
“The ghost of this place . . . ?” Pol said.
“Her body lies in a hidden spot, neither dead nor alive. Spier did that when I broke the fellowship. Even so, I was willing to fight them.”
Pol wanted to look away, to shift his weight, to pace, to depart.
Instead, “What exactly do you mean when you say Madwand?” he asked.
“Those like yourself with a natural aptitude for the Art,” Ryle said, “those possessed of a closer, more personal relationship with its forces—its artists rather than its technicians, I suppose.”
“I appreciate your explaining all these matters,” Pol told him, “and I realize you are not going to believe any denials I might make concerning my intentions, so I won’t make any. Why not just tell me what it is that you want?”
“You have had dreams,” Ryle said flatly.
“Well, yes . . . ”
“Dreams,” he continued, “which I sent to you, wherein your spirit traveled beyond the Gate to witness the starkness and desolation of that evil place, wherein you saw the creatures who dwell there, engaged in depravities.”
Pol recalled his earlier dreams, but he thought too of the later ones, showing him the cities beyond the mountains, neither stark nor desolate, but holding a culture so complex as to surpass his understanding.
“That is all that you showed me?” he asked, puzzled.
“All? Is that not enough? Enough to persuade any decent man that the Gate must not be opened?”
“I suppose you made a good case then,” Pol said. “But tell me, are dreams all that you sent to me?”
Ryle cocked his head to one side, frowning. Then he smiled.
“Oh. That,” he said. “Keth . . . ”
“Keth? He was the sorcerer who attacked me in my own library?”
Ryle nodded.
&nbs
p; “The same. Yes, I sent him. A good man. I thought he’d best you and settle things then and there.”
“What things? For all your talk about the Gate and my father and Madwands and black magic, I still do not know what it is that you want of me.”
The fat sorcerer sighed.
“I thought that by sending you the dreams—showing you the menace of the thing—and then by explaining the situation carefully, as I have just done, that I might—just possibly might—win you over to my way of thinking and persuade you to cooperate with me. It would make life so much easier.”
“You didn’t exactly start off on the right foot by playing monster games with my anatomy.”
“It was also necessary to show you the extent to which I will go if you do not choose to help me.”
“I’m still not sure of that. What’s left—besides death?”
Ryle rubbed his hands together and smiled.
“Your head, of course,” He said. “I have begun in the easiest manner possible. But if, after suitable painful practices upon the body you are now wearing, you refuse to give me what I want, then I will complete the transfer. I will send your head to join the rest of you in exile beyond the Gate. I will be left with a somewhat maimed demon servant, and you—you have seen that place—you will have an unfortunate existence before you for all your remaining days.”
“It sounds very persuasive,” Pol observed. “Now, of what might it be the consequence?”
“You know where the Keys are—the Keys that can open the Gate or lock them forever. I want them.”
“Presumably to do the latter?”
“Certainly.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any such Keys. I wouldn’t even know where to look for them.”
“How can you say that when I saw them on the table in your study numerous times—and even as I watched your struggle with Keth?”
Pol’s thoughts went back, both to that scene and to one of his dreams. He felt the resistance building within him.
“You can’t have them,” he said.
“I’d a feeling this was not going to be easy,” Ryle remarked, rising. “If opening the Gate means that much to you, it just shows how far gone you really are.”
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