Deafened but functioning, John struggled to his feet; braced himself on shaky legs by leaning back against the steadily blowing wind.
Less than stable on his feet, blinking, John could see little but blazing squiggles of light imprinted on the retinas of his eyes.
Trying to see past the afterimages of what looked like coils of light bulb filament, John could make out a wind-swirled dust cloud ahead of him. A vortex of gray powder driven down the trail, the cloud hiding the distant light pillar at road center.
John blinked.
And blinked again, the dust cloud dissipating.
Virtually blind, John bent down. Felt around him on the road until he located the torch where he'd dropped it, the torch's dying flames appearing to him as flickers around the edges of his nearly sightless eyes.
John had sustained a second, direct hit from the dark Mage's electric fire.
And again, had lived.
Giving himself a long minute more for his eyes to adjust, John began to pull the cannon again, finding that, to get it rolling, he had to muscle the heavy, black powder device up and over the lip of the shallow blast-crater of the last strike.
Moving again, in addition to seeing and hearing once more, John was beginning to think -- not entirely a blessing, thought causing sweating, trembling, and a powerful inclination to ... run!
Hating his cowardice, John told himself he was experiencing the emotion any person would have when facing the unknown. He was on foreign ground. To say nothing of approaching a dangerous malevolence! Throw in an unnatural wind at his back that seemed to increase with every step, and what was abnormal was his former calm. Could it be that Platinia affected him in other ways beside strengthening him against the "pull" of Zwicia's crystal? In this instance, had provided him with abnormal courage?
Something to consider.
Some other time.
The pressing business of the moment was to stumble on in spite of his unmanly fright.
Arguing himself up to speed but still thinking about Platinia's "hold" on him, John could believe he'd been ... manipulated into joining this quest. How else to explain his compulsion to combat the evil Mage of Azare when John's self-interest lay in refusing to meddle in enigmas he didn't understand?
Yet he kept on, compelled to champion ... what? -- Himself? Stil-de-grain? -- Platinia?
On and slowly on, the light pillar, at 500 yards, a fiery column of crackling illumination. A light so thin, so strange, so powerful that John had to believe the blazing line from earth to sky was linked to the dark Mage.
Nothing to do for the moment but flog himself forward, the wind at his back helping him down the trail, the light line ahead thickening into a writhing, twisting, tongue of fire that spewed skyward from what seemed to be a hole in the dead earth.
Though John was tiring, slowing, he was closing on the light, the dazzle of the vertical line projecting shadows behind the forest's decaying trees.
Yes.
Glancing at his torch to find it had gone completely out, John realized the sole light for some time had been the approaching column. Dim, but putting out enough radiance for him to keep the heavy field piece within the mitered edges of the road.
Glad not to be burdened with the torch, John fumbled the handle under his wire-woven armor and into a deep, robe pocket.
In the increased light, John saw that the cadaverous trees to either side of the line of march were even more barren. Why? ... Because, here, the force of the tempest was so great it had twisted off their branches, the trees little more than limb-stubbed trunks.
Continuing to lurch along, occasionally straining in an attempt to see past the denuded tree stumps into the phantom forest beyond, John's only additional discovery was what had happened to the tree's severed branches, seeing them here ... and there ... in wind-tangled piles.
How long had this storm been raging?
Perhaps forever? ... No, or the trees could not have grown at all.
Flash-Boom!! -- John able to turn away from the nearby hit in time to save his sight, no tree limbs above the trail in this blighted place to fall on him in the aftermath of a direct hit.
John felt ... exhausted.
A number of things had drained his strength -- pulling the gun carriage -- the weight of his homemade armor -- the unusually heavy gravity of Azare -- a buffeting wind.
Bone weary, panting, John stopped to catch his breath.
Looking down the dirt track, shading his eyes, John was surprised to realize that the light shaft was not that far away ... a hundred yards? ... the trail about to level out as it converged with the perpendicular blaze.
Staring at that overwhelming, vertical light -- still seeming no thicker than a spear -- John thought he saw a dark ... something ........
What?
A ... something at the level of the road ... black-framed against the brilliance of the vaulting flames. ...
A platform?
If so, could the cross like shadow on the scaffold be ... a man, a man so near the fiery column that he glowed with the penumbra of the column's glittering light?
Flash-Boom!!
Another strike, this one off target, exploding behind John and to the right, John tracing the lightning strike to the dais up ahead!
Firing these salvos must be ... Auro!
John stood for a long moment, refusing to believe what his mind told him must be true.
Bizarre. ....... All of this.
Surrealistic. ......
Shaking himself out of a bemused lethargy, John knew something else. That at maximum elevation, Auro was within range! It was time to fire the cannon!
That decision putting John's thoughts in order, John could act again.
Letting go of the rope, the rope whipping in the wind like a wounded snake, John fought his way to the gun.
Bent double to untie the fuse-sack, John wrestled the wind-whipped bag to the ground.
Squatting clumsily in his armor, John felt inside the coarse, flapping sack until he'd located the small screwdriver. Pulled it out.
Close enough to the radiance of the fire pillar to see in detail, John stood up to locate the metal screw in the fuse hole at the back of the gun. Found it; slotted in the screwdriver; backed the screw out, the wind blowing the screw away as it cleared the last thread-turn. ... No matter. He no longer needed the screw.
Flash-Boom! Auro now hitting the blighted woods in the hope that a blast-propelled hunk of timber would take John out.
It was also possible that Auro was trying to topple trees across the trail to deny John access to the road.
No time for further speculation.
Squatting down beside the gun carriage, sticking his arm in the wind-blown bag, John got his hand on a short piece of fuse; dragged it out, the wind twisting the thin rope around John's arm.
Using both hands, sliding the fuse cord through his fingers, John found one end.
Ready at last, John attempted to stick the detonator cord in the hole at the back of the cannon.
Failed the first time.
Tried again.
No luck.
And again.
Boom!!
Another explosion by the roadside, this time, followed by a stab in John's upper back as a blast-propelled splinter punctured the open weave mail of his armored cloak.
Pain!
That John stubbornly ignored.
If anything, the wound sharpened his mind, the cold burn of it urging speed.
Using both hands to protect the barrel hole from the wind, John made another attempt to insert the fuse.
Failed again.
Bending close, looking at the hole and at the end of the firing cord, forcing himself to keep his eyes open in spite of the sting of wind-driven dust, John found the difficulty.
The detonator cord was too big. .....Too big? But John had made sure the fuse was the right size! Had test fired the gun using the same diameter powder cord.
Too big?
Ign
oring the wind's thunder-gusts, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes of grit, John examined the cord end, carefully. ......
Found that it was not the fuse, but a similar sized piece of rope!
He had to think.
Must think .....
About anything except the ice pick in his back that blazed with the agony of a blowtorch .......
He had to face the truth. Someone close to him had substituted an ordinary length of rope for the powder impregnated fuse; the transfer made after the cannon was loaded on the ship.
Someone, but who?
A shadow formed behind John's eyes: the dark image of an intimate companion ... dagger in hand ... plunging the knife blade into John's chest!
The traitor!
So -- the search for John's would-be assassin had narrowed to the catamaran's passengers and crew. Still a long list of suspects, unfortunately.
A traitor.
Spy.
Assassin.
Failing to eliminate John by more direct means, John's secret enemy had been clever enough to find another, subtler way to end John's life, by depriving John of any chance to win the approaching duel with evil. Pulling the plug on John in such a way that John would be unlikely to discover he was powerless until too late.
Clever, edging into the diabolical.
Placing his complete confidence in his cannon, he was neatly trapped.
He couldn't fight.
And he couldn't run since hauling the useless cannon had drained him of his "heavy-planet" strength.
Nor could John stay where he was. It was only a question of time before an Auro-exploded tree hammered John down, the dark Mage then able to come forward and dispatch John with a rock!
Desperation flaring into anger, John was furious with himself for having come back to this unfathomably dangerous world. Was maddened that one of his own had betrayed him!
Raving at himself for his pig-headed belief that Twentieth Century knowledge must prove invincible -- berating his lack of foresight and faulty planning -- John felt ... stronger.
Adrenalin. A life extending drug for the stupid and unwary.
If John could get close enough to the dark Mage to rush him, grapple with him ....
With at least some semblance of a plan, John let the wind blow him, stiff legged, to the front of the gun carriage, the thick, hemp pull-rope fluttering there like a wind-whipped pennant.
A quick decision.
Should John leave the -- now useless -- cannon behind? ..........
No.
John wanted Auro to worry about why John had been dragging that "great beast" so laboriously.
Resolved to keep going no matter what, with difficulty, John caught the waving towrope; dragged it over his shoulder, John setting out again, grafted to the gun as if it was his ugly -- now dead -- Siamese twin.
Down and down, the scene at the bottom coming into focus as John approached; gaining detail like film developing in photographic fluid.
At 70 yards, the light pillar looked like what it was: electric fire. At 50 yards, that the source of the light was a jagged sinkhole -- electric fire streaking skyward from that pit.
If so, the reason for the light-chasm before him was clear. Since the collective magic of the other Mages was blacking out Auro's sky, the dark Mage had used his minions to dig this crevasse, thereby releasing his own, internal source of power. Viewed this way, it seemed plain enough that tapping into the underground supply of force was what gave Auro the light to work his magic!
Certain he understood the "game" at last, John concentrated on the platform to this side of the light shaft's edge, John having to squint more and more as he narrowed the gap between the trail and the flash-bulb brilliance of the light.
A dais. Curved to circle the power shaft. No matter which direction Auro faced, it seemed, the evil Mage wished to be immersed in light, Auro a back-lit shadow on the twenty foot tall scaffold, easy to overlook in the dazzle of the light that encompassed him.
Auro.
Aware, of course, of John's approach.
The dark Mage silent.
Stationary.
No longer hurling lightning bolts.
Just standing there; flooded by luminescence; seemingly content -- for the moment -- to monitor John's approach.
It didn't matter.
Crash!! .............
John returned to consciousness with quavering flares of light tattooed behind his eyes.
Though almost blind, John had the shadowy impression he was surrounded by trees ........
Trees, but no path.
Straining to remember, all that was clear to him was that he was lying in the woods, an explosion of overwhelming force blowing him into the forest, the dark Mage "shooting" him with amplified power.
Even protected by his metal garb, John had been blasted into the defunct forest ... with no idea how to get back to the trail.
Slowly, testing each joint experimentally -- all painful but functioning -- John began to feel his way through dry grass and brittle twigs, blindly stumbling into a pile of brush the wind had tumbled between two, close-set tree trunks.
Groping about, he chanced on the right sized branch fastened to a felled trunk, John snapping the limb off with the parched crack of age.
Dredging his lighter from the small pocket under his ring armor, shielding the tiny blue flame from the ground wind, John soon had the branch-end flaming brightly.
Everything was tinder dry in this dead band, he warned himself. The tiniest spark .............
And that was the solution!
A way to strike at the dark Mage!
For the first time, John smiled. Shook his head ... stopped because the sidewards motion savaged him, John staggering to the nearest tree trunk, hugging it until the giddiness passed and he could think once more.
About ... fire.
With the wind racing toward the pillar of light, the black mage on his raised platform, a dose of real fire in these dry woods would be a powerful ally.
Feeling steadier, John eased out from behind the tree to scuttle off at an angle to the wind, pausing frequently to touch the flaming torch to flaring patches of dry grass, the fire spreading quickly until it was devouring piles of brush, shooting skyward in exploding cylinders of long dead trunks. A fire that burned out as soon as it advanced, the flames sweeping the forest clear of entangling vegetation, leaving behind a width of dirt and blackened ash and smoldering, smoking trunks.
Turning back, John followed the charred out skirt of woods until he came to the place where he'd first set the fire, blundering on to step out of the mummified forest onto the woodland path.
To one side was the gun, the heavy device hunkered down at the trail's center. Looking down the road, John could still see an edge of orange down the trail, the fire burning off the last of the dry vegetation, the smoke disappearing quickly, the column of "electric" light visible once again.
Just the light pillar.
No platform.
No dark Mage.
Nothing between John and that rippling shaft of soaring luminescence.
John's fire had consumed everything between him and the light source.
John's head was throbbing so badly he couldn't reason.
His only impulse ... to go on.
Backtracking to the gun, John shouldered the lead rope and began to drag the cannon forward once again, pulling mindlessly like a beast, John clanking on toward the bedazzling light shaft.
John stopped.
Even with his head bowed, he could see the burned out ruins of the dark Mage platform ... not ten yards away.
Cupping his eyes, peering out through cracks between his fingers like a snow-blind Eskimo, John saw he'd been right: the light source came from a kind of pit, hand-dug at what must have been incredible, human cost.
Though his head still hurt, John's mind seemed to be clearing.
Of course! The shaft of light explained the dark-Mage force. Trapped in his blacked
out band, Auro had regained his powers by digging into the earth to release this underground light, light the source of this world's magic.
There could be little doubt that Auro mounted his attacks on Stil-de-grain from this very platform -- now an ashen ruin -- the former dais bathed with sufficient light to permit magical usage on a grand scale! This constant supply of light-magic also made clear how Auro could launch bolts at Stil-de-grain, even in the night. Another mystery solved!
As for Auro, had John's flames consumed the evil Mage? Backing away from John's too-real fire, had he fallen into the shaft of light? Or simply run away?
All that mattered was that John had bested the dark Mage.
But ... had he?
Since it was obvious this hole was the work of Auro, was it not also John's duty to eliminate this source of dark-Mage magic?
Fighting his way to the back of the cannon, digging in his boot-cleats, John again began to push the heavy, wheeled object toward the raging, electric storm -- a dazzle that had become so bright that, even though John hid his face behind the iron gun, he had to close his eyes at the last to keep from going blind in the flash-bulb brilliance of the electric shaft until, in a rush, the heavy weapon toppled into the light pit, disappearing down the hole from which the light was gushing.
* * * * *
Though John eventually remembered turning, running -- he could not recall the final explosion of the powder -- the cask, the cannon, and the cannonballs.
Later -- how much later?? -- awakening under Azare's gray-dark sky, it had taken John some time to realize it was the powder blast going off underground that had knocked him out, John walking in the dark, surrounded by the intense quiet following the blast.
He could recall that he'd lighted another branch to serve as a torch, discarded his metal armor, and had gone back along the trail.
The explosion sealing off the source of Auro's magic, it was enough to know that the day of the dark Mage ... was done!
-24-
"Stand by the lines!"
Coluth. Ordering men to ready the coiled, light lines that seamen would throw to stevedores on the Xanthin dock. Other mariners were backing oars to further slow the ship, Orig, at the rudder, steering for a tight space between two boats already docked.
Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series Page 26
