Black Wizards

by Douglas Niles

  Then fate intervened, as eight men leaped from the underbrush to surround Doric and Razfallow, brandishing swords and crossbows. Kryphon, invisible, watched the scene with interest as he quietly approached them. In a minute he had moved within earshot.

  “Gold!” one of the strangers demanded. “Will ye hand it over, or shall we search ye for it?”

  “You shall have what you require,” she said slowly. With great deliberation, she began to fumble in the pockets of her robe. She was taking plenty of time, but the bandits seemed to be in no hurry. Their attention was riveted to her, as her robe swirled aside to reveal a long stretch of her leg.

  Kryphon smiled to himself as he reached the confrontation, still secure in his mantle of invisibility. This was going to be very easy. He drew a pinch of sand from his robe, allowing the grains to pass slowly between his fingers while he concentrated on a simple spell.

  “Sleep, children,” he said mockingly. With the casting of his spell, several things happened: He became visible to all of those gathered on the forest path, and seven of the eight bandits staggered and then slumped to the ground, breathing deeply but sound asleep.

  The eighth bandit—the one who had demanded the gold—whirled toward Kryphon in shock. His shortsword quivered as he staggered backward.

  “Where … where did you …?” His voice cracked and then faded.

  Kryphon smiled. “Be at ease, friend,” he said softly, his hands executing a series of gestures. “I mean you no harm.”

  The spell—the same one he had used to charm Razfallow—worked remarkably well. The bandit relaxed and lowered his sword, offering a tentative smile, “Sorry. It’s just that, well, you surprised me.”

  “I understand,” said the mage, benignly. “We are looking for some … friends. We think they might have passed this way.” He described the prince’s party, speaking without urgency, but his heart pounded with tension. Would this man know anything useful?

  “A halfling, you say?” asked the bandit, as Kryphon described Pawldo. “Sure—they were in Doncastle just yesterday morning.”

  Kryphon forced his voice to remain calm. “Doncastle, eh? How can we find this place?”

  The man beamed with pleasure, elated that he would be able to help his new friend. “Why, it’s a few hours from here. I can take you there myself!”

  Kryphon smiled, his mouth tightening into a thin line.

  Tristan felt a strange mixture of emotions as he stood before the High King. His desire for vengeance flared within his breast, but was tempered by the knowledge that this man was his lawful liege. Yet the fellow’s ridiculous appearance and the stark fear that shone blatantly from his eyes overruled the tradition. At once, the Prince of Corwell decided that this man did not deserve his respect.

  “Who … who are you?” the king demanded, his voice quivering slightly. He stared at the intruder, disbelieving.

  “I am Tristan Kendrick, Prince of Corwell!” he declared.

  “Why … er, what …”

  “Did you have my father killed?” Tristan demanded. He did not draw, or even handle, his weapon, but the High King recoiled as if physically assaulted.

  “No! I didn’t!” His voice cracked and he pushed his chair backward, his uneaten breakfast tumbling to the floor.

  “Why did I find your coin upon the killers?” Tristan took a step forward. He felt, rather than saw, Daryth’s reassuring presence behind him, guarding the door.

  “Don’t kill me!” squealed the king. “The kingship is yours! Just let me live!”

  “Kingship? Of Corwell?”

  “No—the High Kingship!” For a moment the king looked puzzled. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Who told you that?” asked the prince.

  “Why … I thought everybody knew that. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? To claim my throne?”

  Tristan leaped around the king’s table, too quickly for the monarch to evade him. He grabbed the pathetic little man by the throat and shook him. “I came here,” he growled, “to punish the person responsible for my father’s death.” The king gasped and twisted, but could not escape.

  “If that person was not you,” Tristan snarled, “who was it?”

  “Perhaps it is me you seek.”

  The voice, soft and sinuous, came from the far side of the huge dressing room. Tristan and Daryth turned in surprise to see a person, shrouded in a dark robe, standing before them. He had not been there a moment earlier.

  “Who are you?” demanded the prince, retaining his grip on the king’s throat.

  The stranger didn’t answer directly. Instead, he pulled a small gray pebble from a pocket of his robe with his left hand, while his right emerged from another pocket with a pinch of what looked like dust.

  “Wissath Duthax, Hisst!” said the man, sprinkling the dust over the stone.

  Tristan suddenly felt himself falling, head first. The room whirled around him as he released the king, struggling to raise his hands and protect his head before he landed. He crashed into a hard stone surface and felt the wind explode from his lungs. For a fraction of a second, he had the feeling that he, and the king beside him, were lying on the ceiling of the room. Then the force of gravity returned to normal. He had been on the ceiling. Now he crashed to the floor where he lay, stunned. A crash, somewhere behind him, told him that Daryth, too, must have been ensnared in the spell.

  “Guards!” squealed the king, squirming away from Tristan. The prince found his muscles paralyzed, and his head pounded. He had nearly been knocked unconscious by the strange fall.

  “Korass, Sithtu—” the wizard began, pulling more items from his robe.

  “No!” cried the king, somehow scrambling to his feet and stepping in front of the wizard. “Do not kill him … yet.”

  Tristan could not see the wizard’s face beneath his cowled hood, but the sudden tension in the mage’s body signaled his annoyance with the king’s order. Nonetheless, his movements relaxed.

  “Very well,” he said quietly. The smooth voice, Tristan thought, sounded incongruous coming from one of such arcane power.

  The door burst open and a dozen guards flew into the room. “Seize them!” ordered the king, and the groggy pair of trespassers were swiftly clasped by strong hands.

  “I will interrogate them myself!” he barked. “Take them to the dungeon!”

  The iron door slammed shut, leaving Tristan alone in the darkness of his cell. Daryth had been taken somewhere else—the vast dungeon seemed to have no shortage of suitable enclosures.

  Angrily, the prince pulled against the chains that secured his wrists and ankles to the hard stone wall. They clanked taut with his movements, but gave no further. Reaching awkwardly behind him, he felt the mounts of each of the chains. They were solidly embedded in hard, dry mortar.

  His eyes adjusted to the gloom of the small cell. As in Llewellyn, a feeling of terrible suffocation threatened to choke him. This time, the feeling was intensified by darkness, and the fact that he was chained to the wall, alone in a cell.

  He shouted at the darkness. Furiously, he struggled with the chains, trying to tear them from the walls with brute strength. All he gained for his struggles were chafed wrists and strained muscles.

  He thought of Robyn, wishing there were some way she could know of his plight. But then he imagined her young druidic powers facing the magic of the king’s wizard—a man who had the power to reverse gravity itself! Robyn, he knew, would face the wizard, unflinching in her courage and her faith. And she would be doomed by his power to a horrible death.

  Only the fortuitous intervention of the High King, he felt, had saved Daryth and him. Why had the king wanted him to remain alive, after dogging their trail with assassins and sorcery? Certainly whoever had sabotaged the Lucky Duckling had not wanted them to remain alive for questioning. Nor had the assassin Razfallow with his band of killers.

  And what had the wizard said when he suddenly appeared in the king’s dressing room? �
�Perhaps it is me you seek,” or words to that effect. Was his quarrel indeed with the king’s wizard, and not the High King himself?

  “Tristan,” came the soft, musical voice.

  “Huh?” he grunted stupidly, opening his eyes and raising his throbbing head. A white figure stood before him, glowing with a brilliance that hurt his eyes. He blinked several times, and saw her blond hair spilling across a silver breastplate, His heart leaped as he recognized his visitor.

  “My queen!” he croaked. “Thank the goddess you have come! Please, unfetter me!”

  Queen Allisynn’s eyes were brighter than he had ever seen them. She was here in the cell with him. He longed to reach out and touch her, but she came no closer. The light surrounded her body, and caused her hair to glow like fire. He looked full upon her face and felt the pain in his skull melt away under the healing warmth of her gaze.

  “I cannot free you.” Her voice was heavy with sadness. “My power is useless against the cold iron that binds you.”

  Tristan moaned and dropped his head in defeat.

  “Do not despair, my prince! You have learned what your enemy fears most, and that is valuable knowledge.”

  “Learned?” he said scornfully. “I learned that I’m a fool! I don’t deserve to be a footman in Corwell’s army, much less the king! I was taken prisoner like a chicken walking into a noose!” His anger threatened to consume him, and the queen flinched under the onslaught of his rage.

  “I have no right—I forgot where I was for a moment. Can you forgive me for my self-pity?”

  “I fear you place undue weight upon my approval,” she said. “There is a lass upon Gwynneth who would be sorely touched by your plight. Perhaps it is for her that you should fight.”

  Tristan bit his lip with guilt. In the glory of the queen’s presence, he had forgotten about the woman that he loved—that he wanted to have share his life. “But, you …”

  “I am … far too old for you.” She smiled coolly. “Though your affection touches me deeply. It has been a long time since a man looked at me with such … love.”

  “I do love you, my queen!” he gasped. He suddenly felt deep humiliation for his imprisonment. “May the goddess grant me the power to prove that someday!”

  “I think that she will. Think about what you have learned. And now rest, my prince.”

  She slowly faded from his sight, but he could not call her back. He had already collapsed into sleep.

  His awakening came as his cell door clanged loudly open. He jerked his head up to see a sudden wash of torchlight precede two figures into the dingy room.

  The first was the bent and leering turnkey who had eagerly latched the chains to his wrists and ankles. And the other was the High King.

  The turnkey stepped out of the way, holding the torch high. The monarch marched past the turnkey and stopped, just out of the prince’s reach. He looked more self-confident than he had during their first encounter, though still not quite the picture of a High King that Tristan had always imagined.

  He wore a long purple robe, trimmed with white. His wig of loose curls gave his head an unnaturally large appearance, though he was a broad hand shorter than the prince. A tiny mustache twitched below his long, pointed nose.

  “You intrigue me, Prince of Corwell,” said the king, staring intently at Tristan. The prince said nothing.

  “You say that you come here for vengeance?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You did not journey to Caer Callidyrr to claim the throne of the High Kings—my throne?”

  “Of course not! I don’t know where you got such an idea!”

  “This is very interesting. Of course, I do not know whether or not to believe you.…”

  “Your Majesty?” said a figure from the doorway. The king whirled around in surprise as a dark-robed shape entered the cell through the open door.

  “Cyndre! We will talk later! Leave me now.” The king’s voice was authoritative but a trifle shaky.

  “I am afraid this cannot wait, sire. I come to you with a matter of the greatest urgency!” In the flickering torchlight, Tristan saw the wizard’s hands float through a delicate series of gestures. The king shuddered slightly and then sighed in quiet resignation.

  “The usurper?” asked the wizard softly.

  “He … he is …” The king seemed to have trouble collecting his thoughts.

  “He is a threat, you mean,” finished the wizard. Tristan was horrified by the way the sorcerer manipulated the ruler. For the first time the prince truly feared for his life.

  “It is time that he died,” concluded Cyndre, still speaking in that musically pleasant voice.

  “Very well,” replied the king quietly. He did not look at Tristan as he spoke.

  The chains that held Daryth of Calimshan were no less stout, nor were their mountings in any way inferior to those binding the Prince of Corwell. But the Calishite had one advantage that the prince did not: He wore the gloves he had recovered from the treasure vault of Caer Allisynn. The guards, even after a thorough search, had not discerned the gloves, so perfectly did they match Daryth’s brown skin.

  Daryth waited for several minutes after the guards had left. He heard them escort Tristan deeper into the dungeon. Some time later, he heard the guards approach again. One stuck a torch through the small iron grate in the door, illuminating the room and apparently satisfying himself that the prisoner was secure. Then they moved on.

  Carefully, Daryth pulled his right hand against the tight manacle. It slipped through the rusty ring smoothly. With a gentle tug, his left hand came free as well. He drew forth one of the long wire probes concealed in the gloves, and crouched to examine the clasps binding his ankles. His nimble fingers located the tiny keyhole, even through the supple leather of the gloves. It was the work of several minutes to release the mechanism securing his right foot. The left one popped loose after another thirty seconds.

  Daryth waited for a few minutes, scarcely daring to breathe. The dungeon was silent. He crept carefully across the cell, taking care in the inky blackness that he did not bump into anything or make any sudden noise.

  The door was easy to find, though the lock proved more challenging than the clasps that had secured his manacles. It took him nearly ten minutes to figure out the complicated mechanism, but it finally revealed its secrets to his persistent probing and clicked free.

  He inched the door open and looked into the corridor. A torch flickered somewhere in the distance, but elsewhere all was dark. The cold stonework dripped with moisture, and the air smelled dank and heavy with mold. The Calishite slid carefully into the corridor, noting that there was no sound in either direction.

  Daryth knew that Tristan had been taken to a cell farther down the corridor, to his left. The torch that flickered faintly was some distance to his right, while all was dark in the other direction. Realizing that he needed some light, he first glided silently the hundred feet to the torch, which sputtered in a rusty wall socket. He seized the flaming brand and turned back toward the depths of the dungeon.

  But then he thought of their weapons—particularly the Sword of Cymrych Hugh. They had come too far with it to abandon it here, he decided. He held the torch before him and started up the corridor, determined to at least investigate the nearest guardroom.

  He slipped carefully around a corner and recognized the stairs he had come down. The guardroom, where their weapons had been taken from them, was just at the top of the stairs. He sprang up the steps, three at a time, pausing below the top to observe. He cursed at the sight of an iron gate, closed across the passage. Beyond it, a guard sat dozing upon a chair—and beyond him, their weapons dangled from a hook in the wall!

  Daryth carefully propped the torch against one of the steps, and removed the wire probe from his glove. Trying to work as quietly as possible, he gently prodded the mechanism. In moments, it freed with a loud click.

  The man sat bolt upright in his chair, his eyes widening as Daryth flung open t
he gate and dove into the guardroom. The Calishite’s fist caught the man’s jaw just as he opened it. His shout of alarm died in his throat and he collapsed, unconscious, against the wall.

  Daryth turned toward the weapons and swiftly pulled down his scimitar. He girded the weapon to his belt, took the rest of the weapons, and locked the gate behind him.

  There were only occasional doors along the walls here, he realized as he passed his own cell. As he passed each door, he held the torch to the iron grate that was set at eye level, illuminating the interior as he searched for his friend. The first four cells he examined were empty.

  But the fifth held a man.

  The figure was chained to the wall. His head hung low, so that Daryth could not see his face. The man did not look like Tristan—he seemed smaller than the prince—but the Calishite could not be sure in the light.

  “Tristan!” he hissed. There was no answer, nor any sign of life from the figure.

  Cursing to himself, Daryth set the torch down and began to pick the lock of this cell.

  His familiarity with the lock paid off, and the door clicked open in several minutes. He crept into the room, but the man still made no move. Holding the torch before him, Daryth moved slowly forward.

  Suddenly the man raised his head, and looked at the Calishite with an expression of hopeless longing. It was not Tristan—this man was older, smaller, and emaciated. His gaunt cheeks flexed as if he tried to speak, but no sound emerged. His hands, Daryth realized, were twisted claws—they had been horribly mangled.

  The man blinked a few times, apparently realizing that Daryth was not a guard coming to torment him. He moved his mouth, soundlessly, again. In fact, everything about him was soundless. His chains made no noise as he rattled them. His gasps of breath were complete inaudible.

  “Who are—” Daryth began, but he could hear no sound. Sorcery! The hair at the back of his neck prickled as realized that the cell was blanketed by some kind of magical effect that eliminated all noise.