The wizard at Mecq tst-1

by Rick Shelley

  But he did feel the evil.

  "That wizard brought this on us," Sir Eustace shouted. It wasn't the first time he had made that accusation since the storm roused him from sleep, since he felt the thrill of danger close and charged up to face whatever was coming. The knight looked down at the Eyler. The lightning came so frequently that he had no trouble at all seeing how high the river was getting. And he could cross to the side of his tower and look down at the village and fields. Puffs of smoke now and then showed where lightning continued to strike the thatched roofs that still refused to burn. In the fields, water stood around battered stalks of grain.

  "That wizard brought this on us."

  – |Brother Paul remained standing in the doorway of St. Katrinka's. He held his crucifix out in his hand. Both arms were raised against the storm. He stood in supplication and defiance, mouthing what spells he could command, trying to bend the storm around the village, trying to interpose himself between his flock and the ravages of demons and nature. His voice was hoarse from shouting his prayers and spells into the storm. He could see no result, though he took heart every time a puff of smoke from a roof died away without blazing into fire.

  Then two bolts of lightning hit the same roof simultaneously, and the roof erupted in dirty orange and red flames. The wood of the walls, and whatever was within the cottage, flamed almost instantly. Brother Paul ran toward the cottage, but no one came out and by the time he arrived, the entire house was engulfed by flames. In less time than he needed to utter a prayer and make the sign of the cross, the home was gone and the fire had leaped to its nearest neighbor.

  Brother Paul ran to the next house, screaming a warning. The family ran out into the rain, terror on all their faces as the house fell to the blaze.

  But when the second house had been consumed, the fire went out. No other cottage stood near enough to catch in the driving rain.

  "Come back to the church with me," Brother Paul told the family that had survived. "Come out of the storm."

  – |Carillia and the cats had obeyed Silvas's instructions to remain in their guarded circles in the conjuring chamber. When Silvas returned, he said merely, "It continues," before he cleared a passage back into his pentagram. There he moved straight into another series of incantations, trying to fight the assaults on Mecq and on the Seven Towers. He felt the power of his Unseen Lord flowing through him, but the flow remained sluggish, opposed by whatever forces the Blue Rose had mustered. The glow of the walls pulsed, dimming, then brightening again in tune to some greater tide that the wizard could not completely grasp. The wind he had cast around the Glade was reflected within his workshop, twisting around the circumference of the pentagram. He couldn't extend the device to cover the village of Mecq, not without dropping his efforts to defend the Seven Towers-and without those defenses he would not long be able to defend outsiders in any case.

  The light pulsed in the conjuring chamber, and it began to pulse within the wizard's head.

  Then the light disappeared completely.

  It was an instantaneous transition. The light blinked out and then returned, brighter and clearer than before. But Silvas was no longer within his workshop. He was no place he had ever been before.

  He needed a moment to gather his thoughts and look around. The terrain was etched with incredible sharpness, everything defined and delineated with an uncanny precision. The sky was a perfect blue, unblemished by any cloud. The sun was a point of perfect orange brilliance. The grass, trees, even the rocks and dirt, all seemed to be painted with a perfect touch.

  The plane of ideals, Silvas thought, the land of the gods. He could see no reason for him to be suddenly transported there. It can't be defeat, he reasoned.

  The he saw the armies. The battle of light and dark was joined even on this plane. Heroic figures in plate armor of mirror-like brilliance stood against figures draped in armor so black that it seemed to soak up any hint of light. Swords flashed in blinding strokes. The wounds were clean and lethal. Death came quickly, in glory, even though Silvas recognized that this death was more than the simple death of the body. It was a destruction of the soul as well.

  "Lord, why have you brought me here?" Silvas asked. His telesight forced him to watch the battle whether he wanted to or not. His vision focused first on one duel and then another, and then he would be given an overall view of the ranks of knights and demons fighting.

  Behind those ranks, even more impressive figures commanded the action.

  Silvas dropped his quarterstaff and fell to his knees. "I am in the presence of the gods!" The wizard felt an awe that was alien to him. One of the figures behind the lines of bright armor looked his way. Silvas could see nothing of the being behind the armor, but he felt that it was his Unseen Lord. Silvas was drawn to his feet, commanded to watch. The godly figure raised a hand to his face and tilted back the visor of his helmet.

  "My Lord, why have you brought me here?" Silvas's voice was a small thing that seemed to have no place on this plain-on this plane.

  The distant figure raised his hand and pointed it across the field, toward Silvas's right. Silvas turned and looked.

  Why didn't I notice that before? he asked himself. The ideal plane came to an abrupt end. Beyond it was a desolate wasteland, a desert so complete that it made the valley of Mecq look like Eden. Now the dark army was lined up within the desolation, facing the army of shining armor out on the ideal plane.

  And-somewhat apart, like Silvas-there was another lone figure. He too was staring at the field of battle. His eyes came to light on Silvas. Their eyes met, their heads nodded.

  Silvas needed no further clue. This was his enemy, the foe he must beat to win his own battle over Mecq. The gods and their hordes of shining and dark knights charged toward one another. Silvas's lone opponent charged toward him. Silvas picked up his quarterstaff and moved to meet him.

  Silvas chanted for the lightning and it came, but it didn't strike the other figure. Silvas's foe lifted his own staff, and the lightning was shunted aside, bounced back toward Silvas, who met the blast and grounded it harmlessly. A wind grew around Silvas, but it was not his doing.

  I have met the Blue Rose wizard, Silvas thought as he worked to unwind the corkscrew wind. He ran forward, crossing the border into the desolation to meet his enemy. Silvas's magic picked up stones and hurled them. He raised eddies of dust and cast them toward the other wizard's eyes. At the same time Silvas had to meet the magical challenges thrown back at him.

  The two wizards closed on each other. Silvas swung his quarterstaff, aiming the silver ferrule for one of the metal caps on the other's stick. Miniature bolts of lightning sprung from the contact. The Blue Rose wizard pressed Silvas's staff to the side and whirled his own, trying to hit the juncture of neck and shoulder with a disabling blow. Silvas turned sideways and threw his weight against the other wizard, then spun completely around while he slid both hands toward the silver end of his staff for a mighty swing at the other's head.

  The contest went on for a time that may have marked ages in the mortal world. Silvas was hard put to hold his own. There seemed to be little chance of decisive victory. Victory would come only if one wizard made a mortal error, and neither seemed likely to do that.

  Very rarely Silvas caught a glimpse of the greater battle being fought by the gods and knights in their anonymous armor, but there too it was hard to see any decision being approached. Warriors died on both sides. Silvas couldn't tell who they were-or even what they were. After a few minutes of combat Silvas couldn't even have picked out the figure who had commanded his entry.

  Silvas tried to sweep the legs out from under his opponent. The other wizard jumped over Silvas's quarterstaff and returned his own blows, first high, then low. Throughout the encounter not one word was spoken. Neither wizard even grunted with the effort.

  It has to end sometime, Silvas thought. He had nearly exhausted his store of tactics with the quarterstaff. Even after ages of practice, there were only so many thin
gs a man could do with a wrist-thick, seven-foot-long piece of wood. And the other wizard seemed to know how to meet each of them, and which counterstrokes would be hardest to meet.

  The two wizards moved in until they were almost toe to toe, swinging their quarterstaves between them in minimal space. Silvas felt the other staff scrape his knuckles. His right hand stung and went numb. Afraid he might lose his grip completely, Silvas butted his head against his foe.

  It wasn't that hard, Silvas thought, but the darkness took him anyway.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I am still alive was an expression of surprise, not a boast. Silvas felt the smooth chill of the marble floor against his cheek. He felt air pumping within him. He felt pain. He felt stunned, dazed. Mostly he felt drained, as if much of the life force had simply been sucked out of him by some unnoticed demon. He lay as he was for long moments, unable even to open his eyes, too spent to think the words of magic that would speed his recovery.

  Old memories were the least demanding of thoughts. They floated in and out of his daze of their own volition, cradling Silvas's mind and body in their flattering veils. For a time Silvas saw himself as the child he had been when he first came to the Seven Towers. He came up against that blank wall within his mind. He didn't remember any time before the Glade. As far as Silvas could tell from his memories, he might have been created within these walls, a brand new, almost seven-year-old boy with no past and a future already determined.

  "Where did I come from, Auroreus?"

  The old wizard had chuckled. "You came from your parents, as any child does."

  "But where? Where was I before I came here?"

  Auroreus had never answered those questions, even after Silvas grew to manhood and survived his initiation into the Greater Mysteries of the trimagister.

  "You must find those answers for yourself if you truly want them," Auroreus had said. "What I will tell you is that you do not want to know them."

  "I do want to know, Auroreus. Why will you not tell me?"

  "I cannot answer the one without answering the other, my son."

  Newer memories came with a trifle more weight, floating like waterlogged rafts, bumping and turning, grinding their way past Silvas's attention. He recalled his vision of insanity, of a crazy world or time where people sped by enclosed in shiny wagons of metal and glass, vehicles that went faster than horses could travel, vehicles that had no beasts to pull them.

  "This is the world to which you were born. This is the time and place where Auroreus found you and drew you back to his castle. He scoured all of time for his successor. This is far, far in your future… if that future ever comes. If you fail, people will not say, 'It would have been better if he had never been born.' If you fail, you will never have been born… and then you could not fail, and the world that comes, if it comes, will be the world as it would have been had you never lived."

  The words came back to Silvas as clearly as if they were being spoken again. He held fleeting images of the place of insanity he had seen.

  "In similar circumstances." That came out almost spoken. Silvas recognized the return of the first glimmerings of strength. He forced himself to take a deep breath, aware of the movement of his chest as he did.

  Carillia. The Seven Towers. Mecq.

  Silvas dragged his eyes open, but he was careful not to attempt to move anything else. He was in the center of his pentagram, and magic still flowed from the crystal. His face was scant inches from one of the interior lines. There was not the burning pain that had followed his battle with the two demons within this room. There was pain, but more the agony of total depletion, of exhaustion. Silvas mumbled the words of a restorative spell and waited for the warmth to spread through his body.

  His hands were at his sides. He looked at as much of the crystal line near his face as he could without moving. Once he was certain that he knew his position with sufficient precision, Silvas started to inch carefully away from the nearest line, drawing his arms and legs in.

  After a moment he got his head up enough to look around. Carillia and the cats were still within their protective circles. But the light in the room was wrong. Silvas needed long seconds to realize that what was wrong was the time. Full daylight streamed in the window.

  "Has it been so long?" Silvas didn't realize that he had spoken the question aloud until Carillia answered.

  "It is near mid-morning, my heart." Her voice sounded tiny and distant with fear, and likely with her own exhaustion. "I could see that you were alive. The power did not free us this time."

  Silvas took a deeper breath and spoke the words of release. The crystal of the pentagram and of the circles faded. The faint buzzing that accompanied them died away. Carillia hurried across the room to Silvas. She knelt at his side and put her arms around him.

  "How stand the Seven Towers?" Silvas asked.

  "They stand," Carillia said. "Braf and Bosc have both been to report."

  "And?" Silvas asked as he let strength flow back into him. As always, the flow seemed faster when Carillia held him.

  "There have been deaths and minor damage to the southwest tower and the wall near it."

  "How many died?"

  "Braf lost three soldiers, and Koshka's uncle died as well, though perhaps not directly from the attack. He was an ancient of his kind."

  "Who should have had leave to grow more ancient yet," Silvas grumbled, feeling the pain of the losses. He forced himself to his feet, then swayed with a giddiness that almost forced him back to his knees before Carillia's touch steadied him. "There is work yet to do." He directed that at himself as he sought to draw in all of the replenishment that his magic could summon.

  "Anything of Mecq?" he asked. "They suffered this assault as well."

  "I could not look myself," Carillia reminded him. "But Braf said that there appeared to be some damage, a couple of cots burned to the ground, a smell of mourning to the air."

  "They will blame me," Silvas said. "Have there been no calls yet from the village?"

  "I've heard the voices of the friar and the man from the castle who was here before."

  "Master Fitz-Matthew," Silvas said sourly. "Do they remain?"

  "I've not heard them for a while. I will check if you feel stronger now, my heart."

  Silvas managed a smile. "It improves, my love." His voice remained rougher than it usually was when he spoke to her, but the roughest edges were beginning to fade. "I hope there are not so many nights and mornings like this before we make an end in this place. It wears mightily on my bones."

  "You are feeling better, my heart." Silvas could plainly read the relief in her voice and in the smile that finally came to her lips.

  "It seems I have at least one more fight left in me, my love," he said. "Now, if you would, Mecq?"

  "Of course." Carillia left the pentagram and hurried up to the turret that looked out on the village.

  "Both men remain outside," she reported when she returned. "The friar paces with such patience as he can muster. The other stares up at the smoke and curses under his breath."

  Silvas experimented with movement. He started by clenching and unclenching his fists. He flexed his arms, squatted and bent over, straightened up again. Movement that was too rapid brought dizziness, but as long as he was cautious, he could move freely. He was outside the pentagram when Carillia returned. Satin and Velvet sat near him, watching, still uneasy, still nervous.

  "I need to see to our people," Silvas said, speaking as much to himself as to Carillia. "But I suppose I need to hear out Fitz-Matthew and Brother Paul first. They have concerns of their village and masters to deal with." The sigh did not quite escape his lips.

  "Koshka will be back in a moment with nourishment," Carillia said. "You must take a bite before you attempt too much."

  Silvas hesitated for only an instant before he nodded. He did need food, and a little wine, to hold him until he could sit down to something more substantial.

  "Will he find us in the libra
ry?" Silvas asked, putting a smile on his face.

  "Since he must pass through the library to reach this room?" Carillia asked, her voice lightening at the sign of his improvement.

  "Do I have time to dress before?" Silvas asked.

  "Of course, my heart." Carillia took his arm and they left the conjuring chamber together.

  – |Braf came to the library with Koshka, and his report included the names of the dead as well as details on how they had died. He also had wounded soldiers to mention. "None so bad as to need serious help," he assured the wizard.

  "I'll stop by to treat them anyway," Silvas said, and Braf's face relaxed a little.

  Silvas hurried through the selection of cheese and fruit that Koshka had brought, and listened to Koshka's recitation of how the domestic staff had come through the fight. Silvas was amazed at his hunger and thirst. In just a few minutes he cleared the tray of food and downed two large goblets of wine. Carillia only nibbled and sipped. "I'll have more while you listen to our guests outside," she told Silvas.

  "And now I guess I must face them," he said, getting up from his chair with only slight difficulty. His joints seemed stiff, the way Auroreus's joints had stiffened up whenever the weather turned cold and damp. He stretched and twisted a couple of times and then headed out.

  His healing work in the soldier's barracks took only a couple of minutes, but Silvas's mood didn't lighten.

  It is still too much, too soon, he thought as he crossed back through the great hall. I am pressed nearly to the limit and there's no end in sight to this confrontation. I need time to think through all that has happened, all I have been shown. There were magics he could invoke to help him recall every detail of his mystic experiences, the visions-or whatever they truly were. The answer must lie in them somehow. If I could only find the time to search…