The wizard at Mecq tst-1

by Rick Shelley

  The storm expanded over Blethye, spreading to cover the entire horizon even as it continued to advance toward Mecq. The waves of fear that swept out in front of the clouds of night were as real as an Atlantic storm tide washing against the shore, breaking, washing sand back out to sea, to destruction.

  "Time runs behind itself," Silvas said softly. "The storm races for us, yet we experience each moment as if it were five." That is part of the evil, he thought. "It is simply a way for the Blue Rose to make its terror work harder. If they were as strong as they try to seem, they would not need such artifice." He looked around at his companions. They were watching the approaching storm. Concern, fear, was on every face. I expect it's on mine as well, Silvas conceded. There is certainly cause enough.

  "We are with you, my heart," Carillia said. She managed a smile, but it was tinged with sadness… or regret.

  Silvas returned her smile. "I know you are, my love." He nearly stuttered over the last two words.

  He turned to face the storm again. It covered half of Blethye now, stretching out for miles on either side, curving in at the edges like the horns of the gibbous moon. The leading edge was no more than a mile from the northern slopes of the twin hills now. Silvas started to chant, projecting part of his mind forward to meet the night that flowed across the morning. I must make my challenge, let them know that I stand ready to do battle.

  The curdling cries of demons, the soul-destroying wails of the banshees who waited like vultures to feast on the souls lost in battle, the laughter of the Blue Rose's gods, all rose to greet Silvas's probe. He chanted, closing his eyes to concentrate on his spells, doing what he could to ignore the leeching of resolve. After a moment he felt the sun burning brightly behind him, heating his back, seemingly enlarging itself to challenge the unnatural night sweeping south toward Mecq. Silvas's armor grew hot, the trembling inside him seemed to ease. He forged ahead with his incantations, feeling stronger, more confident. Even if I fall, the Blue Rose will know they have faced a battle, he promised himself. If a heaven remains when this day is over, the angels will sing of our stand.

  The musics of hell assaulted Silvas. The chanting of Bishop Egbert's monks rose in reply, the traditional plainsong of the White Brotherhood. The music of the Unseen Lord came not just from the monks on the ledge with Silvas, but also from the monks in St. Katrinka's, in perfect unison, though the one group could certainly not hear the other.

  – |The people of Mecq huddled together in their church. At first many of them had little real notion what was coming. There was some foreboding, but not all that much more than there had been since the first storm had assailed Mecq after the arrival of the wizard. Some of the bolder villagers stood at the doors of the church for a time, watching the storm gather beyond the twin hills. But as the black night rose to the heavens and stars returned to the sky, terror finally gripped all the villagers so completely that rational thought became impossible. Even Master Ian shrank from the sight and retreated inside the church to lose himself in Pater Nosters and Ave Marias.

  Clear spaces remained around the six monks in the church. The villagers held back from the monks, their chanting, and the almost visible aura of power that grew around them. The monks chanted magical formulas that the peasants couldn't hold on to long enough to really hear. Only when the chants moved from the spells of the Greater Mysteries to the plainsong of the Church Revealed did the people of Mecq find any ease. Familiar hymns loosened the ropes strangling their hearts and souls-for the moment.

  – |It is time, the voice of the Unseen Lord said within Silvas. You must strike now.

  Silvas lowered his gaze from the Devil's darkness to the plain of Blethye. His telesight came upon him without bidding, and Silvas found himself staring at a single man who stood on the plain, in the center of a pentagram much like the one Silvas had scribed outside the gate of Mecq's castle.

  That is Caradoc, the wizard of the Blue Rose in Blethye, the god's voice said inside Silvas. He is the wick of their attack.

  As I am the wick of yours? Silvas asked, but no reply came.

  Silvas focused on Caradoc. He had never heard the name before, had heard no rumor of this wizard. I did not know that there was another such wizard-potent in all of England, he thought. That another as powerful as he could operate and gain no fame was amazing. Whether he worked for good or evil, there should have been some rumor of his power. Unless the Blue Rose has saved him unused for this one moment, Silvas allowed.

  Caradoc was a man of exceeding height, taller than Silvas and thinner, as if fasting had been a way of life for him. The discipline of the Blue Rose is stern, the Unseen Lord's voice said. Silvas studied the other wizard. Coal black eyes (they could be nothing else) were raised toward the leading edge of the demonic darkness. The face was lined and gaunt, hard-edged with anger and consuming hate. His passions are those of the Blue Rose, pain and punishment. The cheeks angled sharply down and inward to a pointed chin of great exaggeration. His robe was an unadorned black, blowing fitfully around him in the winds that his magic had raised against Mecq. His hands were raised, the right one clenched in a fist, the left one… Silvas couldn't make out at first what was wrong with the left hand. It formed no fist. The fingers seemed stiff and bent at unnatural angles so that the hand looked almost like the claw of a hawk. The punishments of the Blue Rose.

  Silvas transferred his quarterstaff to his left hand, resting the iron tip on the ground just inside his point of the pentagram, and he drew the sword at his side for the first time and held it out over the intersection of the lines, aimed directly at Caradoc. A spell and a word of power came to Silvas's lips without searching. Thunder roared in the heavens and spat out a single bolt of lightning at the Blue Rose's wizard. The lightning coursed directly at the man but shattered against the dome of protection that covered Caradoc's pentagram, sending dozens of ribs of light harmlessly into the ground around the perimeter.

  It was too much to hope for, Silvas thought, but he immediately tried again, racing through the spell and adding words that would rain lightning down on the other wizard as heavily as it had rained down on Mount Balq barely a half hour before.

  Caradoc, the five assistants in the pentagram with him, and the pentagram itself were covered by a dome of lightning, a solid sheet of white fire that glowed brighter than the sun. But the white fire turned a muddy clay red and then faded into blackness. The last bolts of Silvas's lightning cracked with uncommon loudness and seemed to turn back on the sky.

  Within the night of the Blue Rose, the voices of the demons and banshees grew louder and became audible even to ears unaided by magic. Silvas felt his concentration waver as he heard cries of fear from the soldiers on the rampart behind him. Fighting to shut out those cries, Silvas struggled to regain his focus on the Blue Rose wizard, and managed to seal his mind to the task just as Caradoc launched his counterattack.

  Caradoc pointed his deformed hand at Silvas, and a blaze of blue lightning seemed to emerge directly from that claw. Silvas imagined, and knew that it was only imagination, that he could smell burning flesh. This blue lightning appeared to move at the pace of a donkey under a heavy burden, leaving Silvas sufficient time to erect an extra shield against it. But before the blue light reached the ledge on Mount Mecq, it divided into five fingers as misshapen as those that had launched it and came at the pentagram from every side.

  Though Caradoc's attack was neither as intense nor as powerful as Silvas's opening thrust, Silvas couldn't meet the blue fire as simply as Caradoc had met the white. If he merely shunted the blue lightning aside, it might engulf the monks standing below the castle walls, or even rebound against those on the ramparts. Instead Silvas reached out with his mind, attempting to cup each finger of fire in a palm filled with water. The blue fire faded into red and limped away across the ledge, feeble enough that the monks were able to step clear of the dying tendrils.

  But even as Silvas damped the blue fire, black lightning struck from above, a jagged edge of ni
ght cleaving the remaining daylight over the twin mountains. This bolt seemed to be directed at Carillia rather than at Silvas, and she was able to respond more quickly than he, raising her hands and shattering the black lightning into bits of black coal and shiny crystals of diamond that scattered and bounced as they hit the ground.

  Bay bared his teeth and neighed in anger, faced with some challenge of his own that Silvas couldn't discern. The horse didn't move, though, and after a moment his face relaxed.

  "It is truly joined at last," Silvas mumbled, though no one heard him.

  – |Outside Silvas's pentagram, the ground, the hills, even the castle walls and the monks and soldiers were covered by a thin orange haze. An unnatural silence descended with the mist, leaving hollow echoes of emptiness ringing in Silvas's ears. To the north, the infernal night continued to advance, more slowly than before. Its leading edge was within a hundred yards of the foot of Mount Mecq. A new terror advanced more rapidly beneath that mantle of blackness.

  "The armies of the night approach," Carillia announced.

  "Demons of hell, driven by the Devil," Brother Paul said, astonished that he could actually see something of the enemy even though they were still some distance away and concealed by the necessary night that sheltered them.

  "Near enough the mark," Bishop Egbert said. "Lord Silvas, do you have a specific defense in mind for these?" The bishop's voice remained remarkably calm despite a certain quaking within him. He was ready, even eager, to make this stand for his faith.

  "How has the White Brotherhood fought the Blue Rose before?" Silvas asked, a mostly rhetorical question.

  "We raised a crusade against them in Burgundy," Egbert said, uncertain of the real tenor of Silvas's question.

  "You sent a crusade of living soldiers against the living tools of the Blue Rose. Now we are faced by tools of the Blue Rose who do not live, who likely have never lived. Can we not meet them with an army of martyrs who have already died for their faith?" The idea had come to Silvas almost as he spoke, prompted as much by the bishop's response as anything else.

  Bishop Egbert stared off toward the coming night and the armies of the never-living while he spoke a quick prayer and contemplated Silvas's suggestion. While there is time to think, it would be a sin not to think, he told himself.

  "It might be the best of all replies," the bishop said. Deliberation did not require excessive delay. Egbert had a quick mind.

  "Amen," Silvas said-so be it.

  He raised his sword and quarterstaff toward the darkness and started to chant. The spells came to mind without searching, although they were ones that he had never used, or even contemplated, before. It was as if they had been especially entrusted to his mind for this battle. After a moment Carillia started to speak in unison with Silvas, and the others in the pentagram fell in automatically, even Brother Paul, who had no idea what he was saying. Words he could hardly have grasped, could scarcely have heard, outside the pentagram flowed easily from his lips. It was as if Silvas or one of the others were driving his throat and mouth as well as his own. This is of the Greater Mysteries, the vicar thought. It takes me beyond where I have ever been. His feeling was more of wonder than fear. I always thought that the Greater Mysteries were beyond my talents.

  The cadence of the chant gave the semblance of music. The different registers of the voices gave it harmony, from the clear contralto of Carillia and the reedy tenor of Bosc through the baritones of Silvas and the two churchmen to the basso profundo of Bay rumbling underneath all of the others. The six monks lined up beneath the wall finally picked up the chant, as automatically as Brother Paul had. They seemed to remain half a sound behind the rest, though, giving the chant a tremolo, an echo.

  For the soldiers on the walls above, the effect was one of growing noise, sound without form. Neither Sir Eustace nor any of his men had the gift to grasp the words of the ancient spells.

  For several minutes there was no visible result. Silvas and his companions within the pentagram could feel the increase of power they were generating, but they could see nothing new. Then…

  The army of martyrs rose silently from the dirt and rock of the twin hills. It was easiest to see what was happening across the river on Mount Balq, but the same thing happened on Mount Mecq. Soldiers grew out of the earth, already mounted on spectral steeds. The knights and men-at-arms seemed to come from different eras and from all parts of Christendom. Their manner of dress, their weapons and armor varied. All wore a bright white cross on their shoulders, though, whether on ragged tunic or rusted mail. The ghosts of these warriors who had died for their faith were pale images, less substantial than a reflection in a rippling pond, but the blades of their weapons caught the sunlight and glinted. Men rose from both slopes of the two hills. Those who emerged on Mecq's side of the hills advanced over the crests, moving into position behind those who had appeared on Blethye's side. Steep slopes, even sheer drops meant nothing to this army of the dead. Kings and high lords called out their commands, and the martyrs fell into ranks and rode into the sky, moving out under the darkness that had been projected to cover the advance of the demons of the Blue Rose. Under the darkness the army of martyrs became more visible, a pale luminescence that shimmered in subtle ways.

  Even the soldiers on the castle walls could see these warriors. Most of the soldiers fell to their knees in uncontrollable fright or desperate prayer. Not even Sir Eustace was immune.

  But the terror didn't last. The army of martyrs raised a hymn, and while the words weren't completely audible to those without entree to the mystic realm, their comfort was. The soldiers on the wall struggled back to their feet as the martyrs charged toward the advancing enemy. When Sir Eustace looked out through one of the crenels, he had regained his customary scowl. This time he focused it toward Blethye rather than toward the people who had raised this latest terror. He even found grudging approval for the fact that the wizard and his allies had dispatched this terrible army into Blethye to fight. Better there than on my land was his easy assessment. Such a fight could leave the land on which it is fought barren.

  – |The transition was as sharp and jarring as an unexpected slap in the face. Still, allowing for an instant of shock, Silvas recognized the field immediately. This is the land of the gods, he thought, and then he spoke the words when he realized that Bay and Carillia were with him, one on either side. Then he recalled Carillia's divinity and felt embarrassment.

  "This is not my home," Carillia said. "My home is with you, my heart, always." She leaned against him. Since Silvas held weapons in both hands, they could do little more than touch shoulder to shoulder.

  "My love," he whispered. Warmth spread over the edge of fear that remained in his thoughts. Perhaps we do have tomorrows left together.

  At first Silvas was only aware of the three of them. Then he saw the armies of the gods arrayed on the field. Silvas and his companions were in the midst of one army. The second faced them from two hundred yards away. There was little to obviously distinguish between the armies. This was no clash of light and dark, white and blue. This was the land of the gods, and everything was bright and perfect. These warriors were dressed in full metal plate. From toe to top, they were covered in armor that gleamed like the brightest mirrors ever devised. Visors were pulled down on helmets, giving the assemblage an anonymous look. The horses were magnificent, many appearing to be Bay's equal in size. Their coats, where they were visible, were glossy. Their harness was impeccable, and most were draped in armor and in silken finery.

  "My brothers and their cohorts," Carillia said. "And my sisters."

  "All of them?" Silvas asked.

  Carillia shook her head. "Some few have forgone any part in this fight. It does not matter. It will debase them as it debases all of us." There was tremendous sadness in her voice when she added, "Yet it cannot be avoided. It must be endured."

  If any can endure, Silvas thought-and that startled him, for it did not seem to originate in his own mind.


  A trumpet blew.

  – |Hail assaulted the top of Mount Mecq. Ice pellets the size of plums struck with incredible fury. Their impact was blunted by the dome of protection that covered Silvas's pentagram, but only for those within it. The soldiers on the ramparts of Sir Eustace's castle, dressed in chain mail and wearing helmets, still raised their bucklers above their heads to guard their faces. The monks in front of the wall were left with no defense except for the partial protection of the wall itself. They were forced to break off their chanting to turn and face the wall. They hunched over and pulled the cowls up over their heads to try to protect themselves until Silvas and the others in the pentagram could stop the onslaught. Satin and Velvet growled in anger and pain, then retreated under the cover of the gate, hugging the wall on either side to avoid the rest of the storm.

  The hail quickly covered the ledge and made the ramparts treacherously slippery. Bishop Egbert took the lead in fighting the hail, calling for holy fire to cleanse it. Silvas lent his power to the bishop's chant, and soon the ice started to burn away with tiny flames that didn't affect people. The fire of Pentecost. Egbert's mind projected that thought so clearly that Silvas could hardly miss it. The flames seemed to climb into the sky on ladders of hail, clearing the air.

  Silvas looked up to the castle ramparts. The soldiers were slow to expose themselves again, but there seemed to be no serious casualties there. Below the wall, one monk didn't rise. Two of his companions went to check on him. "He is dead," Brother Andrew reported. Brother Andrew had blood streaks on his chest from the hail.

  "Look down the road toward Blethye," Bay said. Silvas focused his telesight and scanned quickly.

  "The Duke of Blethye and his army," Silvas said. Then he said it again, loud enough for Sir Eustace to hear, and added, "He appears to have a dozen knights, as many archers, and six score men-at-arms. They're over a mile from the foot of Mount Mecq."