The wizards and the warriors tcoaaod-1

by Hugh Cook

  And Hearst remembered the inscription mapped over the countryside around the volcano: Here Be Dragons.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  'No closer,' said Comedo. 'No closer, or I swallow it.' He kissed the ring.

  Miphon took another step forward. Comedo grinned and parted his lips, stretching a thread of saliva to breaking point. His tongue lolled out to accept the glistening gold. Suddenly he snapped his mouth shut and gulped. Miphon swore. Comedo plucked the ring from his mouth and capered up and down: a grotesque figure of dust and blood, blood and tatters. He was, Miphon was sure, quite mad. i fooled you then, didn't I? Your heart squeaked nicely, nay? A mouse, and I stepped on it. I fancy that, for Miphon's fancy's fool, the mute word's moron. Nay?'

  Then suddenly the pretense of humour was gone: 'Now down on your knees and grovel! Or I'll swallow it.'

  Miphon shook his head, and said, as he might say to a dog or a horse: 'Soft now, soft, I'm no harm to you, soft now, easy.'

  Slowly, carefully, as if easing out over thin ice, he began to close the distance. Comedo lept away, and shouted: 'Belly down to the dust or I'll swallow the ring.'

  'Swallow it then,' said Miphon, suddenly angry. He drew a knife. 'Swallow it, and I'll rip you from vent to gills.'

  'That blade may kill, but hardly the hand that holds it.'

  'You're still walking, but that doesn't make you immortal.' i'm mad,' said Comedo. 'You mustn't hurt me. I'm mad, I can't help it.'

  An extravagant cringing fear had replaced Comedo's arrogance. He was like… like what? Like a patch of sky in which any sort of weather might manifest itself. Princes have the opportunity to create the kind of reality that suits them. i won't hurt you,' said Miphon, regretting his outburst of anger.

  'You couldn't anyway,' said Comedo, suddenly fierce, drawing a blade and snarling. 'Magic doesn't work in the bottle, does it? Blade against blade, I can take you. No contest. Now what will you tell your toenails if I go outside with the ring and leave you counting days to years – forever!'

  'Try it,' said Miphon.

  'Not today,' said Comedo. 'I'm a prince, not a prince's fool, my princely fool. But the swords won't be waiting outside forever. The dragon will munch them down, soon if not later. I saw the dragon from the shores of the lake. It flew from my dreams: practising. Wonderful! Bones crunch slowly. I wish I could watch.'

  Miphon watched Comedo as one might watch a scorpion. The subdued green light from the walls of the bottle allowed him to see everything clearly here, for they were in the neck of the bottle. Downstairs the rooms would be gloomier. How many rooms were there? How many chambers? Miphon had no idea. He had never studied the magic of enchantment of bottles: it was old lore, now commanded, to the best of his knowledge, only by the order of Varkarlor.

  Suddenly Comedo ran for the spiral staircase that led downwards. Miphon chased him down the stairs, and found himself in a storeroom a hundred times the size of the room above. Firestones studded the ceiling, shedding light on massive barrels of water, ale and wine, on sacks bulging with potatoes and onions, on fish smoked and salted, dried meat, pickles, hams, bunches of herbs and dried figs.

  'Come and get me,' said Comedo, with a giggle. 'Come and get me.'

  'I will,' said Miphon grimly.

  This was getting too dangerous. He should have knifed Comedo in the room above. Would Hearst have hesitated, or Gorn, or Alish? Even Blackwood would not have hesitated under the circumstances. Comedo dangled the ring over a drop-hole.

  'Don't drop it down there!' said Miphon.

  'Why not?'

  'We'll never see it again.'

  Miphon knew all about the drop-holes. They would have a common opening located beneath the overhang of a tower at one of the wizard castles – in the case of this bottle, most probably Castle Vaunting. Anything thrown into one would finish up in the flame trench which circled the castle.

  'We don't need to see it again,' said Comedo. 'We already know what it looks like.'

  Miphon lunged at Comedo, who skipped back, snatched something from a shelf and hurled it at Miphon. It shattered at Miphon's feet: a jar of pickled pigs' trotters. Comedo threw another one. Miphon ducked. The jar clipped a barrel and burst in a shower of ceramic shards.

  'Come on then,' said Comedo.

  Miphon threw a jar at him.

  'Missed,' said Comedo.

  The prince danced away down another flight of stairs. The chase ended in a totally bare room. It was much larger than the one above, but was split in two by a massive stone wall which was fantastically carved with figures of wizards, warriors, dragons, and creatures of the Swarms. In the wall was a single doorway, flanked by twisting stone pillars.

  There were no firestones here, but the bare floor was patterned with a filigree tracery of green light which supplemented the dull glow from the outer walls., 'You can't run much further,' said Miphon. 'Give it to me.'

  Comedo backed toward the doorway. Miphon followed him cautiously. The other half of the room was also bare and featureless, apart from a stairway leading downwards. Miphon tried to circle round Comedo to cut off his escape down that stairway.

  'Don't hurt me,' said Comedo. 'Oh don't hurt me.'

  'Give me the ring,' said Miphon. 'Now!'

  Comedo's fingers opened, and the ring fell to the stone floor. It rolled round and round in ever-diminishing circles, then fell, shivered and was still. Comedo backed away. Miphon stalked toward the ring, now ready to kill Comedo if he tried to grab it back. But Comedo kept retreating, with fear, despair and terror written on his torn and bloodstained face. Miphon scooped up the ring.

  Comedo skipped back through the doorway and threw a lever hidden in the decorative carvings on the other side of the wall. A huge portcullis crashed down between him and Miphon, blocking the doorway. Miphon stood there unbelieving. Comedo had tricked him. Just like that. He had managed it so easily, so easily.

  Comedo laughed.

  'Now you'll grovel,' said Comedo. 'Now you'll grovel, now, down on your slime on your belly, because it's mine now. Mine!'

  For a moment Miphon was dismayed, then he smiled. Of course! One turn of the ring would dissolve his body into mist, which would reassemble outside the bottle.

  'You forget,' said Miphon. 'I've got the ring.' 'Have you now?' said Comedo. 'Have you now? Take a closer look, Mr Wizard. Take a closer look.' Miphon held up the ring to study it by the dim green underseas light. But one ring looks much like another. He jammed it on a finger and turned it. Nothing happened.

  'Do you want the magic ring?' said Comedo. 'Do you want it?'

  Miphon walked to the portcullis. On the other side, Comedo grinned at him. Comedo opened his mouth, and fingered a ring out of the dark wet shadows within.

  'You're my prisoner now,' said Comedo.

  Miphon put his hands to the cold metal bars of the portcullis. He tried to shift it. He might as well have tried to move a mountain.

  'You need me,' said Miphon, thinking quickly now. 'You could die from your injuries. They're starting to rot already. I can tell. You're going to die if you don't get my help.'

  'Pox doctor!' i tell you, if you don't get my help -"

  Comedo shouted Miphon down, screamed at him, alternating rage with sarcasm, bitterness and spite. Miphon's bluff had failed. Turning, he walked away toward the staircase that led downwards deeper into the bottle.

  'Run then,' said Comedo. 'Run then. You'll be back, when you get tired of drinking your own piss. You have to eat, you know. I'll feed you – once you've eaten. I've got you now. I'll have you licking out the inside of my nostrils before I'm finished with you.'

  At the head of the stairs there was a hatch which Miphon could close and bolt after him. He did so, shutting out the sound of Comedo's ranting. Water, yes, he would need water: he was already thirsty, his throat dusty from that long slide down the scree slope.

  But did he really dare venture downwards in search of it?

  The stairs were dark. The steps, hollowed by many fee
t, reminded him of the bottle's great antiquity. It dated back to the Long War against the Swarms, thousands of years before his birth. It might well contain dangers unknown to the age he had been born into.

  He did not hesitate. He had no choice.

  He descended the darkened stairs.

  On reaching the bottom, Miphon found himself in a huge room bigger than any of the chambers above. The dim light from floor and walls showed him the room was empty.

  Prince Comedo had been indulging in histrionics when he had sobbed that inside the bottle it was 'so jolty sway'. There was no trace of motion inside the bottle. The horizons were always the same. The fluids within the inner ear were as quiet and steady as the silent waters of a landlocked underground sea. The bottle was a self-contained world where the air felt dead and lifeless, as if nothing had stirred in it for centuries. The dull green glow from the walls, like the eye-vein patterns sprawled across the floor, had nothing to do with the world outside; the illumination was a property of the bottle itself, giving no hint of night or day. The temperature was constant, cool but not chill; neither sun nor frost in the world outside could alter it.

  Miphon tried to remember his days in the sunlight -which already seemed a long time ago. He tried to remember the bottle swinging from Blackwood's belt. It widened from the neck for a third of its height, then for the next two-thirds it tapered very slightly to a flat base. Since the rooms were still getting larger, he could not have descended more than a third of the way to the bottom, if that.

  Someone's tracks showed in the sparse scattering of dust on the floor. Miphon followed them to the next stairway and descended. He guessed Valarkin had left the tracks, as he doubted that Comedo would have cared to explore this bottle on his own – and the tracks had all been made by one person.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Miphon entered a room where the walls were almost lost in the misty green distance. He followed dusty footprints till he was close enough to the walls to see the chairs, desks and shelves of books that were arrayed there. Valarkin, judging by the tracks, had lost his nerve and turned back at this point. And no wonder. The silence was enormous.

  – This is what it will be like after the death-stone kills everything.

  Miphon shivered, and went on.

  Had this place been a library? A prison? A holding pen for hostages? Or a refuge in times of fire, flood, war? It could have been used for conferences, allowing wizards of different orders to meet, safe in the knowledge that none could use magic on the others. Perhaps Miphon might be able to find a ring that would let him leave the bottle.

  Otherwise, the only way out was by a drop-hole, which was suicidal. Anything thrown into a drop-hole was subjected to tremendous acceleration; climbing down, one would be torn from the walls by that acceleration and spat out at the other end at a considerable velocity. Even if Miphon could, by a miracle, have got safely to a drop-hole's exit under the overhang of one of the wizard towers, he would have needed a second miracle to survive the difficult climb to the top of the battlements. If the fates denied him a double miracle, the drop-hole promised only a death in the flames of the fire-dyke.

  So: no ring, no escape.

  On a table was a chess game, which had been abandoned at a difficult stage. Miphon puzzled over it for a while, then placed a wizard aboard a dragon to be ready for flight or attack. He walked around the board to look at it from the other side. Now the counter to that move…

  Miphon shook himself.

  A Rovac warrior caught in this trap would have been 270 tearing the room apart to find some ring or key or tool or clue that would secure release. No Rovac warrior would have given up without – at least! – ransacking this vast room. Could a wizard do any less?

  Part of the problem was that Miphon, like any wizard of Nin, had always had that comforting thought at the back of his mind: if the worst comes to the worst, if there is no other way, then I will begin the rites of recall. I will recall the powers too terrible for a human being to be trusted to live with: I will open the book of Nariq.

  But here in the green bottle, his magic would not work. He had no more resources here than any mortal man. Nevertheless: he had the room to search. He began.

  Much later, he found the ring, which lay on a page of an open book. He put it on the ring finger of his left hand, then twisted it experimentally. It was only as he twisted it that he noticed the red bottle that stood on a nearby bookshelf. The ring turned full circle and Miphon was sucked into the red bottle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Fear is the mind-sharpener.

  A shadow wheeled over rock and sand. The men scattered. They dived for cover, and lay still. They could hear the creak of wings labouring through the sky. The shadow lurched over the rocks, once, then again. The dragon was circling overhead. Then they heard it alight on a bluff overlooking the ground where they were hiding.

  It was hot. Hot and quiet. Morgan Hearst lay in an anorexic shadow in the lee of a rock. The desire to look up almost overwhelmed him, but to move could be death. Instead, he concentrated on his hand. He flexed the fingers: they were his own. But he saw the hand in all its strangeness, as though taking his first look at the paw of an alien species. i've got cramp,' said Erhed, a young man who had the weakest brain of any of Comedo's soldiers.

  'Shut up, Erhed,' said Hearst.

  'But I've got cramp!'

  'Shut up!' hissed Hearst. i've got -'

  Alish closed the distance in a convulsive leap. Smashed Erhed with a chunk of rock. Silenced him. Hearst lay still as death. Would that movement attract the dragon's attention? Would this be the end? He waited. And waited. And the dragon: did not swoop.

  So Alish had saved them. Alish, hearing Erhed so close to panic, had acted. And Hearst had not: had been afraid to move, even though he had seen that Erhed was about to panic and run, bringing disaster to all of them.

  In the Cold West, men had rightly called Hearst fearless: he did not remember being afraid in those days, not even at Enelorf when the troops of the Stormguard broke and ran in panic. Morgan Hearst, son of Avor the Hawk, had been bold to the point of recklessness, scorning fear and doubt.

  However, when the chill of the Cold West had begun to get to his bones, Hearst had lost the absolute certainty which had previously characterised his every action. He remembered how they had been skirmishing outside the walls of Larbreth when the joints of his right arm had begun to seize up. He had wielded his sword left-handed while he made his escape. He had known fear then; and many times since.

  And knew it now.

  Where was the dragon? Was it still high on that bluff, or was it moving softfoot down to the killing ground where the men lay hiding? Could a dragon move softfoot? Was it playing a game with them, as a cat will play with a mouse? How long could the men lie there in the shadow of fear? Sooner or later one was sure to panic and run.

  Hearst heard the dragon take to the air. The wings creaked. The shadow plunged overhead. Where was it headed? Was it gaining height, ready to dive down to attack them? 'It's gone,' said Alish, in a voice Hearst remembered from the Cold West: the voice of Bloodsword, He Who Walks, Our Lord Despair. 'On your feet,' said Alish. it's gone. Come on. Up! You, and you: carry Erhed. He's stunned.'

  As the men slowly got to their feet, Hearst consulted with Garash. i thought dragons only flew by night,' said Hearst.

  'No law tells them to,' said Garash. 'They may choose otherwise here.'

  'What do you suggest we do then?' said Hearst.

  'There is nothing to do,' said Garash. 'Except hope.'

  'What's this?' said Alish. 'Taking advice from wizards, are we?'

  'There's nobody else to ask,' said Hearst.

  'Then we can keep our own counsel,' said Alish.

  'Many value the advice of wizards, manroot,' said Garash.

  'When fear speaks to fear, courage sees no reason to listen,' said Alish. 'We march.'

  ***

  The challenge came the next evening. The Ro
vac warriors had heard not so much as a rumour of trouble, but then, they had been busy – Alish scouting ahead for the easiest route, Hearst helping Garash and Blackwood over the more difficult parts of the trail, and Gorn bringing up the rear to make sure no stragglers lagged behind. Those who wished to conspire had been given all the opportunities they could have wished for.

  The mutiny was planned and led by Atsimo Andranovory, an experienced, dangerous man. Born in Lorp, a poverty-stricken land on the west coast north of Estar, he had spent part of his early life as a fisherman in the Lesser Teeth, before joining the Orfus pirates. Boozing and brawling had destroyed any prospects he might have had there: after quarrelling with a pirate captain, he had been put ashore at Iglis, in Estar, and had put his sword at Prince Comedo's command.

  In Castle Vaunting, Andranovory had never amounted to much – he had just been a drunken bully boy. Even after they had left the High Castle, the thought highest in his mind had been the proper care and rationing of the two skins of hard liquor which he had carried in his pack.

  However, it was now a long time since Andranovory had put alcohol to his lips – or, for that matter, to any less conventional part of his anatomy – and he was clear-minded and ready to assert himself. He knew full well that it would be easy enough to gain the Velvet River and retreat to the Harvest Plains in the south, whereas the journey north was taking them into danger, with every chance that winter would catch them on the desolate uplands of the Central Plateau.

  Andranovory soon found he was not the only one who thought it was better to sing about heroes than to try to emulate them. After all, in this desolate wasteland there was no chance of any pillage, plunder or rape -unless, as Erhed said, one was to find a very young and tender dragon. All that was needed was the right moment to strike.