The wizards and the warriors tcoaaod-1

by Hugh Cook

  T should have saved one of those little fish,' said Hearst. 'That's the best bait.'

  'You can have the first one I catch,' said Blackwood.

  Soon after, Blackwood handed Hearst a small fish. It quivered in his hand, struggled as the hook went home. Live bait. Hearst swung his line once, twice, three times, then cast it out into the darkness. It fell. The line snaked away as the small fish sprinted in panic. Hearst felt life sing along the line as his bait carried the hook into the depths.

  Then the line went weightless. It swayed away sideways into the night. Pulling on the line, Hearst felt a leisurely power bearing his bait-fish away. He yanked on the line to drive the hook hard home. The answer was a sudden jerk that almost had him in the water. The line pulled taut. Cordage burnt through his hands. He swore. Then the line broke.

  A larger swell rocked through the dark sea, splashed spray onto the rocks they were standing on, and boomed thunder inside the sea cave. Black clouds swallowed the moon. Something gleamed under water, big, white, far down, turning, gone – what was it? Another wave slammed home against the rocks.

  'Come on,' said Hearst. 'Let's get back to the campsite.'

  Later that night, waiting for sleep, he thanked his 505 fates for what had been, in its own way, a perfect day. He knew the dangers that lay ahead: the Dry Pit, the Marabin Erg, and, if they survived that, eventually a battle with the Swarms themselves. He knew the odds favoured his death: he doubted that he would live to see another spring. And so he savoured what was left to him, and found it sweet. As Saba Yavendar said:

  My feet wear down the last of the road Through scarabshard cities, through shufflerock hills, Through grey timedwindled mountainscapes.

  Insects feed at my sweat Till a cavemouth swallows me to its shelter.

  My goatskin outglubs the last of its bub, And fills the cup to less than belly-centre:

  Yet I drink, for I will not refuse the cup Simply because the wine lacks the brim.

  There must have been a storm far out to sea, because for days big swells broke on the shores of the Tongue, each swell rising glass-green as it reached the shallows near the shore, then breaking to churning white spray with a boom of thunder.

  As the three trekked north along the sands, the tideline now was littered with shells, and occasional clumps of black seaweed, some with thick clusters of fat pink barnacles clinging to them. Now and then they encountered signs of human life: charred timbers that had once been shaped with axe or adze, and had met fire before the sea brought them to this resting; a fishing float marked with a weather-rune; the cork-buoyed haft of a broken harpoon.

  Halfway between the Elbow and the cliffs of Seagate, they found a beachside tree covered with blood-red blossoms. It was, said Miphon, a tree known to some of the peoples of the Ocean of Cambria as yanzyonz, meaning 'autumn fire'. The travellers rested in the shade of the tree; bees were at work in the blossoms.

  'Honey,' said Blackwood, listening to the bees.

  'That would be nice,' said Hearst.

  'These things can be arranged,' said Miphon. 'If you don't mind waiting.'

  'But,' said Hearst, 'you've lost your…'

  'This doesn't need magic,' said Miphon. 'Watch.'

  And he caught one of the nectar-seeking bees, tore pieces from its veined wings, then released it. The injured bee could fly hardly faster than walking pace. Miphon followed it, knowing it would lead him straight to the hive.

  'I'm going to dig shellfish,' said Blackwood.

  'Enjoy yourself,' said Hearst.

  Left alone, he decided to gather some firewood. In his search, he discovered, not far from the shoreline, a low bank of old shells, long ago bleached white by the sun. Many were calcined, cracked by heat; there were banks of such shells all along the Chameleon's Tongue, where groups of people had camped for weeks at a time, feeding on shellfish, sometimes cooking them in bulk to take inland. The heap of discarded shells could have been there for years, decades or centuries.

  Unbidden and unexpected, a memory surfaced. It was one of the memories of the wizard Phyphor, who, thousands of years before, had stood on the shores of the harbour of Hartzaven, at Seagate, watching a small sailing craft making for the shore.

  Phyphor had said: is that them?'

  And his companion, one Saba Yavendar, had said, yes, yes, that's them, that's the party come to negotiate for the Dareska Amath – Hearst remembered.

  Remembered the Dareska Amath, as seen through Phyphor's eyes. A wild people, yes, much given to laughter and boasting, fond of improbable stories and outrageous dares, a tough and hardy seafaring folk, eager for the challenge of an audacious venture into the Deep South. Those were his ancestors, and… they were nothing like the people who now lived on Rovac.

  The Dareska Amath had been quick to anger and quick to forget; the Rovac had developed the capacity for a sour, unrelenting hatred that nothing could appease. The Dareska Amath had possessed a sardonic sense of the ridiculous which tempered their excesses; the Rovac cultivated an overbearing arrogance and a fanatical sense of honour which destroyed their sense of proportion.

  Standing there on the sands of the Tongue, Hearst thought of the way Elkor Alish had gone raging to war to revenge a wrong committed over four thousand years ago. The Dareska Amath would have laughed at such a loss of proportion – and at Alish, seeking to honour their memory by destroying the Confederation of Wizards.

  Now the Swarms were sweeping north through Argan. That disaster must make Alish re-assess the situation, and see that their world was too fragile to sustain a never-ending feud that threatened the destruction of the strongest and the best. And if Alish would reconsider, then, possibly, Morgan Hearst and Elkor Alish might one day be able to meet again as friends.

  ***

  The time came when the cliffs of Seagate appeared through the surfhaze: one more march would bring them to those cliffs. Another day would bring them to Hartzaven, where they hoped to be able to find a boat to take them to the northern shore.

  Hearst decided to make the march to the cliffs by night, for if they were going to meet anyone on the Chameleon's Tongue, this last part of the journey was where it was most likely to happen.

  They made their way by moonlight. The moon was cold and steel-bright in a clear sky. There was no cloud; every star was visible. The beach stretched away into the darkness; they walked on the wet sand, letting the waves' wash obliterate their footprints.

  The ocean had calmed; the waves were less than knee-high, but broke with a series of sharp retorts, each like the crack of a whip. Breaking, each wave curled over, forming a tube in which phosphorescence was stirred to life, so it was as if a bolt of lightning shot along the inside of each tubing wave just before it collapsed into miniature thunder.

  Where feet scuffed the wet sand, phosphorescence shone, a speck here, a speck there. Blackwood scooped up a handful of sand. In the centre shone the blue-green fire of one single phosphorescent creature. Its body was too small to see, but its light, in the darkness, held close to his face, was bright as one of the ardent stars of the heavens.

  The Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst led them on, into the darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  At Hartzaven, a sheltered harbour in the mountainous upthrust at Seagate at the end of the Tongue, the travellers stole a double-hulled ocean-going canoe from a small fishing village. They also took quantities of dried fish, sweet potatoes and white paste. The paste, extracted from the roots of a type of fern, looked and tasted a little like flour. After living for so long on lizards and shellfish, they welcomed the change in diet.

  They ventured the Sponge Sea in the stolen canoe. The seas at the end of autumn favoured them with an easy crossing. They landed on the northern coast, a hundred leagues from the Dry Pit.

  Much of the coastline was ancient metamorphic rock, but this was interrupted by dead, cold lava flows, which had run from far inland out to the edges of the Sponge Sea. Miphon said the lava flows had issued from the Dry Pit tho
usands of years before; to reach the Dry Pit, they need only follow one of the lava flows inland.

  It was a hard journey, through countryside that was mostly flat and monotonous, though here and there isolated mountains rose above the barren plains. There was little vegetation, but there were many insects. One afternoon the travellers broke open an ants' nest, a nest of earth that stood half as tall as a man; they mixed handfuls of black ants and white ant eggs with the last of their fern-paste, and roasted the combination over a slow fire. Several times Miphon found small colonies of honey ants, which they ate along with roasted crickets.

  Water was a problem. They found a few small pools 510 and streams, but sometimes ran short and went thirsty. Still, they managed, coping through habit and experience, aided by observation and alertness; they made steady progress through a landscape where others might have struggled just to stay alive. They fed on snakes, beetles, worms and grubs, and did not think that they were suffering.

  In times past – including very recent times – the way to the Dry Pit had been very dangerous because of the ferocity of the nomadic tribes that used to inhabit the area. However, so many expeditions of wizards had recently ventured the area that those tribesmen who had not been killed fighting wizards had fled to safer areas.

  Once, the travellers met a wandering rock, but Miphon drove it away with ease. Now that his only remaining power was the power over the minds of stone, he found such control very easy. Given the chance to regain all his former powers, he would have done so without hesitation, but he had to admit that life was much simpler now that his power was diminished. The meditation needed to build and control his remaining power demanded much less energy than he had been forced to expend previously. Miphon also found he could control the creatures of stone with much more precision.

  Truth to tell, released from most of the demands of maintaining his powers as a wizard, Miphon felt stronger and younger than he had done for years.

  On the seventh day they came on the scene of a battle. Fire had been the major weapon used. Scattered on scorched ground were the frayed, tattered remains of the bodies of human beings and pack animals. Morgan Hearst kicked apart the charred remains of a hamper one of the pack animals had been carrying. He revealed books, charts, maps, all ash-black and illegible.

  'Wizards,' said Hearst.

  That was all he said. The other two made no comment: none was needed. They went on, leaving the battleground behind them. It did not figure in their dreams, and by the next day they had almost forgotten it; after all they had been through, it would have taken more than a few dead bodies to upset them.

  On the eleventh day after leaving the shores of the Sponge Sea, they reached the Dry Pit.

  It was huge. Standing on the southern side, Hearst estimated that the northern rim was at least twenty leagues away, if not further. At their feet, cliffs fell sheer to indecipherable depths where thunder rolled, where shadows walked, where strange clouds of purple, umber and orange lumbered out of clefts and chasms, spitting lightning.

  'How do we get down?' said Miphon.

  'Easy,' said Hearst. 'Jump.'

  They shuddered, stepping back from the edge.

  'Somehow,' said Blackwood, 'I can't imagine Garash scratching his way down a cliff. Yet he got down there somehow. There has to be an easy way.'

  'Or,' said Hearst, 'at least a way which isn't quite suicidal.'

  Without further ado, they began to walk round the Dry Pit, but found no way down. They camped for the night; waking the next morning, they found the tracks of a large, multi-clawed animal which had come close to their campsite in the night.

  'What is it?' said Blackwood.

  'No comment,' said Hearst, who, frankly, didn't know.

  As they marched on, they became aware that there were carrion birds circling over a spot some distance ahead. Something was lying out there, dying.

  'If it was dead,' said Hearst, 'the birds would have come down already.'

  They debated the merits of waiting. Their waterskins were mostly empty, and that, in the end, decided them: they could not afford to wait. Advancing, they began to make out low mounds lying on the barren ground. The mounds slowly resolved themselves into corpses – and low-slung animals which were tearing at these corpses. It was the animals, obviously, which were keeping the birds at bay.

  They dared their way forward.

  The animals, big lizard-style creatures, turned tail and fled, scuttling over the rim of the Dry Pit and disappearing into the depths. Reaching the bodies, they read the tracks.

  'A walking rock was here,' said Miphon, pointing to a huge furrow which had ploughed up some drifting sand, and to scratches on bare lava. 'The bodies… well, you can see for yourself.'

  'Here's our path,' said Hearst, looking over the edge of the cliff.

  A narrow trail wound downwards into the depths.

  'Shall we start now?' said Blackwood.

  'Eat, first,' said Hearst, pointing to the bodies. i,' said Miphon, a little stiffly, 'am not a cannibal.'

  'You,' said Hearst, 'are not really hungry yet. No – relax, friend. I'm not suggesting we break out their marrow for a feast. Not yet, at any rate. Weil try their packs, first.'

  'Oh,' said Miphon.

  Miphon had thought of the dead bodies in terms of human tragedy; Hearst, still very much a Rovac warrior in spite of all the revelations he had experienced, thought of them in terms of loot (and, if necessary, flesh for the pot).

  Without the slightest qualm, Hearst rummaged the dead, rock-mangled lizard-chewed bodies, tearing away the wreckage of clothing, uncovering, with pride, a few bits of hardtack, a twist of tobacco and some dates.

  Miphon and Blackwood searched the packs. Some had been smashed by the walking rock, but others were entirely uninjured. Clearly none of the dead had been wearing their packs when attacked, which suggested they had been camping – sleeping by night, perhaps -and not on the march.

  Turning out one pack, Miphon found a load of maps and manuscripts. Then a tinder box, in much better repair than his own. Then a fire-iron, of the kind wizards of Arl sometimes used for lighting fires. Then a flimsy cotton shirt, which might be good for bandages. Then – 'Skalakala!' screamed Miphon.

  It was a cry right out of his childhood. It had served his ancestors both as a warcry and as a shout of surpassing delight. He raised his hand, exhibiting his trophy.

  The dead men had already been to the depths of the Dry Pit. They had already risked its dangers. And what Miphon held in his hand now was… a death-stone.

  It kicked in his hand, like a living heart, and he let it fall. If he had held it any longer without using it, it would have killed him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  They marched from the Dry Pit without delay, carrying the death-stone with them. Their triumph was shortlived; they were acutely aware of the immense distances they had to cover.

  By now, the Swarms would already have spread most of the distance up the western coast of Argan. Nobody would say for certain how fast the Swarms would move, but the travellers knew that the distance from Drangsturm to the Dry Pit was roughly equivalent to the distance from Drangsturm to the land of Estar.

  If the Skull of the Deep South had sent the Swarms north as fast as they could go, then there was probably no hope whatsoever of the travellers cutting them off at the southern border of Estar. On the other hand, if the Swarms had stopped to kill out each human community they came across, there was still some hope.

  A faint hope.

  That day, they marched due west from the Dry Pit, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and its unknown and half-known dangers. They camped that evening beside a marginal trickle of water, which – like the dates and hardtack they shared between them – was sweet luxury.

  That 'evening, they began to argue over which route to take. Having at least half-expected to die in the Dry Pit, they had never really talked it out before.

  Estar lay north-west, but a direct journey
, north-west as the eagle flies, would have meant crossing the Shackle Mountains, dragon country near the Araconch Waters, the Broken Lands, the Spine Mountains and the Ironband Mountains. Such an expedition was out of the question – they would have needed maps, guides, food, pack animals and cold-weather clothing for the mountain crossings.

  And it would have been slow beyond endurance.

  Their fastest route to Estar, if they walked, lay southwest down the barren and almost waterless coast of the Sponge Sea, then due west across the Marbin Erg to Veda – or, to be accurate, the ruins of Veda – then north along the Salt Road.

  'That's if we walk,' said Hearst. 'But I favour the sea.'

  'And maybe it favours you,' said Blackwood. 'But there's no way west from the Sponge Sea to the Central Ocean.'

  'We wouldn't go that way,' said Hearst. 'Returning to our canoe, we'd go the other way. We'd sail out through Seagate, then travel along the coast all the way to Skua. The sea has its dangers – but I'd rather contend with storms off the Bitterwater Coast than with monsters from the Swarms on the Salt Road.'

  In the end, Hearst won.

  They would go by sea.

  That night, Blackwood dreamt of Loosehead Robert, the mad revolutionary who, according to the children's stories of Estar, came to grief when he was caught in a cave in the hills. Blackwood's dream became a tangled nightmare in which hooks, claws and devouring spiders tore apart Robert's body.

  In the dream, Robert bled. Not blood, but long words: stochastic, phenomenological, epistemological. In the dream, of course, the words had the full glory of their High Speech avatars: jonmarakaralarajodo, ena-konazavnetzyltrakolii, zeq-telejenzeq. Bleeding, Robert fled down the hill, with the hooks, claws and spiders rampaging after him on a glissando of blue milk.

  At first it seemed he would escape. And then:

  The hill itself began to move.

  'No!' screamed Blackwood.

  And woke himself with his scream.

  He blinked at dawnlight, at the lava-dark barrens, at his two startled companions.