The Charmed Sphere

by Catherine Asaro

  “You’re finished,” she said, twisting in his hold.

  Anvil grabbed her roughly. “Hold still!”

  They were going too fast now for her to answer. Snowhawk broke out of the woods onto a long, lush slope that stretched down to a rolling meadow. Anvil gave the horse full rein and its stride ate up distance. Shouts came from the trees. Craning her head around, Chime saw a rider burst out of the woods, a man on a black charger, his hair streaming behind him, gold in the luminous morning.

  “Muller!” The wind grabbed her words and threw them away, but she didn’t care. Saints, she relished seeing him!

  Anvil yanked her around. Clenching her fist, she rammed her elbow into his torso. It hit his armor and he grunted with surprise. Turning, she struck him against the side of the head, though it made her shift precariously on Snowhawk. He raised his arm, warding off the blow, his face furious, then shoved her to the front again.

  Snowhawk kept running, undaunted by the pursuit. With dismay, Chime realized they were outdistancing Muller. She grabbed the reins, yanking, trying to slow them down. She would rather risk falling than have Anvil escape. The horse stumbled, then regained its stride.

  “Are you crazy!” Anvil struck her across the back. “You will kill us both.”

  Chime gritted her teeth, but she kept struggling with him, trying to slow down Snowhawk. At the bottom of the slope, the ground became muddy, interfering more with the horse’s pace. Twisting around, she saw Muller gaining on them and another rider farther back. Relief swept over her: Anvil wouldn’t make it. Muller would catch them.

  Suddenly Anvil reined in his horse, pulling so hard that Snowhawk reared and trumpeted his protest. Chime held on, clinging to the horse’s neck. He came down with pounding hooves, agitated and ready to bolt. Anvil maneuvered him around to face the way they had come, right in line with Muller’s approach.

  Muller rode forward, slowing down. Chime recognized the second rider behind him, Arkandy, his approach wary and careful.

  A short distance away, Muller reined Windstrider to a halt. “Are you all right?” he asked Chime.

  “Don’t speak,” Anvil told her. He drew his sword, letting it slide close to her leg. She froze, aware of its honed edge. In her side vision, she saw him raise the weapon, the blade glinting.

  “Coward,” Chime muttered. “You haven’t the skill to best him.”

  “Be quiet,” Anvil said in a voice only she could hear.

  Muller’s face hardened. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “You want her back, eh?” Anvil snorted. “I can’t imagine why.”

  Arkandy walked his horse to Muller and reined in next to the prince. Chime didn’t fool herself that Anvil had no chance against three of them. She had felt the power of his spells.

  Muller drew his weapon, a beautifully crafted blade with round gems in the pummel. Arkandy put his hand on the hilt of his sword but went no further.

  “Interesting,” Anvil commented. “How do you plan on fighting me while your wife sits here?”

  Muller’s jaw worked. “You would hide behind a defenseless woman?”

  “Defenseless?” Anvil made an incredulous noise. “That tongue of hers could level the Tallwalk Mountains.”

  Muller looked ready to explode, but he held his temper. Chime concentrated on the gems in Muller’s sword. She was too far away to focus her full strength through them, but a spell stirred within her.

  Dizzy, she thought, fanning the scrap of power. Then she threw the spell at Anvil. When it hit him, she reeled as well, her head spinning as if she had been twirling in circles.

  “Ah—” Anvil swayed behind her, his sword dipping. Then he clenched Chime’s tunic. “So,” he said to Muller. “You do have shape-power.”

  “You speak nonsense,” Muller said.

  “So it was Lady Chime.” Anvil shifted behind her, his sword poised near her shoulder. Then she realized he was coaxing Snowhawk to back up.

  Muller’s forehead creased. He nudged Windstrider forward, following step by step. Arkandy came with him, slowly, everyone careful not to startle anyone else. As Anvil retreated, he lowered his sword until the flat of the blade rested on Chime’s leg.

  Muller’s face paled. “You have nothing to gain by injuring my wife.”

  “True,” Anvil said. “She has more value as a hostage.”

  “What do you want?” Muller asked. They all continued to move across the plain in their odd, cautious procession.

  “Free passage away from here,” Anvil told him. “When I reach Suncroft, I will release her.”

  A muscle jerked in Muller’s cheek. “We know Varqelle is riding to Suncroft. You will take her to him.”

  Anvil didn’t answer. As they continued their strange walk, Chime felt him concentrating on the sphere he had stolen from her. His spell gathered. Alarmed, she focused again on the gems in Muller’s sword, but he was too distant now. She knew then why Anvil backed up; it moved her away from shapes she could use to make spells. She tried to draw on the sphere Anvil had taken from her, but she could do nothing without seeing or touching the orb.

  Anvil’s spell continued to grow. The air became hot and indigo light brightened around them. His sword blade felt heavy against her leg.

  Muller’s face blurred in the light. “If you hurt her, I will see you die.”

  “I doubt it,” Anvil said. The heat worsened; within moments, it could be hot enough to ignite grass.

  Angry, knowing Anvil intended yet again to dishonor his gifts, Chime concentrated harder on the gems in Muller’s sword, straining until her head throbbed. A faint spell awoke within her. Instead of attempting to counter Anvil, who had far more power, she latched on to his spell—and shoved.

  The heat suddenly diminished, shifting instead into brighter light, hard on the eyes but far more benign.

  Anvil swore. “What the blazes?”

  Chime smirked. “Actually, no blazes.” She couldn’t overcome his power, but she could funnel it into a positive spell.

  Then she moved.

  Chime jerked hard, twisting in his hold, catching him off guard while he struggled with his faltering spell. The edge of his sword sliced her leg, cutting through the tunic and her skin. Losing her balance, she toppled off the horse. Snowhawk’s body went by in a white blur. She hit the ground with a jarring impact, her arms crumpled under her body as she tried to break the shock. Her leg twisted, wrenching the sword gash, and she gasped.

  Chime scrambled to her feet, but she seemed to move in molasses, especially her leg. The world slowed down. Anvil jumped off his horse, reaching toward her with one hand while he raised his sword with the other. Muller lunged forward, parrying with him, and their swords rang together.

  Stunned, unable to react fast enough, Chime stumbled backward until she hit the trunk of a tree. It jolted her time awareness back to normal. She stared in dismay as Muller and Anvil battled on the meadow, trampling grass, their swords slicing the air. Before today, she had loved to watch Muller practice, admiring his grace, but she saw nothing beautiful in his movements now, knowing he could die if he missed a blow.

  Although Snowhawk stepped away from the commotion, he didn’t run. Arkandy slid off his mount, grasping its reins. He moved toward Muller’s horse, but Windstrider shied away. True to the code of shape-warriors, Arkandy made no attempt to interfere with Muller and Anvil; it would have been dishonorable. Right now, Chime couldn’t care less about codes; she wanted her husband to survive. Period. Nothing else mattered.

  Muller and Anvil seemed evenly matched, but as they lunged back and forth, their feet dancing in intricate patterns, Chime realized Muller had the advantage of his longer arms. His slender build also hid a physique far more muscled than people realized. Now he used his strength and flexibility to drive Anvil back. Sweat dripped off their faces and ran down their armor and mail, which gave some protection, but interfered with mobility.

  Suddenly Anvil lunged, not at Muller, but toward Snowhawk, making a break for f
reedom. Muller blocked his way—so Anvil whirled and ran for Windstrider instead.

  Caught off guard, Muller hesitated for one moment; in that instant, Anvil reached the charger and vaulted onto its back. Windstrider reared in protest, trying to throw him off, but Anvil held on. He shouted at the horse and hit it hard with his heels. The startled animal bolted then, racing across the meadow.

  “No!” Muller slammed his sword back into its sheath and ran after them, his long legs pumping hard, eating up the distance.

  “Mull, you can’t catch him!” Arkandy yelled. He shook his head as Muller kept running. He watched for a moment, then looked around the meadow. When he saw Chime flattened against the tree, he came over to her.

  “Are you all right?” Arkandy asked, his gentle voice a startling contrast to his implacable appearance.

  Chime nodded, though she was shaking for some reason. She couldn’t feel the wound in her leg. “I’m fine.”

  Anvil had ridden so far ahead now, he was barely visible in the hills. Muller gave up trying to catch him and headed back, covering ground in his long, loping run. It finally hit Chime that nothing was keeping them apart. She took off, limping as fast as her injured leg allowed. Neither of them slowed much as they drew nearer, so they ran right into each other. Laughing and crying, they embraced, and she hugged him hard, so grateful to have him alive and whole that she couldn’t speak.

  For a long time they held each other. With her head against his shoulder, she could see his pulse in the veins of his neck. Gradually, as their hearts slowed, they pulled apart.

  “I knew you had come north,” she said. “Everyone thought I was wrong. But I knew.”

  He managed to smile. Then he kissed her, his lips eager. Chime melted against him, closing her eyes, aware of nothing but how it felt to touch him again.

  Someone cleared his throat.

  They turned with self-conscious laughs. Arkandy stood a few paces away, holding the reins of his horse and those of Snowhawk, the charger Anvil had left behind. It was a beautiful animal, with fine breeding and clear eyes.

  Arkandy offered Snowhawk’s reins to Muller. “It seems you have a new horse.”

  Muller scowled. “Windstrider will never tolerate that dark mage.”

  “He is a good rider,” Chime said, wishing otherwise. “And he treats his animal well.” She disliked having to admit Anvil had any good qualities. Windstrider had always been loyal to Muller, and he had a charger’s fiery personality, but unfortunately he also tended to respond to riders who knew how to treat a horse.

  Muller let Snowhawk snuffle around him. “She is well cared for,” he admitted. He regarded Chime and Arkandy uneasily. “We must get to Suncroft as soon as possible.”

  Chime heard what he left unsaid: they had to arrive before King Varqelle could take the castle.

  35

  The Relentless Waves

  The Pentagons, Hexagons, and Heptagons poured over the hills above Croft’s Vale, interspersed with the King’s Archers, rank after rank of warriors. Chime stood with Muller and Jarid at the top of a ridge while men streamed past them and down into the fields. Pages had taken their horses to tend and feed. On a higher hill, across the village, Suncroft reached its spires into the sky.

  King Varqelle’s army had arrived first.

  The Harsdown army surrounded the castle. They had already overrun and looted the village, though they had let its people flee to the hills. With Croft’s Vale subdued, they moved on, filling the slopes and meadows, settling in for what would have been a siege had Stonehammer’s forces prevailed in the north. Instead the Aronsdale army spilled across the land, ready to challenge them for Suncroft, the crown jewel of the realm.

  Muller stared at the massed army. “Saints.”

  “Hardly.” Jarid sounded as if he were gritting his teeth. “Devils, more like.”

  Just men following their king, Chime thought, weary. She felt only dismay that her premonition about Varqelle bringing a substantial army to Suncroft had been accurate. A pall hung over her, the exhaustion of spending the last eleven days tending to wounded men, helping Iris and Jarid. She couldn’t heal, but she could ease the pain of the soldiers, giving comfort. The royals worked alongside the army medics, using magecraft to aid the mundane treatments of splinting broken bones, cleaning wounds, and the like.

  Jarid turned as Iris came up to them. He held out his arm to her. “How are our patients?”

  She took his arm. “Impatient to heal.”

  “A good sign.”

  “Aye.”

  Fieldson approached them, accompanied by Arkandy and several other men. When Jarid nodded, the general said, “We’ve fifty-eight men able to fight in the polygons, about thirty archers, and another forty or so with injuries. Maybe twenty of the injured could fight if necessary.”

  Moisture gathered in Chime’s eyes, as it had other times since the battle. Iris had told her of the memorial service they held on the plateau that day, for the warriors who lost their lives, both those of Aronsdale and Harsdown.

  Fieldson looked out at the distant army camped around the castle, his gaze bleak. Hundreds, even thousands, of warriors had converged on Suncroft. After a moment, he said, “We have General Stonehammer as a hostage.”

  Jarid pulled back his blowing hair, catching it into a warrior’s knot on his neck, redoing the ragged leather tie. “Perhaps Varqelle will negotiate for him.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Iris indicated the distant castle. “The Quadron, Octagon, and Nonagon Units are within Suncroft’s walls.”

  “They should be,” Muller said.

  “That would give us another one hundred and sixty-four polygon warriors, counting their three commanders,” Chime said. “Add to that the six hundred we have in archers and other infantry, and we’ve almost nine hundred.”

  Fieldson let out a tired breath. “But the polygons are the key of our offense, the way they work with the mages and coordinate the army. Three of our prime units are diminished.” He indicated where Penta-Colonel Burg walked with one of his pentahedron-majors, deep in discussion. “He no longer has a pentagon of pentagons. Right now they are one square and a rectangle of triangles. Either that, or a quadrilateral of four-sided figures. They have trained to cope with such losses, but it isn’t how they were optimized to fight. The same is true for the Heptagons and Hexagons. You may not be able to work with them at all. Their formations are imperfect.”

  His last sentence caught Chime off guard. Nor was it only her. Muller stared at him, his mouth open. “Saints all-blowing-mighty!”

  Fieldson blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  Muller turned red, the flush bright on his pale skin. “My apologies. I had never thought of a reduced polygon unit in exactly those terms.”

  Fieldson scowled. “Well, you should have.”

  Chime could tell Muller didn’t mean what Fieldson thought. Of course Muller knew polygons would be less effective in a second battle if the first had eroded their numbers. But he hadn’t realized he could work with such polygons—as a mage. He had spent his life suppressing his gifts, in a country that had known no major conflict for generations. Even in the days when they had gone to war, mages had contributed as she and Iris had done in the Tallwalks. He worried his flawed spells might hurt his men’s ability to fight. And that could happen. But he might also have abilities that would be invaluable to the army, if he could learn to use them. Had the ancients who created the chamber of flawed shapes in the Mage Tower intended to create a war mage?

  Jarid and Iris were watching Muller, comprehension in their gazes. They couldn’t reveal him as a mage now; the shock could disrupt morale, particularly if the army feared their commander would make spells that could go awry. They had no time to prepare either Muller or his men. But this gave an entirely new slant on his gifts.

  When Fieldson began to look puzzled by the silence, Iris spoke up. “General, do we have a count yet of Varqelle’s men?”

  He motio
ned to Arkandy. The hexahedron-major stepped forward and spoke. “My scouts estimate one thousand five hundred, Your Majesty.”

  Jarid grimaced. “And they are rested. We are not.”

  “Our men are eager to fight.” Arkandy’s voice sparked with anger. “This is our home.”

  “We also know this land,” Iris said. “They don’t.”

  “And we have five mages,” Chime said. “Three here, two in Suncroft. Varqelle has only one.”

  Jarid laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Pray that will be enough.”

  Varqelle the Cowled sat in the darkwood throne in his tent, his long legs stretched out, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, a mug of hot, spiced wine in his hand. He wore his leather armor and sword belt, though he had removed his chain mail. Diamond studs glinted in his ears.

  King Varqelle considered the Aronsdale messenger who stood before him, his forehead sheened with sweat. The man was a hexahedron-major, a solid fellow with tangled curls that might be brown when they were clean. He had come without weapon, shield, mail, or armor, wearing only dark trousers, a wrinkled shirt that looked as if he had slept in it, and dusty boots. Varqelle had no doubt the man had ridden with Jarid’s army from the Tallwalks; anyone stationed here wouldn’t appear so travel weary.

  “Arkandy Ravensford.” Varqelle let him stand while he sat comfortably, scrutinizing the tired man. “I have never heard the name.”

  “It is not a common one, Your Majesty.” The stiff quality of Ravensford’s voice matched his posture.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Varqelle murmured. “It sounds common to me.”

  Ravensford’s ruddy cheeks flushed, but he made no response. Varqelle noted the man’s self-control. This one would conduct himself well in battle. He had lived through the Tallwalk engagement, which suggested he had skill with a sword. The Harsdown warriors who had survived and made it to Suncroft described it as a brutal combat.

  Varqelle thought of the men he had lost in that battle and his anger sparked. Yes, warriors died in war, but that changed nothing of his disquiet or sorrow at losing such good men. Some of the fighters had been mercenaries, however, including those who deserted his forces after they lost the engagement. He would attend to them later. About thirty of his men had made it here to Suncroft. He doubted many others would arrive; those who had escaped, had stayed together. Jarid had managed to take no prisoners.