The Summon Stone

by Ian Irvine

  “It hurts,” she whimpered. Her voice faded. “Hurts really bad.” Her eyes shot open. “An evil old woman. Pointing at me! She’s got horrible eyes. Mummy, she’s trying to kill me! Help, help!” Blood trickled from her nose. “Help,” she said more faintly.

  Then Sulien began to scream, a shrill, awful sound, but each scream was softer than the one before, as if the life was being drained out of her.

  Putting her hands around Sulien’s head, Karan tried to lift the attack from her, as she had lifted the nightmares. She heard a great sigh, Aaahhh! Had she done just what the magiz wanted?

  “Get away from her, you murdering bitch!” Karan snarled. “You’re… not… touching… my… daughter.”

  She looked deeper, found the new link the magiz was using and tried to break it. But it was far stronger this time; she could not touch it.

  Her only option was to take the attack on herself, as she had done before. Karan wrenched the link out bodily and Sulien shot to her feet as if she had been jerked up on a rope. She teetered on the tips of her toes for a few seconds, then slumped to the ground, gasping. Her mouth and chin were covered in blood. She wiped it away with her sleeve, smearing it across her left cheek.

  “Mummy?” whispered Sulien.

  Karan could not move; she was on her knees on the frosty grass, and the spike in the top of her head was back, though it no longer felt as though it was being gently tapped into her skull. Now each thud was a hammer blow, bruising and brutal. She could not think for the pain.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy?”

  “Mglpf!” Karan could not get any words out.

  Sulien threw her arms around Karan, and at her touch the pain eased. Karan could still hear the thudding, but it seemed more distant, and each impact was duller and more remote, until the pain faded away.

  Sulien’s eyes widened and she gave a low moan. She was staring over Karan’s shoulder. Karan looked round but the hillside was empty.

  “What is it?” she gasped.

  “I had a nightmare… weeks ago,” said Sulien. “But you took it away.”

  “Yes,” said Karan, her skin crawling.

  “It’s back, Mummy. It’s back!”

  “What’s back?” Karan said carefully, not wanting to alarm her more than necessary.

  “The big bald man who saw me. He’s got a jagged black tattoo on his forehead.” Her eyes widened; Karan could see the rest of the first nightmare coming back, bit by bit. “His name is Gergrig and his army was attacking a beautiful city and killing everyone. He wants to invade Santhenar on the night of the triple moons.”

  “It was just a nightmare.”

  “That’s a fib!” cried Sulien. “Gergrig knows I saw him. He ordered his evil magiz to kill me. And you and Daddy…”

  She broke off, staring into space again. Her pupils widened and contracted over and over, as if she was staring at a series of bright flashes.

  “There was another nightmare,” Sulien said slowly. Her brow furrowed; she peered into Karan’s eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop this one coming back either. “Daddy was dead! I saw him lying on the cold, cold stone.”

  “That was just the magiz, trying to frighten us,” said Karan.

  “But Daddy’s been framed for murder. He’s running for his life, and if they catch him they’ll hang him just like they hanged poor Benie! You’ve got to save him, Mummy.”

  Clearly Sulien had to be told everything. “The magiz just attacked you,” said Karan. “And I can’t do anything for Llian until I… deal with her.”

  Sulien said nothing.

  “Do you remember any other nightmares about the enemy?” said Karan. Her heartbeat was a series of slow heavy thumps.

  “No. Should I?”

  “Gergrig once said that you’d seen their greatest weakness. If we knew that, we’d know how to beat them. It’s really, really important.”

  Sulien pressed her spread fingers against the sides of her head, closed her eyes and sat still for a minute or two. Then her eyes sprang open. “Is that why the magiz wants to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t remember it at all.”

  “Maybe it’ll come back later.” Karan got up and put more wood on the fire.

  “What are you going to do?” said Sulien. Her voice had a tremor, as if she felt she had let everyone down.

  “I have to go back to Cinnabar, the little world the Merdrun are attacking,” Karan said slowly. “Your Aunty Malien put a spell on me – a disembodiment spell – so I can get there in spirit.”

  Sulien wrapped her arms around Karan. “Are you going to attack the magiz?”

  “If I don’t kill her, she’ll kill us all. And I’ve got to do it soon, before she attacks again. But…”

  Sulien looked up at Karan, breathing shallowly and fast. “You’re scared to leave me here, all alone.”

  No parent should ever have to tell their child such things. Karan took Sulien’s hands. “I… I might not come back. And that would leave you all alone, with… with…”

  Sulien took a very deep breath. “Of course you’ll come back. That rotten old magiz couldn’t possibly beat you.”

  “She’s a powerful mancer, and I’m just a sensitive who can do a few things with links and seeings. She might beat me, and before I take her on I’ve got to know you’ll be safe.”

  Sulien’s lower lip wobbled. She wiped her eyes. “If – if you don’t come back, I’ll ride straight to Chanthed. It’s only a day from here. I’ll be safe there.”

  Until the magiz was dead Sulien would not be safe anywhere, but there was no point saying so. Karan told Sulien exactly what she was going to do, and how, then got out the hideous copper mask.

  “Aah!” cried Sulien, burying her face in Karan’s chest. “What’s that?”

  “Mad Basunez’s death mask.”

  Sulien took another peek. “How can anyone be that ugly?”

  “He was a very evil old man.”

  “Don’t use it!”

  “The mask was made by your grandfather Galliad. It’s safe.”

  It was clear from the expression on Sulien’s face that she thought using it was a very bad idea. “How will I know?”

  “Know what?” said Karan.

  “If the magiz has… got you. And you’re not coming back,” Sulien ended in a rush.

  Malien had explained that. “My body will stop breathing.”

  “But before you can attack the magiz, you’ve got to let her materialise you. Your body won’t be here.”

  Sulien’s wits were in better shape than Karan’s own. Not a good sign. “If I disappear, wait a quarter of an hour. If I don’t come back by then it means she’s got me, and you must leave at once. Ride to Chanthed, without stopping, and find… Thandiwe. She’ll look after you until Shand or Tallia or Malien gets there.” Karan crossed her fingers behind her back.

  Sulien looked astounded, as well she might. “Thandiwe?”

  “She likes Llian. Of course she’ll like you.”

  This irony was even more sickening than sending Llian to Thandiwe. Could she protect Sulien? It hardly seemed likely but Karan did not know anyone else in Chanthed.

  “All right,” said Sulien, very quietly. She gave Karan a tremulous hug. “You’d better…”

  “Yes,” said Karan.

  She took the death mask in her right hand, made sure her knife was in its sheath on her hip and focused on the golden castle the Merdrun had been planning to attack next.

  “Trigger!” she said.

  Karan’s insides burned like an oil-fed fire, then her spirit was inside the castle, though it no longer resembled the beautiful place she had seen weeks ago, when the magiz and Gergrig had so very nearly caught her. Under the light of the little yellow moon and the middle-sized red one, the castle was a ruin.

  Weeks of bombardment with siege engines had brought down the tops of the towers and battered away most of the tens of thousands of wall carvings; only
smashed fragments remained. The streets were a mess of golden rubble, twisted green copper roofing and broken black slates, and there were corpses everywhere. The defenders were little better than corpses themselves; they were battered, staring-eyed zombies who looked as though they had not slept in a week. They knew what would happen when the Merdrun broke in, as soon they must, but they were determined to fight for what was theirs.

  In other circumstances Karan might have fought beside them, for she could see a desperate nobility in the defenders that was entirely lacking in their attackers. She rose into the air to see how long they had left.

  Not long at all. The top of the wall was almost empty of living guards, and knee-deep in dead ones. She imagined Sulien kneeling beside her body back on the hilltop, desperately watching to make sure she kept breathing. Karan had to close off the image – it was too painful.

  She was looking over the edge when the great wall began to collapse up from the base. There had not been one of the magiz’s explosions this time; some dark mancery, long in preparation, had eaten away the rock below a hundred-yard section of the wall, leaving it unsupported.

  Within minutes, broken stone filled the hole where the rock had been removed, and the attackers were scrambling in intent on slaughter. Karan could not bear to witness it. She was roaming back and forth, looking for the magiz, when she remembered that Gergrig had ordered her to take no part in the attack until she had eliminated Sulien and her household.

  Karan drifted lower, searching for the red tent with the green rope along its ridge, and found it where it had been last time, but it was empty. Where was the magiz? She floated higher, scanning around the ruined castle and then above it, and her eye caught a faint flash as off a glass surface – the magiz’s sextant.

  The upper edge of the huge green moon was just cresting the horizon to Karan’s right. Her heart lurched painfully – all three moons would be in the sky at once – though a swift glance told her that they would not line up. The middle-sized moon, the fastest-moving of the three, was diving towards the left horizon and would set within minutes.

  Karan took a firm grip on the death mask and headed up towards the magiz. It was bitterly cold at this altitude: the ground was sheathed in thick ice, every vertical surface was hung with blue icicles, and even in her bodiless state it was numbing her fingers. The magiz, her stringy form made shapeless by heavy furs, was entering another measurement in her almanack.

  Karan instinctively looked up towards the ice fortress high above. It was a series of igloo-shaped masses, lit dimly from within by haloes of orange light like strings of glowing beads. There was no sign of guards. A long way above the fortress she saw the flat-topped peak with the red trilithon – the gate the Merdrun were fighting towards – but the mist up there was too thick to make it out.

  She landed fifty yards from the magiz and stood there, watching warily; the magiz might have set out any number of detectors and traps. Karan headed slowly towards her, psyching herself up to do something utterly foreign to her nature – kill in cold blood. It was not an easy thing to think about, but if the magiz lived, Sulien would die.

  Forty yards. Thirty-five. Thirty.

  Crack! A dazzling white nimbus sprang up around her. Karan let out an involuntary cry of fear and saw the magiz turn slowly, smiling that blank-eyed smile. Her trap had been sprung and again Karan’s strength drained away.

  Five slender green beams fixed on her from all sides. Were they part of her enemy’s materialisation spell or did they have another purpose? As she continued towards the magiz, the green beams dragged on her; she felt as though she was hauling an increasingly heavy weight. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.

  The magiz waved her white rod in the air, rather as a conductor would, then snapped it down and pointed the tip at Karan. The green rays thickened and began to sting.

  “Materialise!” hissed the magiz. “How I’m going to drink your life.”

  Karan’s skin burned and the heat sank into her like a reversal of the blistering internal heat of the disembodiment spell. Then, in an explosive and painful instant, her spirit outline filled with real flesh and bone as her body dematerialised on the hill next to Sulien and materialised here.

  Instantly Karan knew she had made a terrible mistake – she had failed to dress for the cold, which was so bitter up here that each breath burned all the way down her nose and throat and into her lungs. It was a killing cold and she could not survive it for more than a few minutes. Already her fingers were stiffening; soon frostbite would set in.

  What must Sulien be thinking? That Karan was already dead and the magiz would soon attack her directly? Don’t wait fifteen minutes – run now! Get away from the trilithon.

  Karan fitted the copper mask to her face, but the moment she took her hand away the mask went with it – it had frozen to her fingers. She pressed it against her forehead until it stuck and slowly worked her fingers free. If she ever got out of here she might be scarred for life, though that was the least of her worries.

  She thrust out her right arm, her fingers throbbing, and pointed at the magiz’s heart – but could not speak a word. Her fingers and toes, her ears and lips and nose, and even her eyes were burning with the cold. It hurt so much that she could not remember the word to release the killing spell in the death mask, the spell that would turn the magiz’s power back on her.

  Then she had it. “Transpose!”

  No sound came out; her vocal cords must be too cold. Karan rubbed her throat furiously with her free hand.

  The magiz thrust the white rod high in the air and fired a blast of red. Horns went off in the distance and heavily armed Merdrun came from everywhere, charging towards Karan.

  “Tranzbose!” she slurred. “Transpose! Transpose!”

  Only on the third attempt did she manage to say the word clearly. The death mask grew hot and fell off her face, and her hand wobbled; instead of pointing at the magiz’s heart the spell was directed at her left leg. Karan saw no beam or flash or any other evidence that it had worked, but suddenly the magiz was screaming and rolling around on the icy ground with white smoke billowing up from her left leg, then flame and black smoke. A small popping explosion spread thousands of little fragments of char across the ice and…

  The magiz’s left leg was gone.

  It was horrible, and Karan’s spell had done it. But the troops were closing in and coming fastest of all was Gergrig. Was there time to finish off the magiz? Karan had to try. She snatched up the frigid death mask, held it to her face and pointed again.

  “Transpose!”

  Her arm shook and the reversal spell missed. There was no time for another attempt; she had to flee now or die.

  “Spell-stop!” she cried. “Spell-stop!”

  It did not work, though the death mask grew hot again. Could it be interfering? Gergrig was charging in, only twenty yards away, swinging his serrated sword back for a blow that would hack her in two. At the same moment the magiz managed to sit up and point her rod at Karan.

  “Spell-stop!” Karan yelled.

  Of course it wasn’t working; she had been materialised. Before she could dematerialise, the magiz’s spell had to be broken.

  “Transpose!” screamed Karan, pointing at the magiz.

  The rod blasted at the same instant that the transpose spell struck it, and blew the rod to pieces, embedding hundreds of little white splinters in the magiz’s hand and releasing a torrent of power that created a fireball and a mushroom cloud of yellow smoke. The magiz fell back screaming and, as Gergrig swung, Karan dematerialised.

  “Materialise!” shrieked the magiz, pointing with her splintery fingers.

  “Spell-stop!” yelled Karan. “Spell-stop!”

  She materialised in a black nowhere, then burst out of it into moonlight and fell a couple of yards onto the hilltop directly under the grey trilithon, thirty yards from Sulien, with a bone-jarring thud. Karan rolled over, groaning.

  “So hot here,” she whispered. Her finge
rs and toes and the tip of her nose were throbbing.

  “Mummy!” cried Sulien, running to her. She stopped suddenly, staring. “Mummy?”

  “I’m all right,” gasped Karan. “I didn’t kill her, but the transpose spell destroyed her rod; that’s how I got back. I’ve stopped her for a while, and I’m all right!”

  “No,” said Sulien, holding both hands out in front of her as if to block a bright light. “No, no!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She’s put her mark on you.”

  “Where?” said Karan, checking herself over. “I can’t see anything.”

  “In here,” said Sulien, tapping Karan’s forehead. “It’s like… a mental lighthouse, flashing out of you.”

  Karan’s blood ran cold. The magiz must have marked her with a psychic stigma, and it was the perfect defence. Karan would not dare attack again because the magiz would always know where she was, and what she was doing, before she could act.

  But it was worse than that. The magiz would always know where Sulien was too. She would never be safe while she remained with Karan.

  There was only one solution. She had to send her away, though who could she possibly entrust her daughter to?

  38

  A LIFE THRICE OWED

  “What’s that funny smell?” said Sulien late the following afternoon. They were winding down the last pass towards the foothills and would reach Chanthed tomorrow.

  Karan sniffed, and her healed bones gave an anticipatory throb. Whelm! She had been hoping to meet them, knowing Idlis would come this way on his annual trip to bring her hrux. And they were close.

  “The Whelm feed those strange horses of theirs some stinking herb. I never learned why.”

  She looked over the brink, down to the road far below. There, moving in a steady line, were half a dozen cadaverous Whelm horses and their equally gaunt riders. They were all bony, with grey skin and big ugly feet and hands. It was Idlis and Yetchah – she recognised them – plus another four Whelm escorts. Or spies. An insecure people who lived in a cold and inhospitable southern land, they saw threats everywhere.