by Brian Craig
The magician raised his hand again then, and seemed to throw the bird back into the empty air. There was a moment when it was reluctant to go, and it opened its beak again to emit a small caw of protest, but it could not retain its hold. It took wing, and was swallowed instantly by the Stygian gloom.
Arcangelo unwrapped the pouch, and emptied its contents into the palm of his other hand. He seemed very relieved to have them, and in reply to Orfeo's quizzical stare he said: "All magic needs an instrument, and though the human body is one which plays many a miraculous tune, still there are many tricks which need the alchemist's earths or the elementalist's samples. It is said that anything imaginable might actually be achieved, if only one had the right tools, but such recipes as I have seen for spells involving the blood of dragons or ogres' teeth are very hard to try, and I suspect they have often tested the imagination of the men who wrote them down far more than their actual experience. But here are things whose virtue I know well enough; I could not carry them with me to Rodrigo Cordova's house, or they would have been taken from me, and I had other work to do when I made my way here from the cell where they thought me safely confined."
First Arcangelo picked up a small amulet, and asked Orfeo to put it around Jacomo Falquero's neck. "It is a special adamantine,"
he said to his old friend, "which gives resilience to the weak.
Pray that it gives you all that you will need to complete the mission which has been five years interrupted."
Then, to Orfeo, he said: "I have but one of those, for I had not expected another companion. I need these other things for my own use. All the magical aid which I can offer you—and to Jacomo also I will give it—is to make you immune to my own illusions. It is a small thing, I know, and I cannot give you the power to see through Semjaza's illusions, should he have time and enterprise to use any, but I fear that my stock had perforce to be small enough to be carried in the raven's beak."
"I am used to relying on my own strength," Orfeo told him.
Then he saw the priest take something else in his hand, which looked like a tiny twig from an oak tree, bearing a single leaf 132
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and a single acorn. With this held covertly in one hand, the magician made signs with the other, murmuring some arcane incantation. There was no flash of light or crack of thunder to mark the acomplishment of the spell, but when Orfeo looked down he suddenly saw that where there had been no bridge but a moment before, now there was a solid piece of rock some five feet wide and six or seven deep.
"That is the route we must follow if we are fortunate in our task," said the spellcaster. "The bridge will last until morning unless I choose to make it vanish before then. If I am not here to guide you when you cross it, go carefully—and wait at the first junction until I catch up with you. If, perchance, I cannot come, then you must find your own way to safety, and may the gods to whom you pray guide you kindly and well. Now, I must use my power to discover where Serafima is to be found."
"There is no need," said Orfeo. "I know the very room. It is in the High Tower, and I can guide us there from the courtyard.
But there will be guards on every section of the ramparts, and there may be others about on the ledges between the east and west towers."
"Soldiers and savants need not concern us overmuch," Arcangelo assured him. "I can screen us from their observation well enough, and confuse them if the alarm should be raised. If fortune favours us, I will need no more than petty magic to conceal us from beginning to end—but there may be magical alarms too, and if Semjaza awakes—and has the quickness of mind to see what is happening—then I will need to draw on every resource which I have to keep him at bay."
"Semjaza is not the only magician in the castle," said Orfeo, uneasily. "I know that you have met the sorceresss named Morella d Arlette, and I fear there may be other followers within these walls of the one she calls the god of luxury."
"That kind uses its magic to particular ends," replied Arcangelo, with some measure of contempt. "They are unlikely to add to our trouble, and insofar as their corruption has distorted and distracted the minds of those upon whom they exercise their charms, their presence here may make our task easier. Semjaza is the one we have to fear, for he has never wasted his power in licentiousness."
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Orfeo could not suppress a pang of anxiety when Arcangelo spoke of those upon whom the charms of Morella dArlette and her kind had been exercised, but he quelled it.
He turned to look again at Falquero, whose breathing had calmed as soon as he had donned the amulet. He was standing staighter now, and was more composed than Orfeo had seen him. The virtue of the amulet had been absorbed into his body.
"This false strength will not last indefinitely," said Arcangelo,
"but long enough. It is time that your enemies had cause to fear what they have made of you."
"Aye," said Falquero—and though he said no more, there was a great enough measure of grim feeling in his voice.
Orfeo, meanwhile, was looking at the bridge which had not been there before. He knelt to touch it, to reassure himself that it was in fact solid enough to support a man.
"It will bear your weight," said Arcangelo.
"Aye," said Orfeo. "Unless it vanishes as easily as it appeared."
"It cannot do so before morning," said the priest, "unless I command it—or unless I am destroyed by my enemy. Even if that should happen, you must not despair, for I have tried to prepare for every eventuality in my plan, and even my death is something which might be turned to the advantage of the lady I serve."
Orfeo lowered the brighter of his two lights into the darkness beside the bridge, but could see nothing in the gloomy depths.
A thought struck him and he looked up at the spellcaster.
"Where did you go when you escaped from your prison?" he asked. "You did not come this way, for you had not the means to make a bridge until your tame bird brought it to you."
"No," said Arcangelo. "I did not come this way until I returned in search of Jacomo. I could not leave my prison by the door, for Semjaza took care to seal it magically before he went about his other business. I went into another region, where I had business of my own."
As he spoke of 'another region' the magician glanced downwards, and Orfeo looked down again into the gloomy depths whose denizens were hidden by the darkness. He was not surprised that a wizard should not have an ordinary man's fear of rats and other vermin, nor that a wizard could go up and down faces of rock that were too sheer to by climbed by man or beast, but he 134
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knew well enough that it must have cost the spellcaster something to make that descent, and to keep himself safe from harm while he did whatever it was he had gone to do.
"I think that I would like to have your plan explained," said Orfeo. "For I see that there is much in it which I do not understand."
"There is not time," replied the priest, though Orfeo knew that this was not the true reason. There was, he knew, an essential secrecy in magic, which required that its schemes remain covert.
It may well have been the case that Arcangelo had simply created potentials, which might be ruined if he said aloud—or even fixed within the privacy of his own thoughts—what patterns of development might follow from them. It was often the strength of curses—including the curse which had allegedly been laid upon Rodrigo Cordova's house—that not even their creator could determine precisely how they could and would unfold.
Nevertheless, Orfeo regretted that he could not know more about the tangled web which he had allowed to catch him. If he had to take his life in his hands to serve a cause in which he had no personal interest, at least he would have liked to know what forces were likely to be unleashed in the course of the struggle. Semjaza, he believed, was a friend to powerful daemons. If Arcangelo really had resources which were equal or superior, what could mere mortals do to protect themselves when the conflict was pushed to its limit?
"We must leave the brighter lantern at the foot of the stair,"
said Arcangelo, cutting curtly through the thread of his anxious thoughts. "You will need it when you return, if I am not with you."
"Well," said Orfeo, tautly. "Let us hope that we know all that we need to know. And let us hope that your plan is as perfect as you believe it to be."
"Trust in me," replied Arcangelo. "And trust, if you can, in those gods who love justice."
Orfeo made no reply, for he knew only too well that he had no alternative but to trust in this enigmatic wizard. But he knew also that a love of justice was by no means adequate to ensure that a just result could or would be attained in any matter of practical endeavour. He knew too much of the world and its ways to trust that the gods would always act to secure its ends.
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Chapter Ten
The stone stair which brought them up from the dungeons delivered them into the centre of the castle's courtyard, a little below the level of the two main towers. There were lanterns burning in the stables, and dimmer lights illuminated from within a few of the glazed windows in the main living-quarters below the eastern tower, but the place where they had emerged was in deep darkness. They waited for a little while so that their eyes could become accustomed to the starlight.
From where they were they could see a stationary sentry on each tower, and they knew that there must be two or three more hidden within the gatehouse which was in the south-east wall.
A two-man patrol was walking the circuit of the walls, offering a low-voiced ritual greeting to each of the sentries as they passed him by.
Had that been all, Orfeo would have been well pleased, but it was not. Standing still upon the south-west rampart, close to the High Tower, was a solitary figure, darkly dressed but unhelmeted, who was staring out over the silent land. At first, Orfeo wondered whether it might be Sceberra, but his stature was not quite right, and when he moved Orfeo saw that the way the man carried himself was rather more graceful. When the patrol passed the man on its round the two men did not speak, but saluted 137
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him with more than ordinary reverence.
"Come now," whispered Arcangelo, in the softest of voices.
"They will not see us."
Orfeo touched Falquero briefly on the arm, signalling him to follow. What had been but a pale shadow of a man now seemed all sinew and strength, and Orfeo knew that Arcangelo's amulet would sustain the man through the next few hours—which ought to be more than ample time to complete their adventure.
Arcangelo moved swiftly and quietly to the next level, and then to the next, each time moving quickly up the nearest stair and across the ledge, pausing in the shadow of the vertical face. It seemed very easy to climb all the way to the High Tower without being seen.
There was an open archway at the bottom of the tower, with a door set some way within. They moved safely into the protection of the covert, and Arcangelo quickly bent to the lock on the door, letting slip a small sigh of relief—which Orfeo took to mean that there was no magic seal upon it whose breaking might disturb Semjaza.
Within a few seconds, the lock was breached and the door swung open, with only the slightest creaking as it moved upon its hinges.
There were no candles set on the stairway which led up into the tower, and the windows were unglazed slits which let in hardly any light at night. Orfeo touched the wall with his hand, not relishing the prospect of feeling his way, but Arcangelo conjured up the same tiny flame that he had made before, and used it to light their way until they were close to the floor on which Orfeo had been confined while Semjaza questioned him.
Arcangelo extinguished his light again when they reached that point. There was certain to be a guard in the straight corridor which cut through the tower to give access to the cells, and he would be the first substantial barrier to their progress.
When they came to the door which gave access to the corridor Orfeo was able to look through the small barred window which was set at head height. There was a small table inside, with a single candle, and a chair. The guard was sitting on the chair with his feet up on the table, and though he was obviously quite relaxed he did not seem to be asleep. He had his back to the door.
Orfeo had nursed a feint hope that he might find Fernand Arrigo 138
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on duty here—which would give him the opportunity to use persuasion in pursuing his goal—but this man was far leaner in his build. Failing that, he had hoped to find this door unbolted, so that they would be able to reach the guard without difficulty—but when Arcangelo tested the door it would not yield. Orfeo expected the magician to use his art, but instead it was Falquero who eased him aside, and tested the gap between the bars with his wasted arm.
An ordinary hand would have been too well-fleshed to go through the narrow gap betwen the bars of the peep-hole, but Falquero's entire arm was so unnaturally thin that it could pass through it.
By this means he could reach the bolt on the inside, and draw it back.
Orfeo and the magician stood aside. If the bolt was habitually drawn every time the door was closed then it must move easily in its track—but even the best of bolts is likely to creak as it moves.
Orfeo's sword was still in its scabbard, but he drew from his belt another weapon which he had borrowed from Sceberra's torture-chamber when they had passed through it for the second time—a pair of pincers whose heavy head would make a very useftil club.
Falquero drew the bolt as carefully as any man could, but still it scraped slightly as it came free. The man in the chair tried to sit upright, but because his legs were on the table there was a precious second wasted while he put them on the ground, and by the time he could turn to look at the door Falquero's arm had been withdrawn.
It could not have been obvious, in the candlelight, that the bolt had been taken back, and Orfeo hoped that the guard would simply resume his former position—but he did not. He stood up, and came towards the door. Orfeo, the priest and Falquero moved aside, so that they could not be seen through the peep-hole, and Orfeo put his hand on the handle of the door, trying to gauge the guard's position by sound alone.
When he judged that the moment was ripe Orfeo suddenly turned the handle and shoved the door with all his might. It smashed into the guard's body with a considerable thud, knocking enough wind out of him to prevent him from crying out. The unfortunate man-at-arms managed no more than a whimper of surprise before Orfeo rounded the door and brought the pincers down heavily 139
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upon his head, knocking him senseless.
He fell, but not silently—a dagger fell from his belt, clattering as it hit the stone floor, and Orfeo froze instinctively, wondering if the sound could be heard. When nothing happened, he moved along the corridor, not pausing at the cell where he had formerly been confined, but going swiftly to the other. He drew back its bolts, and then stood aside so that Falquero could precede him.
There was a candle lit within the room, but it had burned very low. The woman who lay on the bed was apparently fast asleep, her face turned towards the door so that it caught the light very well. What struck Orfeo was the odd facial resemblance between this lady and the Duke's own daughter—save that where Veronique had that remarkable flame-red hair, this lady had hair as black as a raven's wing.
The sight affected Falquero very differently, and he fell to his knees beside the bed, saying: "My lady!" in a way that was part whisper of adoration, part cry of anguish. It was loud enough to wake her, and her eyes came open, staring at him first in confusion, then in shock, and finally in horror.
"Jacomo!" she exclaimed—far too loudly for Orfeo's liking, though it was hardly a shout. "Oh, Jacomo, what have they done to you?"
Arcangelo still hung back in the corridor, his hand upon his forehead as though he were preoccupied with the sensing of distant events. If there was a magical alarm, it would be triggered now, and the time of their greatest d
anger would be fast approaching.
"There is no time," Orfeo said to Falquero, in an urgent tone.
"Take her up, man, take her up!"
Falquero, who seemed to have lost control of himself for the moment, was slow to respond, but the woman—or girl, for now that she sat up Orfeo could see that she was younger than Veronique—put her arms around his neck to hug him. When she did that, Falquero remembered what he was about, and seized her around the waist, pulling her from her blanket. She was clad only in a loose white nightshirt, but it was capacious enough, and Falquero lifted her from the bed with an effortlessness which belied his apparent condition. She was small, and Orfeo could have carried her with ease, but that Falquero's excessively thin arms could bear any weight at all seemed incongruous.
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"Now," said Orfeo, "we must fly. Make no sound, my lady, I beg of you."
Arcangelo barely glanced at them as he led the way back to the stair, and Orfeo judged by his hurry that he had become very anxious, though he said nothing at all. They descended the stair as carefully as they could in the dark, knowing that a slip and a tumble might put a sorry end to their mission.
By the time they reached the bottom in safety, Orfeo was beginning to believe that they could complete what they had set out to do. He knew that it would require only the pettiest of magic to distract the attention of the unwary sentries while they fled across the open space to the stair which would let them down into the dungeons—and then into the underworld beneath the citadel. But Arcangelo peered out from the archway into the starlit terraces with obvious trepidation.
They had to pause where they were, pressing themselves into the wall behind the protective archway. The man they had seen on the ramparts, apparently taking a stroll at this most unusual hour, was no longer on the ramparts. He had come down to the courtyard, and was standing only fifteen feet away, looking down across the descending terraces in the direction of the southern tower.
