“Grolius!” Patha called. The black-furred werewolf detached himself from the watchers and slipped away. He returned in a moment with a dark wooden box and held it open for his chieftess. Patha plunged her hand into the velvet-lined casket and produced a fistful of wooden charms.
“We are merchants, so we carry many things our customers require. We are like you in that most of us do not have a talent for magic, but we respect it highly. These amulets and magical trinkets are made by the Yelia family’s own magician, a male who lives a city away from my home, and whose things we carry for sale. You saw that the beasts ignored us entirely. We have enough charms of protection, such as those we wear, for all of you. We offer them as a gift. They will fool the monsters into thinking no one is here. We have used these for years. I guarantee they will work.”
“We cannot accept it,” Sharhava said.
“You refuse our gift?” Patha snapped, dropping the charms back into the box. Her eyes blazed with anger. “Are you a fool? Didn’t you see the harm that came to you and yours? Would you denigrate the sacrifice you say you honored?”
“No!” Sharhava said, her jaw set. “We will pay you for these things. You have already saved my life. That I can never repay. You will not be made out of pocket for your goods.”
Patha was still a bit sulky. “They are a gift or they are nothing,” she said. “Take them or don’t. Decide now! The night is almost gone.”
Inbecca felt more shame than she had before. The sacrifices that the werewolves were willing to make for those who wished them ill showed the Scholardom in a bad light. She knew, as Sharhava did, that to turn back a gift was an insult to the giver, but she suspected that the abbess had already been pushed to the edge of her mind’s comfort to know that a race she saw as inferior had behaved in a more noble fashion than she could or would have.
Head high, Inbecca stepped forward. “I accept on behalf of my noble aunt, Patha,” she said. “Thank you. We will be glad to have the protection. The smallfolk girl who was with us told us how fearsome the thraiks were. We didn’t know how terrible they were until now. Since we cannot protect ourselves, we will be pleased to have aid from those who can provide it.”
Patha’s harsh expression softened as she turned to Inbecca. She gestured to the one holding the box to step forward. “Take, then. Yours shall be first choice. We have chains and strings of every kind, depending on what will be comfortable for you to wear.”
Inbecca didn’t look carefully in the box, but took the first charm on the top, a small piece of carved stone the size of a lesser silver coin. “Thank you, gracious Patha.”
The werewolf chieftess waved away her courtesy with an impatient hand.
“It is only practical. We do not wish the winged monsters to descend upon us again.”
To this, Inbecca said nothing. Though her back ached with exhaustion she held her regal posture in tribute to her hosts.
“Quackery,” one of the knights sniffed.
Inbecca didn’t wait for her aunt to discipline him. She turned and gave him the kind of glare she reserved for courtiers who made a rude remark in her mother’s court. The knight caught it, and his expression changed to one of shame. She turned her back on him and chose an amulet for her aunt. It appeared to be made of cherrywood, with a slate-colored vein running through the smooth russet wood. The looped and complicated carving on it soothed the eye without confusing it. Sharhava took it in her good hand. All the command seemed to drain from her. It was up to Loisan and Brouse to line the others up to take a charm from the box and thank the donors. Once they had all donned their amulets, Patha raised her voice to be heard by them all.
“You will all be well cared for,” Patha announced. “But you will stay with us until we are allowed to set you free. I hope you will not make things more difficult for us than need be. My people will see to it that you will have comfortable places to sleep. Let us make better use of what remains of the night than we have.”
She nodded to Grolius, who put a gentle paw on the abbess’s arm. Sharhava allowed him to guide her away. Others took charge of the remaining knights. Romini’s eyes were bright as though he might weep with frustration as his escort steered him around the sinking bonfire.
“Come now,” Patha said, taking Inbecca by the hand. Her long, strong fingers felt as comforting as a nursemaid’s, in spite of the wiry hair laid along the backs. “You shall sleep here in my tent for what is left of the night.”
The werewolf helped Inbecca pull off the creased and stained habit, the mail shirt and padded tunic, and the by-now unspeakable shift and drawers she wore underneath. Patha rummaged through a very neat bronze-bound wooden chest and found a clean chemise that she pulled over Inbecca’s head.
“Lie down,” the werewolf said, turning back a handsome woven blanket. The golden eyes glinted at her. “You have been of great help this night, in spite of being a princess and a human. Good night.”
Inbecca murmured something she hoped sounded polite, and turned her face into the scented pillow. Her drowsy mind incorporated the sky-splitting howls that arose outside the tent into her dreams.
Chapter Thirteen
iamond-bright, it came into his mind and lit it like a summertime meadow. The Compendium! He saw the pure white scroll as if it were there before him. Knemet sprang up from his sleepless rest in his carved stone chair and began to pace the floor. Once again the book’s protections had fallen. He could see its rune through the walls of his prison. Its hyperreality shone like a beacon, illuminating those mortal things around it. He knew exactly in what direction it lay, in the ancient realm of Melenatae, not far short of its northern border with Orontae. The book was hundreds of miles closer to him than before—how considerate of its keepers to bring it toward him. Convenient, and not before time! His hands ached to hold it. He reached for it, feeling its warmth across the miles. This time I will have it, he vowed.
“My children, hurry!” he shouted to the thraiks.
The black shadows swirled down from their niches near the high, domed ceiling, shrieking.
“Where, master, where?” the creatures cried. They swooped around him, eager to please.
Knemet spread out his hands upon the air. He made the shape of the land appear as the book caused it to reflect in his mind’s eye. He didn’t recall if he had ever visited that place, but after so many years the world was no more real than a page in the Compendium. The book and its keepers were near a river, on a bluff above a bridge. He could just see the posts and the first span. Yes, a bridge was there in his day. It had been many times renewed, he was sure; this form was not familiar to him. Yet he could describe it. Not only did he show them, but he drew a rune that gave the thraiks the location in a form they could understand.
“You cannot fail to find this in your first try,” he admonished them, putting as much detail into the word-picture as possible. But as he scribed its golden lines he became suspicious. It was too easy and too vulnerable a location, high and with little natural protection. After so many miles and so many days of caution, why would the bearers reveal themselves now?
“They may be taunting us,” he warned them. “They want to draw us out. If it is a trap, return to me at once! I will not let them make sport of me! Hurry! The light is fading! Make no mistakes this time!”
The winged hunters had not waited for a second admonition. They sailed up to the ceiling and disappeared through the blackness that rent the air.
Knemet could not be still while he waited. Nervous energy propelled him to stride aimlessly around the great chamber. He had not had so good a chance to regain the Compendium in thousands of years. Unlike the last few times that it had reappeared, it was not being concealed again as swiftly as before. Why? Were the keepers dead or injured? Accidents did happen, even to the most careful of magicians. This time the thraiks must be successful!
He paced the ground in frustration. How narrow the walls of his stronghold felt when he knew the book was so far away. Night was f
alling, but the thraiks could see the runes that the Compendium cast upon everything in its aegis. All they had to do was aim for the center of that circle. What was taking them so long?
Knemet felt the moments passing, each one an agony. Why must he live through more of them? They mounted hundreds upon hundreds, dogging him, taunting him. He could not sleep. He could not rest. The Compendium still lay in the open. It was moving again. Yes, it was coming southeast, and speedily! Did the thraiks have it? But, no, he did not see their runes coupled with its glowing sigil. The strange wizards must still have it. He was desperate for it, desperate for the freedom it held for him. He railed at the thraiks, though they could not hear him in the midst of Melenatae.
“Come to me!” he cried, holding out his hands to the distant book. It did not appear, and he was not surprised. It had never obeyed any of the Makers, not the way their other creations had. It must be obtained by physical hands. Otherwise he would not need those of his thraiks. His frustration threw him back into an energetic walk. The thraiks must return soon.
The rush of air overhead drew his attention. The thraiks had returned, but fluttered in a nervous and confused knot near the ceiling. They did not descend to deliver his long-awaited prize. He already knew that they had been unsuccessful, but he was shocked at how few of them had returned.
“What happened?” he asked, staring at them. “I sent six of you. Why are there only three?”
The thraiks gibbered all at once. Out of the nonsense, Knemet gleaned the kernel of what had happened. An overwhelming number of humans—intelligent, trained humans—had attacked the thraiks on sight. He must push them aside to take back the book. It should never have been out of his hands for so long.
He turned his mind toward the place where he had last divined its presence. He was not surprised to discover that it was hidden once again. Knemet crushed his fist into his palm, and a shock wave sent the thraiks squawking and blew a crater a yard wide in the stone floor. With a wave of his hand at its rune, he repaired the hole. He couldn’t stand it. To have the book keep turning up like a rabbit popping out of one of many holes was frustrating. What was the goal of the new keepers of the book? Nemeth’s goal of the destruction of Orontae had been in the late wizard’s mind since the moment he had touched it. All of his efforts to hear the thoughts of the three wizardesses had been unfruitful. Neither the human, the dwarf or the girl child was vulnerable within the concealing spell.
Knemet lashed out against the walls in his fury, sending shards of rock flying.
What good was he as a wizard and a Maker if he could not solve his own problems? He had been too tentative in his approach so far. He must bend his intelligence and his will to the task. He needed a species that was more effective in searching out the book than the thraiks. While they had the strength and the speed, they lacked the numbers, and they were too easily fooled by shield charms. They were too flighty for perseverance. Knemet needed a new species. Yes, that was it! A new being whose sole task it was to spy out the Compendium, no matter what magic stood in its way.
The energy that had propelled his feet now concentrated in his hands. He felt his palms tingle with anticipation. It had been a very long time since he had created new beings. Such a thing was not lightly undertaken, even in the days of his youth, when everything and anything seemed possible. It was the challenge that pressed him to his greatest efforts—the challenge, and the chance to prove those wrong who said he would fail.
With all his will, he cudgeled his thoughts of the past, both glad and angry, out of the way. His mind must be clear to create.
Knemet threw himself into his chair and propped his chin on his knuckles. His rainbow eyes stared out into the center of the room at nothing. The primeval nothing, whom the religious said was only Time and Nature waiting to separate into their eternal forms and begin the act of creation. Symbolically, he found it satisfying to start as they had.
Removing his wand from his sleeve, he drew a few lines on the air to describe movement. An arching line pleased his eye. He pictured his new animal, longer than it was tall, dancing nimbly, running across the landscape, diving into burrows or water with equal ease, like a fish or an otter. Large eyes. It must be able to see the book’s rune at a distance. A shield spell kept those with second sight or a scrying crystal from seeing what was behind it, but it was impractical to maintain for a long journey. The Compendium was therefore visible. He would pair excellent vision with an innate sense of the book’s rune. It had not changed since it was made.
Knemet sketched more details on the glowing framework. A keen nose wouldn’t be needed. The ability to sense magic came from a place in the brain behind the eyes and nose. That point of focus he would make most sensitive after the eyes. The creature must be just intelligent enough to send a sign to the thraiks when it had absolutely found the book—and unstoppable. He drew more signs upon the air, fleshing out the complete animal, halting just before they became real. Would this beast be able to sustain itself on its search, finding wholesome food and water? Would it have the sense to avoid danger or unnecessary encounters? It must have an instinct for self-preservation, or the search would end soon after the creature left his hands. It had been so long since he made a live beast. He needed examples to form the proper runes.
“I need you,” he called to the huddled shapes. “I am not angry. I must have examples to make proper runes.”
Reluctantly, a few of the larger thraiks swirled downward and hovered as far from him as they could go.
“Seek for me natural animals,” he instructed them. “Find me snakes, eels, fish. Find me otters and weasels. I need both land and water creatures. Bring them to me alive, mind you! If you wish to eat some of them, do it out of my sight. Now, go!”
He could sense their relief as they ascended to the heights before vanishing. As swiftly, he forgot them and went back to his designs.
Knemet was interested as he had not been in centuries—in millennia. There was such satisfaction in research and experimentation. After four unsuccessful attempts, he made the correct mystic passes to bring his sketches to a kind of semi-life. A few didn’t move well. They would find survival difficult if he rendered them into flesh. They were poor designs, unworthy of him. He flicked a finger at the wrong shapes. They popped like bubbles. He was left with few of his sketches.
The thraiks did not keep him waiting. With glad shrieks, they soared through the gash in the air and sailed down to make their offerings to him. Knemet shook his head at the pair of gasping salmon the largest thraik clutched. He pointed a finger and the two fish were enclosed in a floating cube of water. They swam in rapid circles, no doubt puzzled in their tiny brains as to what had just happened to them.
“Well done,” he said. “Where is the rest?”
The other thraiks pushed at one another, each seeking to be next to hand over their prey. A river otter bit and scratched fiercely at its captor. Knemet could see the thraik’s short temper was about to let loose. He laughed.
“Drop it,” he said. The thraik let it go, and it bounded around the room, looking for a way back to its littoral home. “Later,” he promised it.
The eel was nearly dead, its slime-covered body gouged and scratched, no doubt in the effort to hold on to it. The thraik that had captured it looked ashamed. Knemet shook his head. There was nothing to be done for it. He examined its sinuous muscles and sleek sides. He could do something with those traits, but the face was too narrow, the eyes too small, to be of use in his plan. He took notes in glowing glyphs, then threw a hand toward the eel.
“Dispose of that for me,” he said.
The thraik didn’t hesitate. It opened its jaws wide and dropped the creature inside. Knemet gestured dismissal, and it took off for its perch. The Maker gloated over the rest of his specimens. He had not seen such snakes in centuries. He especially admired the brilliant red snake with the black ring just behind its head. Those did not hunt in underground caverns like his. Such beautiful skins th
ey had, and the sacs of poison behind their long, curved fangs were undeniably deadly. He admired them and set them free to wind across the floor.
The mongoose and weasels, brought from opposite ends of the continent, immediately went on the hunt for their old enemies as soon as he had examined and released them. The lizard was one he had not seen before. He watched it camouflage itself by changing hue depending upon what it was near, and immediately suspected it had been created by one of his colleagues of old. He let it run free, and enjoyed the play of color upon its scaled hide. It could not run away from this chamber, and he would always be able to locate it by its rune. It scented the snakes and ran up the wall. Knemet had to separate them all with magical wardings. When his job was done, he might let natural selection have its way, but in the meanwhile, each of these animals provided him with invaluable templates.
Like an artist, he built up a picture one characteristic at a time. Should it be armored? No, such protection would weigh it down. What Knemet wanted was speed. He drew several arching lines and added those traits he wished to incorporate. Limbs or no limbs? Two of his ideas were worth bringing to semi-life. The iridescent shapes were as different as could be. One beast was capable of swimming, but not for long. The Compendium might be found on water as easily as on land. He put that one aside, and concentrated upon the second shape. He turned its rune around and around in midair. It wriggled, in tribute to its snake heritage, the primary shape upon which he had based it. It was bursting with strong, bandlike muscles. He would have liked to make use of the strong otter limbs, but they might be injured or torn off. He did not wish it so easily crippled. The toughness of its belly would substitute for legs. He made it narrow, so it could cut knifelike through underbrush.
The silvery, thin creature could swim, but not as swiftly as he would like. He let the tip of his wand quiver slightly, and minute fins appeared at either side just behind the head. It would be a swift swimmer. It could move rapidly over land, and into the smallest cracks in stone, burrow through sand or soil like a drill with the sharp, hard nose like a turtle’s beak. It would eat what it could catch. The digestive system was like that of the weasel and eel. One could scavenge more successfully than hunt most times. It would excrete efficiently, to rid itself of waste. Gender was not important. This chimera was meant for a single task, not to breed. Defense—it needed little, for all it had to do was find his quarry for him—but Mother Nature had made many fierce beasts of her own. He gave it poison; let it be a rapid toxin that paralyzed. He did not wish to kill if he didn’t have to. He altered the swirling rune that circulated inside the sacs within either side of the upper jaw. Fangs as sturdy as the red snake’s would dispense the poison if needed.
A Forthcoming Wizard Page 25
