by Brian Daley
Gil reflected that Gale-Baiter could very well have done just that; lots of people would have. The envoy brought a liquor flask from beneath his seat cushion. He gave Brodur a sip, then he and Gil each took a swig. It was thick, cordial-tasting stuff Gil wouldn’t ordinarily have liked, but welcomed now.
Gilbert A., old son, he told himself, Brodur was right. Bey sure hasn’t lost his touch.
Brodur was holding his wound, teeth gritted, clinging to consciousness. Gale-Baiter slipped his scarf off, helping stop the seeping blood. It was decided the aide must go to Earthfast, where Springbuck’s physicians could treat him.
“Sorry am I,” husked Brodur, “that Yardiff Bey’s control still extends so far. We wasted your silver and you are no farther toward the Hand of Salamá.”
“Don’t bet on that.” Gil tucked the pistol away, carefully retaining the pellet of Earnai he’d snatched from the booth with two fingers, just before leaving the snug. He held the Dreamdrowse up to the fitful light of torches and cressets as the coach tore along.
“No, don’t be too sure of that at all.”
Chapter Three
So much the rather thou celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.
John Milton
Paradise Lost, Book III
GABRIELLE deCourteney had been installed in lush rooms, luxury appropriate to the sovereign’s mistress and a pre-eminent sorceress.
The knock surprised her. Springbuck had said he’d be occupied with counsels, and would see her at breakfast. Her handmaiden opened the door and Gil MacDonald stepped in, right arm in a sling, a limp in his stride. Gabrielle inspected him coldly; there’d never been much liking between them.
“Can I talk to you alone? Please.”
Dismissing the handmaiden, she curtly invited him to sit. “Have you had an accident? You have seen the chirurgeons?”
He skirted her questions. “I’ll be okay. The arm’s numb, and my hook shot’s ruined, but I’m bound up tight, and it’ll do.”
Gabrielle wore a gown of softest white kid, embroidered in the flowery, intricate Teebran style. Masses of red curls tumbled around her shoulders, and the deep, green eyes held him. He’d always felt jumpy around her. Her aloofness knocked him off stride; she was too good at manipulating people.
He told her what had happened, words tumbling over each other, up to where he’d left Brodur sitting propped up in bed, wound sutured closed, puffing on an old, deep-bowled pipe, out of danger. Gil finished by holding up the waxy bead of Earnai. Soliciting his permission with a lift of an eyebrow, she took the Dream-drowse, and held it up to a candle.
“Why me? Why not Springbuck or Andre?”
“Springbuck’s preoccupied and—no offense—your brother’s too cautious. He might not go for what I’ve got in mind.”
“And I?”
He hesitated. “I figure you’ll try anything that sounds interesting. That’s the way you strike me.” She didn’t reply. He knew he’d have to say it all without prompting; that much she would demand.
“I was sitting in the White Tern, thinking about what Wintereye was saying. I’m running around Coramonde like a monkey in a hardware store. You have to understand, I was brought up to go from ‘one’ to ‘two’ to ‘and so on.’ You’ve got necromancy and tiromancy and all, those other ’mancies, but I always steered clear of ’em. But this Earnai, it was like it found me. I thought maybe I could tap in on whatever, uh, insights I can unlock.” He made a vague gesture, hand dropping to the chair arm. “I want in on those Doors Between and Beyond. I need the mystical connection. I want to perceive things a different way.”
She scrutinized him coolly. It was, she thought, a decision that could as easily have come from desperation as from reason. “Do you think you would find Dunstan? Or Yardiff Bey?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen you do things a million times weirder. At one time or another, I’ve believed in nuclear fusion and Virgin Birth, but I never saw either one. I admit possibilities. Look, we’ve never been great pals, but I thought it might intrigue you.”
She rose and glided from the room. He waited. In a moment she returned with a tarot deck. She held the Earnai up to the candle again and smiled. “And I thought this would be an idle evening. Come.”
She led him to an inner chamber, furbished to suit her, not a sanctum, but a personal place of solitude. The carpet was deep; the door seemed to shut airtight. She’d arranged lamps, shades and mirrors to decorate with illuminated and shadowed spaces. Gil found himself studying unidentifiable knickknacks, paintings, and objects that might be musical instruments or, equally likely, rococo mobile sculptures. Or something utterly else. Nobody really knew how old she was. What might a finely alert mind, living for centuries, light upon as curious?
“There are many forms of Earnai.” She brought out a tiny brazier carved from a block of onyx, its basin no larger than a teacup. She lit a flame beneath it. “It comes from the heart of a plant found throughout the southern reaches, did you know that? Some Southwastelanders call it ‘mahonn,’ which means ‘rescue.’ Among others it is ‘k’nual, the visitor.’ It is, in different places and climes, ‘Vision Flower,’ ‘God-call,’ and ‘the Passageway.’ But it takes a measure of art to use it safely. A single mote of the pure substance would slay you, me, and anyone else in the room. It must be diluted, it must be handled carefully, like a cunning beast. It is used in countless ways, you see. Effects depend on concentration and combination.”
She dropped the pellet into the brazier. Thin ribbons of smoke curled up into the air. “It can be a euphoric, or make you giddy. It can banish pain or render the strongest man unconscious. It has been used in aphrodisiacs, and inquisitor’s compounds.”
At her invitation, they arranged themselves on thick pillows on opposite sides of a low table of old, pleasant-feeling mahogany. “That pellet, that is a thing of the south, but the Horseblooded sometimes use it. Did Wintereye wear thimbles or coverings on his fingertips? Ah, then he worked it from the pure himself. The Dream-drowse is mingled with one of the noropianics. Its color and inner striations are good, its odor untainted, perfect for what you have in mind. Have you ever experienced the Other Sides?”
Not certain what she meant, he kept it to the issue at hand. “Guess not. Do we stick our heads over it, catch it in a bag, or what?”
“What do you taste?”
He rolled his tongue experimentally. “Musk. A little tartlike, I think.”
“Dreamdrowse. It entered your pores, and your blood has carried it to your tongue already.” She put the tarot deck down precisely between them. Her fingers stroked and patted the deck slowly, renewing old ties.
Perhaps the Dreamdrowse was working, or the events of the night had exhausted his restraint. On impulse, he clapped his hand down on the deck before she could take it up. She withheld her objections, recognizing inspiration. Gabrielle had no qualms about subordinating ceremony to revelation.
In a motion he never questioned, he fanned the cards out, faces down, an arc from one side of the table to the other. She said nothing, but her green eyes flashed at him again.
He let his hand rove the deck. He felt warmth rising against his palm, and picked up the card from which it radiated. She took it gently.
“The Ace of Swords. Hmm.” She laid it before him. On it, a hand emerging from a cloud held a greatsword encircled by a crown. In the background, tongues of flame blazed in the sky like a firmament. Every feature screamed possible interpretations at him. He sensed an outpouring from himself toward the tarot. A small part of him saw its resemblance to the regimental crest of his old outfit, the 32d.
Gabrielle whispered piercingly, “Your card—it is yours now—says ‘All power to the extremes!’ Dare to seize your moment, the prize, the victory. Card of conquest, of excess in love and hatred, love of haunting intensity, but also hatred of terr
ible immutability.
“Reversed, it takes on other connotations, proliferation and increase, variety and, perhaps, tragedy. But you pulled this tarot yourself and I cannot tell which message is intended. You are not meant to know yet, Gil MacDonald. There are things especially pertinent to the Ace of Swords; the glow on a lover’s face, and blood on a steel blade.”
The tarot rose through his senses. Gabrielle’s voice was a narrative faculty for it. He opened himself to it. It enveloped him.
Then there were quick images, like a slide show. An enormous fortification spread before him on a level plain facing a gray, wind-chased sea. It stretched in grim angles and martial tessellations. It was, he intuited, a repository of fear.
From far away, words drifted to him. Forget the fear. There is no fear.
And the fear was gone. The American almost identified the voice, but the scene shifted. Another view, of a dark, vaulted ceiling in a dank, subterranean room. It was lit by banked fires. There was the creak and clash of equipment of torture. In a white-hot universe of agony, the voice returned. Reject the pain. There is no pain.
The anguish retreated. Gil knew it as Dunstan’s voice, and tried to call, but had no voice of his own in the eerie pseudo-world of the Ace. He sensed cruel bindings against wronged flesh. The words persisted. Banish restraint. There is no restraint.
But there was a note of doubt to it. The restraint didn’t disappear.
A last vision came, of a fluttering banner. Its device was a flaming wheel, half black, half white, on a black-and-white field, so that each half of the wheel was against the opposite color. Then the world faded before his eyes.
He was at Gabrielle’s table, had never left it. She watched him with an attitude very much like pity. From stellar distances he heard her say, “You are no thaumaturge, yet rarely, rarely have I seen the Cards do that for anyone. The Sudden Enlightenment, it was. We are very much alike, you and I.”
His eyes were still drifting. His brain overloaded with speculation, mystical synapses, cognitive spasm-shocks. Ideas strobing in his head left tantalizing residues of after-image.
But one fact was manifest. He knew whose banner he’d seen through Dunstan’s eyes, without himself ever having seen or heard of it before. Gabrielle watched the lips form a single word under vacant, murderous eyes. Bey.
Springbuck was alone in his cavernous throne room, without crown or pageantry, steps clacking hollowly.
It was the first time he’d ever been in the chamber without anyone else. He could feel echoes of the past pressing in; it was for that reason he’d come. He saw the darker spot on the floor where, months before, the younger Hightower, the old hero’s son, had been beheaded by the ogre Archog. Peering hard to accommodate weak vision, he could see places where Gil’s and Van Duyn’s shots had blasted chips of stone from the walls.
He climbed the dais where he and Strongblade had fought. In the ornate wood of the throne was a deep penetration where the Ku-Mor-Mai had left his knife when he’d chosen to face the usurper with only his sword Bar.
There was a bare spot where Strongblade’s portrait had been. Throughout Earthfast and the city, statues, paintings, busts and plaques of him had, in fear or anger, been unceremoniously removed. Traditionalists had wanted to strike the name from history; Springbuck had forbidden that. Strongblade’s name, deeds and fate would be an infamous lesson for posterity.
Gil entered, the only person besides Gabrielle and Hightower whom the door warders would let interrupt the Ku-Mor-Mai’s musings. He saw that the young monarch was lost in introspection. “Hey, I could catch you later.”
“No, come in. I hungered for early-morning silence before the day’s obligations. They are bringing Midwis before me today, a thorny problem, one of the Legion-Marshals who went against me. He’s been decorated half a hundred times, and his battle standard’s heavy with ribbons of valor. His family’s influential as well, and at the very last he renounced the conspiracy. I can neither deny him some measure of clemency, nor let him go unpunished. A twisty dilemma.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“May it be so. Tonight will be little less busy. A famous poet will be here. Court will be crowded and last late.” He sat on the top step of the dais. “Gil, do you remember Freegate, in my exile? Reacher brought in that prestigious harper, but you and Duskwind were tipsy. You insisted the poor man come with the two of you to the kitchens, and teach the scullions to dance? What music was that?”
“A slide. A Kerry slide.”
“Oh yes, slide.” Springbuck chuckled. “The courtiers were quite astonished.”
“Yeah, but Katya liked it. And it was the only time I ever saw Reacher dance.” Gil, too, chortled.
“And in the end, didn’t that harper add it to his repertoire? Aha, and offer you both places with his company?” He burst into mirth again.
Gil sobered, nodding to himself, speaking so the other could hardly hear. “We had ourselves some times, then.”
He went up the dais and plopped down on the throne, one leg dangling nonchalantly over its arm. Springbuck was no longer shocked at such irreverence.
“Gil, I should like to hear your version of what happened last night with Brodur. He’s mending nicely, by the way.”
Recounting the incident at the White Tern and the séance, the other became strained and brittle. There was anger, curbed violence, just beneath the surface of him. As he spoke, he felt with his forefinger the scar on his forehead.
When he’d heard it all, Springbuck said, “A foolish idea. You could have died, you idiot!”
“Sue me. I just tried for a lead on Bey. How was I supposed to know we’d be set up?”
“I did not mean going to the White Tern, though that was no stroke of genius either. I meant using the Dreamdrowse. It could easily have been poisoned; Bey’s traps are subtlety itself.”
“Gabe would have spotted it if it had been a hotshot. Besides, I figure it was worth it.”
“Ah, marvelous epitaph! ‘He figured it was worth it.’ Splendid!”
“Hey, take it easy. Don’t be such a hardcase.” There was a tray of food and a pitcher set out on a small table. Gil poured them each a stone mug of lager. “Here, put some money in your meter. What I did doesn’t matter. Bey does.” He drew breath for the big question. “How many men can you spare me?”
Springbuck took a long bowie knife from beneath his robes and toyed with it. It had been a gift from Gil, a genuine Hibben, and had left that mark in the wood of the throne.
“Have you considered this in detail?” he finally asked.
“What’s to consider? I got through to Dunstan. Gabe felt it too. She thinks he’s at a place called Death’s Hold, an old hangout of Bey’s.” He pointed vaguely southwest. “It’s thataway, on the coast of the Outer Sea. I’m going. Do I get men, or not?”
Springbuck put the tips of his fingers together and pressed them to his lips. He avoided the American’s glance, racked between commitment to his friend and duty to the suzerainty.
He spoke into the little steeple of fingers, resenting what he must say. “Had I left that Legion under you, when first you returned from the Dark Rampart, you would have taken it back into the mountains, would you not? Hearing Van Duyn’s news, you’d have had us all depart for the Highlands Province, is that not true also? But this morning you are of the persuasion that Death’s Hold is the place. Gil, my very hold on Coramonde is in jeopardy. Subject-states threaten to fall, not one by one but in rows. Where you would have been wrong the first time, and the second, how can you ask me to squander a Legion I need so badly? Every man under arms is crucial.” He faltered, then met the American’s glare. “Had you not returned with that Legion when you did, I’d have dispatched orders to its Marshal.”
Gil whitened, the scar and powderburn standing out vividly. “All right, Coramonde’s in trouble; so are you. Where do you think it’s coming from? Bey, where else? Nail him and you settle all your hassles right there and then. Are
you too dumb to see we have to get him for your sake too?”
“Which Yardiff Bey?” the Ku-Mor-Mai shouted back. “The one in the Dark Rampart? In the Highlands Province? Death’s Hold? I dare not be prodigal with what loyal units are left me. If you were in command you’d say the same.”
The American lost hold of his bitterness. “You’re going to do nothing while Bey and his people chip away at you? When are you going to learn to take the first swing? Are you scared to go after him for a change?”
Both knew they were on their way to irrevocable words. Springbuck was first to avert it.
“Yes, I am afraid. I fear for Coramonde, and myself as well. Everything I ever learned about the sorcerer makes me wary. He can do more damage with a lie than most men could with a regiment at their back. He draws out that ductile gullibility in all of us. You’ve deceived him, because you used tricks of war altogether new here, but he never makes the same error twice. Never. I am afraid this fresh spoor is one more trick. There are uncounted lives hinging on this; I cannot divert Coramonde’s remaining manpower, not on such tenuous grounds.”
Gil, too, pulled back, ashamed. The Ku-Mor-Mai was right; in his place Gil would have been just as cautious; the man in charge had to be. He scratched his cheek, and thought.
“Springbuck, I’m sorry. You had it straight, I had it garbled. I never meant you’re, y’know, a coward.” He sat down alongside the other. They knocked mugs.
“It’s funny about Dunstan, he was so full of contradictions. He’d be so placid, introverted really, until he flew into one of those berserkergangs. I took it into my head that somehow he was like a key to the Crescent Lands; if I could understand him, it would clarify everything for me here. And when he began hanging out with us, when he’d learned how to laugh, I felt this Chinese Obligation.”
Gil drew himself back to the present. “Springbuck, it was so clear, Dunstan in Death’s Hold. You’d have believed it too.”
