The Starfollowers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  The son of Surehand shook his head. “I believe you as much as myself. I trust not my own senses either, where the Hand of Salamá is involved. What’s needed is proof.”

  Gil jumped up, pacing the thick carpet. “Proof? All right, now we’re clicking. You want hard evidence, I’ll get it.”

  He broke off. “Do you still think you’ll have to go south, against Shardishku-Salamá?”

  “I am uncertain. The question is whether or not I will be able to. Coramonde’s upheavals continue.”

  “But if we take Bey out of the picture, it’ll take pressure off you.”

  “Past all question.”

  “So when I find Bey, be set to move fast. The next problem’s how to get to Death’s Hold. What’s the normal route?”

  The Ku-Mor-Mai rubbed his jaw. “Most trading fell off during the thronal war, but the Western Tangent is open. I would be dubious of traveling with merchant convoys, though; insecure. An alternative suggests itself. You might go south with Andre deCourteney.”

  “Andre? Why’s Andre going south?”

  “To bring the sword Blazetongue back to its rightful owner, as I told you he would. He insists Blazetongue has important consequences in the struggle against Salamá. He and a small party are leaving within days,”

  “How many?”

  “A minimal number. He, too, knows no men can be spared, but requires few. There are a number of borders between here and Veganá, where he’s going. Foreign governments would respect Coramonde’s letter of transit, but they’re hardly likely to permit a large armed force to enter their territories. Andre wants no regular soldiers; he could not take enough to guarantee safety, only enough to insure conspicuousness.”

  Gil had missed that angle. He saw now that any large group would make travel harder. “Smart. But would Andre go out of his way and check out Death’s Hold?”

  “Not before he delivers Blazetongue. He is adamant. But he is as eager to break and hinder Bey as you are. If you accompany him, he will probably be more than ready to investigate Death’s Hold afterward.”

  Gil sorted it out. If he couldn’t use a large escort, the next best thing was Andre deCourteney. No one in the Crescent Lands had a more formidable constellation of skills and experience.

  “Okay, quit shoveling. It’s a deal. Where’s Andre? I’ll give him the pitch.”

  Andre deCourteney had appropriated Yardiff Bey’s abandoned sanctum sanctorum, at the summit of Earthfast, to examine its contents and learn what he could from them. He still hadn’t replaced the door that had been bent back on its hinges by the reptile-man Kisst-Haa.

  Gil knocked on the frame, and went in to find the wizard at a puzzling piece of apparatus. The American sat on a bench to watch. The room was filled with jars, bottles, scrolls, astrolabes and star charts. Blazetongue, the huge onetime Sword of the Ku-Mor-Mai, rested against the bench.

  “I have plumbed a riddle here, I think,” Andre said, “but it has generated another. Behold.”

  He lit a flame under each of two retorts. The liquids in them boiled, one forming a yellow gas, the other a red. Opening two petcocks, he let them blend. A faint orange mist rose from a nozzle at the top of the equipment.

  “Now, see.” He held a piece of parchment into the orange flow. It was old, with a ragged edge as if it had been ripped from a book.

  Andre fanned the sheet in the orange vapor, which began to peel a covering from the parchment in flakes. Soon there was a little snowdrift of them on the work-table, and a page-within-a-page was revealed. Andre held it up proudly. Gil politely applauded.

  “Andre, I thought science projects are Van Duyn’s line.”

  “This is of interest to me because it was important to Yardiff Bey.” He held up the binding from which the page had come. It was richly embossed, encircled by a wide metallic strip. A thick, raised seal was impressed on the strip, filled with runes and sigils, in wax the color of burgundy. Bey had apparently removed the pages somehow without disturbing it.

  “This is the cover from Rydolomo’s Arrivals Macabre,” Andre explained. “It survived the Great Blow. There are not more than two or three copies in existence; Rydolomo was an arch-mage and premier thinker. Bey is, by appearances, under the impression Rydolomo left some in one of his books. The sorcerer circumvented its guardian seal somehow.” The page he held was blank, but Gil understood. Somewhere, a book of Rydolomo’s had something Bey coveted, hidden within.

  A servant appeared at the door frame. Andre went, and accepted a blanket-wrapped bundle. It was a baby, a chubby girl.

  “Recognize her? She’s the one we brought back from the Infernal Plane, the one the demon Amon had been holding.”

  Gil inspected her from a distance, not used to children. Andre began tickling and chucking her under the chin, making senseless, happy sounds. “Isn’t she the charmer? Oh, come on, Gil; say something to her.”

  “Goo,” offered the American solemnly. “Why’s she here?”

  “Reacher brought her from Freegate. I believe she’s tied in with all this, the endeavors of Bey and the Masters. I wanted her here while I go through Yardiff Bey’s things, to see if there are correlations.” He put her in a makeshift bassinet, a dry-sink. “But now, what brings you up here?”

  Gil jabbed a thumb at Blazetongue. It was a long, imperial-looking weapon, its blade chased with inscriptions and enchantment. “I’ve been elected. I’m going to Death’s Hold, but first I’m going with you to Veganá.”

  “Your company will be welcome; we share common goals beside Veganá. As to Blazetongue, there are some things I could tell, and one thing for certain I cannot. I do not have the spell that makes the blade burn, as Bey and Strongblade did.”

  “Well, Springbuck told me the rest. Too bad; that would be a handy trick to have.” His eye fell on Arrivals Macabre.

  “Delivering Blazetongue is a job that has wanted doing for a long time,” the wizard assured him. He went back to playing with the child, chuckling at her giggles.

  “Your sister and I both think Bey is in Death’s Hold. Are you interested in seeing?”

  “After delivering Blazetongue? Hmm, yes, if evidence points to it. First, I must think it through. Speaking of the Hand of Salamá, Bey’s sword Dirge is there on the chest.”

  Gil spied it, a shorter sword than Blazetongue, with a vicious, runcinate blade. The sorcerer had dropped it in his fight with Dunstan. Terrible properties were attributed to it. It occurred to Gil that it might be linked to Bey’s magic; weapons and owners had strange affinities here.

  Andre was still fussing over the baby. Gil picked up the binder of Arrivals Macabre, feeling its ancient weight.

  “Andre, do you think we’ll find Bey?”

  The wizard didn’t turn. He bounced the child, answering, “You will have your moment with Bey. The hatred is mutual, and in both your destinies.”

  Hearing it cut Gil to the bone. His hand closed angrily on the binder. The rough edges of the seal rested under his fingertips.

  “What kind of crack’s that, Andre?” His nails had detected a slight give in the seal’s edge. Unthinkingly, framing his next words, he dug at it. The outermost corner gave way with a minute pop, but Andre somehow heard.

  The wizard spun, consternation on his face, shouting “No!”

  Gil was blown back off the bench with enormous force by something that had suddenly come into the room. He twisted to avoid landing on his injured side, but was still jarred by shooting pain. He sat up awkwardly to a hair-raising scene, with those feelings so characteristic of his Coramonde experience, utter astonishment mixed with stark terror.

  Between Andre and Gil a ball of swirling transplendence hung, a miniature sun. Andre had taken in the situation—which Gil hadn’t sorted out yet—and acted. Putting the baby back in the dry-sink he began mystic passes, uttering words from a dead language. As he did, he backed away, deliberately shoving the dry-sink toward the door with his legs and plump buttocks, wishing he hadn’t left the occult jewel Ca
lundronius with his sister.

  Gil found time to think, He’s such a homey little guy, balding and fat. You forget he’s the man of action.

  Andre’s spell had been hasty or incomplete. The entity sizzled, and lashed out at him, knocking him sideways. The baby began wailing, attracting the thing’s attention. It floated in that direction.

  Gil grabbed for his pistol, then stopped. It wasn’t likely to do much good. Andre was still groggy. As a tendril of energy edged into the dry-sink, the child’s complaint shifted register from dismay to rage

  Blazetongue, still lying against the bench, flared incandescent. Flame licked up and down its glowing blade.

  The being instantly pulled back, compressing into an alarmed ball. Gil snatched up Blazetongue, leaping sparks singeing his hands. The bench had begun to burn where the sword had rested against it.

  Gil circled, the short-hairs of his neck on end with electricity, trying to get between the child and the thing that hovered near it. Instead, the thing floated over the dry-sink and retreated to the far wall, dangerously at bay, gathering itself to strike out. He followed, waving the weapon dubiously. Putting himself to block the baby from immediate harm, he tried to decide what to do.

  A hand on his shoulder; Andre. The hand was steady as stone, its grip imperatively strong. Gil gave him room. Andre moved nearer the being, pointed his index finger at it. It swelled to attack. He roared a string of syllables that meant nothing to the American, and the intruder was rent like smoke in the wind. It pulled itself together again, radiating its perturbation. Gil waved Blazetongue, cheering. “Eat him up, deCourteney!”

  Wrath, usually a stranger to Andre’s face, had transformed it. His lips quivered, his eyes slitted, but the finger was unswerving. He loosed the string of syllables again. This time the being was dissipated beyond its ability to recover, dismissed.

  It was the old, unscary Andre who took the baby to his shoulder, to soothe her. Gil watched fire die along Blazetongue.

  “What—what was that thing?” he got out finally. The wizard ignored him. “Y’know, Andre, you could have just said you didn’t want to give out the burning spell. You didn’t have to lie.”

  The thaumaturge came to him, bouncing up and down a fraction, which the baby enjoyed. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “The goddam sword’s what I’m talking about, man! You did one helluva job just now, but you were still jazzing me about not knowing the spell of the sword.”

  Andre stopped bouncing. Gil tensed.

  “Let me inform you of two facts,” the wizard said. “The first is that what you saw was a guardian entity. It appeared when you meddled with Rydolomo’s seal; it was to avoid just such an accident that I forebore to wear Calundronius today. Next time you go poking about such perils, I should be grateful if you would arrange to deal with whatever problems arise by yourself.”

  Gil eyed the disturbed seal of Rydolomo guiltily. Andre plodded on. “And the second item is that, as I said, I do not know the conjuration for the fire of Blazetongue. Do I make myself quite lucid?”

  “So, who lit it up? ’Cause I sure as hell didn’t.”

  Andre smiled smugly and patted the baby’s back. She burped softly. Gil stared in disbelief from wizard to child and back.

  “You’re kidding. Aren’t you? Kidding?”

  The other sighed. “I am not certain how, yet it was indisputably she. Now, I presume you have no objections to my cleaning up here. You have, I take it, other things to which you should be attending?”

  “I’m going. I’ve gone.”

  In the stairwell, he blew thoughtfully on his blistering hands. One other item’s for damn sure; the next thing I unseal’s going to have a drink inside it.

  Chapter Four

  Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men.

  John Donne

  “Death, Be Not Proud”

  ON his way to Springbuck’s study the next day Gil met Van Duyn.

  “MacDonald, I, ah—”

  “You craved my presence?”

  The scholar agreed wryly. “There’re things you and I should clear up; it may be awhile before we see one another again.”

  They found a window seat. Gil sat gingerly, protecting his shoulder. His occult contact with Dunstan, and the belief that he was on the right track, had calmed him. He’d been able to sleep, a dreamless rest that had refreshed him. The lacerating feeling of futility was gone.

  Van Duyn rubbed his hands. He wasn’t sure he credited his countryman’s alleged samadhi-experience, his Enlightenment. “Katya is going back to Freegate. With her country on a wartime footing she has little option. I’ve decided to go with her. The Highlands Province will be untenable so long as Shardishku-Salamá engages in Fabian policies. I will do what I can for Katya and Reacher. I am taking the contiguity device. I was separated from it once, to my sorrow. I won’t risk leaving it here. But before we part, it’s only fair to offer you one last opportunity to leave the Crescent Lands.”

  Van Duyn’s machine was the only certain way back to their home Reality. The deCourteneys’ spells might suffice, but would be hazardous. Gil considered for a moment.

  “I can’t, just now. I’ll have to take a raincheck.”

  “The choice is yours.”

  “Thanks for asking though. I remember, before I returned to Coramonde, I threw together the stuff I was bringing here with me. My brother Ralph wandered in when I had it all laid out, the traveling gear, guns and all. Right away he flashed on it that I was heading ’way out into the tall timber someplace. I almost told him how far short that fell, but he’d never have bought it. He knew me though; I had nothing to keep me back there. Oh, I’ll go back one day, but there’s no rush.”

  “I see. By the way, you shouldn’t have gone off so quickly the other day. Not all Reacher’s news was so unfortunate. He brought General Stuart back from Freegate with him.”

  “Jeb? Outstanding!” Jeb Stuart was the name Gil had given the war-horse assigned him from the stables of Freegate. Jeb had borne up well under travails of the thronal war.

  “The King thought you’d want him. Now, I suggest we join the others.”

  They assembled in Springbuck’s airy, high-windowed study, where long slants of sunlight irradiated the stained-glass scenes and breathed life into the tapestries and selected pieces of sculpture.

  Hightower and the deCourteneys were present, with the Ku-Mor-Mai, Katya and Reacher. Gil settled into a chair, making his shoulder comfortable, and Van Duyn sat and fiddled with his glasses. The last participant arrived, Angorman, Saint-Commander of the Order of the Axe.

  Gil had been introduced to him earlier. The Order was one of two rival sects of warrior-priests sworn in worship and errantry to the female deity called the Bright Lady. The Brotherhood of the Bright Lady, the other sect, was an older organization whose Divine Vicar Balagon was at odds with Angorman on a running basis. Outright violence between the two groups was absolutely prohibited, and so occurred only rarely. But there was an ongoing, pious antagonism.

  Angorman greeted them all and eased himself with a grunt into the last vacant seat. He was dressed in his usual brown forager’s cloak, an old man bald as an egg except for thick, flaring white eyebrows. He retained his wide-brimmed slouch hat with the brassard of the Order on its high crown, an axehead superimposed on a crescent moon, worked in heavy silver. The Saint-Commander rested his famous greataxe against his chair. Gil recalled its name, Red Pilgrim. Six feet of wooden haft, braced with iron langets, held a double-flanged bit, gracefully curved to lend cutting power and leverage.

  Springbuck had shucked the hated robes of state. Barefoot among the furs and pelts, he wore loose, soft trousers and sash, and a wraparound jacket. The hilt of the Hibben bowie nosed from his waistband.

  Gabrielle sat at the Ku-Mor-Mai’s right, in deep conversation with Andre. Seeing her, Gil unconsciously put a finger to the chain around his neck. After the tarot seance, she’d taken the Ace of Sw
ords from the deck, put it on a fine chain and given it to him, saying it was truly his. He’d accepted it reluctantly, committing himself to something he didn’t understand. It was not made of paper or parchment, but a flexible material he couldn’t identify.

  Andre was sitting tailor-fashion on Springbuck’s tall writing table. Gil saw that the protector-suzerain had been working again on The Antechamber Ballads, a collection of poetry, essays and autobiographical writings.

  Angorman spoke. “Blazetongue is our subject first, is it not? It belongs in Veganá, we know. It is therefore an object of the Bright Lady, for they follow the Blessed Way down there. It is hence of interest to my Order to see the sword—and the child—safely back where they belong.”

  Gil sat up. “Child? You mean you want the kid to go? How can I—”

  “We!” Angorman interjected. “We will accomplish this. The baby did conjure the fire of Blazetongue. By that we know she must be of the royal house of Veganá; only they command the sword’s enchantment by inherent right.”

  So, Angorman was in the party. Gil turned to Springbuck. “What d’you say? How’d you like to pack a kid around with you?”

  “Have you forgotten? I have already traveled with her.”

  “Oh. Yeah, but that was ’way before, when there was no choice. This is now, and this is me.”

  “I shall be responsible for the infant,” Angorman declared, “and so you need not fear for her.” His gnarled, sinewy hands played along the length of Red Pilgrim like some musician exercising before concert. “She shall be safe.”

  Gil slumped. If he backed out now he’d lose his best crack at finding Bey and Dunstan. It was a simple go/no-go.

  He lost the floor to Andre. “Gil, is it not clear, after all she has been through, held captive along with Gabrielle in Arnon’s halls, that she will never be safe anywhere but with her own people? There are impetuses at work here that are not to be questioned. Attempts to harm or recapture her may be foiled simply by dint of quick, quiet departure. Does that alter your attitude?”