Eldra said, “Before we go in, Davok, tell your guards to see that a full supply of food, perhaps enough for days, is sent immediately.” She closed her eyes suddenly and swayed. Teron almost released his grip on Davok to start toward her and then stopped as he realized what she was doing.
She opened her eyes, sighing softly. “Korox has seen what happened in the Deathcourt. He is wild with anger.”
“Inside,” Teron snapped to Davok. The door swung open and they stepped into the top floor of one of the castle’s round towers. The first room was of medium size with one window in its curved wall. It was simply furnished, one wall taken up by a long table covered with dusty looking scrolls. An elderly man, with thinning white hair and a face seamed as deeply as one of Erul’s vales, stood in an inside doorway watching them.
“Bator!”
Eldra ran across and they clasped hands. “It’s all right, Bator. This is Teron of Korv, the man the Old One ordered us to bring to Erul for the joining. And the Old One was right. If anyone can save Erul and Zarza, it is Teron.”
Davok made a snorting sound. Eldra said, “Davok is our prisoner.”
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Teron said, “Eldra, hand me my spellstaff.”
She did so and he stepped back, putting away the needle and setting the spellstaff. Davok drew his sword and brandished it. Teron flicked the staff tip upward and the sword turned red. Davok cried out as the heat seared his hand. The sword clattered to the floor.
Teron said, “When it cools, take it, Eldra.” He said to Davok, “Why be a bigger fool than the gods made you, Davok?”
Going to the window, Teron glanced out. The smoke was gone and the dead lay where they had fallen. The guards and bowmen left alive had dragged themselves off to nurse their ills in private. Teron was about to turn away when he saw Korox move into the Death- court.
“Hail, Korox!” Teron called down lightly.
Davok raced to the window, jerked Teron aside and thrust his head out. “Korox,” he cried, “I am taken prisoner! Get me free! Call your drig. I give you rule of Fenn if you get me free!”
Korox stood with a sudden breeze whipping his robe about his body. He threw back his skull-like head and laughed, and a bony finger pointed upward.
“Davok, you fool! You and those with you are all prisoners. The men have pledged themselves to me— or soon will. I am leader of Fenn without your leavel” A sudden creaking made Teron look at the side wall. Bator had opened a small door and was lifting out baskets of food and wine with a puzzled frown on his face.
Davok cursed Korox and then turned to face the three people behind him in the tower. “He lies! The guards remain loyal to me.”
Eldra, who stood quietly, her eyes closed, said now, “Open the door to the landing and see, Davok.”
Teron set the spellstaff to one side. “Go ahead.” Davok leaped for the door and jerked it open, only to slam it shut as an arrow twanged into the heavy
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wood. From outside, a man cried ceremoniously, “Davok dies. Korox rules. Hail Korox!”
Davok shivered. “They do that only when a leader has died or lies wounded to the death.” He swung toward Teron. “And now what will you do, spellmaker? We are trapped up here while Korox holds the castle. We have a pittance of food and no way of escaping! Korox will call his drig and we will die! Tell me what you plan to do now!”
Teron said easily, “If Bator will help, I plan to study the original Song. We will find the way to call Eliff. Let us see then what Korox and his drig can do.”
He turned to the old man, pawing through the food as though he had not seen such delicacies in many a month. “Can you bring us the scroll, Bator?”
Bator’s eyes gleamed with a kind of wildness as he stared at Teron. “It is hidden from Fenn! I give it to no one—to no man.”
He struck himself on his thin chest. “I am Bator! I am keeper of the scroll!”
XTI
ELDRA APPROACHED Bator and spoke softly to him. His adamant expression softened a little, but he shook his head. “I do not trust Davok.”
“He is helpless,” Eldra said soothingly. “Teron has him under control.”
“I know nothing of this Teron,” Bator said stub* bomly.
Teron, standing by the window, glanced down to the Deathcourt. He said, “Korox is in She death circle. He acts like he’s calling up spirits.”
Eldra said, “He is. He fears we will call Eliff.”
Eldra grasped Bator’s hand. “Don’t you understand. The wizard is calling up the drig, perhaps even Udrig!”
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“If Korox has you all in his power, I dare not reveal
to you the manuscript.”
Teron called softly to Eldra. She came to him and he said, “You can’t reach Bator with words. Can you speak to him with your mind, speak to his mind but not with
Words?”
“I can try,” she said. She remained where she was, eyes closed, her body swaying slightly. Davok was staring outside. He turned to Teron, a mixture of fear and anger whitening his face.
“Korox will destroy us all!” he whispered. “You heard the Seventh. Make that old fool understand.”
“Fear creates strange allies,” Teron murmured. He was watching Eldra. She relaxed and opened her eyes. “Bator is screening himself against me.”
Davok was staring out the window again. Suddenly he threw it wide. “Listen!”
From outside came Korox’s high-pitched chanting. Most of the words were unintelligible, but at the end of each breath Korox Would cry, “Udrig, send your drig!”
“Do you hear, Bator?” Davok screamed. “Do you hear?”
The old man looked at him with unfocused eyes. Eldra caught Teron’s hand. “Our only hope is to summon liffL If Bator sees one, he will believe us.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Give me your strength. Let it flow into me. Open your mind, arid when you feel mine, join with me.”
Teron clung to her fingers, feeling them grow stiff between his own. Her eyes closed and he let his lids fall. He could feel the shivering work itself through her, could feel her drawing at him. He tried to empty his mind of everything but the thoughts of her, of sending his strength into her.
He could feel the drain on his mind, leaving an emptiness. The sweat ran down his body, soaking his jacket, but he was unconscious of discomfort. He could feel something probing into him now, and he tensed him
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self to repel it. But this was no cold drig; this was warmth. And he dropped his defenses and took Eldra’s thoughts into him. And from somewhere he brought up more strength and joined it to hers, and together they reached out, seeking.
Eldra’s mouth opened and a voice strange to her cried out, “Liffi! Show yourself. Declare yourself to us. For the sake of Eliff, show yourself!”
Teron opened his eyes. He could feel the liffi before he could see it. Then it was there, at first a tiny pinprick of light and finally a full glowing, hovering between his head and Eldra’s.
And now words drummed in his mind, words from a source he had heard before but could not identify. “Hurry! Korox has gone beyond himself! Udrig stirs. Hurry, Teron of Korv!”
“Rocan!” Teron cried in surprise. “The Old One speaks to me!”
He felt Eldra’s mind tear from his. The liffi began to fade until it was no more than a speck; then it was gone. Eldra sagged and Teron caught her. Across the room, Bator was nodding his head so violently that his thin white hair flew about in halo. “I heard. I heard.”
He turned and disappeared into the other room. Holding Eldra, Teron followed, Davok on his heels.
Eldra recovered and drew away from Teron. “Hurry, Bator.”
He stopped with his back against a wall made of tightly mortared stones. "Davok seeks Eliff, to use him for etdl.”
“Davok cannot control Eliff,” Eldra sa
id. “Only I, the Seventh, and Teron, the spellmaker, can do so.”
“I yield,” Davok said hoarsely. “Anything to stop Korox from destroying us all. Do you understand, Bator? I yield.”
He was giving up nothing, Teron thought dryly, but he said only, “The Seventh speaks the truth, Bator. And my spellstaff can control Davok.”
Bator turned to face the wall and began plucking at
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the mortar between two of the stones, using only his fingernails. It was soft, but it seemed to take an endless time for a few flakes to come free. Davok laughed. “My men searched between every stone in that wall. He is pretending!”
“Not between the stones,” Bator said in his thin voice, “within one.” His hand slapped one longer and narrower than most. “Here.”
“Is it well protected?” Teron demanded.
“I cut the end from the stone, hollowed it out, and buried the manuscript within.” Bator said, “I cut cleverly, and the stone looks as whole as any other.”
“Move aside,” Teron said. He set his spellstaff for the thinnest line. Lifting it, he activated the stud to send a fine, faint light directly at the mortar. A stench filled the air. The mortar melted, dribbling down the wall. The stone loosened and slipped a little outward. Bator came forward.
“It’s hot!”
But Bator jerked it free, shouted in pain and let the stone fall to the stone floor. The cap he had fashioned shattered and the wooden end of a scroll holder showed. Ignoring his burned hands, the old man pulled" the scroll free. Then he sagged to the floor. “Forgive me, Eliff, if I have judged wrong!” He lay flat, not moving.
Eldra rushed to him. “He’s—no, he’s only fainted.” Teron opened his belt and drew out a small phiaL “This will help his bums.” He turned away and lifted the scroll reverently. It was an ancient thing, so brittle that merely touching it frightened him. Gingerly he car- cied it to the other room.
“Davok, clear that long table for me.”
Davok stumbled over himself to help. Teron unrolled the scroll on the long table. The material was truly ancient; the beaten and sun-dried reed paste that had once been the paper of all Zarza. The writing was of the old, twisted script, though clear enough to Teron’s eyes. It ran in three columns downward, the width of the
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scroll; then a gap followed, decorated with tiny now meaningless symbols.
Teron’s heart hammered as he read. This was indeed the true Song of Vacor and Eldra. The words were those of the manuscript in Korv, but here and there was an extra word or a different turn of phrase—and each time he felt the increased power of the language. It sang in his mind so that he wanted to shout.
Suddenly the tiny symbolic decorations ceased and squeezed in their places were minute columns of writing in a different hand. Eldra stood beside Teron, her breath soft on his cheek. “The hand of Vacor himself held the brush that wrote those words,” she whispered.
“Ah,” he said softly, reverently. His lips moved as he sounded out the words. Suddenly he wanted to laugh and then to cry. The words sounded in his head; they rang musically; and they made no sense at all. They were meaningless, with the same kind of meaninglessness that he had witnessed in self-styled prophets. They were simply gibberish.
“Can you understand them, Teron?”
He shook his head. “Not yet” How could he tell her? How could he explain what he knew to be true, yet could never prove—that when Vacor took up his brush to write these verses, he had ceased to live in a world of reality.
Still, there must be something here or everything he had experienced, from the first communication of the Old One to the now audible screaming of Korox below, all of these would have no meaning, no reality.
Teron said. “Eldra, tell me again the last words of the dying Seventh to you.”
“She said only, “The key, child, remember the key. The sevenths. The truth is in die sevenths.’ ”
Teron said, “Can you write as I speak? Pay no attention to meaning; write the sounds I make.”
As she spoke, his eyes had been counting the words in the lines written by Vacor, and each of the seven
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verses had seven lines and each line seven words. Which sevenths then were the power sevenths?
Teron carefully pronounced the first word of each of the seven verses. Then, pausing, he pronounced the first word of each line of the first verse; then of the second; and on through all seven verses. He wondered how long it would take to follow the same pattern until every word and every possible combination had been made? Even an intuitive computing of the result staggered him.
Davok, by the window, screamed like a man in terrible fear. “Korox brings the drig. They hover about his head seeking direction. Hurry, TeronI”
Teron stopped speaking. Staring at the dark ink of the symbols made by Vacor, he let his vision go out of focus. He emptied his mind until he could feel only a great sense of loss. One hand reached out and grasped Eldra’s fingers. He held himself that way, waiting.
And a picture came to him without words. It was fleeting, almost too swift to grasp. But when he came back into the world surrounding him, the image remained as if imprinted on the backs of his eyes.
He said tiredly, “I give you the seventh word of the seventh line of each verse. Write them carefully as I pronounce them.”
His voice chanted out the strange sounds. Eldra wrote
slowly and carefully, and when she was done, Teron said, “Memorize them now.”
She stood staring at what she had written, her lips moving. Looldng Up, she nodded. “What do they mean?” “I haven’t been able to analyze them, but my guess is that part of each word is gibberish to mislead Udrig. But in that gibberish are the words that the Seventh needs.” He looked wearily at her. “I can think of no other answer.”
Davok cried out again: “Korox is looking up this way. He will soon send the drig against usl”
“Go now,” Teron said. “My strength goes with you.” Eldra went into the other room and shut the door against them. In a moment it opened and Bator came
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out. Before the door closed, Teron saw Eldra removing her clothing.
“Hurry, in the name of Eliff!” Davok shrieked.
Teron went to the window. He stared down at Korox, standing alone in the center of the death circle. His face was the face of a madman and his arms reached skyward to end in taut claws. Around his head Teron saw the strange dark blobs of nothingness, the empty cold that made up the drig. Without closing his eyes, he sought to send Eldra the strength in him and the urgency as well.
They could hear her chant, the chant of the Seventh
calling on Eliff. Her voice again the voice of a stranger. And now the new words boomed out: “Ah tuha, atti katat glimka libna milel!”
And without conscious effort, Teron’s mind found the true words buried in the gibberish, and it said to him, “Father spirit, send thy image from above!”
A single light glowed against the doorway that shut Eldra from them. Then another and another until the room was as bright as a sunlit land. Davok cried, “The drig are coming at us!”
The lights at the door flowed together into a formation shaped like an arrow. They streaked across the room, blinding in their brightness. Reaching the outside, they stayed straight on their course.
Teron stared, frozen, as he saw the dark shapes mass. The bright ones struck into them. There was no sound at all. At first he thought the arrow of light had been swallowed by the blackness; then it burst out again, regrouped its scattered parts and thrust forward. It was smaller, true, but the blackness was equally less.
Korox stared upward. He shrieked out, “Udrig! Udrig! Udrig!”
From behind the doorway came the strange voice from Eldra’s throat: “Eliff! Ab tuha, ani katat glimka libna mileV Eliffr
It was mad; it was impossible. Yet T
eron could see it happening. The golden arrow struck again and again
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into the blackness, and now its brightness diminished the less. A great shadow rose behind Korox. It strained upward and then struck down. Part of the castle wall tumbled to the ground with a massive crashing.
Above them came a brightness, too great for any to look on easily. Teron turned his head away, his eyes throbbing. When he could see again, he looked on molten rock, running as a river, where the far wall of the Deathcourt had been. Again the black finger of shadow slashed down. The tower rocked violently, sending great stones crashing into the courtyard.
Korox stood only briefly, and then he ran, his arms still reaching up in supplication.
Eldra staggered from the other room, drawing on her clothing. “Quickly, Teron, get the scroll. We must leave before the liffi and the drig destroy everything in their battle."
A piece of wall crashed outward, leaving them naked to the day. Teron tore his eyes from the sight of the Deathcourt ground flowing sluggishly, red and smoking. He looked left and shouted with pleasure as a stream of Whitelanders showed themselves, racing across the moat bridge. In the lead, blood streaking her pale skin and coloring the sword held high in her hand, was a triumphant, chanting Inge.
The floor buckled, throwing them all toward the doorway. Teron lifted his staff and cut away the lock so that the door swung drunkenly outward. He rolled the scroll and thrust it undefhis sweat-soaked jacket.
Davok was opening and closing his mouth, gasping wordlessly. The roof crashed down, and Bator, staggering forward, disappeared under the mass of rubble. Teron tore rocks free and then picked up the limp, light body. “He lives yet.”
Eldra pulled Teron by the arm. “Run! Our only hope is to reach the moat bridge while it still stands.”
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xrri
SHOULDERING THE OTHERS ASIDE, Davok stumbled down the stairs. No guards were in sight, and they saw no one interested in stopping their flight Teron moved more slowly than the others, carrying the light weight of Bator over his shoulder. At the foot of the main staircase Davok ran for the great double door opening onto the front courtyard.
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