Wings of Power

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Jamshid shouted from his howdah, the shout was repeated by the sentries atop the tower, and from the walls rained arrows as thick as the bees of Dhan Bagrat. Another shout, and a troop of Ferangi cavalry raced around the walls, from where they had been hidden behind the city, and hit the Allianzi in the flank. So the treachery was not solely on Menelik’s side. Gard would not faint at that, either.

  He whisked in beneath the gateway, leaped from his horse and ran, thrusting his way through hurrying soldiers, up the steep stairway to the battlement. Blue sky arched innocently overhead. The dome of the palace lay pristine in the morning sun. Shattered bodies writhed on red-stained mud.

  Yasmine swooned, and was carried off by maidservants. Ladhani, her face less animated than an ivory carving, led Narayan away. Senmut capered among his catapults, but the armies were too closely meshed for a clear shot.

  Rajinder’s voice lanced through the tumult. “You stationed those men behind the walls! It was an honorable parley, and you planned treachery!”

  “A good thing I did,” retorted Vijay, “or they would have overrun us.”

  “You have a lot to learn about war, Raj,” Jamshid added gently.

  Deva watched the metallic knot that was Menelik, Shikar, and Tarek drive the Allianzi ranks forward. The limbs of the semaphore atop the tower jerked crazily, and another force of Ferangi ran toward the Allianzi camp. “Good,” she said. “Massacre a few camp followers and preen ourselves on a victory.”

  Senmut dropped the rock he had been trying to load onto a catapult. “Bhai is there,” he said. “With any luck . . .”

  Luck, Gard asked himself, to wish your own brother dead? He cast a quick glance at Senmut’s face. The old man’s nose was hatchet sharp, his teeth gleaming in a rigid grin of—no, not hatred, pain.

  The sky was the color of Yasmine’s eyes, stained by the smoke rising from the encampment. Soon there would be the smoke of funeral pyres as each side burned its pointless dead, and the priests of Vaiswanara and Hurmazi delivered little homilies on honor and grace, valor and death. The gods were, no doubt, seating themselves in their divine theater, carrying picnic baskets laden with nectar and ambrosia, enjoying the show.

  Deva slipped her arm behind Gard’s. Her steady sapphire gaze peeled away his thought and stroked his senses like a cat curling around his ankles. Luck, Gard thought wearily, would be Yasmine’s death.

  * * * * *

  A waxing crescent moon rode among rushing clouds like a Sardian trireme riding the waves of the Farther Sea. The wind was a chilly fingertip tracing Gard’s spine. He peered over the parapet; the campfires of the Allianzi pocked but did not illuminate the night.

  Deva shivered in her cloak beside him. From the chill, he hoped, not from fear. “Are you well?” he asked.

  Her reply was a baleful look from eyes that in the darkness were slate gray. “Not particularly. But I see no other option.”

  “Well then,” he said with false heartiness, “let us go.” He ushered her along the parapet with a confident wave. The dragonet in his gut repeated the gesture, making of it a thrust of desperation.

  The duties of a wizard in wartime were taxing ones, Gard had discovered. His mind was not his own but was turned constantly toward the enemy as if he were an animate spyglass. And there was little for him to sense, only an occasional frisson of sorcery followed by an agonizing slash of flint. It would have been easier to have no power at all than to muddle from situation to opportunity, to the disappointment of knowing that however much power he had, it was not quite enough.

  They passed the dark huddled shapes of sentries dozing against their spears or peering cautiously outward. Each with his regulation two blankets, Gard supposed with a grimace.

  A small company waited in flickering torchlight within the gates. Senmut was waving a long tube in Rajinder’s face—not his spyglass but something else. “Yes,” the old man insisted, “if I place one end of this tube on the ground and the other on my ear, I can hear movements beneath the earth.”

  “And are there movements beneath the earth?” Raj inquired.

  “Harus’ tail feathers, yes! They are digging tunnels under your walls, man. A pile of brush under a pier, a fire, and the walls are weakened.”

  “An explosive black powder,” said Gard, “and the walls are shattered.”

  Raj scowled, his mustache bristling. He had seen the effects of Bhai’s powder. A gourd packed with the stuff, a slow fuse, a shepherd’s slingshot, and Ferangi soldiers fell like butchered sheep even on the heights of the walls. The priests looked haggard after the last ten days of funeral-after-sacrifice-after-impassioned-debate upon the length of a god’s eyelash or the width of his toenail, and how such measurement affected his preferences upon the field of battle.

  Raj turned to a waiting captain. “Take a small company just before dawn and attack the men digging along the walls. They will come back again, of course . . .”

  “I will build platforms out from the battlements,” offered Senmut, “so that your archers will have a better field of fire. When I perfect the proper mixture of powder, then we could perhaps use the force of the explosion to propel arrows or even small rocks toward the enemy.”

  Gard smiled narrowly; when, indeed. Senmut had singed his beard and brows more than once trying to duplicate Bhai’s powder, and now looked less like a feral animal than a moth-eaten bearskin. He had made a huge screw to raise water from the wells, modified the catapults so that pots of burning oil could be fired onto approaching siege engines, plotted how to destroy the bridge Bhai had thrown so cleverly across the river to the new Allianzi camp on the far shore, fashioned of planks stitched together with rope strung between anchored boats that seemed to sail endlessly up the flooded Mohan. Senmut had, apparently, forgotten to sleep or eat.

  Deva whispered, “Do you think that some day the men who control mechanical contraptions will be all-powerful, not those who control magic?”

  “Not a discouraging vision,” Gard replied. “Perhaps those machines will even do the work of the gods.”

  “Hardly,” she scoffed.

  He ignored the sharp elbow she ground into his ribs, and did not give voice to the corollary: If there are no gods, then nothing need replace them. The stinging nettles that were his senses tasted the night air, the stirrings of ash and cooked flesh and something else—something vaguely sulfurous that hung upon the breeze. Magic might fade sometime, but not now.

  “Thank you,” Rajinder said to Senmut. He turned to Gard and Deva. “Are you ready? I cannot tell you how grateful. . .”

  Gard cut short his comments with a brisk nod. “Wait until the scheme works, Raj. Then you can thank us.”

  “Certainly,” the prince agreed, equally brisk. “The message said to go toward the bridge. Jofar will take you to the—er—exchange.”

  “Exchange?” Deva inquired tartly. “What do you hope to get in return?”

  “Peace,” answered Gard. And to Rajinder, “You will deal with Jamshid and Vijay?” As they bleat of victories lost and honor tarnished, he added to himself.

  “Oh yes, I shall deal with them.”

  The prince’s voice was grim and tight, but not dull. Raj’s humor had been abraded like the fine marble sheath of a monument scraped thin to reveal granite beneath. Gard quelled the stamping of the dragonet in his gut. “My respects, Rajinder-ji. Take care, Senmut. Come along, Deva.”

  “You take care, foolish boy.” But the old monk’s imperative sounded more like a blessing.

  The gates creaked open a handsbreadth. Gard took Deva’s hand and led her out to wracked and bloody ground that seemed an indifferent violet-gray in the moonlight. When they were beyond the walls of Ferangipur they stopped.

  Gard’s forefinger raised Deva’s face toward the sky. The pallid light of moon and stars drained the rich darkness of her skin to sepia. He set his hand on her shoulder and inhaled deeply of her breath, blending their disparate but complementary powers.

  The pentacle flared
against his chest, sending a shock through his body. His daemon jerked into a dance. Step, turn, leap, twist . . .

  A cloud swept the moon. The night drew in like a shroud. Something flew chittering across the sky. Focus, Gard told himself. Focus like a lens. His thought, his will, spiraled into one small point and hung there shivering.

  It was Deva who shivered, closed her eyes, swayed in his arms. The sapphire in her nose flickered with a quick blue light. Blue light reflected in the dragonet’s eyes. Step, turn, step—Leader of Souls. Yes! Together, one mind, one purpose, molding, shaping, changing. A silver luminescence poured over the woman Gard held in his arms. It was Yasmine.

  The sapphire did not gleam so brightly as those amazing blue eyes. Her blond hair was elaborately ringleted. Her small pink mouth crumpled above a soft chin. An elusive fragrance of roses hung over her. He leaned forward to kiss those pouting lips and caught himself just in time. “Deva?”

  A quick flash in the eyes, a sudden shading of violet. Then it was she who caught herself. “I am her image?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let us go, and get this pathetic scheme of yours finished.” She jerked his hand, almost yanking him off his feet.

  I want nothing more than to get it finished, he thought. Aloud, he asked, “Pathetic?”

  “Shikar will want to assert his marital rights over her—me. Often.”

  “You have already dealt with his lusts.”

  “I can only maintain so many illusions at once, beloved. I shall be struggling for my soul while you wait, hands folded.”

  The dragonet wheezed and shifted irritably. Gard spoke hurriedly—the scheme would work, it had to work— “We have already gone over this. You must use the herbs Senmut gave you, and your own powers, and appear to die. If Yasmine were dead there would be no excuse for war.”

  “And you will save me from the pyre at the last moment?”

  “The Apsuri bury their dead, Deva. I will be with you the whole way, as a donkey or a camel or something of that nature. Do not worry.”

  “Hah!” Her breath exploded against his ear.

  Of course she would worry. He would worry. Not the least that Menelik would continue to fight, even with Yasmine returned. A determined warmonger could always find an excuse to fight. And Tarek; yes, there was a scent of sorcery upon the air, probably warding spells around treasure or weapons or Bhai’s potions.

  The bridge of boats was a necklace across the glistening throat of the river. Figures stirred around a watchfire at the near end. Closer to hand a hulking shape strode forward, its steps barely penetrating the hum of the pentacle in Gard’s ears.

  “Here we go,” Gard whispered to Deva. “Jofar! Old friend!”

  “Gard!” The warrior crushed his hand. “I was so pleased to hear that Vijay-ji had seen reason. I have no desire to fight you.”

  “Er—yes,” said Gard.

  Jofar bent, peered at the face of the woman, grunted approval. “Welcome back, Lady Yasmine.”

  From anyone else, that greeting would have been sarcasm. They followed Jofar past the campfire, through the curious gazes of several sentries, and onto the bridge. It bucked beneath them. The handrail was only a fragile line of hemp, and Gard clasped Deva about the waist.

  Blessed solid ground. He more formally gave Deva his arm, and led her through the gantlet of fires, tents, and stares to the great pavilion of the Shah. The pentacle keened against his steaming flesh, strumming his thought. He knew who was inside. Damn!

  So many lamps blazed in the pavilion that at first he could see nothing except Deva’s—Yasmine’s—image. Surely in this merciless light the illusion would peel away like the skin of an apple . . . No, her modestly downcast face remained steady, even banal. If beauty could ever be banal, Yasmine’s was.

  The faintest resonance of power emanated from her, but she hid her aura well. Hastily Gard gestured toward her, throwing over her a protective spell that had his own power stamped upon it. A red herring for Tarek to read and disregard, obscuring the more complex magic beneath. If only Deva could have been like the saltcellar, devoid of power and therefore above suspicion.

  With a flourish, Jofar presented his charges. From the dazzling haze three faces materialized, like the three heads of one of the more bizarre Ferangi deities: Menelik, Shikar, and Tarek.

  The wizard sat at a small table, quill upraised over a parchment, turning only a brief and disinterested expression toward the door. Shikar lurched forward, his aura of sweat and sour ale eddying around him. “So that perfumed pretty boy valued you less than his own skin!” he bellowed. “Come here, wife; you must have missed the touch of a man!”

  Deva shrank, ducked her head and mumbled something self-effacing: . . . noble husband . . . overpowered by magnificence of . . . features . . . such a relief to be going home at last after such arduous captivity . . .

  Do not overdo it, Gard silently directed. Yasmine does not know too many big words. He must not think Yasmine went freely with Vijay.

  The tent was stifling. Sweat stood in huge pendant beads on his forehead. The smell of liquor choked him—no, the reek of evil was heavier. There was Bhai. Unnatural how much he looked like Senmut, lurking behind Menelik’s bulk like a mongoose stalking a snake. But Bhai’s gray eyes were cloudy with smug amusement, not limpid with insight.

  Shikar dragged Deva into his arms, pawed her, engulfed her face in a kiss, and pushed her down to the floor. She huddled on a glorious Muktari carpet, seemingly overwhelmed by his virility.

  The bile that rose in Deva’s throat at the taste of Shikar’s mouth gagged Gard. Never fear, he told her. You shall be repaid for your suffering with my jealousy.

  It was only with fierce effort that he answered Menelik’s politely insulting inquiries. Yes, Rajinder’s—not cowardice but good reason—prevailed over Vijay’s—not bravado but natural affection for the lady. No, he, Gard, could not promise any gifts other than the person of the lady herself—although probably some peace offering could be made at the shrine of Hurmazi, enough to defray the expenses of the campaign. When the campaign ended. And no, he could not promise any trade concessions—let the fighting cease, and the noble Allianzi warriors return home, and then negotiations could begin again. Right back where we started from, the boil festering once more, waiting for some other fool to come along and lance it.

  Menelik tossed down a gold coin. “Here, wizard. For your services.”

  Disdainfully Gard stepped upon the coin and ground it into the carpet. “No, thank you, Nazib-ji. I am in the pay of Rajah Jamshid.”

  Menelik shrugged. Gard backed toward the door, ignoring the cup Jofar held out to him. Deva sat, head bowed, crushed under a heavy weight. Ah, Deva, forgive me . . .

  His feet were too heavy to lift. Some long and sticky strand bound him to Deva; the farther he got from her, the harder it was to pull away. He tugged at it. The dragonet hurled itself against his ribs and the pentacle yanked at him so that his backward progress became a forward lurch.

  Was it Deva’s power that held him? His own love-struck possessiveness? Or some imperative from—

  Tarek laid down his quill. He rose slowly from his chair, his head cocked to the side, his eyes barely glimmering between half-closed lids. A snap of his aura, and Gard was caught immobile in the midst of the tent like a fly in a spider’s web. Menelik glanced at Tarek and said, “Well, what is it?”

  Another snap, a tendril of power shooting like a whip across the carpet. Deva’s face turned up as suddenly as if pulled by a hand.

  In two strides Tarek grasped her arms and lifted her, not only off the carpet, but off her feet. The stone blades of his eyes slashed Gard’s protective spell, threw it away, and flayed the glamour from her as if flaying skin and flesh and inspecting her very bones.

  Deva’s gasp of dismay and pain was as close to a scream as Gard had ever heard her make. Like steam, the illusion of beauty wavered and dissipated. Tarek held Deva, the serving-girl, the slave, her face plain and her ey
es as flat as brown faience beads.

  “What the—!” bellowed Shikar.

  Menelik stepped forward. “Shut up!”

  Gard’s pentacle ignited. Stung, the dragonet expanded like yeast bread inside him. Tarek released Deva as if she burned, and stood with hands upraised as she reeled back. “Amathe’s girl,” he whispered hoarsely. For one fleeting second, Gard’s daemon crowed—the wizard was at last taken aback . . .

  Gard seized Deva and whirled her unresisting body against his chest. She clutched at him, her face struggling with appalled horror. “I recognize him,” she whispered. “I know him.”

  Of course you do, idiot; he bid on you in Chandrigore, he watched us frolic at the Festival of the Fool . . .

  “No!” she shouted, and gestured a warding spell.

  Jofar’s mouth hung open in puzzlement. Bhai shouted, “A trick, by Raman’s forelock. A dirty, sorcerous trick!”

  Shikar whisked his sword from its sheath, imprecations bubbling from his lips. “Ah,” said Menelik. “My thanks, Tarek.” He shrugged. “Go on, little brother; go on, my son, kill them.”

  Shikar lunged. Jofar drew his sword with much less conviction and stepped forward, only to entangle himself with his uncle’s angry rush.

  Gard gesticulated, turned slightly, twisted his spine in a quick dance step. The dragonet inflated, saturating every fiber of his body.

  A paroxysm of power. He was fire, he was wind. Wings of Rexian purple flapped and the sides of the pavilion billowed. Claws of silver raked the air. A five-pointed star burst, sending shards of gold to shatter the lamps and rain fire upon the carpets.

  Shikar howled and fell back. Bhai dived behind an open-mouthed Menelik. Jofar stood, sword dangling, staring. Tarek’s aura snapped and lapped through the tent like a roiling thunderhead sketched with lightning.

  Gard snatched up Deva in his, in the daemon’s paws, and ran. The pavilion blazed up like a giant torch behind them. Soldiers raced this way and that as Menelik and Shikar bellowed conflicting orders. A wind pealed down from the sky and the sliver of the moon smiled.