The old man obviously had some acquaintance with magic, as Valder had suspected, to realize so quickly why a weary traveler might refuse an offer of food.
Then the hermit stepped aside and opened the shutters, allowing his guest a good look at the hut’s interior, and Valder knew that his host had far more than a passing acquaintance with magic.
The basic furnishings were simple and practical. A bed consisting of a mattress, pillow, and furs lay against the base of one wall; a table against another wall held a basin, pitcher, and assorted pots, pans, and kitchen implements. A cozy wicker armchair stood beside the table and a large wooden chest that could serve as either another chair or a low table was nearby. Those were the only ordinary furniture, but the remaining space was by no means empty. Shelves and cabinets lined every wall, and free-standing sets of shelves occupied much of the floor. Every shelf and cabinet was crammed to overflowing with bottles, jars, boxes, vials, and bizarre paraphernalia. It was obvious why the hermit had been able to identify the Spell of Sustenance so easily.
“You’re a wizard, aren’t you?” Valder said. Only a wizard had any use for such things as mummified bats and bottled organs, so far as Valder was aware. Sorcery, witchcraft, demonology, and theurgy all had their own ceremonial trappings, but those were not among them.
The old man glanced at the cluttered shelves as he sank into the wicker chair. “Yes, I am,” he said. “Are you?”
“No,” Valder answered, “I’m just a soldier.”
“You’ve got that spell.”
“They issue that to any scout who’s going out on patrol for more than a day and a night.” He looked around again, impressed by the arcane bric-a-brac.
“Sit down,” the hermit said, pointing at the wooden chest. “Sit down, and tell me what’s happening in the world.”
Valder’s feet were tired and sore — in fact, his entire body was tired and sore. He settled gratefully onto the wooden trunk, allowing himself to forget momentarily that he had no time to rest while the northerners were after him. His boots made a wet squeaking as his weight was removed.
“Get those off,” the wizard said. “I’ll light a fire and you can dry them out. And I’m hungry, even if you can’t eat; I don’t use that charm if I can help it. It wears you down if you keep it going too long, you know; it can ruin your health. If you don’t think the smell will break the enchantment, I’m going to make my dinner.”
“A fire would be wonderful,” Valder said, reaching down to remove his boots. “Please don’t let me interfere; you go right ahead and eat.”
As he pulled off his second boot, however, he suddenly remembered his pursuers. They might, he realized, arrive at any moment, if he had not lost them by entering the marsh. “Ah... Wizard?” he asked, “Do you speak the northern tongue?”
The sun had set and the light was beginning to fade; the old man was lighting a fish-oil lamp with a flame that sprang from the tip of his finger. When the wick was alight, he curled his finger into his palm, snuffing the flame, and turned to look at his guest. “No,” he said. “Haven’t needed it. Why?”
“Because there’s a northern patrol after me. I should have told you sooner. They spotted me four days ago and have been following ever since. There are three of them; one’s a sorcerer, and at least one is shatra.”
“You led them here!” The old man’s voice became a screech.
“Well, I’m not sure of that. I may have lost them. I’m hoping they wouldn’t expect me to try and cross the marsh and that their trackers, if they have any, can’t follow me across water. If you could speak their language, I was hoping you could convince them that I’m not here; after all, this far north, one of their people would be just as likely as one of ours, even out here on the coast. If you hadn’t spoken Ethsharitic when I hailed you, I wouldn’t have known which side you were on and I might have gone around you. Maybe you can convince them that I did go around.”
“I wish I hadn’t spoken Ethsharitic! I don’t know any of their speech; I can’t fool them for a minute. I came out here to get away from the war, damn it, not to get tangled up with shatra!”
“I wondered why you were here. Well, if you deserted, here’s a chance to get yourself a pardon; just help me get away from these three.”
“I didn’t...”
A voice called from outside, and the wizard stopped abruptly in mid-sentence. The call was in the harsh northern tongue.
“Oh, damn it!” the hermit said. He reached for a thick leather-bound book on one of the nearby shelves.
“Look, I’ll see if I can slip out and lead them away,” Valder said, suddenly contrite. “I never meant to get anyone else into trouble.” As he spoke he got to his feet, leaving his boots behind and stumbling toward the doorway. The wizard ignored him, fully occupied as he was in pawing desperately through the fat, leather-bound volume and muttering to himself.
Valder leaned out the door, then jumped back in as a streak of red flame flashed past, tearing through the twilight inches from his face.
Seconds later, three sharp smacks sounded, followed by an instant of uncanny whistling screams as sorcerous projectiles tore across the interior of the hut at roughly the level of a man’s chest, narrowly missing Valder’s arm as he fell back. The sound ended in a second three-part snap as they exited through the north wall.
Not quite sure how he got there, Valder found himself sprawled on the hard-packed dirt of the hut floor. He looked up and realized that the wizard was still standing, book in hand, staring nonplussed at the holes in his wall.
“Get down, wizard!” Valder called.
The wizard still stood motionless.
Concerned, Valder shouted, “Are you all right?”
“What?” The magician stirred uncertainly.
“Wizard, I think you had better get down, quickly; they’re certain to try again.”
“Oh.” Slowly, the wizard sank to his hands and knees, keeping the book nearby. “What was that?” he asked, staring at the holes.
“I don’t know,” Valder answered. “Some damned northern sorcery.”
The wizard peered at the soldier in the dim light of the flickering fish-oil lamp and the last gray twilight; his scraggly beard almost reached the floor, and his robe was bunched up around him, revealing bony ankles. “Sorcery? I don’t know any sorcery.”
“Neither do I,” Valder replied. “But they do.” He jerked a thumb at the south wall.
The wizard looked at the three entry holes. A wisp of smoke trailed up from a book that had been pierced by one; the other two had gone through jars, strewing shards of glass. “Protections,” he said. “We need protections, ones that will work against sorcery.” He began desperately turning pages in his book.
Valder watched him warily. No new assault had immediately followed the projectiles, and that seemed like a good sign. The northerners might be waiting for someone to move and provide them with a target, he thought. If so, they would have a good long wait; he was not that foolish.
The wizard stopped, slammed a hand down on the open book, and looked at Valder, anger and fear on his face. “What were those things?” he asked. “I have to know what I’m defending against.”
“I don’t know what those things that came through the wall were, but I know what sent them. I told you, a northern patrol is after me. Shatra — you know what shatra are, don’t you?”
“I’m not a fool, soldier; shatra are demon warriors.”
“More or less; they look like men, but fight like demons.”
“Damn you, soldier, I came here to get away from the war!” the wizard burst out.
“You told me that. Tell them that; maybe they won’t bother you. I doubt they have anything against Ethsharitic deserters.”
“You have no call to insult me; I am not a deserter. I was never enlisted. I served my apprenticeship under a civilian advisor, not a combat wizard, and worked thirty years as an advisor myself before I retired and came out here to do my own research.�
�
“Research?” Valder ducked his head instinctively as another projectile whistled through the hut; this one entered through an open window and departed through a box of gray-brown powder, leaving a slowly settling cloud of dust hanging in the air above them. “You mean magical research?”
“Yes, magical research.” He waved a hand in the direction of the nearest jam-packed shelves. “Oh.” Valder stared at the old man. “And I thought you were a coward, hiding out here! I apologize, wizard, for wronging you. You’ve got far more courage than I do if you’ve been experimenting in wizardry.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” the wizard replied modestly, brushing at the dust that had settled on his sleeve and open book.
“I’ve heard that the life expectancy of a research wizard is just twenty-three working days,” Valder argued.
“Oh, but that’s for military research! I don’t do anything like that — no flame spells or death-runes or juggernauts. I’ve been working with animations and I’ve been very careful. Besides, I use a lot of protective spells. That’s what most of this book is. They were my old master’s specialty.”
“Protective spells?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Have you got spells there that will stop those three?”
“I don’t know. Look, soldier, you must know what wizardry is like; it’s tricky, unreliable stuff, and there’s no telling what a new spell will do — if it does anything at all. I haven’t gotten any of the results I wanted in my research so far. I’ve come up with some interesting things, but I don’t know what will work against shatra. Demons aren’t like men or beasts, and shatra are half demon, aren’t they? I’ve got a spell here that may help us; it’s not much, but it’s the best I could find in a hurry that won’t take more time than we’ve got or ingredients I don’t have. It’s an aversion charm.” He rose to his knees and snatched a jar and a small wooden box from a low shelf.
Valder paused and listened before replying, then said, “I hope you can do it fast, wizard; I hear something moving out there.”
The hermit paused, a pinch of malodorous green powder in one hand. “I don’t hear...” he began.
The rest of his words were lost in a whooshing roar as the roof of the hut vanished in a ball of flame. Blinking and shielding his eyes against the sudden glare, Valder grabbed one of the old man’s bony arms and dragged him unceremoniously across the dirt floor, keeping his head low and dodging scraps of flaming debris that spattered down on all sides.
The wizard flung the powder across both of them, gestured with his free hand, and said something incomprehensible. Something flashed pale blue where the powder fell, cool against the orange blaze of burning thatch; the old man grabbed at the knife on his belt and yelled, “The door is the other way!”
“I know,” Valder shouted back over the roar of the flames. “That’s why we’re going this way! They’re probably waiting out front!” With his left hand still locked around the old man’s wrist, Valder drew his sword with his right and jabbed at the back wall above the wizard’s bedding.
As he had thought, the smooth coating was a thin layer of baked mud, and the wall itself just bundled reeds; the mud broke away easily, allowing him to hack an opening through the dried reeds with his blade. A moment later the two men were outside, tumbling down into the brackish water of the marsh; the wizard spluttered angrily while Valder scanned the surrounding area for the enemy.
Someone was visible off to the left; Valder whispered in the old man’s ear, “Lie still.”
The hermit started to protest; Valder jabbed him with the hilt of his sword.
“No, listen,” the wizard insisted, “I have a spell that can help here.”
Valder glanced at the shadowy figure of the enemy soldier, standing well back and apparently unaware of their presence, and then at the blazing fury of the thatch roof. “Go ahead,” he said. “But hurry, and keep it quiet.”
The wizard nodded, splashing, then drew his dagger and stabbed the back of Valder’s hand.
“What the hell...” The soldier snatched his hand away; the wound was only a scratch, but it hurt.
“I need a little of your blood,” the wizard explained. He smeared a streak of blood along Valder’s forearm, dabbed a few drops on the soldier’s face and neck, then pricked his own arm and distributed a little of his own blood similarly on himself.
Behind them, the fire was eating its way down the walls of the wizard’s hut, lighting the surrounding circle of marsh a vivid orange, its reflections in the murky water a labyrinth of flame. Valder knew that somewhere in the blackness beyond the illuminated area the northerners were watching; he could not see them anymore, as the fire’s glow kept his eyes from adapting sufficiently to the dark, and nothing at all remained of his night-sight spell. He wished that he had one of the sorcerers’ masks that the enemy used for night vision; they were awkward to wear and carry, but they seemed never to wear out the way wizard-sight did.
The old man was muttering an incantation, working his wizardry, whatever it was. Valder wondered, as he had before, why Ethshar used wizardry so much more than the Empire did and sorcery so much less. This difference in magical preferences was hardly a new question; he and his comrades had mulled it over dozens of times back in camp. Everybody knew that the Empire used demonology and Ethshar used theurgy, but that just made sense, since the gods were on Ethshar’s side, and the demons on the Empire’s. Wizardry and sorcery seemed to have no such inherent bias, yet a northern wizard was rare indeed, and southern sorcerers almost as scarce. Neither side, it seemed, got much use from witchcraft, and that was another mystery.
He peered out at the surrounding gloom and again spotted the northerner he had seen before, at the very edge of the circle of light. That, Valder thought, was probably the one who had ignited the hut. He was slowly circling closer to the burning structure, obviously looking for any sign that his intended victims had escaped. Valder could make out one of the intricate metal wands used by combat sorcerers cradled in the northerner’s arms; he gave up any thought of fighting the man on even terms and perhaps killing him before his companions could arrive. One of those wands could rip a man to pieces almost instantaneously, from a dozen paces away.
Something exploded with a bang and a tinkling of glass somewhere inside the flaming hut, and Valder remembered the shelves and cabinets crowded with jars and boxes. He guessed that several more would probably explode when the flames reached them.
The northerner turned at the sound, wand held ready, and Valder looked desperately for some way to take advantage of the instant of surprise. He found none.
If the man came closer, Valder estimated, ambush was a possibility; at close enough range, sorcery would be no better than a sword, and a knife might be better than either. Thinking of the wizard’s dagger, he realized that the sound of the old man’s incantation had stopped. That reminded him of the drawn blood, and he glanced at his injured hand.
His mouth fell open in horror; instead of a simple scratch, he saw the flesh laid open to the bone, blood spilling out thickly, as if half-congealed. When his jaw fell, more blood poured out, running down his beard and into the mud — yet he felt no pain save for a slight twinge in his hand.
Confused and frightened, he looked at the wizard and shrank back involuntarily; the old man was obviously horribly dead. His skin was corpse-white, splotched with cyanotic blue-gray, and blood dribbled from his nose and mouth. His arm was a mangled ruin, and his throat cut open clear to his spine.
“Gods!” Valder gasped. The spell must have gone wrong, he thought; he had heard of spells backfiring. Backfires were what made magical research so deadly.
The old man smiled, his expression unspeakably hideous through the half-dried blood. “The Sanguinary Deception,” he whispered. “Looks awful, doesn’t it?”
“You’re alive?” Valder had difficulty accepting it, despite the old man’s movement and speech. “Of course I’m alive. So are you, and you probably look
worse than I do. It’s a simple trick, but effective; doesn’t the army use it any more?”
“I don’t know,” Valder said, staring in fascination at the hermit.
“Well, it’s a good trick, and if they aren’t using it, they’re fools. Now, shut up and lie still, and they’ll think we’re dead.”
Valder stared at the old man for another second, then slumped back and did his best to look dead.
Something else shattered amid the flames, and a loud clatter followed; Valder guessed that a shelf had given way, spilling its entire contents. He stole a glance at the hermit and saw that the old man was no longer smiling at his ruse; instead his face was contorted with anger and pain at the destruction of his home and his work.
From the corner of one eye Valder noticed the northerner doing something with his wand, perhaps making a mystical gesture or perhaps only adjusting something; then he lifted it to chest height and pointed it at the fiery remains of the hut. Red streaks of light scarred the air, etching themselves into Valder’s vision, and the burning ruin fell inward all at once with a roar, collapsing into a smoldering heap less than two feet high.
A seething hiss sounded.
The northerner did something else to his wand and pointed it again; something seemed to leap from the wand to the wreckage. With a white flash and a sound like tearing metal, the smoldering heap vanished in a shower of burning fragments, leaving only a crater.
For several seconds lumps of hot mud and burning reeds splashed into the marsh around the two fugitives, sprinkling them liberally with salt water and mud, but not actually striking either of them. It seemed to Valder that some pieces actually dodged aside in mid-air in order to miss them. “That aversion spell,” the wizard whispered beside him.
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