Hambly, Barbara - Sun Wolf 3 - Dark hand of magic.txt

by Dark Hand of Magic [lit]

  One minute they were being pushed back and trapped. The next, half a dozen men from within the camp itself fell upon the defenders from the rear, all bellowing Ari's name, and through surging confusion the attackers burst out of the choked gateway and into the open spaces of the muddy square. Arrows spattered them, mostly shot at random from the walls and mostly missing, since both bows and arrows were still warped and splitting; a mule raced past, eyes white with spooked terror, scattering men before it. Ari was yelling, "Take the gatehouse! Take the gatehouse!" as more defenders came swarming down the walls.

  Then Sun Wolf felt the geas clamp on him with killing pain. The cold wrenching in his guts made him think for a moment he had taken a mortal sword thrust; the next second, it was only Dogbreath's fast work that kept him from doing just that, as his arm went limp and a defender's blade drove in on him. He fell back against the wall, breathless and sweating, his vision graying put. For a wild instant, he felt the overwhelming compulsion to turn and begin hacking at those nearest him, Dogbreath, Ari, Penpusher. He clutched at the dimming earth magic, pain now instead of madness, but the agony of the geas did not lessen; it was like two crossed ropes straining at one another, with his own flesh caught in between.

  He screamed an oath, a hoarse shriek like a disemboweled animal, and his mind cleared a little. The madness was lifting, bit by bit, and the wild dark of the power with it-soon it would be gone. More men shoved past him out of the shadows of the gateway and into the square, swords clashing, the reek of blood and smoke like a knife blade driven up his nose and into his brain. He heard others running along the top of the wall, and saw a body pitch over; the rest of Ari's men, fleshed out with as many fighters as Wrynde was able to field, would be trying to scale the walls. Then the geas hit him again, the silver runes swimming visibly in his darkening sight and the rage, the need, to kill Ari and the others almost smothering him. Purcell, he thought blindly. Now, quickly ...

  Heedless of whether any followed him or not, he plunged across the square toward Ari's house.

  There were fear-spells all around the old governor's quarters, lurking like ghosts in the shadows between the chipped caryatids of the colonnade. Though the Wolf sensed their power objectively, the earth magic still in him brushed them aside like cobwebs. He smelled Purcell before he saw him, smelled the sterile, soapy flabbiness of his flesh and felt the metallic cold of his mind-felt by the pull of the geas where he must be found. He turned his head, and caught the flicker of shadow heading across the waste ground toward the Armory.

  With a hoarse cry he turned, pointed-only just becoming aware that Dogbreath and Starhawk had followed him and were standing gray-faced with shock just outside the colonnade's protective spells. But when they turned their heads it was clear they didn't see. Still unable to speak, he flung himself in pursuit once more.

  The square all around them was a scene of the most appalling chaos, of Zane's men fighting Ari's, Zane's men fighting each other, sutlers frenziedly looting soldiers' quarters, and wranglers wildly chasing horses and mules, which plunged back and forth through the confusion with white-rimmed, staring eyes. Near the barracks row, two camp followers were tearing one anothers' hair and screaming in a circle of their watching sisters, oblivious to the pandemonium around them. Men were fighting along the tops of the walls, without concert or purpose; others were simply running to and fro in unarmed panic.

  This had better be fast, Sun Wolf thought with the corner of his mind that had once commanded men. Once Zane rallies them, Ari's going to be swept away.

  Where the hell was Zane, anyway?

  A squad of guards intercepted them at the Armory door, led by the woman Nails. She was armed with a five-foot halberd, which far outreached Sun Wolf's own sword, and moreover stood above him on the steps. The madness within him and his own desperation drove him forward; he wanted nothing but to end this, finish it or die before his borrowed power waned. Screaming wordlessly, he cut, feinted, and ducked in under her guard, crowding her before she could turn the pole on him as a weapon to knock him off the steps. He killed her when her dagger had half cleared leather; behind him, Starhawk and Dogbreath had turned to guard his back against the half-dozen men pounding up the steps behind.

  He flung Nails' body over the edge, ten feet down to the mud of the square, turned, and threw his weight on the door. By the way it jerked, he could tell it had been latched but not bolted. Maybe the bolt's jammed, he thought dizzily, slamming his shoulder to the door again. This is the last goddam time I mess around with a hex. You just can't aim the bastards.

  It might, he reflected through a haze of pain and madness, be the last goddam time he did anything.

  Smoke burned his eyes. It was drifting everywhere, thick and white in the damp air; his head was pounding, the raw magic burning up his flesh. Finish it, he screamed within himself. Finish this before it finishes you! He braced his feet and slammed against the door, which gave at the same moment the rickety staircase under his feet creaked, swayed, and collapsed.

  It went down like a sharecropper's shack in a gale, taking them all with it-Starhawk, Dogbreath, their attackers. Sun Wolf, halfway through the narrow door, had the breath knocked out of him as his belly hit the door-sill, but managed to drag himself up and inside. The dark maze of the Armory was filled with smoke, choking and blinding him even as the geas filled his brain with a thin, whispering darkness. Pain ate his flesh and clouded his vision. He felt the blind compulsion rising in him again with the urgency of insanity to turn his sword, not on his friends this time, but on himself. He tried to scream again, but only a thin, strangled wailing came from his mouth, like a child trying to make noises in a dream. When he moved forward, drawing on all the earth magic in his crumbling flesh to put one foot before the other, it was like wading through glue.

  One dark room-two. He knew the Armory as he knew his own house, but for an instant he felt lost, disoriented, trapped in an unknown place. Black doors and endless voids of empty space yawned on all sides of him, and behind each door silver runes seemed to hang like glowing curtains in the air. Stumbling into the main gallery he could see smoke hanging in the air, bluish in the sickly light that fell through the room's high windows, and across the planks of the floor a sprawling spiral of Circles of Power, curves and patterns he had never seen before, like the galactic wheel drawing all things into its lambent heart.

  On the far side of the room Purcell stood beneath the arches of the gallery, a trim, dark shape which no light seemed to touch. His magic filled the room like the bass voice of unspoken thunder, vibrating in Sun Wolf's bones. The dark hand of shadow reached out toward him, trailing darkness from skeletal fingers. The hated voice spoke, soft and spiteful and smug, from the gloom.

  "Don't come any farther, Sun Wolf."

  The rage that surged in him at the cold timbre of those words was almost nauseating. Shame, fury, and humiliation blazed into lightning in his hands, and he flung that lightning at the dark form. But the shadow hand gestured, repeating the wave of the soft white fingers emerging from Purcell's furred sleeve. With a shifting crackle the power dispersed, cold little lightnings running away into the walls.

  Then Purcell gestured again and pain locked around Sun Wolf's head, like the spiked bands torturers used to rip off the tops of their victims' skulls. Though he did not look down he was aware of the silver runes all over his flesh, clinging stickily to his bones and nerves and mind, to his life and the very core of his being.

  I've fought on with worse than this in battle, he told himself, through blinding agony, though he knew it was a lie. I can do it now ... He forced himself a step forward; it was like pulling his own bones from his flesh. Purcell flinched back, for a moment seeming as if he would run. Then he stepped forward once more. The smoky light picked out wisps of gray hair under his velvet cap, and the white-silver frostiness of his eyes. "I see you've been fool enough to tamper with earth magic," he said coolly. "Good. That will make it easier for me. I suppose you looked on it as
just another convenient drug. You thugs really are all alike. Get down on your knees-I won't have you standing."

  Sun Wolf's knees started to bend in an almost reflexive obedience. He stopped himself, panting.

  "Down, I said! DOWN!"

  A shudder passed through him, but he remained on his feet. In the cold bar of light, he saw Purcell's nostrils dilate with real anger and that prim upper lip tighten.

  "You defiant animal. I see I was right to abandon the thought of making you either slave or ally, with such an intransigent attitude. What a waste of power."

  "I wonder-you didn't-seek Altiokis-as an ally," Sun Wolf panted, the sweat of exertion pouring down his face with the effort not to kneel. His tongue felt numb with the long silence of his madness. Panic fought at the edges of his mind, the sense that the world would crumble, that he would die, if he didn't kneel-and what was kneeling, after all? "You're two of a kind."

  "We are nothing of the sort!" Purcell retorted, deeply affronted, and some of the agony eased as his attention flickered to his offended pride. "The man was a drunkard and a sensualist, like yourself! He gathered power only to waste it on his perverted pleasures. He was a gangster, not a businessman."

  "What the hell do you think businessmen are but gangsters with the bowels cut out of them?" He'd hoped making Purcell angry would have freed him, but with every ounce of strength he could summon, he could neither take another step, nor touch the black whirlwind of pain and insanity that was fading slowly back along the scorched trails of his nerves and bones. As it did, the geas tightened, slowly strangling-he was aware he was trembling with exhaustion.

  Nevertheless anger washed over him, anger at this cold little man in his neat gray robes and hands that had never wielded more than ledger and quill. "You and your damn King-Council would wipe out Vorsal rather than risk them cutting out your trade; and you'd sooner wipe out my friends than negotiate with them ... "

  "Negotiate?" Purcell spoke the word as if it were a perversion beneath his dignity. "With a pack of barbarians who would trade their influence to the first merchant who offered them dancing girls? If I'm to hold control of the King-Council, I can't be wondering from month to month about alliances with people who haven't the faintest idea what business is about. No-it really was the only way. You must see that. Now ... draw your sword."

  "Eat rats." He was fighting for breath, the pain unbearable. He wondered if, when the last earth magic went, he'd die. Remembering Purcell's dominance of him, the rape of his mind and will, he hoped he would.

  Smoke had thickened around them even as they spoke, a fog of choking blackness dimming the light. With a crashing roar something fell behind him, and the heat of fire beat against his back. Trapped, pinned where he stood against the glaring light of the blaze, he could move neither forward nor back. The Armory was burning-or was it only the searing heat of the earth magic consuming him? His scraped voice managed to gasp out the words, "You want to kill me, you come over here and do it with your own lily-white hand!"

  "Don't be foolish." The hated voice was calm as if addressing a child.

  A shower of sparks whirled through the doorway behind him. One of them lighted on the back of his hand; his other hand jerked to strike it out, but could not move. As the hot needle of pain drilled into his skin and the thin smoke of his searing flesh stung his nose he heard Purcell say, "I know what will happen when the earth magic ebbs-what it will take with it when it goes. It's fading already, is it not? The merc fact that you can speak tells me it is. So I have only to wait ... "

  Dark madness filled him, swamping the insignificant agony of his hand. With a cry, he tried to lunge for the old man, to kill him as an animal kills; the geas seemed to explode in his skull, blinding him, smothering him, holding him fast.

  Around him the sparks had kindled little lines of fire across the floor, crawling in blazing threads toward the walls. In another few minutes the place would be in flames. The dark magic surged and thrashed in him, but could not overcome the deadlock of the cold silvery will bound so fast around his mind. He realized in panic Purcell would hold him here until the fire reached him, hold him in it, unable to move ...

  "CHIEF!"

  The geas slacked infinitesimally as Purcell looked past him into the smoke-filled anteroom. Sun Wolf heard, or felt beneath the greedy crackle of the flames, the light spring of Starhawk's boots. He tried to scream a warning, and the geas locked on his throat like a strangler's hand. A moment later, Starhawk was beside him, the wildfire light splashing red over the blade of her lifted throwing ax. Then she gave a cry, doubling over in agony, her knees buckling as she clutched at the X-shaped scar on her head. The ax slipped from her nerveless fingers; she caught at the wall, fighting to stay on her feet.

  Purcell smiled.

  And Sun Wolf thought, as if the woman sinking sobbing down beside him were as complete a stranger as those he had spent most of his life being paid to kill, It isn't just business to him. He does enjoy it.

  And the rage of his anger turned cold, collapsing inward, a black star swallowing light.

  Deliberately, coldly, he conjured the last of the earth magic into himself, for he could not cast it out past the bonds of the geas. But with all the strength of it, with all the strength he possessed, he gathered the geas around him, drawing it into his mind, his soul, his life; holding fast to the tendrils that bound him to Purcell's will-and Purcell to him.

  "Starhawk," he said quietly, and she looked up at him with eyes streaming with smoke and pain. "Take the ax. Kill me with it."

  Purcell had felt the change in the geas, the slacking of his resistance; he stumbled forward as if some physical pressure had been released. "What?" he gasped, and Sun Wolf smiled, feeling the strength of the geas now from the other side. He held it closer to him, using all the earth magic to bind those silver ropes to his life.

  "You want me to die, Purcell, you're coming with me. Now. Do it, Hawk."

  Whether she understood what he was doing or not he didn't know, but she had never disobeyed his command. Her hand shaking, she picked up the weapon again, and swaying, forced herself to her feet.

  "What are you doing?" screamed Purcell. "I forbid this! I command you to ... to ... "

  "Release you?" said Sun Wolf softly. Perhaps he did not say it-he couldn't tell. Perhaps the words sounded only in his mind. But he knew the master wizard heard. "No. You release me-or you come with me. Do it, Hawk." He felt the geas bite, rip, twist like a terrified bullock on a rope. But its very nature twisted it around his mind and soul, and he held it fast.

  Beside him the Hawk drew herself up, her eyes dilated, delirious with the pain gouging at her skull. "You're insane!" Purcell was yelling. "Let me go ... "

  Sun Wolf made no reply, watching the Hawk, willing her to find the strength against the pain in her own head. He had taught her that strength, and taught her obedience to the Cold Hells and beyond. Shadowed black against the flames in the doorway behind her, the Cold Hells of pain and madness were in her eyes. The earth magic was evaporating from his flesh; he could feel his strength going, and tightened his grip still further on Purcell's geas, on the silver mind entangling his, to drag it down with him into death.

  Wearing her cold, soulless battle face, Starhawk raised the ax. Purcell screamed, "Let me go ... "

  You let me go, dammit, he thought, but all he could manage to cry was "Do it, Hawk! NOW! That's an order!"

  She screamed her battle yell and swung with all her strength at his skull.

  The snapping of the geas from his mind was like a rope breaking, disorienting in its suddenness; he barely twisted aside in time. But the Hawk's reflexes, even in pain and madness, were as fast as his own. Her momentum was broken, even as he snatched the ax from her hand. He was turning as he did so, turning and throwing, and even with one eye-if he aimed with his eye, and not by instinct and magic and hate-his aim was true.

  The ax took Purcell right where it should, at the base of his spine. He seemed to break at the w
aist and fold backward, collapsing in the archway where he had first stood; at the same moment there was another crashing, and a beam from an upper floor ploughed down from above, setting the rafters overhead on fire. Sparks rained down, igniting the wooden floor. Sun Wolf caught the Hawk by one arm as she staggered, and together the two of them ran through the falling sparks and choking blur of smoke, through the furnace of the two chambers behind them, to the white rectangle of the outer door.

  He knew the stairway outside was gone and was long past caring. He and the Hawk flung themselves through the door, and for endless minutes, it seemed to him, they floated outward and down ... to land in a tangle of mud, lumber, and the bodies of the slain.

  The earth magic left him as he jumped. He hit the waste of struts and boards limp and muscleless as the last of that black torment vanished like vapor, taking even its memory with it. His own magic, the power that had slept in his bones since his childhood, the power to weave the winds and to call back the living from the shadow-lands of death, vanished, too. He felt nothing inside him but a vast white hollow, an emptiness that filled the world. Later it would hurt. He knew that even then.

  For a long time, he lay on his back, wondering if he would die, and looking up at the smoke pouring up out of the burning Armory into the gray belly of the sky.

  Then Starhawk's voice asked, "You okay, Chief?" Her hand reached down to help him to his feet; she had to put her shoulder under his arm to help him cross the square to where Ari and his men waited for them beside the gate.