by David Grace
"I am not sure. I noticed it just before we reached the grove. I cannot make it out. It looks like a large glass ball with something dark inside. We will have to wait until it comes closer."
As the apparition neared, the angle at which the sun impinged upon its surface shifted and the sphere became transparent. As it passed abeam of the feather trees its composition was clearly illuminated. More than anything else the craft resembled a soap bubble twenty feet in diameter. Inside, a vital, bronze-skinned man was seated in a rich red-velvet chair. Hazar rode the winds like a king. On the transparent floor in front of the Gogol lord sat a disheveled Mara. To Hazar's left, a thin figure in a black robe and a wizard's pointy hat lay twisted, his body tightly secured with bands of coarse rope. Even allowing for the awkward angle of view, Grantin was certain the body was that of his uncle Greyhorn.
"Do you think he saw us?"
"I do not think so, but our troubles are not over. From now on there are bound to be guards, warning posts, deadfalls, traps, and alarms. We must devise a plan of defense."
"What do you suggest?"
"Grantin, your stone is capable of projecting great amounts of energy. You must work on a spell which could be used to destroy any missiles or physical attacks made against us. Castor, what sort of spells do you possess?"
"I can defend us against psychic intrusion and attacks by magic."
"Very well. Grantin, if you can neutralize Shenar's spell, for my part I will attempt to detect ambushes and traps."
"How am I going to do that?"
"Shenar's hex enfolds me like a blanket. Close your eyes and visualize me through your bloodstone as if it were the window to your brain."
Grantin sat cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, his fingers caressing the stone. Chom's form swam into view, but hazily, as if seen through wrappings of dirty gauze. Shenar had been a master wizard indeed. His spell had survived even his own death. Grantin visualized a pair of psychic hands which, under the control of his mind's eye, ripped away the gauze that swaddled Chom's form. A moment later Grantin opened his eyes and looked questioningly at the Fanist. "I am free," Chom announced.
A few minutes later the three moved out with Grantin rubbing his bloodstone while Chom and Castor each fingered the powerstone appropriate to his race. Chom led the group a rough zigzag course through clumps of trees, back and forth across the stream, and at least once through a patch of immature razorbrush.
It was after the sixth hour when they reached the last bit of shelter before the mountain. Ahead a grassy meadow extended several hundred yards up to the edge of the mountain's sheer walls. The fugitives studied the clearing in the same way that a cliff diver stares at the sea beneath him.
"Why don't they do something?" Grantin whispered. "They must know we're here."
"Perhaps they don't have enough men to risk meeting us in the open," Castor suggested.
"No," Chom replied. "They are just waiting until they have us bottled up in the caverns where we will not have room to maneuver. A few men in front, a few behind, and they will keep us trapped until we fall asleep from fatigue. They know we cannot maintain a spell forever."
"In that case, why don't we avoid the passage and simply climb the walls?" the Gray asked.
"They would detect us there as well. How long could we repel the boulders they would drop from above?"
"Chom, couldn't you and Grantin construct a bubble like that which carried Hazar--something which would float us up over the wall?"
"Perhaps, but it would take all our energy. A hasty flotation spell might get us off the ground, but we would have no power left to repel Hazar's bolts and blasts."
"Why couldn't all three of us work together on the same spell?" Grantin suggested. "With the power added by the stones it should at least be equal to anything Hazar and his men can command against us."
"What kind of spell?" Castor asked. Chom considered.
"It must be something simple, an image all three of us can grasp at once. Any weakness, any imbalance, could cause a feedback and destroy us all."
"Why not just create a band of demons and send them on ahead to destroy Hazar's defenders?"
Chom and Castor considered Grantin's suggestion and agreed to give it a try.
"Each of us will create one demon," the young Hartford suggested, "and send it through the tunnels to clear the way."
Grantin closed his eyes and caressed the powerstone. In the clearing a hundred yards ahead a misty red shape began to form. In a few seconds the apparition had congealed into an eight-foot-high biped each of whose arms was tipped with five long steel talons. From the beast's mouth protruded four great fangs which dripped droplets of blood-red saliva. With sweat beading his forehead, Grantin opened his eyes and practiced putting the monster through its paces, causing it to march awkwardly left and right and slash the air with its taloned paws.
Grantin noticed that Chom had also completed his demon, but one of a wildly different sort: a hazy bluish six-foot mound of plastic ooze. From its upper portions a myriad of hand-tipped pseudopods flashed from its bulk, whipped the air with crazy strangling motions, and then retracted again.
Castor finished his creation last. It was as different from the others as they were from each other. Where Grantin's monster had two arms and Chord's hundreds, Castor's had none at all. Instead he created a snake fifteen feet long and four in diameter, with a massive head, twin foot-long poison fangs, and a gigantic hinged jaw which could easily swallow a man whole.
Grantin's demon, the first to be created, now exhibited the most lifelike movements, even down to the nervous whipping of its long, thin tail.
"Grantin, you seem to be the most practiced of us. Perhaps your monster should go first."
Grantin directed his attention to the beast and maneuvered it several quick bounds forward toward the mountain. Suddenly it slowed and stopped. "What's the matter?" Castor asked.
"I don't know. It is becoming harder to control, almost as if it has a life of its own." As if to demonstrate the accuracy of Grantin's report, the creature turned back toward the copse, raised both claws high, and emitted a bone-chilling growl.
"I can't control it! It's getting away from me. It's angry with me for bringing it here; I can feel its hatred. The beast wants to kill us all," Grantin screamed as the monster began a purposeful stride toward the small grove.
Another shape flashed behind Grantin's creature. Just as the beast broke into a loping trot hundreds of translucent blue tentacles wrapped themselves around its body. The two demons rolled in epic battle, steel-tipped claws slashing deep into the putty-like structure of Chom's creation while the Fanist's monster sought to extrude itself into a wide thin shape which might enfold and presumably digest the beast.
Castor by now was also losing control of his creation. The snake exhibited signs of extreme excitement at the sight of the writhing blue and red masses. At last, unable to be restrained any longer. Castor's demon slithered forward, opened its jaws to their fullest extent, and attempted to swallow both combatants whole. More pseudopods shot out of the blue mass. Before the writhing bundle could be swallowed completely, the tentacles extended themselves to their farthest limit. They whipped around and around the snake's great head, tying its jaws together with translucent blue cable. The snake found itself unable either to regurgitate its meal or maneuver it into its stomach. Wildly disconcerted by this state of affairs, the demons whipped wildly back and forth and fled headlong across the basin.
With equal parts of terror and fatigue, a sweating, weak-kneed Grantin slumped to the ground, to be joined there shortly by his two comrades.
"What happened? Did Hazar turn our creations against us?"
"No, I do not think so," Chom replied. "We are not experienced at this sort of thing. We made our monsters too real. We called them up as if they were alive and visualized them having minds of their own. We created them with all the ferocity, savageness, and intelligence which we imagined a real creature of that sort wou
ld possess. They could do no less than become as we imagined them."
"Perhaps," Castor suggested, "the solution lies in imagining something without a mind at all--for example, a wall of flame which would travel through the tunnel engulfing all it passed."
"And what if there's something flammable in there?" Grantin protested. "What if they put Mara in the tunnel as a hostage? All they need do is stand back out of the way until the flames have passed and then attack us when we enter. No, it must be something which stops them and also protects us. A spell of some sort that doesn't necessarily kill."
"Perhaps Castor had the right idea in reverse. I propose that we surround ourselves with a wall of ice which will freeze anyone who attempts to penetrate it."
"Good, Chom--but not a wall of ice, a cloud, a transparent cloud. It should be a light mist so that we can see through it. Something so thin and delicate that Hazar's men will blunder into it unafraid. Something that does not kill but stiffens the victim, knots up his arms and legs, and numbs his brain."
"It is as good a suggestion as any. Castor, what do you think?"
"If you and Grantin think it will work, I am willing to try."
"Very well, then. We must work together. Let us all visualize the same thing. Grantin, you are the most familiar with what this field should resemble. Describe it as you see it."
"It's a mist, a light, pale white mist the color of steam as it first begins to rise from a bubbling kettle. I see it as a shell, a sphere around us, penetrating the rock fifteen feet over our heads and ten feet on either side as we walk abreast. The field moves as we move, turns as we turn, and as long as we stay together it cannot touch us. I see a Gogol soldier running toward us. He walks through the field and is instantly frozen stiff. He turns and falls, his arms and legs still bent in the positions they held as he penetrated its edge."
"I see it!" Castor suddenly exclaimed. "Another soldier comes toward us. He has seen his comrade fall, but he does not understand the field and he extends his arm into it. The arm stiffens and becomes as immobile as a piece of iron. He stares at the member in horror, then, he turns and runs from us, screaming."
"I see it, too," Chom declared. "A band of Gogols waits in a side passage, hoping to catch us from behind. We sense them and break into a run. The edge of the bubble races forward keeping pace with us. Our shield penetrates the solid rock and swirls over them, freezing them like statues. One of them has managed to fall backward out of the way and is unhurt. Grantin stands to my left and, seeing the soldier, he moves a few feet away from me. The bubble bulges in the direction that Grantin has moved, catching the Gogol in its grip."
Grantin, Chom, and Castor opened their eyes. Around them they beheld a shimmering sphere exactly as they had imagined it.
"Well, we seem to have done it."
"Yes, Grantin, it would appear so."
"What are we waiting for?" Castor asked.
Grantin ruefully shook his head and for the last time examined the sunny afternoon meadow and the sheer walls of Grog Cup Lake. "How do I get myself involved in these things?" he asked himself as the three advanced on the black crevice which led to the bloodstone mine.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The chamber was abuzz with activity. From the tunnels behind Hazar's counting table emerged a constant stream of laborers. Clothing tattered, soiled, or nonexistent, the Gogol criminals and Hartford slaves trundled ore carts to a gigantic pile of fractured stone.
Around the edges of the mound bustled a second group of slaves. These latter workers, less vigorous, composed mostly of females, older men, and a few Ajaj, picked over the shards at the base of the pile, culling out the fragments which might contain crystals of powerstone. These pieces were carted to a semicircular table behind Hazar where twelve Ajaj carefully fragmented the rock with geologists' hammers. The Grays deposited the worthless scraps in another set of ore carts behind them while the occasional bloodstone crystal was retained in a small bin affixed to the side of each Ajaj's chair. To eliminate any possibilities of smuggling the Ajaj were naked and the rubble in the carts behind them examined by Gogol supervisors before being disposed of.
In front of Hazar a hole five feet in diameter was bored through the floor. Under the watchful eyes of Zaco's minions, the tailings were dumped into the pit.
Though, none of the miners knew the terminus of the shaft, few who labored there were desperate enough to throw themselves down its maw in hopes of escape. In point of fact the opening was a garbage-disposal chute. The first section was a sheer drop to a point below the floor of the lake. There it bent at a forty-five-degree angle, eventually to protrude from the side of Grog Cup Mountain some two hundred feet above the meadow. Day after day boulders, chunks of rock, stones, gravel, and occasionally a suicidal, infirm, or recalcitrant laborer roared from the garbage-chute exit to crash to the ground below.
Today all of these functions continued as they had over previous days, months, and years. But to these activities Hazar devoted only the smallest portion of his attention. Ore was removed, sorted, fragmented, checked, and discarded in a continuous process whose only important aspect, as far as Hazar was concerned, was the production of bloodstones. Each hour the overseer made his collection from the Grays' boxes, immediately thereafter depositing the raw gemstones on Hazar's table.
Hazar himself counted the stones and sorted them into piles by size, color, and shape. After entering a tally he personally carried the gems to the cutters' table to the left of the only entrance to the mine's main room. Hazar carefully deposited three more dull red-brown crystals on the green felt of the cutters' table, then removed two polished oval bloodstones from the box of completed work. In another two days he would, have enough stones to equip all of the key men in his army. Hazar paused in his efforts long enough to instruct his subordinate, the subdeacon Nimo, to commence an attack against the intruders.
Nimo, who had supervised the mining operations for Zaco, bowed and sprinted from the room. The sight of his hasty exit pleased Hazar. He would have Zaco's lazy subordinates whipped into shape in no time at all.
Why stop at a mere fifty stones? Why not a hundred, two hundred? Each would have a special cut, a facet etched in its underside which would make it resonate to an incantation of Hazar's own devising. If any of their wearers opposed King Hazar--Emperor Hazar--he would pronounce the spell. The concentration of great magical energies within the lattice of the stone itself, a psychic harmonic resonance, would shatter not only the gem but the hand of the wearer as well. Yes, he had made a mistake in sending Greyhorn an undoctored stone, one of the rings he had received as a completed unit from Zaco. Was it possible that Zaco had placed such a grating in the bottom of Greyhorn's ring? Possible, but he would never know. Zaco was long gone and the exact components of the spell that would fit Grantin's ring could not be discovered by any haphazard method.
Hazar toyed with a new batch of crystals. Strange that such a dull and ordinary-looking piece of rock could, with a bit of effort, be turned into a magnificent scarlet gem. Hazar was so entranced with the flaws, bumps, and contours of the crystals that he failed to notice Nimo's approach.
"Uh, excuse me, my lord," Zaco's supervisor stammered.
"Yes, Nimo, what has happened to our friends? Have they been disposed of? Tell me, has the human been captured alive?"
"No, my lord, you see .. ."
"No, my lord, what? He is not alive, or he has not been captured? I don't see at all, Nimo. You had better explain at once."
"My lord, great magic protects the fugitives. The acolytes did their best, but even their most powerful spells were unable to reach them. They had no effect whatsoever."
"Well, don't stop. What happened?"
"Monsters, my lord, demons!"
"What!"
"Demons, my lord, in the meadow between the grove and the mountain. They just appeared: one like a great beast with fangs and talons, ten or fifteen feet high, standing on two legs. Another at least ten feet high, all blue, wi
th arms and waving tentacles; and a third like a huge pale green snake, five, perhaps ten, feet in diameter. They just appeared there. And then they started walking and moving around. It was terrible! They began to fight with each other. The beast attacked the blue thing, and while they struggled the snake ate them both."
"And then what?"
"With the two of them struggling in its mouth the snake squirmed away across the meadow and vanished."
"You mean to tell me these demons appeared, fought with each other, and in the middle of the struggle all three of them disappeared?"
"Yes, my lord, yes. Our magic was as nothing against them. If they were to get in here we would be defenseless."
"Stop whining! They did not get in here, and obviously the fugitives cannot control them any better than you can. They are gone, and that is that. Now, return to your post and watch. I want to know what the three of them do next."
Hazar dismissed Nimo, then turned his thoughts inward. The fact that Grantin had apparently learned to manipulate the ring was not too much of a surprise, but there were other disturbing implications in the sub-deacon's report. The three demons, each of a different color, indicated almost to a certainty that the Fanist and the Ajaj were also capable of manipulating formidable powers. True, their control was clumsy, but the energy was there.
Hazar cast his gaze around the chamber, taking stock of the assets he might employ in the coming battle. Huddled against the wall on Hazar's left sat a bitter but cowed Greyhorn. Shorn of his amulet, half starved, frightened, and hexed to the eyeballs, the sorcerer had been reduced to a shadow of his former power and vitality. Did he bear his nephew enough enmity to oppose him? Possibly, but returning to Greyhorn a measure of his power was a dangerous proposition. Instead of attacking Grantin it was equally likely that the wizard would turn his waning energies upon Hazar himself.
On the other side of the room, opposite Greyhorn's position and only a few feet from the mouth of the disposal chute, Mara's form was restrained in a heavy ironwood chair. Thin, silk-like cords fastened each of the girl's arms and legs to the frame.
