If I Pay Thee Not in Gold

by Piers Anthony

  She was afraid to construct anything too tall; it would be a target for lightning. What they needed was fairly basic, a shelter that wouldn’t blow away-

  Wait a moment; she remembered something. Lightning went to metal; that was why they made fighters take off their armor in a lightning-storm. If she could create a tall metal pole outthere -maybe she could get the lightning to hit something besides people.

  Quickly she switched her focus, concentrating on the tallest stone in the ring, and creating a thick, heavy rod of metal projecting up from the top of it. She had to work quickly, for she was not certain what the effect on her would be if lightning stuck her creation while she was still conjuring it. So what she made was quite crude, but it did not need to be anything but functional. And it needed to be able to withstand multiple lightning-strikes, for she had the feeling that after this storm was over she would discover it more than half melted away by the power of those bolts.

  It was one of the fastest bits of conjuration she had ever performed. And she finished just in time, for no sooner had she pulled her concentration away from her creation, than it became the target for every lightning-bolt for furlongs around. Now they truly did have their very own source of light, as lightning lashed the top of the stone and thunder became a continuous roar. So many bolts struck the stone-slab that it crackled with energy. Their hair stood on end despite being plastered down by the rain, and little blue lightning-snakes and sulfur-yellow balls ran down the stone and into the ground. The air was sharp with the scent of ozone. The men stared in fascination as she turned her attention to getting them some shelter.

  Something basic, she told herself. Four-no, eight supports. Heavy stone would be best, something the wind could not pull up or push over. She built eight square, squat pillars of stone, wider at the bottom than the top, and just a little taller than the tallest of the men. Then the roof-a slab of heavy wood, as thick as her waist. Nothing to attract an errant bolt of lightning that was not obeying the laws of nature.

  She built a wall only on the side the wind was coming from-another heavy slab of wood. She was afraid to try to put up any more walls; it would be too easy for the wind to topple them. She had no way of bracing them, other than by their own weight.

  Shortly after she completed that wall, Faro came dashing in at a bent-over run and cursing under his breath, followed by Horn who was cursing quite audibly; from the other side of the compound Ware ran in under the shelter as well, with the lead-ropes of his stallion and three of the mules in his hands. The animals rolled their eyes in terror every time a bolt struck nearby, and they were pathetically eager to get in out of the rain. Xylina noticed one thing with a sinking heart. None of the three were the two riding-beasts; she and Faro would either have to ride in the wagons or walk unless the two riding-mules turned up. The heavy odor of wet equine filled her nose, but the mules and the horse were warm, and unlike a fire, they were not going to blow out. The wet humans and animals crowded together into the minimal shelter, and Xylina reached for Ware’s arm, to bring him near enough for her to ask him for advice-

  This storm could not be natural. Was this why she had the headache? Was that a harbinger of the storm? She remembered how her mother used to get headaches before storms. She had a dozen questions to ask Ware, but she never touched him, for at that moment, one of the men screamed, a sound so shrill with terror that it carried even over the pounding of the thunder.

  All eyes went to him, blanched and wild-eyed, then followed where he pointed.

  What they saw was more terrifying than any of the monsters they had thus far encountered. As if the storm, not content with blasting them with lightning, had decided to grow tentacles to seize them, a dozen groping, black funnels eeled their way across the grassland towards them, moving impossibly against the wind. They towered into the lightning-lit sky, hundreds of cubits tall, larger than anything, living or not, that Xylina could remember. As they drew closer, Xylina made out the shapes of entire trees flying weightlessly around the funnels, trees that had been torn out by the roots and sucked up into the sky.

  Even as Xylina gasped, frozen in her place with fear and uncertainty, one of the funnels moved straight towards them, as if it had eyes and could see them cowering there.

  Utter panic ensued. The horse and the mules broke away from Ware’s hold and dashed madly out into the storm. Several of the men cried out in inarticulate horror and ran out as mindlessly as the animals. Xylina could only stand and stare as the funnel moved closer.

  Faro and Ware simultaneously threw her to the ground and threw themselves down beside her. She had just enough wit to curl into a ball and try to protect her head and neck with her hands. Then there was no more time-for the whirlwind was upon them, roaring like a waterfall, shrieking like a legion of the damned, howling like a hundred thousand mindless monsters- -and the world came apart.

  It seemed to take forever, and it was over in moments. When the thing had passed on its inexorable way, there was nothing left standing of any of Xylina’s conjurations. The stones of the palisade were flattened-those that were stillthere . As for the rest, the whirlwind had picked them up and danced them about, then carried them off, somewhere. The shelter she had conjured so hastily was completely gone, and only the flat hearth-stone remained of the encampment.

  Xylina, Ware, and Faro prized themselves off the rock, and stared about in the flickering lightning-and even Ware seemed completely dumbfounded. Horn and Hazard remained clinging to the rock, unable to move or even open their eyes. Xylina sat up slowly, the rain plastering her hair to her head and back, and tried to put together a single coherent thought. Faro simply sat and shook like a bush in a high wind. Ware tried several times to say something, then shrugged, and gave up. Finally, he managed a single word: “Light.” She knew what he meant, of course, and after several tries she succeeded in conjuring a glowstone large enough to guide any other survivors toward them. Of the men, less than half returned, soaked and shaken to the core, plodding back through the soaked and flattened grass to what little was left of the encampment, shreds and shards and the occasional recognizable object.

  Somehow she, Faro, Ware, Horn, and Hazard had managed to cling to the stone while the whirlwind sucked up rock and wood and reduced them to splinters. As if the storm were satisfied, the whirlwinds moved off into the distance, the wind and lightning died, and even the rain faded away to little more than a drizzle. When she stopped shaking, Xylina’s first thought was to give her men some kind of comfort, so she created another shelter and made a bonfire beneath it for Ware to light. The five of them sat huddled about it in thick swaths of conjured fabric, joined by others, staggering in one at a time. One of them, Xylina was relieved to see, was Pattée, sadly bedraggled but whole. Xylina put her arm around the woman and conjured warm material to surround them both. Theoretically one was a member of the ruling elite and the other a foreign whore who couldn’t conjure; those had become meaningless distinctions.

  Gradually, all those men that could, returned. When the roll was taken, they were down to a total of eleven, including Ware, Xylina, and Faro. Horn and Hazard survived; the other five were all fighters-Tron, Steel, and Jerig of the experienced men, and Pol and Ren of the men that had not had any previous campaigning. Even those three experienced campaigners were shaken to the bone by what they had just lived through. Tron had actually seen one of the others sucked up off his feet into the maw of the whirlwind, and hurled into the sky, screaming helplessly. He could only speak about what he had seen in broken fragments, augmented by gestures. “Never seen nothin’ like it,” he mumbled, over and over. “Not never…”

  “First that terrible headache, then this,” Pattée murmured.

  So she had felt it too, while the men had not. That suggested that something strange had happened, but Xylina wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  They sat about the fire, glumly, and no flame or blanket could warm the chill in their hearts. Xylina was too numbed even for tears, and Faro st
ill shook with tremors that came and went and had nothing to do with the cold. Finally, after long silence, Ware spoke.

  “That was no natural storm.”

  He knew this place; somehow he must have recognized something about the whirlwinds that none of the others could have guessed. Xylina and the men looked at him expectantly, and waited for him to continue.

  Ware stared off into the darkness, and his face was frozen into a cold mask that made Xylina shiver. “That was a mage-storm,” he said at last. “It was created by a weather-wizard. There is only one tribe here that practices such magic. The Julamites know we are here; they somehow thought we were challenging them, and this was their answer.”

  He paused for a moment, and then turned to Xylina, his face now full of sorrow. “I did not know there was a weather-wizard this powerful in existence,” he said to her, with mournful desperation. “If I had known, I would have warned you. I thought the worst the Julamites could produce would be lightning-I thought we would have plenty of warning of their storms. I never thought they would deign to bother with an expedition as small as ours.”

  The men stared at him, expressions of accusation beginning to form on their faces. But Ware was more than apologetic; he took the responsibility for what had happened on himself. The sorrow in his voice, and the despair in his eyes, were as moving as anything she had ever heard, and she felt impelled to answer them.

  “How could you have known? And even if you had known, what could we have done about it?” she asked, softly, trying to keep her own fear and borderline hysteria out of her own voice. “No one could run away from something likethat ! And nothing I built could have withstood it! If these Julamites were determined to slay us with their storm, I fear that there was nothing we could have done to prevent what happened. I know of no conjurer who could match that kind of power, not even Queen Adria.”

  Accusations died unspoken, and slowly the men nodded a grudging agreement. Ware shook his head slightly, but said nothing-only his own bleak face told her that he did not consider himself to be any less at fault. She felt a strange pity for him; he was so alone among them, and he was so accustomed to being the authority, that this failure to anticipate disaster must come doubly hard to him.

  He turned his gaze from the darkness to the flickering fire. “If the Julamites are this strong, I must assume that the other tribes of this land have become just as strong,” he said, finally. “The only good news I can offer is that I do not think we will be troubled by another mage-storm. It takes particular conditions to enable a weather-wizard to turn an ordinary storm into a mage-storm, and it is very draining on the wizard himself. And I know the Julamites cannot have more than one weather-wizard of such strength; they are an ambitious people, and a powerful wizard would not permit any rivals.”

  Like the Queen, Xylina thought, but did not say aloud.

  “Then what can we expect?” Faro asked after a moment. He cast a glance past Ware’s shoulder at the east. “You said yourself these people are all likely to be hostile. It’s almost dawn; surely we’re in for some other surprises.” Faro seemed to be recovering his strength and his wits, and Xylina was grateful. She had hated to see him sitting there, trembling.

  “I wish I could tell you,” Ware replied helplessly, shrugging. “I am sorry, but since I was last here a few months ago, many things have changed that I did not expect to change. For that matter, I did not expect to find this realmhere ; it was much farther to the east when last I traveled. There are a score of tribes in this realm, and all of them have different wild magics. I know I saw the ur-birds of the Lgondians above us yesterday, but I do not know whether they will attack us, or whether their masters will. If the Julamites are so strong-have the other tribes become weaker, or stronger? I simply do not know!”

  “Well, give us a starting point at least!” Faro snapped. “Give us a plan! We can change the plan, if need be, but at least we will have one. You are the only one who knows anything about this place.”

  Ware opened his mouth as if to retort angrily-then closed it. He nodded slowly. “I apologize,” he said. “You are right. We must do something other than sit here on a rock. We will have to try to travel stealthily-and Xylina will have to conjure everything we need, from this moment on, save for food and drink. We must try to be unobtrusive, unchallenging, and if the fates are with us, the tribes may think us too weak to bother with. That is the only way that we will succeed in passing through here, now that our company is so decimated.”

  “Eh, well,” Horn replied at last, with a glance around him, “At least we won’t be carrying heavy packs.”

  That elicited a laugh-a strained one, but it was at least genuine. Xylina felt a little of the tension leave her. Things were bad-but they were not yet dead.

  When there was enough light so that it was possible to see effectively, Faro sent the men out to try and find whatever might have been left of their supplies and weapons. That was when they discovered some of the fantastic things the whirlwinds had done. A straw was found driven into the wood of a ruined wagon-frame like a nail. A single wild-bird egg scarcely larger than Xylina’s thumbnail was found balanced on top of one of the toppled palisade-stones. One of the swords was discovered twisted into a bizarre knot-like shape.

  Xylina scoured the grass, looking for anything that seemed out of place, for often only a corner of something protruded out from under the mat of rain-flattened grasses. She found scraps of fabric, bits of wood, and a few metal arrowheads and spear points, but that was all. After a few hours, her eyes ached from peering into the grasses, and squinting against too-bright sunlight. She returned to the rest with a pocket full of metal and a few ragged bits of cloth that was not of her conjuration.

  When they all gathered again at mid-morning, there was not much good news. Some few of the food supplies had been found: a bag of grain, some journey-bread, and some dried peas; also enough of the weaponry that each of them could be armed after a fashion. The wagons were wrecked and there wasn’t a piece larger than a hand anywhere; the livestock were gone beyond even Ware’s ability to hunt. Only one of the mules and two of the missing men were ever found dead; as for the rest-Xylina did not care even to hazard a guess.

  Horn butchered the poor mule as well as he could with nothing more than his belt-knife, and strung as many ragged strips of meat as he could over conjured fires to smoke-dry. They conferred together over a strange and haphazard meal of soaked journey-bread and roast mule about what, exactly, Xylina could conjure that would be effective as weaponry. She could not produce a sword, of course-but she could manage a pointed rod of metal enough like a spear to make no difference. Finished bows and arrows were impossible, but she discovered through trial and error that she could produce a tapered and flexible stave that Faro could notch, something strong enough to serve as bowstring, and thin dowels that worked well as arrow-shafts. That, together with the arrowheads she had gleaned, gave them each two real arrows-and when Faro sharpened the dowels they, too, served as cruder arrows. Slings, of course, were easy; a length of leather-like substance and a couple of thongs, and every man was armed. There were few stones suitable, but she could conjure with no problems the kind of leaden shot that made a good slinger so effective-all she had to do was concentrate on makingsmall bits of “lead” and the conjured metal appeared in rounded globules. She could still create their shelters and defenses each night, albeit more slowly than before, and the fuel for the fires to warm them and cook their food. Water could be a problem; they only had three waterskins among them, and unless they found water each night, they might run short fairly quickly. Food itself would quickly grow to be a problem unless they could find good hunting on the way; the food they had found and scavenged would not last that long, divided among so many.

  But there was no hope of turning back. Not only would that be an admission of defeat, but it might not even be possible at this point. None of the men said anything about giving up-and Xylina had the feeling that they knew as well as
she did that the road behind them was as hazardous as that ahead. She did not think they would be able to survive the country of the tentacle-beasts as poorly armed as they were now. Assuming that when they turned back, they actuallyfound that country there! It was entirely possible that the border itself would now reveal an entirely new and deadly realm, for Ware had not expected to find this realmhere , and that meant that the boundaries were changing more frequently than he had thought. More than that, Ware knew the country here, and that should help them.

  At roughly noon, they set off again, this time afoot. Ware scouted ahead, seemingly indefatigable, covering the ground with a tireless stride that Xylina could not help but envy. She had gotten used to riding; she had thought she was inured to the hardships of this trek, but to her chagrin, she found herself coping with aching legs, and cramps in unexpected places, by the time they made their first halt.

  Fortunately for her aching legs, their progress was slowed by the need to hunt. Of the three experienced campaigners, Tron and Jerig were the best with slings, and so they ranged to either side of the rest, hoping to bag something scared up by the passage of the larger group.

  By the third halt-at a tiny stream, which gave them all a chance to slake their thirst-the hunters still had come up empty-handed. “You know,” Horn said to her at one halt, “if we have to, we can always eat them hoppers. Bugs ain’t bad toasted, and there sure are a lot of ‘em.”

  Xylina gave him a sideways look, uncertain if he was trying to make a joke. His expression convinced her he was serious. Hewas an experienced cook, and he did know the secrets of surviving on campaign, where supplies might be captured or destroyed by the enemy. But that was one trick she had never heard of.

  The “hoppers” were thumb-sized insects, shaped like the tiny leaf-hoppers of Mazonia, but much larger. They had been scaring these creatures up all along the trek, dozens of them with every step, and until this moment Xylina had not considered them as a food-source. She probably would not have considered Horn’s proposition seriously, except that she knew from personal experience that there were a great many things that one would eat if one became hungry enough. There had been several times when she had made cakes of flour full of weevils, and told herself that if the weevils were eating her flour, she might as well eat them. She had certainly come to no harm from the experience.