by Guy Antibes
She shook her head. “Come back to me. I don’t want to live alone.”
She put her hands to his face and pulled it down. They kissed a long, lingering kiss.
“Go,” she said huskily.
I will take care of him, Demeron said.
“Tell the others, I’m sure they will be successful. Biloben had the same notion that I did. It is the right pattern.”
“You and your patterns,” Shira said as she watched Pol mount. “I would wish you to take care, but that’s not in your mission.”
“It still is, when I need to.” Pol grabbed her hand and squeezed before he let go and urged Demeron to take off into the night.
Saying goodbye to Shira could not have not been more awkward or more difficult. He wished she had not followed him outside the tent. He looked back at the lights of his army. Pol did not want to desert his fellow soldiers, but he and Demeron had special talents that they could not employ directing his army. Shira had learned more than enough defending Redearth to do that.
He guided Demeron north. If they encountered any scouts, how could the Winnowers stop him? No horse lived who could travel faster than Demeron. Dawn had beckoned before they stopped for a rest.
They were miles to the north of where Pol thought the Winnow Society army camped. Pol closed his eyes for a moment and woke not too much later. He gave an apple to a grateful Demeron and mounted again, heading west with the sun staring into his back.
As planned, he had skirted the Winnower army to the north and estimated he would have the rest of the day to reach the place where he would head south into the enemy’s heart.
“How are you holding up, Demeron?” Pol said, now that the sun faced them.
I am doing as well as you, but if we cross a stream, I wouldn’t mind a drink.
“Deal,” Pol said.
They picked their way through a forest in the twilight as they turned south. Demeron heard the ripple of a brook.
“You take us there,” Pol said.
He dismounted and pulled off his water skin while Demeron leaned his head over and drank.
“I’ve got another apple for you,” Pol said as he rummaged around in his pack, pulling out black clothes. “Here it is. You eat this while I change.”
Pol magnetized his weapons. The Demron steel didn’t magnetize, but he made sure he had access to all his knives and splinters. He even had a black bag full of iron balls that he made sure was accessible. Pol would use his power to move the balls into exploding soldiers. The soldiers were undoubtedly involuntarily warded, and that made Pol even more upset with the callous behavior of the Winnowers as he thought about it.
They rode under a dimming sky and found their first scout within a few hours of heading south at Demeron’s greatly enhanced pace.
“Scout,” Pol said.
Scout’s horse. Do we go around him?
Pol smiled. “Of course.”
They avoided a network of scouts and eventually reached a ward. Pol led and pointed out where Demeron had to avoid walking. He had never thought to ask if his horse could see wards and when he did, he found that Demeron couldn’t.
Demeron reminded Pol that he could locate horses farther away than Pol could humans. They stopped while Demeron showed Pol where humans were located on a map. Demeron could see a large concentration of horses at the end of his range. That had to be close to the edge of the main camp.
They headed in that direction, dodging scouts and wards. Pol finally located large concentrations of humans.
“I’d like you to join the horses in the huge corral. They won’t be looking for you there. Is that all right?”
It is. I haven’t seen a corral that could hold me, Demeron said. Promise we will communicate as we go.
“I will,” Pol said. They stopped within sight of the corral. Pol removed the saddle and his bags and hid them in a clutch of bushes. No one was close to the corral. “Get inside before someone comes.”
Demeron nodded and easily cleared the fence. The other horses have reins, so I’ll fit in just fine. Good luck. Don’t forget where I am.
Pol waved to Demeron as he slipped into the darkness towards torches that lit up the tent city. After tweaking invisibility, Pol walked past the tents. Some men played cards or dice on upended barrels used for seats and playing surfaces. Others sharpened their weapons.
Unlike the Winnower camp near Covial that he had walked through, the mind-controlled soldiers displayed the kind of anxiousness that normal soldiers did. Eliminating the spells tempted Pol, but perhaps on his way back, if he came back, he would cause some disruption.
He walked for more than an hour. Soldiers were beginning to turn in. Pol looked down a wide lane and spotted taller tents in the distance. He headed in that direction, always careful to stay out of the way.
Two guards stood on either side of a fabric fence, separating the large tents from the rest of the camp. That figured. He walked straight past the guards, stepping over a series of wards until they stopped, and then he ducked to the side, slipping in between tents. He sought out information first before he would attempt to act.
There were a few hundred in the tent compound. Pol wanted to know if this was the headquarters of the entire army or of a Winnower General. The West Huffnyan armies had not had a compound like this when he had rescued Biloben. He had his hopes.
Pol heard laughter coming up ahead. He inched around a tent and saw a fabric structure with the sides rolled up. The torches flickered in a fitful breeze, making it hard to make out faces, but there in the middle of it all, Pol spied Grimwell, the former Imperial magician. From the positions of the forty or so magicians, Grimwell seemed to be their leader.
Pol had seen enough. He pulled a few splinters out of his pocket and held one, waiting to get closer to the magicians. He crept along another tent to get a closer vantage point and finally decided he had gone far enough. He teleported a Demron splinter towards Grimwell’s head. He quickly cut down three more magicians, but Grimwell’s protection held up.
Grimwell looked around him and pointed in Pol’s direction. “An intruder. Over there somewhere!”
Pol pulled out more splinters and killed another five magicians while their flames bathed the area all around, setting fire to the tents. He retreated backward. Pol’s invisibility did not keep Grimwell from pointing him out. He figured that the magician could locate.
He kept close to a few more magicians exiting their tent as the fire began to spread. Pol did his part to keep the fire burning as he passed more tents and dispatched more magicians. He circled around the compound, trying to stay close to other magicians. Suddenly his head burst with pain. Magicians dropped around him, screaming with their hands to their heads. Pol reinforced his shields, and the pain retreated a bit until it ceased. He took the opportunity to dispatch the helpless magicians. They all wore Winnow medallions outside their robes. That became a death warrant as far as Pol was concerned.
Another assault put Pol down on his knees. He could not be so passive this time and tweaked a spell similar to the one that assaulted him. He heard more gasps. He increased the power of his attack, and magicians began to fall, their eyes rolling up in their heads. Most of them died in the compound from attacks by Grimwell, trying to get Pol and Pol’s directed attacks.
Pol fired another tent and found that he could not move his limbs. Had he stepped on a ward? He fought the spell and then decided to let it overcome him. He wouldn’t run from Grimwell the way the Imperial magician ran from him. He gained control over the spell, and let part of it overcome him.
“Over there. Everyone else is dead.” Pol heard Grimwell’s voice. Pol located, and there was only one dot in the compound, but Pol noticed another dot that had entered the area. They converged on each other.
“He is visible now,” a familiar voice said, as Namion Threshell walked into his view. “I suspected the only person who could withstand Grimwell’s spells would be you.”
Pol pretended to appear in
pain, and until he released the spell, he would be stiff. His shields were still in place. Namion tilted his body and dragged Pol towards the main tent. Namion did have to veer around the bodies that littered the compound.
Namion dropped Pol to the ground. “It’s the Fairfield boy,” he said.
“He’s no boy,” Grimwell said. “His power nearly rivals my own. That makes him a threat, and I’ll treat him just like I treated his brother, who literally rots in Borstall.” He leaned over and looked Pol in the eye. “Did you hear me? King Grostin rots in unendurable pain in a dungeon.”
“He can’t reply,” Namion said.
Grimwell glared at Namion. “Of course he can’t. Bring me a sword. We might as well turn them into twins.” Grimwell’s mouth turned into a sneering smile. “I must thank you for getting rid of all my competitors. I will rule over all Eastril and then over the entire world. With my secret weapons, no one can stop me. I labored for years to learn ward magic.” Grimwell laughed as Namion put a sword into Grimwell’s hands.
Pol released the spell but did not say a word. The man he sought stood over him with a sword, but not for long.
Grimwell swung the sword down on Pol’s left leg. The blow would cause a bruise, but it bounced, nearly rebounding to cut the magician. Grimwell stepped back. “You are shielded!”
Pol got to his feet. “Of course. Do you think I’d let you torture me like you tortured my brother? He deserved a lot of punishment, but no human deserves what you did to him.”
“You’ve been to Borstall?”
Pol nodded. “I released the wards that kept him alive and used magician’s fire to clean out the dungeon beneath the Royal Guard building. You’ve lost Borstall, and the rest of North Salvan is being purged of your magician ‘minders’ in each city, town, and village.”
“You’ve been busy,” Namion said.
“So have you,” Pol said, looking down at Namion. He had grown half-a-head taller in the years since he he had last seen the ex-Seeker in Yastan.
Pol pulled out his Demron sword and thrust it into Grimwell. The sword could not make it past a shield. If Grimwell couldn’t get past Pol, Pol couldn’t get past Grimwell.
His splinters did not work, and the sword, which had never been blunted before could not defeat Grimwell.
Pol sheathed his sword and punched Grimwell in the mouth. The magician fell back on his bottom. Namion pushed at Pol, but Namion was not the Imperial Magician. He pulled out a splinter and teleported into Namion’s brain. The man staggered back and fell on his back; unseeing eyes stared at the stars. Pol glanced at his dead nemesis. No protection spell saved him this time.
Grimwell ran into Pol. They grappled with each other. The magician tried to inject flames into Pol’s shields, but all they did was surround him. He could feel some heat, but nothing would work on Grimwell, either.
Pol tried to lift him off the ground, but Grimwell’s shields were stronger than any he had ever encountered. Soldiers began to enter the yard. Pol sprayed them with flame and completed setting fire to the fabric wall surrounding the tents until the men retreated.
Grimwell and Pol faced each other and fought without damaging the other party. Neither had the power to defeat the other. Pol had finally met his match on Phairoon. On Phairoon, he thought. As they grappled, Pol called up the tweak that the alien essence had used to transport him to the Demron world. He grabbed hold of Grimwell, surrounded him with his shield, and tweaked.
~
The struggle continued as Pol sensed the blue disk and their passing through it until both men’s steps brought up puffs of gray dust. The angry red Demron sun lit up the landscape in a sickly scarlet.
Pol caught a whiff of the alien essence. “Not in me,” Pol said. “He’s the one you can take over. See how powerful he is? That is the Winnow Society leader.”
He thinks like I do, Pol heard the essence say triumphantly in his mind. I don’t need you!
Grimwell clutched his head. “Get out! Get out!” the magician yelled. He stepped away from Pol, fighting the alien essence.
Pol’s breathing became labored as he looked on. He coughed and realized the planet’s air was poison, finding a way through his shields. It was not safe to stay on the dead world any longer, so he tweaked his body back to Phairoon. He materialized, falling on top of Namion’s body and stumbled a bit before he stood. He gasped for air as he looked for more Winnowers, but guards hadn’t entered the compound yet. He must have been gone for only seconds. He looked around for Grimwell’s body, but it had stayed on the dead world.
He staggered back away from the entrance and tweaked a hole in the fabric. As he moved, his breath returned. Pol threw fire in every direction, burning tents and setting exploding wards on pots hanging by the fire.
He tweaked invisibility and stalked through the Winnower camp, raining more destruction on the tents. They had lost their leaders and their inner circle. Namion had received an appropriate reward, and Grimwell had gone to a place where he would have no idea how to return. The fact that the essence had not come back told Pol that the Demron spirit could not return either. It did not have a body to die, but Grimwell did, and he was probably dead by now. He deserved worse, but Pol did not see how he would be able to defeat him on Phairoon.
Pol tweaked invisibility again, and he grabbed the sack of iron pellets and began to teleport them at officers when he could find them. Occasionally he sent a pellet into a soldier who would explode. He soon discovered that the Winnowers had not converted all their army into walking weapons.
The fires continued while Pol took a circuitous route towards the north end of the camp. The Winnower magicians who openly wore their medallions made them easy targets, but there couldn’t be many left. He had an hour’s walk if he walked straight, but he would not do that. He spent twice that time threading his way back and forth between tents setting wards and fires wherever he could.
He finally reached the corral. The horses were safe from the fires. Demeron jumped up to join him outside the fence.
Pol saddled his horse, giving him a blow-by-blow description of his fight with Grimwell. He opened the corral.
“Would you please tell the horses to get lost in the woods?”
What about the wards?
Pol looked at the blazing camp.
“Do you think anyone cares?”
Demeron laughed inside his mind, and the horses began to stream out of the corral.
“Let’s head back to Shira and Amble.”
My time was not as exciting as yours, Demeron said.
“But you did get to see the burning camp.”
~
Even though they moved a little more slowly, it took less time for Pol to reach his armies. Biloben’s forces were closer to the Winnowers, who still hadn’t attacked.
Shira looked travel-worn when Pol showed up towards the end of the day. She rode to him and jumped off Amble. They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed…a number of times.
“I was worried until I read your message. Namion’s dead, and Grimwell is as good as. It seems like a dream.”
“No dream, except who knows the location of the Demron world? The alien essence appeared right before us. Perhaps it did not move far from where I left it. Grimwell did not enjoy the thing trying to worm its way into his mind. Shields don’t hold air in for long, and I was beginning to lose my breath. He would not have lasted long, even if Grimwell successfully fought off the essence. Namion wasn’t even a challenge. I expected his death would be harder.”
“Only because he gave you a hard time,” she said. She sighed and put his face in both her hands. “I have you back,” she said through smiles and tears.
“Now, I thought you’d be fighting when I returned.”
Shira shook her head. “Biloben thought so too, but the army didn’t turn. Perhaps they were waiting for orders, or our efforts to change their minds worked.”
“Maybe we can get them to parley.”
“We’ve
already tried, but that was before you eliminated their high command.”
Pol might have stopped Grimwell, but he had not yet stopped the war the way he wanted.
Morning came, and Paki joined him. He told him his story again.
“I can’t relate,” Paki said. “I always thought you were the most powerful magician in the world, but you lied.”
“I never claimed that,” Pol said.
Paki waved Pol’s comment away. “It doesn’t matter. That’s what most people thought. With Grimwell gone, who is your equal?”
Pol smiled at his friend. “In magic? Maybe you are right. However, there are other things to life. It is good to be proficient at other things. Your father was the best scout, wasn’t he?”
Paki nodded.
“I’m not the scout he is. I would never be as good a ruler as Hazett. He can charm people,” Pol said. “I know the social graces, but they don’t come easily. You can ask Farthia Wissingbel.”
“But you’ve succeeded.”
“In what? Do you think I saved the world? I did not. I saved a little bit of it, maybe, but there is a lot of world. What impact did I have on Kiria? None.”
“But Zasos and Shinkya,” Paki said.
“I helped them help themselves. The Shinkyan bureaucracy was waiting for the right moment to weaken Queen Anira’s reign.”
Paki raised his hands in submission. “I won’t talk to you anymore about that. What will you do when the war is over?”
Pol looked off towards the south, where Shira had gone to gather magicians and commanders. “Redearth is where I belong.”
“Do you think Emperor Hazett will let you off?”
Pol grinned. “Didn’t you say I’m the most powerful magician in the world? How can he refuse?”
~
Pol rode with the Generals and a large escort towards the Winnower lines. White flags fluttered in the breeze. They didn’t care about the wards they violated and waited a hundred paces from the enemy lines.
A contingent of officers and two robed magicians rode out to meet them.
