by Lyndon Hardy
“A day too late.” Ocanar forced a laugh. “I have already made the sweep while you were fussing over the harvest of a single field. Look at my legion.” He waved a thick arm to those filling in behind. “At least two hundred, trained freetoilers, and ready to fight. Yes, two hundred. It is clear that the momentum has swung my way. The rebellion is growing, and I am the center. The time for timid confusion is over. I charge you to accept my command, Pelinad. Swear allegiance to me as leader, so that we may strike Kenton’s strength rather than poke with petty irritations at his periphery.”
“Command is not measured by mere numbers.” Pelinad pointed at Jemilor and those around him. “If I wanted to enlist the old men and the lame, I could have done so a year ago. No indeed, my raid was strategic. Because of it, I have garnered an element of great power.” He motioned Canthor to come forward. “Henceforth I battle with a craft far removed from simple thaumaturgy. Here is my sorcerer, Ocanar, and from no less than Morgana itself.”
Ocanar looked at Canthor as the bailiff walked forward. He frowned and pulled at his beard. “The village whispers that sorcery is no more,” he said slowly. “And this man wears no robe with a logo. His walk is that of a fighter, not the shuffle of the masters I have seen.”
“Look me in the eye and we will test the truth here and now.” Canthor put his hands on his hips. “Let us see to what extent the village talk is true.”
Ocanar took a step backward and threw his hand across his face. “Whatever resources we have should be tested in battle,” he said quickly. “It is folly to waste them fighting between ourselves.”
“Allow me to accept the challenge to your place.” Melizar glided forward to stand by Ocanar. “Let the so-called master pit his skills against the powers that are mine.”
“Ocanar speaks with good judgment.” Pelinad put his hand on his sword hilt. “There is no need for confrontation.”
Melizar hesitated. His deep cowl slowly scanned the line of Pelinad’s men, all grasping weapons. Like cranked crossbows, they tensely waited the signal that would release their restraint. Ocanar’s troop responded in kind. For a long moment, no one moved. All eyes were on the leader to see what would happen next.
“A fight here in the foothills sheds none of Kenton’s blood,” Melizar said at last. “And it is not according to my plan. Perhaps I do agree, Ocanar. The battlefield is best. There is no need to test this so-called master now. Let him show his merits in the pass, and then all can judge the true prowess of his craft.”
Jemidon bit his tip. Melizar knew full well that nothing remained of sorcery. The stranger was maneuvering Canthor and Pelinad into a position from which they were bound to fail. But right now, he could say nothing. His own position was too tenuous. And it was just as well that Melizar did not recognize him as one who had disrupted Trocolar’s scheme in the grotto. Later, when he knew more, he could formulate the best course of action.
Ocanar tugged on his beard, looked at Melizar, and then glanced across to where Canthor stood. “Yes, tomorrow can be the judge. Pelinad, do you abide by it? The one of us whose power best decides the battle, then he is to lead us both.”
“What battle?” Pelinad asked. “We do not yet have the strength to confront Kenton in his keep, even with both of us acting together. And soon he is to be fortified by a troop of the prince’s own from Searoyal.”
“It is your good fortune that we have met,” Ocanar said. “Your ignorance would otherwise prove quite costly.” He turned and forced a laugh that his men picked up in chorus. “This troop from Searoyal. No doubt you have seen some trace?” He turned back to mock Pelinad. “What would happen if they came upon you unaware?”
“In truth, we have seen nothing,” Pelinad said. “We have been in these hills, planning for our successful raid.”
“You would have seen nothing, even if you had been on the plain!” Ocanar roared. “They do not beat upriver for all to see, so that we can melt away.” He waved a fleshy palm to the east. “No, they proceed by stealth in the next valley. Through Plowblade Pass they intend to come—to fall upon us in our lairs and thrash us from behind is their plan.”
Ocanar paused, sucking in his breath. “But we are the ones who will stage the ambush. It is into our trap they will fall, not us into theirs. And after our victory, the plains will erupt with fire. Not a single man will hold back. Kenton and the others will be swept from the fields. It will be a true rebellion at last.” Ocanar gazed off into the distance, savoring his thoughts, then fixed Pelinad with a hard stare. “You dispute my leadership, Pelinad. But by the laws, on what grounds? Certainly not your vision; you show as much imagination as an ambulator upon his mill.”
“It was I who found the truth,” Melizar said before Pelinad could reply. “Nimrod has many friends in the royal garrisons. Let us keep the importance of my contributions firmly in focus, Ocanar. I have been deceived once by your kind. This time there is to be no misunderstanding.”
“Our agreement still stands,” Ocanar said. “I see no reason to change it. You come with a dozen men in mail, fully trained fighters whom you offer to be my captains. And they have bullied my rabble into fighting shape, I do not deny it. Aid me in plucking Kenton from his keep, and what you ask shall be yours, even if I do not understand why you want it so.”
“You find it strange, do you not, that my lust is not for a manor and rows of humble servants? Those trappings, Ocanar, will all come in the proper time. For now, I desire only a halt of all thaumaturgy. After the unlocking, I will need nothing more. And what better way to achieve what I wish than the chaos of insurrection? Unlike sorcery and magic, the craft is too widespread for the contradiction to be effective any other way.”
Melizar paused, and his voice hardened. “And in the end, we shall see whose fiefdom is the greater. A single valley is not enough to interest even the least able pilot, and among them I am the first.”
“As I have said, it is agreed.” Ocanar waved his arm in irritation. “I have heard enough of your mumbled nonsense before. Just make sure that your rock rumblings and strange images are ready when they are needed.”
“I begin my preparations for tomorrow now,” Melizar said, motioning back to the hill over which he had come. “It is somewhat paradoxical that the power of thaumaturgy, which makes the transition so difficult, also greatly mitigates the unlocking.”
“Your cozy tent provides the catalyst for much grumbling among the men,” Ocanar said. “You should sleep on the ground like my men.”
“Warmth?” Melizar said. “Rest? It is not for those that the Maxim of Perturbations was vitalized in the grotto. Which would you rather? Push a pack train along these trails, or have a single minion effortlessly guide my possessions as they are guided now?”
Ocanar did not respond. Jemidon looked to the crestline and saw a large tent float over the rise. It was Drandor’s, the one that had caught his eye in the bazaar on Morgana, its faded canvas hung in loose folds; coarse stitching bound swaths of different colors together in jagged seams. But, unlike the structure on the island, no guy ropes or stakes were to be seen. The bottom side panels gently rippled over the rock and scrubby plants, like the hem of a woman’s dress. All the cloth danced and wavered as the whole structure bobbed along. A single man-at-arms held the end of a rope that ran to a ring attached above an entrance flap. He tugged the structure along without effort into a quickening morning breeze.
“Perturbations,” Melizar repeated. “Perhaps not as dramatic as a dance which crashes open fissures in the earth, but guidance of small swirls of air at the right place and time can produce buoyant effects as good as the largest balloon.”
With a soft whoosh of the tent, the men-at-arms halted a short distance behind Ocanar’s line of men. Melizar glided into the opening and returned shortly with the drums and weights that Jemidon had seen briefly in the interior of the tent when Drandor had shown him around.
Drandor’s tent. Drandor. Drandor and Delia. Jemidon’s thoughts took another sud
den turn. He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to recapture the taste of his thoughts before Ocanar’s band had arrived. The slave girl still felt important, as important as the lattice and the rest. But he was no closer to understanding the other pieces of the puzzle than he was to why she held such an allure.
“These will be used for our common benefit.” Melizar waved the drums in Pelinad’s direction. “Simple devices that aid me in my craft. Hold your men silent, so that I may receive all that they tell.” He looked at Canthor. “If your master has any preparations to make as well, then gladly will Ocanar’s legion return the favor.”
Pelinad glanced at Canthor and then scowled. He flung his arm to the side in acquiescence and prepared to watch with the rest.
Jemidon tried to concentrate on what Melizar was doing as the cold one set the drums up in a row between the two lines of men and adjusted the tension in the heads, one by one. But the surge of his thoughts increased rather than subsided. He felt wispy tendrils in his mind, tantalizing glimmers of some insight that eluded his grasp. Deep inside, there seemed to be a tiny box whose lid was slowly beginning to open, oozing out marvels that had never been suspected, but which were nonetheless true.
Jemidon stared at Melizar. Even the proximity of the stranger was suddenly unsettling. Before, he had been mysterious. But now his every motion seemed to have an effect on Jemidon’s thoughts. Each precise flick of the long, thin fingers crashed the images about in Jemidon’s head. He felt the muscles tighten in his back. His mouth grew dry. A hint of queasiness floated up from his stomach. Something unpleasant was about to happen. For whatever the reason, now he wanted nothing to do with this stranger, nothing at all. Cautiously, Jemidon slumped to the ground and tightened his arms about his chest.
“Seven drums,” Melizar said to Ocanar. “Seven drums, one for each of the laws.”
“I am a fighter, not a practitioner of the arts,” Ocanar responded impatiently. “The details of your craft are not my concern.”
“Perhaps it is a weakness,” Melizar said. “It gives me a perverse pleasure to display my workings for all to see and have none understand the slightest glimmer of what truths they mirror. Well spoken, Ocanar. It is the blind devotion to the narrow perspective of your kind that gives me the greatest assurance that a pilot and his manipulants shall succeed.”
Melizar selected a small weight that was not wired to a drumhead and gently placed it in the center of the first tight membrane. The tare barely dimpled the surface. “The new sorcery,” Melizar said. “And there are no animations, as the lack of depression shows.” He placed another weight on the next drum in line, and it sagged further into the thin, translucent covering. “The tent,” he said. “So close to the nexus that it alone has a strong effect.”
The next three were tested in quick succession, each one pulling down the drumhead by about the same amount. “Alchemy and wizardry, three laws in all,” Melizar continued. “They will be the last, after we are sure of the victory.” He looked at the final two drums in the line and simultaneously moved a weight to the center of each one. Instantly, the tares snapped from his fingertips and, with what looked to Jemidon like a force far stronger than the pull of the ground, the weights distorted the planes with deep, cone-shaped depressions.
Melizar rubbed his fingertips together and then looked through a collection of small metal rings mixed with the weights. He selected one from the rest and placed it on the warped drumhead, over the indentation caused by the tare. Instantly, it disappeared from sight into the hole. “Excellent,” he said. “The workings of the art are not as nearby as a vault, but they are widespread and strong. The unlocking will proceed better than I first would have thought.”
“Well,” Ocanar demanded impatiently, “what does your reading portend?”
“That the unlocking should be now, when it is easiest,” Melizar replied. “Before, I was too cautious, when there was no need. Now I know that it does not matter. There are none here who can tug in directions other than my own. Yes, I will unlock the nexus now and then be ready when the rebellion has reduced thaumaturgy to a level from which I can proceed.”
Melizar bent to the ground and released the tension in the drumheads. He stored the apparatus back in the tent and then indicated silently to Ocanar that he would be but a moment more. In a fashion almost as theatrical as Holgon’s, he removed from a chain on his belt a small cubical structure that was painted with a crosshatching of smaller squares.
No, not painted squares, Jemidon thought as he watched Melizar manipulate the solid, twisting faces in a series of rapid rotations that his eye could barely follow. It was a collection of smaller cubes, bound together and yet able to move in several independent directions, creating and destroying intricate patterns as they came together in varying juxtapositions. There were six sides and six different colors on the small cubes. Could the structure be manipulated so that—
Just as the thought formed, Jemidon saw Melizar stop and display the solid for all the onlookers to see. The random patterns of the small, colored squares on the faces of the larger cube were now all homogeneous. In less than the time one could hold his breath, Melizar had solved the unusual puzzle.
Puzzle? Jemidon frowned at why he thought of the cube in that way. It was a puzzle, yes, but certainly of much greater significance than that. And what sort of mechanism inside would allow the small cubes in the corners to rotate about three independent axes—?
Jemidon gasped. The impending uneasiness that had forced him to sit roared suddenly through his being like a wild wind. He was aware of a great snap that released some inner restraint and cast him adrift. Like a swimmer struggling against the current for the shore, he felt himself swept away. Like one diving off a cliff in a dizzying spin, he sensed a tingling thrill radiate out from the pit of his stomach to his fingertips.
Jemidon closed his eyes, but it did not help. Coins, changers, cube puzzles, all danced in his head, streaking by faster and faster, becoming glowing blurs that fused into a distant background with no landmarks. Jemidon clutched his arms around his chest tighter and slowly rocked back and forth. With deliberate effort, he breathed deeply and tried to blot out the dizzying thoughts. The words of Melizar and the others dimmed as he concentrated. He was missing the preparations for the battle, but he did not care.
Onward he seemed to streak, lashing out to grab at the formless glows as they sped by. With numbing impact, they ripped through his hands as he continued on his way. Jemidon strained to strengthen his grip and, after countless failures, held one for a moment, before his fingers let go. His body seemed to whip around, losing some of its momentum and slowing its mad rush. He reached out and held onto the next a little longer, pulling the glow along, his fingers slowly sliding off its rough and bumpy surface. Again and again, in the image in his mind, he flailed his arms to grasp the blobs and, with each successful contact, he decreased the blinding rush. The forms took on detail and shape, as individual coins, changers, and cubes, each with a unique structure differentiated from the shapeless glows farther away. He seemed to slow to a fast run, then to a trot, and finally to a gentle drift that carried him along.
Gradually, after how long a struggle he could not tell, Jemidon opened his eyes. The sense of motion persisted, but with a much lower intensity. He still felt as if he were falling, but the acceleration was not nearly as great as it had been at first. The images of the streaking lights faded into the background of the reality around him. Melizar and the tent were gone, presumably back over the hilltop. Both Ocanar’s and Pelinad’s bands were in their separate camps. Jemidon looked up at the one man standing patiently before him.
“If you are finished with the dreaming, then I have a suggestion,” his father said. “Ask to be that Melizar’s apprentice. Perhaps he can teach you a thing or two.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Pendulum Swings
JEMIDON stirred uneasily and flexed his cramped muscles. The advance scouts had moved through the pass
at dawn. The main body of the troop from Searoyal should have marched into the ambush over an hour ago. But the road winding down the mountainside was clear. No cloud of dust or creaking wagon wheels disturbed the serenity of the morning.
The pass itself was still in shadow on Jemidon’s right. A narrow cleft barely four men wide, it looked like a deep furrow in freshly plowed ground. From where Jemidon was hidden behind the rocks at the side of the trail, he could not see all the way through the notch to the other side. Beyond the crest on the downslope that eventually led to Kenton’s barony, Ocanar’s band huddled in concealment, waiting for the royal companies to march by. They lay armed and ready, as did Pelinad’s men across the wagon ruts from where Jemidon crouched.
Inwardly, Jemidon seethed. Why was he behaving the way he was? The object of his quest had appeared virtually as a gift, and aligned on the same side, at that. For over two months, he had pushed to achieve an encounter and now, with it in his grasp, his thoughts kept dancing aside to other things.
Jemidon looked at Canthor, slumped peacefully beside him, and shook his head. “How can you be so calm?” he asked. “You understand as well as I that Ocanar has manipulated Pelinad into an impossible position. Melizar is on the top of one of the crags which frame the pass. He will be able to shake the earth and deliver the avalanche on schedule, splitting the royal troops in twain. I have seen his prowess before. But you can make no illusion that will terrify those on this side as we fall upon their rear. Pelinad will have no special aid.”
“The avalanche will be enough.” Canthor stretched and yawned. “That and the attack from behind will make up for our lack of mail and sharp weapons. I will say some meaningless words and then join with the others pouring onto the trail. And when the swords start swinging, no one will remember whether the hesitation of the opponents was due to surprise or a fanciful image.”
