The web of wizardry

by Coulson, Juanita

  She made no concessions to her surroundings or to Gordyan's frown. Qhorda smirked and said, "But bandits can sometimes be useful, eh. General? Do not my men cle^r the route for your army to control the river marshes?" It was her turn to glower at her ally of the moment.

  "Come. We must present our findings to the Captain," Ti-Mori said brusquely, losing interest in Danaer, or in anyone else in the room.

  As they left, Gordyan said with a snort, "If I must fight beside a warrior woman, I will take Wyaela, who is not afraid to be a female . .."

  "Or Lasiirnte Kandra?" Danaer teased. The big man actually blushed a bit. "Go tell some more Hes to those wet-ears. Maybe it will inspire them as much as Ti-Mbri does."

  Gordyan returned to entertaining the staff, and Danaer wended through the milling crowd. He toured the main room, peeping through curtains and doors left ajar, but failed to find Lira. Two sentries guarded a wide staircase leading to the upper storey. They did not challenge Danaer when he started up the steps. He feared that laxness boded ill for defenses against spies; neither man had seen him before, and he could have been a Markuand in disguise for all they knew.

  Upstairs, more orderlies and aides bustled about, and Danaer carefully kept out of their way as he searched more rooms. At the fifth door he stopped. Lira stood within, reading parchments, her expression deeply introspective. She looked careworn far beyond her tender years. Danaer hesitated to intrude, but as he paused on the threshold, she looked up at him. For a frightening instant she seemed to stare through him. Her mind was someplace impossibly distant from her body.

  Warily Danaer approached her, glancing at the parchment she had dropped on a table. Most of the writing was a busy scrawl far beyond his learning. But he could read a few names, ones all too familiar: Hablit and Diilbok. The scribbling was enclosed by a

  strangely drawn tracery, an intricate and magical net of ink. Looking at it made Danaer dizzy. The dread emptiness had left Lira's eyes now, and she managed a wan smile. "Danaer ... is it ... is it well with you?"

  It was not her normal tone. She seemed to be returning from wherever her mind had been, a place Danaer had no wish to know. "Ai. Shaartre reports to the Captain, and I hoped to steal some time with you while he does."

  "I am glad you did." But her face did not reflect that. Her shoulders slumped and Danaer tried to embrace her. Lira pulled away irritably. "It is these . . . these workings of the Markuand wizard. I had not imagined anyone could be so powerful, and so evil!"

  "Let me lend you my strength, qedra," Danaer began. She tensed and shook her head. Yet he felt in her a desire to yield to his protection, a desire she dared not submit to.

  "Do you guard the walls tonight?" she asked.

  "At midwatch. I am to be Branra's lookout."

  She allowed him to take her hands, but still refused his embrace. Danaer had feared that her fingers would be cold, but they were warm, unmoving within his own.

  "Warn the Lieutenant to be most alert. I have already spoken to him and Yistar, but I fear they do not quite understand just what threatens us. I have warned the officers so frequently, but I know that in the military sometimes such words are lost along the way."

  Her womanly phrasing of a Troop Leader's classic complaint made Danaer smile. "I will warn Branra, and I will be your defender against this wicked Markuand sorcerer."

  She trembled violently, resisting his devotion. He sensed that in some unfathomed manner she attempted to protect him. Visibly she retreated within herself, to a sanctuary he could not reach. "My Web will defend me,"

  "Here? So far from Ulodovol?"

  Fear flared in her countenance. "Yes! Do not be concerned for me. I am a sorkra, and you do not know

  our arts in these things. I will be all right. Please go now, and . . . and beware of the unexpected, qedra."

  Reluctantly he obeyed. In the doorway he looked back and saw Lira again staring down at the magical parchment, her lips moving. Muttering in his anger and helplessness against these things, Danaer went to find Shaartre and get back to their barracks.

  His sour humor did not abate, nor did troublesome thoughts leave when he lay down on his pallet. The straw seemed filled with rocks and crawling with vermin. He tossed restlessly, his dreams ominous. When Shaartre began kicking the men awake at mid-watch, Danaer found a bitter taste in his mouth. Shaartre only laughed when he snapped an obscenity at the older Troop Leader. Danaer set himself to what had to be done.

  He armed himself and got others to take up weapons, issuing commands and marching in step. He moved by reflex and long practice, too weary to initiate thought. They tramped through torchlit streets and close alleyways and places so steep the steps cut in the stone resembled ladders. Gradually Danaer came to full wakefulness, at about the time they began mounting a long brick ramp. Lances banged clumsily against walls, and men stumbled over broken pieces of brick and cobblestones. One ramp became another moving at right angles, and then a third turned back on itself, a twisting snake of brickwork, always crawling up toward the unseen stars. Ramps ended and became stairs, then wooden ladders.

  Men tripped and puffed and dripped sweat, groping for footing in the wavering light of torches bracketed at irregular intervals along the walls. Danaer whispered to Shaartre, "How far up are we going? I thought we were to guard the walls, not the moon."

  "We will be there soon. Patience. I learned this route while you were busy with your witch woman, and you must trust me."

  As they continued to climb, Danaer wondered if he could memorize all the twists and turns. He was a scout, but not at all used to this sort of territory. If he

  had to lead his units back this way in a hurry, could he retrace each staircase and ramp?

  At long last they emerged from that ascending tunnel. The dank and filth-strewn streets lay far below. Men took positions along a broad stone banquette, flopping down gratefully and panting after their exertions. Danaer queried Shaartre, then went to a small turret at the junction of two stair tops. "My lord?" he said softly. Branra sat in a tiny room, studying maps by the dim light of a candle. A cloak was thrown over the loophole opening toward the river so that no Hght could escape in that direction. Branra looked up with a more ordinary form of that air of distraction Danaer had witnessed earlier in Lira. The officer oriented himself to react to the man before him. "Units one through fifteen are now at their positions, my lord."

  "You look none too alert," Bjanra said. "That will not do. I need your sharp eyes. Siim Lorzosh-Fila says the Markuand have sent attack boats to harass the walls each of the last eight nights. Now that we have arrived, probably they will strike the harder."

  "I am awake now, ray lord. The Lady Nalu says we must expect wizardry as well as a frontal attack. In what form she does not know. It may be that this night is critical."

  "Mm, yes, before we have time to lay our defenses more strongly." Branra snuffed the candle with his hand and rose. "I want yoti serving as lookout here, near me."

  Danaer went to the low wall and peered through the narrow horizontal grille. The angle was wide and gave him an excellent vantage clear to the opposite bank. Branra crossed his arms atop the wall and rested his chin on his knuckles. "Is the river larger than you anticipated, Destre?"

  "It is not the Bhid," Danaer admitted, awed. The streamlets of Siank and Vidik and the broad, lazy ooze of Nyald's watercourse were trickles compared to this monster dividing Krantin from Clarique. "The Markuand cannot cross without being seen."

  "Stopping them after they cross is the problem. But yes, they are easy enough to see."

  AH along the far bank lay a golden line of twinkling lights, much like a row of brightly glowing insects. To be seen so far away, those fires would have to be of council size. "Perhaps it is a sham, my lord, to frighten us."

  "Perhaps," Branra said morosely. "Our spies give us contradictory reports, as spies usually do. I think we may rely on nothing about these Markuand, or about their black wizard Lira Nalu warns us of."

 
Danaer strained his eyes looking northward, toward the bluffs where Gordyan must be by now. Then he looked south, though he knew he would not be able to see the marshes in the darkness. Did the Markuand also guard Deki's flanks, where Gordyan and Ti-Mori and Qhorda waited an attack? "How far along the river do the campfires go?"

  "Not so far as they did formerly, according to the Dekans. The Markuand now seem to be gathering directly opposite the city. Deki controls the only shallow water and good ferry point for many leagues in either direction. North stand the bluffs and the Irico Falls; south lie the marshes and the white water rocks. The odds are worse there than here." Branra was bareheaded, his brow glistening with sweat and his dark hair straggling damply over his forehead. He shooed away midges and spoke calmly of the situation confronting Krantin. "Whoever leads the enemy is canny in both magic and tactics. He will strike here. He must crush Deki first if he hopes to conquer our land."

  Danaer gazed at the fires. What had Lira said at the council? It seemed that their numbers were endless.

  He heard murmuring voices far below and peered over the wall. A few fishermen had anchored their rafts and cast lines, trying to keep to their trade despite the dangers of war. Their cries of satisfaction when they landed fish rose in the muggy air. Danaer's eyes were adjusting rapidly to the night, and he could easily discern their dark forms. He could also see the

  broken remains of a quay, demolished by the Dekans in order to deny landing to the Markuand. Every wharf and pier along the bank had been razed, converted into rocky barricades to wreck the bottom of craft which came too near. Calculating the drop to that wreckage, Danaer saw that Deki's eastern walls were much higher than the western ramparts, lofty though those were, for these defenses were built on part of the bluffs. Beneath crenels and watchtowers the massive wall dropped smooth and sheer to a rock-strewn landing area many lengths below. The river gate, like the once-proud quays, was battered into uselessness and obstacles heaped before it. Not even the Dekans could now use the gate. The fishermen must have rowed here from somewhere else along the banks, from bluffs or marshland. Deki was locked solidly against any assault from the east.

  Danaer studied the broad face of the river and the fires a long while. Sentries patrolled the stairs and ramps, and soldiers hunkered at their posts. Officers took messages and gave orders. Once Captain Yistar and Lorzosh-Fila walked by Branra's position, surveying the condition of the defenses, then returning to a command location elsewhere on the walls.

  Well past the middle of the night, Danaer suddenly leaned forward and squinted into the blackness.

  "What is it?" Branra came at once to see what had drawn the scout's notice.

  "I am not sure, my lord. A boat? Perhaps a swimmer?"

  "The fishermen?"

  "They have gone. No, this is something that was not there before. See the wake?" Danaer pointed to a shimmering disturbance in the river, an arrow of water aiming at the walls.

  "Your eyes are better than mine. I... I see nothing."

  The vee of that wake was very close now, no more than twenty lengths out. Danaer glanced briefly at the officer, reading his face. Branra did not doubt him, but he truly did not see anything. Nor, it seemed, did any other lookout; no cry of alarm came from other posts along the walls.

  Danaer sensed an unpleasant and increasingly familiar coldness stealing through his marrow, radiating from the obsidian talisman. Lira was not with him, but this was very near the same chill he had felt outside her tent. "It is a boat's wake," Danaer said decisively.

  Branra leaned over the wall and slapped the stones in his frustration. "I still cannot see it. Where do you make it come to berth?"

  The mysterious movement in the water was disappearing even now, and Danaer quickly traced it toward the head of the watery arrow, slightly to his left and squarely against the sheerest part of the wall.

  "Indeed?" Branra said in a tight voice. "Come." He was angry, but the anger was not directed at Danaer. Puzzled, the scout hurried after him. They raced down ladders and stairs and ramps, taking a different route than the one Shaartre had followed.

  Once in the streets, Branra led the way past the huge barred gates, which were protected by sentries even though the outer approaches were thoroughly barricaded. The ofl&cer rushed through cluttered, twisting lanes foul with slops. As he passed, guards straightened and dropped their lance butts on the stone pavement, coming to abrupt attention, saluting in surprise, then staring at Branra and the soldier at his heels. Danaer suspected the two of them looked like a hunting wolf trailed by a bewildered cub.

  "Are we near the place, would you say, scout?"

  "Ai, my lord, I make it very close."

  "Sergeant of the Post?" Branra hailed. A squad stood at attention near the end of the Httle street. Their arms did not move, nor did they blink in response. They seemed frozen.

  For a moment Danaer thought they had been slain and propped up in these lifelike attitudes to serve as decoys, a Destre ruse he knew well. Branra was acquainted with the same trick, and they both moved forward cautiously, hands on their swords. Taking a deep breath, Danaer shook the arm of the man commanding the post, a fellow Troop Leader from Siank garrison. Instantly the soldier's eyes opened wide, and

  he cried out and seized Danaer's tunic. "What? What is this? Why . . . why, my lord. How? Why .. ."

  It was plain the fellow was as lost as one yanked out of a deep sleep without any warning. The scent of witchcraft filled the street as the man gaped about in pitiful confusion. Branra pointed to the other sleeping men trapped in a waking nightmare. "Rouse them. Your little sorkra was indeed wise to warn us of magic this night."

  As Danaer brought each man back to himself, Branra questioned the stunned Troop Leader. "Did anyone approach your post? Did you see anyone? Was any attempt made to accost you, to cast charms or spells over you?"

  "I ... I swear, my lord, no one! We saw no one. It ... all at once the two of you were here and ..."

  Branra edged toward a narrow opening beyond the post, peering into the dark space. "What is this?"

  "Part of the original walls." Branra put a finger to his lips and the man spoke more softly. "So the Dekans told us." In whispers, Branra bade him fetch reinforcements. Eager to make amends, the man ran off and soon returned with two more squads of unit men and some Dekan militia.

  Branra and Danaer had squirmed into the opening and examined the stone crevice. Danaer held a torch while Branra scraped at the dust with his boot, then knelt to probe at a pile of brush against the wall. His eyes met Danaer's. Brush, here in a city of stone?

  Keeping Branra's order for silence, the soldiers and mihtiamen crept into the narrow passage, clustering around Danaer and the officer. Danaer put out the torch and they stood listening in the dark. Behind the brush there was a soft clinking and scrabbling and male voices. Danaer's gut tightened and he slid his sword from its scabbard, as did Branra and all those who had such weapons. Others hefted cudgels and stood ready with lances, their attention focused on the wall.

  Something fell within, and there was a momentary hush, as if the unseen workmen feared they might have been overheard. Then they moved again and

  stone scraped against stone. With much grunting and ahen cursing, a part of the wall was being removed. Feebly, filtering through the brush, came the gleam of a lantern.

  Steadily the enemy gnawed away at the city's belly, burrowing through a forgotten chink in Deki's armor.

  Then the lantern's gleam drew nearer the brush and fingers groped through broken stone, digging at loose pebbles, pushing debris into the alleyway where Branra and his men waited. A white-clad arm, covered with stone dust and dirt, swept aside the last of the loose fill and brush, and a man stepped through the newly created doorway, beckoning out those behind him.

  "Now!" Branra roared as the unsuspecting sappers crawled out into his trap. The lantern was with them, behind them, silhouetting them as ready targets for those standing in the darkness.

  What Lir
a had described was true—the Markuand, even when stabbed or battered, did not scream. But they could fear, and seek life, and two of them rushed back into the opening they had just left, as their companions were being killed. Branra and Danaer ran after them, eager in pursuit. The sappers' tunnel became their grave. It was not true swordwork, but more like killing rats witjti great knives.

  Their swords gory, Danaer and the officer stood over the bodies and peered deeper into the man-made cave. "They broke all the way through," Branra said incredulously. Five lengths' distant they could see another opening at the far end of the tunnel, with rippling water lit by the faraway Markuand camp-fires.

  How was it possible? How could the Dekans not have detected such extensive tunneling within the very bowels of the walls? Surely this had been the work of many nights, and the sappers' boat would have been seen. ...

  The tunnel air was heavy with the odors of earth and stone, but to^^gtenaer another smell pervaded the place—the reek of^izardry. The tension in his belly became a hurtful knot. He had seen the boat's wake,

  but he wore Lira's talisman. The Deki lookouts had not. Was this the reason . . . ?

  "My lord, I do not think we are alone, nor were these the last of the Markuand to invade the walls."

  "What?"

  Even as Danaer spoke, a shadowy shape eased away from the side of the tunnel ahead—a man shape, large and powerful. A terrible aura of evil emanated from that form. Branra's further questions were stillborn in his throat as the nobleman sensed the same horror now raking Danaer.

  "The Markuand wizard!" Danaer realized with a shock he had blurted that aloud, without conscious thought or will.

  "We must destroy him!" Branra shouted, charging forward, Danaer right behind him, fury overriding his fear.

  The shadow shape retreated toward the opening in the outer wall. He was trapped! If his magical glamour had hid the boat, it would not protect him now. Branra was almost upon him, and if the wizard took to the river, he would shout for archers and burning oil to send the enemy sorcerer to his death in the water.