The Bard of Sorcery

by Gerard Houarner

  "I, too, have seen gods rake men with sorcerous talons, Cumulain. I saw a wizard die, fought myself on a parallel world, allowed a creature to attach itself to me, and was almost slain by my own blind fears and desires.

  "Yet all that seems as if it happened long ago, to another man, or rather to a boy. My history is to me like one of my tales—an artifice contrived to entertain and distract. And now I dream about my parents. I've never known them, but I saw their faces in my dream. I knew them. Isn't that strange?"

  He paused, waiting for her to respond. She was silent. "I'm tired, Cumulain," he said at last. "I want to rest." Cumulain rested her head on Tralane's scarred shoulder.

  "I know," she answered soothingly. "My mother has seen this in you, and she has taught me how to see such weariness. But you are young, Tralane, and still have things to do. My mother rests now, even though she would rather be pitting her waning strength against the Beast, because she has done the things she set out to-do."

  "I have no tasks to complete. I am adrift, useless. You said so yourself."

  Cumulain sat up angrily. "I said you were a danger because you were adrift, Tralane. Do not twist my words to suit your self-pity. If you don't have a past, find it. Go back to your world and find your magician's dwelling place. There must be a record of your birth, or perhaps an agreement between your true parents and this adopter. Dig for your past, Tralane, and find the clues. What happened to your family? Why were you not placed in the care of someone from your birthplace? Why a magician? Why Mathi?"

  Tralane rose to lean on one of his elbows. He spoke loudly, looking down at her, beating back her words from his vantage point.

  "And how do I get back, little one? Should I survive this Beast of yours, what am I to do with the Jade Warrior? How can I travel back to my home world without mastering the Eye and freeing myself from the one who is watching over me? And what am I going to do when the sorcerer from whom I stole this little trinket discovers, as he surely will, that I have returned? I am a mortal, not some god or hero blessed with divine power."

  "Are you? Then why does so much happen to you? Why are you so important that a creature follows you to your own destruction? Why must you die?"

  "Who says I must die?" Tralane protested, knowing he was denying his own thoughts. "The Jade Warrior hasn't tried to harm me."

  "Come to your senses, Tralane. You've seen enough intrigue to know you're caught in a trap; you cannot rest unless you wish to die. And if that is so, I should have let Jax throw you to the Beast when you first arrived."

  Tralane sank down into the bed and let his eyes roam the ceiling. The suitable retort did not fly from his lips.

  "There are only two paths to follow," she continued, her anger subsided and her voice intense. "You can continue your wanderings and eventually destroy yourself. Or you can stand and fight. I cannot say if you will win or not, but at least you will have a chance."

  "And how do I fight the invulnerable, the unseen, the all-powerful?"

  Cumulain smiled with disbelief. "You, a sorcerer's apprentice, and you cannot see the way?"

  Tralane glanced at his scarred shoulder. "I've shown you the proof of my failure in magic."

  "Indeed. Then I will teach you."

  "With simple peasant spells I will conquer my enemies?"

  "No, Tralane. With a little simple wisdom."

  Then she stood and, to Tralane's surprise, began to undress. Her hair diffused the light breaking in through the cracks of the shutters, softening the contours of her head with a glowing aura of daylight. The aura trickled down the side of her body, accentuating the slimness of her waist, the flair of her hips. She turned slightly as she stepped out of the dress and exposed the dark triangle of her loin and her erect nipples to the sun beams. Her face was in shadow, but he could detect the glimmer of a smile on her lips as she looked at him with soft, dark eyes. He reached out with his hand, and she took it, intertwining her fingers with his. She joined him under the covers, embracing him with her arms and thighs. The tension produced by their brief confrontation flew out of his body with a breath. He stroked the creamy skin of her back and savored the warmth of her body pressing against his.

  "It's not even the afternoon yet," she said, closing her eyes and arching her neck as she stretched, "but I feel as if I've already worked a full day." Then she laughed and squeezed his arms playfully, and he went to her with a passion he had never known before, until their love left them arm in arm in the gentle wake of affection. Tralane slept deeply and without dreams.

  Chapter 16

  Tralane gradually came out of his slumber, drawn by a flickering half-light, like a ghostly apparition hovering just at the edge of his field of vision. He hoped for a while that his waking was a dream, but the stirring of the covers near his foot alerted him to the reality he was slowly entering. He rolled over on his back and squinted through crusty eyelids to find Cumulain sitting up in bed, drawing up her feet to sit cross-legged, and studying Wyden's Eye, which lay in her lap like a piece of jewelry she was planning to wear. Outside the shutters, evening had fallen. A candle burned lazily on the table next to the bed.

  "A fine piece of work," Cumulain said without turning around to look at Tralane, seemingly absorbed in the intricacies of the amulet.

  "I've always thought so," Tralane replied in a light tone, though his response carried uncomfortable reverberations of a bravado he did not feel.

  "Yes, but whoever made you forgot to let you cool long enough in water," Cumulain laughed and fell back on the bard's chest. He cried out but yielded to her weight, stroking her hair with one hand, her throat with the other. She held the Eye aloft, letting the candle light catch the flowing lines of the emerald jewel in its silver-woven web.

  "What do you make of it?" he asked, after they had listened for a while to the wind blowing outside.

  "It can be mastered, Tralane. You've been trained for the art, though you may never have exercised the will to control the forces you've been taught to call. The problem with you, dear Tralane, lies not so much with what you can do as with what you want to do."

  "Oh yes, I've always wanted to do a lot of things, and I never seem to manage them all."

  "Please wake up, Tralane," she said with exasperation, "and join me in this world. You've never really wanted to do anything but run."

  Tralane thought for a moment. "I do that well," he commented.

  "I'm sure. But there are better ways to pass the time."

  "You, perhaps?" Tralane was aware that he was slipping into glib seductiveness. He had already had the woman, but now he felt the urge to keep her. He did not want to leave her or give her up to anyone else. Jealousy lurked on the fringes of his thoughts, prodding him to build a wall of fantasy around Cumulain, so that none but he could touch her.

  Cumulain looked at him sadly. "Have you forgotten so soon what I said could be seen in you?"

  "Is there a man who claims you?" Tralane asked, only partly in jest.

  "There's been no talk of love since the Beast broke the bounds of tradition and claimed his own sacrifices. There can be no love until the siege is broken and the roads freed from ice, snow, and the threat of death."

  "I know, I know. But afterwards—"

  "We shall see. At this moment, no one has claims on me."

  She turned her attention back to the Eye, holding the amulet in her palm.

  "How did you learn to use the Eye?" she asked, her voice hardening to the tough, businesslike tone of a tavern keeper.

  "The person—the woman—who helped me steal it showed me how."

  "She taught you poorly."

  "There were some loose ends on my part of the bargain, too," Tralane replied.

  Cumulain ignored the statement and traced a sign in the air over the amulet, with no effect.

  "There are webs of power surrounding this trinket. The trick is to find the one we want."

  She moved her finger back and forth, up and down, searching among strands of sorcery for
the key that would unleash its power. Tralane began to see the patterns she was tracing as his eyes adjusted in the way they had been trained to do when in the presence of magic. Memories of the old wizard explaining the principles of binding magic forces to particular tasks within such tokens returned to him. He recognized the sign he had learned from Crecia in the tangled web and realized Cumulain's probing fingers were dancing too near the locks that held back the threshold-breaking energies within the Eye.

  "Watch out," Tralane cried in alarm, rising to stay her hand.

  She leaned out of his reach. "I'm close to the door between worlds? Good, that means what we want is close by. Show me the sign."

  With trepidations, Tralane worked the sign Crecia had shown him in the air before him, careful not to do it too near the amulet. She repeated his movements several times until she understood their nuances, then worked several variations over the amulet. After one of them, the air shimmered over her hands, lost its transparency, became a reflecting pool, and then shattered as ripples broke the surface and reformed into shifting shapes and colors.

  "Willful purpose, a mind searching with intent, fills the emptiness with an image," she explained. "This thing is named Wyden's Eye, and whoever or whatever Wyden is, his Eye is still an eye. It can be made to see. The amulet has the power to cross over to other worlds, thus is must also be able to see them." She paused, waiting for Tralane's question. He understood, and so said nothing. She continued with a piece of advice.

  "See as the Eye sees, and not as you would have things be, and you will master its power."

  Her forehead creased, and a succession of scenes passed before their eyes. The last image was that of a vast city spread to the horizon of a plain, with broad avenues and majestic temples framing smaller streets and rows of buildings. The city appeared to be abandoned, and what structures Tralane could discern were in partial ruin. Then the picture faded, and with it the memory of the brief scenes that had passed before it. But the city remained in Tralane's mind.

  Cumulain fell back on the bed, breathing heavily with her eyes closed.

  "That's hard work. The amulet would be easier to control if one had a specific destination in mind. You remember the sign for the images?"

  "Yes," and he repeated it, even though she could not see him. He executed the sign only once, as he had released his old skills from the bind of ignorance he had kept them under.

  "Then at least you'll see where you're going and be able to direct yourself to a destination instead of being guided by someone else. And there is someone else," she said seriously. "I felt another will contesting my seizure of the amulet. But whoever exerts influence over this Eye, and thus you, is far away. He can be overcome."

  Tralane was moodily silent. He was glad to have learned the more refined aspects of Wyden's Eye and its powers. Yet he was not eager to use the amulet, for to do so would be to abandon her.

  "If I go," he asked suspiciously, already knowing the answer, "will you come—"

  "With you? And how will poor Jax manage the Wilderness Flower by himself? Who will bury and mourn my mother properly? Only I was trained in sorcery, and only I know how to protect her soul on its journey to other lands beyond the living. No, I will not go. But I've told you, there are duties which you must fulfill."

  "Yes, yes, the Beast," he said.

  "True, you must kill it for us, but there are others for yourself." She thrust her legs out from underneath the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. "I must speak to my mother about the possibility of getting you out of bed sooner."

  "But I'm still hurt," he complained. "My wounds haven't completely healed."

  "True, but perhaps we can remedy that."

  Her hand searched through the folds of the cover for the pouch. Finding it, she slipped the amulet in and dropped the package back on the bed.

  "Remember what I've shown you, Tralane. Use that hook of knowledge to catch whatever other lessons of sorcery are swimming in the depths of your memory. Don't forsake your past for illusory futures—you are what you have been, seasoned with the promise of what you can be."

  She stood and dressed quickly. "I know you better now. My thanks for your confidence."

  Tralane did not reply, uncertain of his feelings and the words with which to express them. She had grounded his ephemeral nature, which he recognized had reveled in the trivialities and superficialities of court life. He admired her wisdom, so much so that he wanted to tell her the many tales he knew, so that she might explain their meaning to him.

  The old tide of loneliness slid over the exposed and shifting sands of his happiness as she made ready to leave. He felt abandoned, loved and cherished momentarily, only to be thrown back into the roaring sea to fend for himself. Her every rebuff was a dagger twisting in his stomach. She could not hurt him outright, he sensed. But she would not allow him to stay, to be nurtured with warmth in safety. He loved her, but in the source of that emotion were the flaws which could only tear at the bonds holding them together.

  And she had sparked desires in him that were flaming higher than those for isolated self-protection. There were questions to be asked, starting with the amulet—the immediate, material mystery—and growing like a many-limbed tree into the nature of his origin, his parents, Mathi, the world of his birth, the parallel planes that were lined like tomes on an infinite shelf. A new curiosity, personal on one hand, visionary on the other, was born from the hard, dry wasteland of his past. This sense of mission filled him with satisfaction and hunger at the same time.

  He was falling into a pit, but the hole did not darken and constrict around him, clutching him close to the soundless heart of death. Rather, the pit yawned even wider, the light growing brighter, as if he had fallen through a hole in the sky. He no longer felt attracted to mere adventure or petty schemes for self-aggrandizement, nor was he even struck with the urge to find one true pattern, one true meaning in all the events he had experienced. The absurd brevity of a meaning which could be encompassed by his mind was made apparent by the simple instrument of the amulet. Here were limitless possibilities and variations. All the gods, all the faiths, all the conquerors and heroes, were mere facets of a jewel and could not be seen all at once. To turn the stone was to fill the eyes with the gleam of a new facet. The whole concerned him only with its inescapable presence; it was the array of worlds and possibilities opened to Tralane that pricked at his attention. Life was not a state to preserve at all cost and to rush through as quickly and unconcernedly as possible.

  Yet along with this need to expand, there was also the desire for Cumulain. For what the world of the senses and action could not provide, she could supply in ample amounts.

  Tralane followed Cumulain eagerly with his eyes and she, seeming to sense his stare, turned to face him at the door.

  "You must not think of me too hard, Tralane. I have my mission, as you have yours. It would be a fine life with the two of us together, but that cannot be." She moved as if to leave, hesitated, and spoke again. "Always face your enemies, my dear Tralane, even as I and my kin face the Beast, though we are in terror of it and cannot defeat it. To turn one's back on an enemy and run is to be overwhelmed by that enemy, suddenly, and swiftly, sooner or later."

  "A wise saying," Tralane replied, mixing sarcasm with respect.

  "Then remember it in times of trial. Now rest, and we shall see how well a warrior can heal."

  He watched her exit, closing the door silently behind her. He almost shouted after her, asking why she didn't stay with him. But her steps faded quickly, and the gloom leaked through the window shutters and the chimney vents, pressing the dwindling taper with shadows. He leaned over to the table and blew out the flame, then sank back into his bed and savored the moment of comfort.

  He had forgotten the last time he had slept in a real bed. Weeks of traveling, predated by his brief tour as a campaigning archer on his home world, had not afforded him his usual access to the private bedrooms of those he was accustomed to se
rve. It had been awhile since he had even occupied private quarters, acting out the role of some noble lady's privileged entertainer and advisor. He had begun to take such luxuries as his due and whatever rough living he did between more comfortable lodgings he had considered a mere temporary inconvenience, a spell of rudeness that would renew his taste for finery. The cramped cot and the later stone bench on which he had slept in Mathi's tower had been forgotten until now. The unexpected warmth and softness of his bed, as well as the harsh wind blowing outside and the renewed vigor of his body, put him at ease. He allowed his disappointment over Cumulain's departure to slip through his dissolving attention. His mind drifted peacefully into the night.

  Time was a tranquil pool, and night still reigned over the world when Tralane began to see the darkness transform itself into colors that did not betoken the dawn. Startled, he reached for the pouch containing Wyden's Eye, and found it already in his hand. He took out the amulet as shadows clashed with shadows all around him. Colors bloomed in corners of the room, dark purples and blues, peppered with shades of green, yellow, and red that grew over his bed in the form of long filaments. Constantly shifting shapes of color flew around the room as if blown by a wind Tralane could not feel. They began to dance in a discernible pattern, pulsating, throbbing. At first he thought his eyes were playing a trick on him; then he doubted his mind—he feared a fever, or the rising of a mysterious, monstrous part of himself. Finally, he began to suspect the entire effect as being an illusion, a taunting thrust at his sanity sent by his nameless tormentor through. Wyden's Eye.

  Then he looked at the amulet.

  The night convulsed. Waves of pressure passed over Tralane's body. He imagined himself being swallowed, head first, by an enormous serpent. The constrictions came with increasing rapidity, until their speed and force were crushing him. He twisted and turned, struggling to resist the darkness that was sucking him into itself.

  Cumulain and all she had said to him echoed through the waves of pain, and he cast the line of his fading consciousness deep into the ocean of memory. He thought of Mathi, his stern, cold visage peering over open tomes of sorcery, the dry, cracked voice admonishing Tralane to concentrate, to focus his mind, to create an image of what he wished and make it happen. Magic. He thought of the art of healing.