Madwand (Illustrated) (14 page)

She began to wring her hands. He rose, and she backed away. He took a step toward her, and she continued to retreat. He watched as she reached the far wall and passed through it, leaving behind perhaps the faintest trace of an exotic perfume.

He returned to his bench and seated himself, the entire sequence merging with his interrupted dream into a kind of hallucinatory half-world. Perhaps he had imagined it, he considered. Only her high cheekbones, large eyes, small chin and narrow span of brow beneath wide-swept wings of hair made such a strong, such a definite image. He sought, but she had left no strands behind by which he might test her reality.

He crossed to the door of the cell. For how long he had slept, he was not certain. He was still tired, but felt a little more rested than he had earlier. It seemed likely now that most others in the place would be asleep. Therefore, the time seemed good to depart, to commence investigating. He shifted to the second seeing to study the area about the door.

The response was slow, murky. It was as if he were wearing smoked glasses on a foggy day. He concentrated on the bar outside, on locating a connecting strand by which he might draw it.

Slowly, very slowly, a greenish strand came into focus—and passed out of it again. He called upon his dragonmark for power and willed that it return.

But the dragonmark did not throb. There was only a tingling, an itching sensation upon his forearm. The strand swam back into view and he reached for it. There was no contact. It passed through his fingers as if they were not present. Then it faded again. His eyes began to ache.

He lowered his hands. What was happening? he wondered. This was the first time in all of his experience in this land that the power had failed him. Could Larick have done something to block its flow?

Then he remembered what Larick had said about the initiation rite—that it might have this effect, that one should refrain from even the simplest workings for several weeks. Yet it had worked earlier, when he had followed Larick about Avinconet. It must be erratic during this period, he decided with a sigh. Somehow, he could hardly think of the injunction as applying to himself. His initiation had been a sham, a trap. Or had it? He had gone through all the motions, had undergone consciousness-heightening experiences at the proper times. Could it be that he had actually passed his initiation while being transformed into a monster?

He shook his head and tried again. His eyes ached more and his temples began to throb. There was a burning sensation along his right forearm. Once more, he saw the strand dimly, but he was unable to influence it.

He returned to the bench and covered himself. He thought of the woman for a long while before he slept again. And this time the only dream-image that he could later recall was the demon head on the stick, grinning.

IX.

In some ways I suppose that it was illuminating, though I am not actually certain how. It did something for me or to me, but I do not know what. It also served to make my nature more obscure to me in certain areas. Yet—

I had entered Belken, that great, dark, glittering, stone hulk, moving along the high tunnel I had found within. In the topmost chamber I brooded for a time, in the place of the waters. I felt a kind of power there, reverberating all about me. It was, in some ways, very disturbing; yet I found it soothing at other levels. I decided then to investigate the entire psychic structure within the mountain.

The route that the would-be sorcerers would take from station to station was clearly marked in non-physical terms. I proceeded to the second area and meditated for a long while in that place, also. If it did good things for them, charged as it was with a kind of ordering power, I reasoned that it might benefit me, too.

How long I took at that and the next station, I do not know. A long while, I believe, for I was lost in long reveries and quickly forgot all about time as I regarded their progressions. It only occurred to me that it might be growing late when I felt an increase in the levels of intensity of those forces in which I was basking. I quickly traced it back to its origin in a circle of sorcerers in the glittering city below. At that time I also learned that it had grown dark outside. I knew this meant that the initiation was about to begin and that the power would continue to rise all night long. I moved on to the next station to maintain my lead. I wanted to complete the thing now, for I felt it possible that it might shake something loose in my memory, giving me what I sought.

Something strange happened at that fourth station, for I heard a voice—tantalizingly familiar—speaking as if addressing me personally, intimately even.

“Faney,” it said. “Faney.”

It was a masculine voice, and it seemed to me as if I should understand exactly what it meant by that pronouncement. It was spoken fairly sternly, as if some order were being laid upon me. Faney. Was this my name, summoned from my faded past by the charged ambiance? No, that did not seem quite right. Faney . . . 

“Faney!”—even stronger tones this time, and with them a roused sense of duty, a desire to follow the incomprehensible order and a sense of frustration at not being able to.

I expanded and contracted. I darted fitfully about within the chamber, seeking some means of discharging the injunction.

“Faney!”

Nothing. There was nothing that I could discover to do which would satisfy what was rapidly becoming a compulsion without an object.

So I moved on. And the power kept growing within the mountain. But the pressure was eased a bit in the next place, and I remained there for a long while. Again, I lost track of time and was only roused from a trance-like state into which I had lapsed by the sounds of the approaching candidates. Almost sluggishly, I drifted down to the next station so as not to be disturbed by them.

The sixth seemed more peaceful than any so far. I spread myself out and absorbed the good vibrations.

It did not seem that long before I heard them approaching again. This time I did not stir. I had no desire to depart and it occurred to me that it could be instructive to witness what went on in the course of the rites.

I watched them enter and take their positions. When he began speaking, I found myself peculiarly attracted to the one called Larick. I studied him, and then I realized why. It was an extraordinary discovery and I was still considering its effects when my attention was drawn to Pol. I was startled by the change in his appearance.

He was slouched well forward and his hands were enormous and scaly. A quick investigation beyond his garments showed me that his arms, though very attractive in their massive, dark fashion, were no longer
his
arms. Still he could not be unaware of this, and if it did not bother him I did not see why it should bother me.

But it did.

Further examination showed me that he was the only one of all those present whose anatomy had been altered. As I puzzled over this, another transformation began in the area of his shoulders and breast. This time I was able to trace it to its source, and I saw that Larick was causing it. I was unable to discover its motive in his mind, for a sorcerer’s thoughts become impenetrable when he is working with the stuff of his trade. And none of the others’ minds contained anything worth knowing; they were uniformly rapt in a kind of trance state.

I waited until they were finished there and moved on with them to the next station. Whether or not the motive would become clear to me, I was determined to investigate the method of the magical operation being practiced upon Pol.

I observed the next transformation very carefully and saw that it might more truly be considered a transference. As Pol’s leg was replaced by a larger, more powerful version, I was able to trace the shifting of materials beyond the mountain. I followed, speeding and spinning down avenues where space was wrinkled and time a stream with many bends and some few oxbow lakes. I followed to the place of the Gate—that dream of Pol’s which I had glimpsed. And I followed beyond, into the deadlands where I found a wailing creature whose body was now half-human, dragonmark upon the arm.

“Brother,” I addressed it, “wear them well this short while, for it is but some human rite.”

But it either could not or would not understand me. It continued its outcry and began beating at the transformed portions of its own person. So I laid a deep sleep upon it, there in the lee of a triangle of standing gray stones, serving both Pol and itself with little real effort on my own part. I told myself at the time that this was a necessary personal involvement—my first—in the affairs of others, for purposes of assuring that things be played out smoothly in their entirety, so as to satisfy a number of purely intellectual needs of my own.

But even then I was beginning to wonder.

I regarded that fascinating land for several extra instants before I swirled and began the long journey back, bright thunder and loud lightning oxymoronic over oxbows as I passed, passed I negative to reverse point and back, finding thoughts this time in Larick’s head, of Avinconet and those he served. The first glimmer of understanding came to me.

I rotated with a certain satisfaction, then followed them to the next station. There, I saw the transference repeated with Pol’s other leg. This annoyed me more than a little. His mind was as far asea as any of the others’, convincing me that he was being victimized. It did not seem a very fair thing, judging from the little I knew about humans, especially coming from Larick the way that it was.

When we moved on to the next one, several things occurred in addition to the alteration of Pol’s abdomen. The one candidate dropped dead. He, of course, was nothing to me; but at approximately the same moment there came a repetition of the word “Faney”. I studied the others for reactions to this, but there were none. Of course, they had just acquired a dead man which might have proved distracting; still, it had sounded very loud, and after a few moments I heard it again.

And then again.

It became steady, relentless in repetition. At first I cowered, but then I listened. How silly of me to have thought that the others could hear it when it was so obviously addressing me and me alone. I felt that at some level I was beginning to understand it. And then something else occurred.

The body was moved, the ritual proceeded, Pol was altered. But none of these seemed particularly important at just that moment. I was undergoing a change, far less physical in nature than Pol’s, a thing which raised fascinating and involved speculations on the subjects of free will and determinism. Unfortunately, I did not have time to pursue them just then, for my full attention was required by the change itself: I had changed my mind. I had taken an unstated, barely realized position of not interfering in the affairs of others for as long as I could remember. I suddenly brought it into focus, examined it and decided that the time had arrived to make an exception.

I did not like what was being done to Pol, but I did not possess the expertise necessary to reverse the phenomenon. I would do something, though—what, I was not certain—something to help him return to what was normal for him, so that he could deal with his own enemies as he saw fit.

I thought about it as we descended to the final station. The voice repeating “Faney” had faded. Pol predictably lost his feet at the next stop. I studied Larick in those moments when he was not conducting operations. I saw that he intended to spirit Pol off to Avinconet, where he would be a prisoner, as soon as the night’s work was concluded.

When we departed the last station and moved on into the big cavern, I watched as he laid the paralysis upon Pol and began conducting the others outside. It seemed that I might be able to lift the spell which held him there in the alcove, but I was uncertain as to what could be done next.

I followed the first initiate outside, to witness the last phase of things. Then I saw that a number of the masters had come up to accompany their people back into town. Lurking in a secluded spot, Mouseglove watched the cavemouth.

Of course.

I was already working on my plan as I returned to the cavern. When I discovered the sorcerer of the midnight visitation with Pol, however, I halted and observed. There was a great feeling of power about the man.

He began using that power. I saw that he was employing it to reverse the transference. I moved immediately to interfere in a fashion which could not be detected. It was pure impulse on my part, not to see such good materials wasted. The creature’s head could be mounted upon a stick by its fellows for all I cared. I made use of the drawstring space pocket as I had seen Pol do for storage purposes.

I saw Pol returned to himself and disguised. It in no way affected my plan when I realized what he intended to do. He would still be operating in an area of considerable danger.

So I sought the body of Krendel, the red-haired man who had died earlier. In that no one else was using it at the moment, I permeated it and set about studying how it worked, I wanted to have it ready soon to run the errand I had conceived of, to Mouseglove, who waited without.

X.

The small man slipped through the golden hole in the center of the room and it began to close behind him. A contracting halo, an optical aberration, the view through the opening was not that of the far side of the sumptuous apartment. Instead, the eye followed the dwindling form of the dark-clad man who had passed that way across a high tapestry-hung hall as it approached an arched gallery past pillars dark and light.

Then the wavering lens closed upon itself, flickered and was gone. Ibal slumped back upon the heap of cushions on which he had been sitting bolt upright. His breathing was suddenly deep and rapid; perspiration dotted his brow.

Vonnie, kneeling beside him, delicately blotted his face with a blue silk kerchief.

“There are not many,” she said, “can do the door spell well.”

He smiled.

“It is a strain,” he acknowledged, “and, to tell the truth, not something I’d ever intended to work again. This time, though . . . ”