* * *
Commodore Meier stepped forward on the dais, and stiffly cleared his throat. 'Each man lives according to his nature,' he said in official summary. The medals in his hand flashed brightly in the lights of the vid cameras. 'May others draw inspiration from the bravery and initiative cited here.'
Jensen held very still as the precious medallion was affixed to the sash on his chest. Like MacKenzie James, he never gambled; there had been no allowance for doubt. A Fleet officer with a future might pursue a skip-runner to the death. The duel of wits would continue. Reveling in his promotion and his honors, the newest Lieutenant Commander in the Fleet promised himself victory at the next pass.
The Snare
Inspired by the painting '
The Wizard'
by Don Maitz
The opening move was deadly because of its extreme simplicity. Iveldane caused one of the candles in the Wizard's private study to flicker out. There was no draft; the casement was tightly closed and latched against any intrusion of the starry night without. The Wizard raised no arcane defense. Mellowed, perhaps, by wine and smoke from his hookah, the enchanter, whose stare had once shattered mountains, and whose spoke
n word leashed earthquakes and
stilled the raging seas of hurricanes, suspected no threat from a single, darkened candle. He glanced up, even as a mortal might, annoyed at the sudden invasion of shadow across the drifting trough of his lap.
Spindled with smoke, the spark-tipped wick glowed red as the eye of a demon, pinning the Wizard's gaze. Before he shaped a Command of Rekindling, Iveldane's snare transfixed his unguarded mind like a spearshaft, and held it.
Wind tore like laughter through the chamber. Flung headlong from its ensorcelled current of air, the Wizard's goblet shattered in a spray of glass and wine. Iron candlesticks toppled, scattering the carpet with necklaces of flame. The spellbook crackled, a tumbling wheel of pages, as stone walls wavered and danced in destruction's wild light. Bound, the Great Wizard of Trevior sat with blinded eyes, unaware of all but the voice of his antagonist.
'Long have I awaited this moment,
Master
!' Deep in his cave of ice and rock, Iveldane smiled. The winds of his summoning screamed in echo of his taunt, and fanned the white mustache and tailored robes of his enemy into profane disarray. Hapless as a doll in the hands of a cruel child, the Master of Trevior was unable to protest.
Iveldane's smile broadened. 'Does my return from the prison you fashioned for me surprise you?'
He loosed his grip, slightly, allowing the Wizard enough will to reply. But the silence was disturbed only by the crisp speech of flames, and the Wizard did not imprint the inanimate with any message. Through the heat of his triumph, Iveldane sensed frost. It made him laugh.
Still, the Wizard said nothing. Iveldane borrowed current from the stars and banished the study with all its ruined comforts. For half an age, he had planned this. Spells spiralled and wove through his slim fingers. His dark brow shone damp with sweat. Presently, the Master of Trevior stood before him, bound in glassy chains of wizardry and ice.
'Do you fear me, Master?' The tone was mocking.
The Wizard's black eyes met blue ones without expression. 'I fear only a past misjudgment.' His words were calm as the sea's depths.
Iveldane felt his heart twist, but hatred did not shake his control. 'And was a thousand years of agony confined in a volcano's fiery core a
misjudgment
?'
Iveldane stared at his enemy, weighted with the bitterness and suffering of days past.
The Wizard bore his stony gaze, patient. 'Was it?'
Iveldane's expression soured, and echoes of his laughter bounced off pillared shafts of icicles. 'You'll answer, before I have done.'
The Wizard bowed his head.
Iveldane's confidence wavered. An icy draft tumbled across the chamber momentarily raising gooseflesh on his braceleted arms. The ornaments hid scars left by fetters of fire, and that nod had been the same gesture which condemned him to torment ten centuries past. But this time, nothing happened.
He taunts me,
Iveldane thought. Rage clamped his gut like iron. He called upon the earth, and dirt rose from the floor like a gaunt old hound, circling the Wizard's feet.
'I will seal you, living, into your grave, even as you did to me.' Iveldane's whisper carried clearly over the grind of soil and stones. The Wizard made no reply, though that freedom had been left him. Once, with a word, he would have smoothed the earth to rest. Iveldane waited, then wondered why he did not. 'I don't understand,' he said.
The Wizard looked up. 'You never understood.'
Iveldane unleashed his anger. Dust rose in screaming fists of maelstrom. When it se
ttle
d, the Wizard was buried wholly beneath a barrow of earth. Iveldane
sat, with his chin on his fist,
and waited for the Wizard to tumble the barriers that imprisoned him from the light. Yet he did not.
'You were once my Master, and my friend.' Iveldane stared at the mound of rubble, and memory surged over him like the tide ...
* * *
He saw himself as a boy again, frightened of the night and soaked by driving rain. The door against which he huddled, shivering, suddenly opened, spilling him awkwardly across a marble floor at the feet of the Master of Trevior.
'Why have you come here?' said the Wizard.
Iveldane looked up, and it seemed those dark eyes saw only the water which dripped from black hair onto the ragged cloth of his shirt. 'My Lord, I wish to learn.'
The Wizard's veined hand tightened on the door panel as he pushed it shut. 'Do you think I will beat you any less than the smith you ran away from?'
Iveldane flinched. Yet his reply was bold. 'My Lord, you are the World's Master. Should you beat me, then surely I will have earned it.'
The Wizard looked abruptly away, and a small shiver seemed to grip his thin frame. 'Remember this. The lesson of wisdom can be painful. And only one can be Master.' Flat as dark obsidian, his eyes returned to the boy. 'Do you understand?'
'Oh, yes, my Lord.'
The Wizard extended a strong warm hand, and helped the boy to his feet. 'Then let us start with dry clothes and warm soup.'
* * *
You never understood.
The words mocked, sharp as needles. Iveldane stared at the rubble which covered the Wizard who had uttered them, and felt the hair on his nape stir. He tried to laugh, but it felt wrong. 'Never once did you beat me.'
The earth was still.
'Instead you betrayed me.
Are you listening?'
The anguished words shattered into echoes against the glassy rungs of ice. When no answer came, Iveldane looked once more into the past...
* * *
'I have taught you all I know.' Cloaked in the golden glow of candles, the Wizard stood with a shadowed face. 'The time has come for you to leave me.'
Iveldane raised eyes pale as frost. His hair glanced in the light like a raven's wing. 'You are the World's Master. There is no place I can go where I will not walk in your shadow.'
The Wizard spoke with sorrow. 'Some things cannot be taught. If you have loved me, go, and learn contentment.'
'That is a poor return for the years and the knowledge you have given me, Master.' Iveldane knelt on the patterned carpet, unashamed. 'Let me stay and serve at your side.'
'Service is not your fate.'
Iveldane looked up, and saw an old man with tears on his face. His own heart turned in anguished response. 'I beg you, let me stay.'
Salt-drops fell like sparks in the candlelight. The Wizard cried out, once, in protest, before steadying his control. Then he raised his Mastery, and sure hands carved the air like ice. 'There is only one reward I can offer for such loyalty.'
The room crumbled out of solidity with a sigh. Iveldane felt himself lifted as though weightless. His sight blurred into blindness. All bodily sensation fell away, until his spirit seemed to stream across eternity like blown smoke. Held fast by shackles of wind, Iveldane made no attempt to resist. If the World's Master saw fit to imprison him, no skill he possessed would avail.
Air was a gentle jailer. Iveldane knew neither pain nor want, and his thoughts were his own, for the Wizard left him alone.
He tests my love,
Iveldane thought. Certain in his loyalty, he waited one thousand years with flawless patience. Yet the Wizard never came.
'Have you forgotten me?' Snatched by tireless currents of wind, Iveldane's appeal went unregarded. Doubts assailed him. He fought them, when they grew too strong. His beleaguered mind imagined the world swept by flood, famine, and earthquake.
'Disaster would keep my Master from me,' Iveldane reasoned aloud, and he wept. 'Free me, Lord. Gladly would I lend my strength to yours.'
But if the winds carried the words to their Master's ear, he did not respond.
Perhaps he, too, is prisoner,
Iveldane realized. Desire for freedom arose within him like a wave. Tireless as the tides, it battered his patience until he could no longer endure.
Iveldane struck at his bonds. He struggled until his muscles burned with exhaustion, and the sweat of exertion chilled on his skin. The wind's whisper mocked his efforts. To silence it, he raised glittering webs of enchantment, and discharged them as blazing white wheels of fire. The wind swallowed his energies, scatheless. It would heed but a single master's word, and that one, the Wizard of Trevior. But confinement had robbed Iveldane of reason. He fought, until weariness claimed him, then woke and fought again. Yet against his prison of air, all efforts were vain. Centuries passed. His passion cooled to listless despair.
Sucked clean of emotion, Iveldane lay passive. The wind gradually claimed the hollow place his thoughts had abandoned. Its sibilant voice filled his battered mind until sight and sound were forgotten, and former experience became shadowy and insubstantial as a dream. Iveldane merged with the wind,
became
the wind, and so inherited its secrets.
Years went by before that knowledge held meaning. Startled to tears, one day, by realization he held the key to his own freedom, Iveldane spoke with a tongue long unaccustomed to words. His bonds dissolved. The air turned around him. His feet struck ground and he stumbled, unprepared for his own weight, and landed on his knees in sand.
For one unbelieving moment, he knelt, blind with weeping, nostrils filled with the salt breeze off the sea and the sour scent of marsh grass.
The earth was whole, untroubled by the nightmares his captive mind had imagined.
Relieved, Iveldane raised his eyes to the sunlight, and saw the Wizard waiting for him on a rock-strewn rise a short distance away. The breezes toyed with blue and gold robes, rippling the sleeves like banners.
Iveldane rose, aflame with the joy of reunion. 'My Lord, I am your servant, still.' Naked and polished to slenderness by long years as the wind's captive, Iveldane crossed the sandspit.
The Wizard watched his approach with black, fathomless eyes, no welcome at all on his face. 'I never doubted your love.'
Iveldane checked, wrenched by sudden confusion. Elation drained from his heart, leaving terrible emptiness. 'Then, my Lord, why did you banish me?'
The Wizard stared at the breakers, silent.
Iveldane bent and scooped a palm full of pebbles from the soil at his feet. Their roughness scoured at his skin, as one by one, he cast them tumbling, into the teeth of the surf. 'Did you take the idea from Maegrel?' Unwanted bitterness threaded his tone. 'He did the same with his apprentice, apparently for sport.'
'True enough.' The Wizard watched the last stone's flight, the brief splash of impact drowned in the rush of incoming tide. 'Can you name Maegrel's apprentice?'
Iveldane's hands hung at his sides, empty. Wind teased his black hair back from features stippled with sweat. 'Does it matter?'
'Perhaps. He still lives.' The Wizard's gaze never left the sea.
'You told me he killed his master.' Iveldane's words were edged with self-doubt. But he did not add,
as I suddenly long to kill mine.
The Wizard fixed unfathomable eyes on his face. 'I know.'
Chilled, shaking, Iveldane shouted back. 'But I never
wanted
to challenge you! I was content with what you taught me. Did you think I would ask anything more?'
Still as stone, the Wizard said, 'Do you recall the warning I spoke when first you came to me?'
'Only one can be Master.' Iveldane shook his head, puzzled.
The Wizard glanced down at his hands and spoke a word. Flecked with chips of mica, a small pebble appeared in his palms. A quick, hard gesture sent the stone spinning in a high arc. Iveldane's eyes followed its plunge toward green, foam-laced waves.
'So be it,' said the Wizard.
The stone struck with a splash. Water closed over Iveldane's head. Aware too late of the trap, he screamed protest. But shadowy depths had already claimed him, and the sea's chill embraced his flesh, unyielding. Iveldane's heart ached like an old wound. For uncounted years, salt-tears mingled with salt water ...