The Sword of the South - eARC (62 page)

Wencit chuckled without a great deal of humor and took the torch to free both of Kenhodan’s hands, and grunting sounds announced Bahzell’s arrival as he squeezed between the body and roof.

“Whew!” He wiped his forehead and sat nonchalantly on the graumau’s haunch. “I’ve no idea at all, at all, what’s after following us, but whatever it may be, it’s a mite too big to be passing this beauty anytime soon.”

“Then let’s use the delay to move on.” Chernion’ voice came in jagged spurts and her face was taut with pain, but she was on her feet.

“Agreed.” Kenhodan nodded and glanced at Wencit. “What does it look like immediately in front of us, Wencit?”

“Straight ahead for two hundred paces or so to reach that four-way intersection. Then I think we’d best bear right. It’s the longer path, and that may cause Wulfra to pay less attention to it.”

“Fine,” Kenhodan said grimly. “Elrytha, can you walk alone?” Chernion gave a sharp, ragged nod. “Then you stay with Wencit in the middle. Bahzell, be ready to move up fast if I need you.”

“Aye, lad.” Bahzell grinned. “So far, so good, seeing as we’re all still alive and all. If we’re after being very good, Tomanāk may be helping us all stay that way, eh?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to give him a little assistance on that point.”

“And I’ll not disagree with you. Himself’s after helping them as help themselves.”

They set out once more, urged on their way by wet snufflings and crunchings as whatever followed them stopped to dine, and Kenhodan approved of any delay of something capable of chewing that armored hide. His bare feet were silent on the cool stone as he walked to the edge of the light. Then he stopped.

“Wencit, this light reflects too far ahead. Anything waiting for us will see us long before
we
see it
, unless we get rid of the torch. Can we?”

“Yes,” the wizard nodded approvingly. “There’s a simple spell for seeing in the dark—I worked it out some years ago, after Bahzell and I found ourselves in a situation unpleasantly like this one.” The hradani’s ears flicked in what might have been amusement, but Wencit ignored him. “I’m afraid it will only last for five or six hours, though.”

“I hope that’s as long as we’ll need,” Kenhodan replied.

“Why, so it will be,” Bahzell chuckled. “One way or the other!”

Kenhodan could have gone indefinitely without that qualifier.

* * *

Wulfra considered her remaining strength with hard-won calm. She couldn’t cover all four approaches adequately, and her survival might well hinge on guessing which one was the true threat.

Her remaining fighting power would be impressive, were it all in one place. But that was impossible, unless she waited to defend the sword chamber itself, and if Wencit got that close, he could attack her directly. Whether he killed her outright or not, half her strength—her golems—would be useless while she defended herself. No, she had to stop them before they got that close.

But how to distribute her strength? Obviously, Wencit was at least as familiar with the maze as she, and that turned the placement of her guards into a guessing game in which he held the edge.

She inventoried her remaining forces carefully.

Most potent where the two demons her patron had loaned her. They could certainly kill any mortal, and wizardry—especially wizardry extemporized in the face of an unexpected threat—would have little effect upon them. Demons were also extraordinarily difficult, but not impossible, for a wizard to bind. That meant it was unlikely—or
should
have been unlikely, at any rate—Wencit would suspect she had them, so he probably hadn’t prepared any spells for dealing with them in advance. Unfortunately, he
had
brought along a champion of Tomanāk who’d earned the title “Demon Slayer” the hard way, and neither of her two pets were remotely as powerful as the greater demons Bahzell had slain in the past. Of course, this time he wouldn’t have Walsharno’s support, and there
were
two of them. On the other hand, the tunnels meant they could only come at him one at a time, and she’d have to deploy them alone. Despite the control spells, they’d be as likely to attack any of her other guardians as to attack Wencit and his allies once combat actually began.

Next most powerful were the chimeras. She had three of them, and Bahzell’s link to Tomanāk would avail him no more against them than it had against the black dragon or any other non-demonic threat. That meant they’d have an excellent chance of killing him and Kenhodan, but they’d stand no chance at all against Wencit of Rūm if the others could buy him even a few seconds in which to summon the wild magic.

After that, came her golems. They were potentially the most potent of her remaining guards, yet they had absolutely no minds or volition of their own. They were essentially huge and deadly marionettes; hers would be the mind animating and controlling them in every sense of the word, which was why she couldn’t risk using them after Wencit had reached striking range, able to take advantage of her distraction.

Her three stone golems were enormously powerful—considerably more powerful than the chimeras, actually—but they were far too large to fit into most of the tunnels. Worse, she’d required the cat-eyed wizard’s assistance to create them in the first place, and if she was right about her suspicions—if he truly had seen her all along as nothing more than bait to draw Wencit into some trap of his own—she might just find he’d buried some nasty little bit of treachery within them. She could think of at least three different spells he might have hidden within the basic working, any of which would have created a blast of destruction which might very well destroy Wencit but would certainly destroy
her
if she was anywhere in the vicinity when it detonated. Better to keep them as far away from her as possible, she decided.

That left only the score of flesh golems. She’d created all of them herself in a working which had effectively depopulated a small village on Darsil of Scarthū’s lands. That had been risky, but she’d needed the spare parts from somewhere, and she’d covered her tracks well. In fact, Darsil had blamed Doral of Korwin for the attack, which had helped fan that particular hatred quite nicely.

They were individually weaker than the stone golems, although collectively they were theoretically more powerful than even the demons, for each had the strength and vitality of a dozen men. Unfortunately, like the stone golems they required individual direction, and coordinating all of them would be difficult. She was no warrior, and she doubted she could use their strength fully, for she lacked the trained reflexes for close combat. On the other hand, they were entirely her own creation, with no opportunity for the cat-eyed wizard to have sabotaged the working which had brought them into existence.

North and south where the shortest routes, she thought, and the northern path was the shortest of all. She doubted Wencit would come by so obvious a path, but she couldn’t leave it unguarded on no more than a hunch. A quick mental command sent the chimeras off to block it.

South was more likely, she thought. It was short, but less obvious. She rather suspected Wencit would choose south, so she sent the demons to watch that path.

The other routes covered less straight-line distance, but they were longer because of their twists and turns. The more northern of them was the longest of all, and Wulfra suspected Wencit was equally unlikely to choose the shortest
or
longest path, which made the southern approach more likely once more. Besides, it passed through a moderately large cavern which made a natural ambush point…and was far enough from the heart of the maze to put her outside the blast radius of any spell the cat-eyed wizard was likely to have embedded in her stone golems. That made the decision for her, and she sent them there while her flesh golems marched stolidly off to protect the last line of approach.

There. She sat back. It was done; now she could only wait and hope she’d guessed right. Given her record to date, she was far from certain she had.

* * *

Her patron shared her doubts. He didn’t like her dispositions, yet he could offer no better, and he understood her reasoning, especially—he smiled despite his own inner tension—where the stone golems were concerned. It was really a pity he hadn’t considered doing exactly that, he reflected. But however reasonable the deployment of her remaining forces might appear, he was far from confident it was good enough. For all he knew, Wencit had a fifth or even a sixth way to the cavern, hidden exactly as the wall-breaching spell had been and only waiting for his command.

Most frustrating of all was the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing
he
could do. He could no more defend Wulfra—assuming he’d wanted to—than he could attack Wencit directly. That meant only the spell hidden in the cavern itself could prevent the wild eyed wizard from regaining the sword, and given the appalling proof of how badly he’d been fooled by Wencit this far, the cat-eyed wizard no longer regarded even that as more than a hope.

Yet his fear was even stronger than his frustration. It became more plain by the second that Wencit moved with certainty where he could only grope, because the unpalatable truth was that he had no idea at all what Wencit was really doing. The one thing he
did
know was that whatever it was, it
had
to be deeper and far more carefully planned than the simple recovery of a useless sword! That was a thought fit to frighten anyone, given the sword in question, and if the Council—and the cat-eyed wizard himself—could be that ignorant of Wencit’s intentions in this, might they not be equally ignorant in other matters?

He snarled a curse and hunched closer to his crystal. The flaming stone limned his face in fire as he sought his enemy once more, but the fleeting scenes in the orb refused to yield the information he needed.

* * *

Kenhodan leaned against the wall, panting, feeling every single one of the aches and pains which lingered in the wake of Bahzell’s healing. The Eye of the Needle lay far behind as he wiped away sweat and looked at Wencit.

“I hope—” he puffed “—it isn’t much farther.”

“Not much,” Wencit replied, and Kenhodan regarded him almost resentfully. The old wizard was breathing hard but showed very little other outward signs of exertion, and Kenhodan wondered how much of his apparent endurance was supplied by wild magic? He hoped he himself would be in as good a shape when he was old. Tomanāk! He wished he was in such good shape
now!

“Good.” His throat felt raw. “Think we’ve outrun whatever it was?”

“That, or else it stayed to eat graumau.” Wencit shrugged.

“Good,” Kenhodan repeated, and slid down the wall.

He sat there, taking a moment to catch his breath. His sight was as clear through the pitch darkness as if the sun shone here in the depths of the maze, and he was grateful. Unfortunately, the fact that he could see clearly didn’t make
what
he saw any better, and his jaw tightened as he glanced at Chernion.

She looked terrible. Her pain-wrung face was like wet, curdled ashes, and she was clearly on the point of collapse. But she stood against the wall, supporting her weight on his bow stave, swaying yet stubbornly on her feet while her closed eyes cut bruised ovals under her brows. Kenhodan didn’t understand how she managed it.

Wencit was in much better shape despite his age, yet he, too, settled to the stone floor and sat with weary gratitude. In fact, only Bahzell seemed relatively fresh. Sweat beaded his face and his huge chest swelled rhythmically, but he exuded a sense of fitness and power.

“I’m done in for the moment,” Kenhodan admitted with a sigh. “I need to rest—and so does Elrytha.”

“I can give a few minutes warning before an attack,” Wencit said. “But we can’t stay in one place long without being spotted.”

“I know, I know,” Kenhodan agreed, and massaged his aching legs while his heart slowed and he tried to calculate how far they’d come. He waved his hand and Bahzell squatted beside him, his sword across his thighs. The glittering blue corona which had touched the hradani when they entered the maze had dimmed, almost disappeared, yet Kenhodan knew it would flare back to life the instant Bahzell required it.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I’m thinking as we’ve done well so far. You and Elrytha have been after bearing the brunt, but I’ll not begrudge it. I’ll be having my chance soon enough. We’ll have a belly full of it, all of us, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You feel it, too, then?”

“Lad, it’s a champion of Tomanāk I’ve been for well-nigh ninety years.” Bahzell smiled grimly. “Himself’s not in the way of leading his champions about by the hand, but he’s not so very fond of leaving us in the dark, either. I’ve no more notion than you of exactly what it is we’re likely to be facing, but I’ve no doubt at all, at all, as it’ll be more than nasty enough to be going on with.”

“I thought so. Wencit, how much farther is it now?”

“Perhaps five hundred yards.” Wencit’s eyes glowed through the darkness. “It’s all twists and turns and hairpins up to the last eighty yards or so. Then the passage widens before it narrows again to enter the heart of the maze.”

“I see.” Kenhodan massaged his sweaty forehead. “Then she’ll hit us there—unless she’s likely to wait until we’re on top of her?”

“No.” Wencit smiled unpleasantly. “I don’t think she’ll do that.”

“I thought not,” Kenhodan murmured. “All right, Bahzell. Wencit will have to worry about the rear from now on, because I think both of us need to be up front. None of us can guess what it’ll be, but I think we can count on it’s being the nastiest thing Wulfra still has to throw at us. That means we’d best have both of us ready to meet it.”

“Aye.” Bahzell tested his sword with a thumb, and his smile was as unpleasant as Wencit’s had been. “It’s widows we’ll make this day, lad!”

“Assuming whatever it is has a wife,” Kenhodan said dryly.

“To be sure.” Bahzell tilted his ears impudently. “It was only a manner of speaking, after all.”

* * *

Wulfra wanted to pace. Or to curse. Or to kick the wall. Anything but to hunch over the crystal till her eyes burned. But she dared not look away.