Cloak of the Two Winds (24 page)

The Iruks argued violently and often. But just as quickly tempers would subside and they would apologize and forgive, anger and resentment changing to comradery and warmth. All of this was normal, Amlina insisted, the process of a wei circle drawing close. The witch herself stayed aloof from the turmoil, keeping to the role of guide and instructor, shielding her own emotions from the Iruks' awareness.

"This is the logical way to proceed," she explained when they questioned her about it. "Your emotions are part of what we seek. Mine are not. They would only confuse our vision."

Each day, in the hour after sunset and the hour before dawn, the Iruks sat amid the beaming lamps and shiny trinkets and searched for Glyssa. The rituals of the circle and the glimmering ring of thought that bound them together became familiar to their minds. The Iruks came to know the meaning of the chants Amlina used and the functions of her various devices: lamps to radiate, tapestries to border and contain, desmets to spin and reflect, prisms to bend and scatter. The klarnmates even got an inkling of the metaphysics of the Deepmind, how thought and light combined to create substance and motion.

The visions of Glyssa too became familiar. At first the pain the Iruks felt at seeing her dispersed the image within moments. But as the steady meditation brought their emotions under control, they were able to hold Glyssa's image for longer. Sometimes they saw her sleeping, sometimes standing or walking. On occasion she seemed to be working, scrubbing a floor or carrying some burden. More often her movements were inexplicable and strange, as if she performed some peculiar ritual. Whatever her posture, Glyssa was always surrounded by the shiny blackness of the spell of concealment, so that the Iruks could tell nothing of her location.

Then one evening unexpectedly the blackness quivered and gave way in places to flashes of light. Surprised, the Iruks grew excited and lost the image in a few moments. But Amlina insisted the change was crucial.

"The design that hides her is beginning to unravel," she said.

Lonn and his mates tried wholeheartedly to believe she was right. Of the eleven days Hagen had given them, five remained.

Other minds also were searching. All over Kadavel witches and seers, sorcerers and priests poured their thoughts into the Deepmind. Working alone or in circles, they delved to find the meaning of the portents visiting the city, which daily grew more ominous and strange.

The Two Winds continued to blow ever more frequently on the Shipway—five or six changes now in a single day. The weather was violent and freakish. Sudden storms of hale and sleet lashed the city. Dense fogs aglitter with bits of suspended sea-ice rose to enshroud the streets, then sank again through the planks just as quickly. Most unnerving of all, a vast spiral of clouds appeared in the sky and remained day and night. Dark and gray, but faintly luminous at times with unmistakable witchlight, the spiral loomed like some tremendous inverted whirlpool poised to suck Kadavel into the sky.

The end of the world was at hand—so proclaimed several wild-eyed seers who spoke from the free rostrums on the Long Acropolis. Others maintained that this age of human dominance was passing and some new sentient race was about to appear. The official position, that the Archimage of the East was to blame for the portents, had begun to lose credence when the expected invasion failed to come. One after another, the major temples abandoned this explanation. The richly-clad priests who addressed the crowds from the temple steps started to preach that the portents were a sign of the displeasure of the Elements, whose worship had slackened in recent years. But certain boisterous iconoclasts charged from the free rostrums that the priests themselves were at fault, for their grasping materialism and spiritual shortcomings.

Despite the ill weather, the speakers never lacked for an audience. Besides the usual crowds of worshippers, supplicants, and pilgrims, the Long Acropolis daily was thronged with out-of-work skimmer men, sailors, and stevedores. Some of these credited the fearful predictions of world catastrophe. Others worried that if the portents continued the harbor would be unable to open for the winter sailing season, and the city's economy would collapse.

But even the most pragmatic in the crowds could not help but be awed by the weird spiral in the sky, which seemed uncannily to center exactly over the Long Acropolis.

After days of hearing the priests decry the people's lack of piety, and the iconoclasts decry the priests materialism, most of the crowd was siding with the iconoclasts. Priestly orators were driven from the steps of their temples by angry mobs. Then rioters nearly succeeded in looting one of the temples. Companies of marines were hastily called up from the waterfront to bolster the harried city guard. Still, the discontented mob atop the acropolis seemed to swell each day.

Concerned by the increasing civil disorder, Prince Hagen forced his State Sorcerers to search without rest for the Cloak. Using crystals and mirrored lamps and aided by a whole troop of assistants and apprentices, the two sorcerers delved constantly to see the Cloak and cast numerous spells to break down the forces hiding it—all without success. For the Tathians had only the written descriptions of the Cloak to go on, along with the information Amlina had provided—which, though mainly true, was designed to be subtly misleading.

In the meantime, in a rented villa in a wealthy district of the city, Beryl the Archimage also watched the flux of light and shade in the Deepmind. She watched as a thorncat watches from a thicket, intent and silent, confident that the thing she awaits must inevitably appear. Twice each day Beryl cast a design: the image of herself wearing the Cloak of the Two Winds. That was all the deepshaping she did, vitalizing the idea that whoever was first to discover the Cloak—herself, Hagen, Amlina, or some other—she, Beryl, would be the one to carry off the prize.

So the currents of thought in the Deepmind drifted and flowed, crashing and combining, generating substance, gesture, and sound, making and filling time and space. Creating those minds that peered within to fulfill their destinies as surely as it created all else.

On the far side of a barrier existing only in thought, one other mind was watching, one that knew these currents well. For many years this deepshaper had watched the Ogo tides from this place called Kadavel, and he had learned to predict and use their shaping force. That was how he concealed the Cloak of the Two Winds so effectively.

The Cloak had come to him more than thirty days ago, and his work upon it had begun at once. He had hoped this work would be accomplished long before anyone could discover his hiding place. But the task was proving more difficult than anticipated. The Cloak, woven by the legendary witch Eglemarde, was amazingly resistant. The deepshaper had hidden the Cloak with a cunning and potent concealment, one designed to take full advantage of the currents of Ogo force in Kadavel and empowered by mind energies drawn from numerous thralls. Yet the concealment was beginning to dissolve.

So the shaper had suspended his awareness in the Deepmind to observe those seeking the Cloak. Most of the seekers, he found, could be discounted almost at once. They did not know what they were looking for or, if they did, lacked enough knowledge of the Cloak to form a clear conception. This was true of the temple priests and of the pre-eminent deepseers and witches of the city. It was even true of the State Sorcerers, though they knew more than most.

In fact, there remained only two deepseers who could not be disregarded: the two Larthangan-born witches, they who had most recently possessed the Cloak. At first the deepshaper thought it must be the elder witch, the Archimage, who had penetrated his concealment. But on observing both witches from behind his barrier, he learned it was the younger, the one called Amlina, who posed the immediate threat. It was her mind, in unison with the minds of her Iruk henchmen, that had succeeded in parting the veil of dark energy that he had woven.

This, the shaper decided, was fortunate. Beryl was a famously redoubtable foe. Better to attack the lesser witch first and perhaps thereby to learn more of the Archimage and of her weaknesses. For it seemed inevitable that the new master of the Cloak would have to destroy both witches in time.

The deepshaper rose from the shallow water in which he had been lying face down. His gullet made a hoarse, bubbling sound as it sucked in air. The blood-red gills along his bulging cheeks closed up as his features resumed their human guise.

For he was no human, this shaper, but a serd.

His name was Kosimo, and he belonged to that fish-engendered race that had flourished in the Age of the World's Madness. For centuries his kind had ruled the land, enslaving humans and other sentient races, until being driven back into the sea by Tuan Tuo and the shapers of Larthang.

Kosimo did not consider that historical defeat to be permanent.

He walked to the edge of the moat and climbed slippery steps, briny water dripping from his coarse black robe. The moat connected through subterranean caverns with the back harbor of Kadavel, behind the Long Acropolis, and hence with the sea. Kosimo had built his sorcerer's lair here to be close to his natural element.

Atop the steps he crossed a narrow ledge and passed through a portal cut in the glistening black stone. Inside was a large, low-ceilinged chamber. A few dim-burning lamps and certain flaming instruments gave scant illumination, but more than enough for the eyes of a serd, bred to the murky depths of the ocean. Tables and racks stood crowded with vials, bottles, and arcane devices of metal and glass. Numerous books lay stacked or open on shelves, for Kosimo had studied human arts as well as the potent sorceries of his own race. In the middle of the chamber was an open space with a gray and black mosaic pattern on the floor—an extravagant and baffling maze. A number of Kosimo's thralls, in white hooded robes, stood at the edges of the maze, motionless as pieces on a game board—lifeless except when their master chose to fill their minds with his bidding.

Glancing at the thralls reminded Kosimo of the Iruk woman, the one who had served as instrument to bring the Cloak to Kadavel. It was through her that his possession of the Cloak now was endangered, through her link to the other Iruks. Too late to kill her however: the violence of her death would only send a vivid signal to her fellows, a shriek across the Deepmind. Besides, once her native stubbornness was suppressed, the woman had made an energetic and useful thrall.

Kosimo considered. Perhaps he should entrap the minds of the other Iruks also, then use them to strike at the young witch. His lips pulled back in an expression like a smile. It pleased the serd's highly developed sense of aesthetics to turn his adversaries against each other. But no, the plan was flawed. Too difficult to cage so many minds at once, too easy for the witch to detect and break the design. Better to simply strike down the Iruks quickly, after first examining their minds to learn what they knew of the witch. It occurred to Kosimo that
drogs
, creatures formed of thought-energy, would be useful for both these purposes—first to focus his probing mind on the Iruks, then to dispatch the barbarians with swift efficiency.

The serd crossed the moist chamber to the stacks of books that constituted his library. Scaly fingers moved over ancient leather bindings until stopping on the volume he sought, a collection of Nyssanian incantations for formulating drogs.

With three thoughts Kosimo animated three of his attendant thralls. One came forward, took the book from his hands and carried it to the center of the tile maze. The other thralls brought two shallow bowls of stone and placed them on either side of the book.

While the thralls resumed their former positions, Kosimo walked to the center of the maze and sat down. With a gesture he lit the two bowls which contained fish oil exuded from his own body. Then he leafed through the book until finding the incantation he desired. He read the verses through several times, committing them to memory, then shut his eyes and began to recite.

As he whispered the spell, Kosimo envisioned the creatures he wished to form. Strong arms would be required, ending in thick hands with steely claws. Bodies were unnecessary, only floating husks of energy to give the arms a center. But eyes were needed, eyes for the serd to look through, burning eyes that hurt to look upon. The form and will of the drogs would come from Kosimo's thoughts, their vast elemental energy from another plane, a realm of potential in the Deepmind tapped by the incantation.

Saliva dribbled down his chin as Kosimo, in trance, continued to mouth the verses. The words were potent, for soon the drogs hovered plain and precise in his vision. Then Kosimo poured his will into the drogs, till their burning eyes gleamed with purpose.

Lonn shuddered in his sleep. An inexplicable clamminess had touched his flesh. Something nagging and insistent probed at his mind. He coughed and rolled over, but the probing continued.

Visions of Amlina filled his brain, crowded and feverish.

Lonn breathed deeply and began to awake, but some force restrained him. He fell back under and dreamed of Amlina. He dreamed of when he had first seen her, lying entranced in her cabin; and later on the main deck of the
Plover
, when she had disarmed the Iruks and chained them to the mast; then later still, when she first began to train Lonn in deepseeing.

Lonn realized with a part of his mind that he was being forced to recall these memories. He strained to understand why, and in the moment of strain his eyes opened.