Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (23 page)

           
"It may be that," Ochen
said. "Perhaps you shall face him at sword's point. But were you able to
defeat him within the sphere of the aethyr ... Is it not his defeat you
seek?"

           
Calandryll looked up, feeling
himself almost defeated, and nodded: "Aye."

           
"We speak," said Ochen,
"of a future some time distant. There's much you need to learn before such
attempt may be safely made. I need teach you the cantrips, the gramaryes . . .
until you know them sound, I'll round you with protections. Only when I know
you safe, would I ask you attempt the aethyr. And that not until we close on
Anwar- teng."

           
"Then round me,"
Calandryll said wearily, "for I'm mightily tired now, and I'd sleep—be it
safe."

           
"Safe for now," Ochen
promised. "He'll not make another attempt this night, and we'll speak
again on the morrow."

           
Calandryll nodded, and lay back.
Ochen left him,-

           
Chazali and his watching warriors
returned to their blankets; Bracht and Katya murmured reassurances that he
answered with a yawn. Cennaire said, "You are very brave," and he
smiled, thinking that a wonderful compliment, for he felt very afraid.

           
IT was some comfort that they must
stand far closer to Anwar-teng before Ochen would ask him to go voluntarily
into that strange bodiless state, for he felt entirely inadequate to the task,
and not at all eager to again face those malign forces he had felt buffet him.
He did not properly comprehend why that proximity was necessary, save—as Ochen
explained, somewhat vaguely as they broke their fast and struck camp—that the
power of the wazir-narimasu was limited by the hostility surrounding the hold,
that emotion strengthening the Mad God's estivatious sendings, and that without
their anchoring support it was too hazardous an undertaking. It was enough for
Calandryll that the attempt should be delayed. Besides, there was much else to
occupy him.

           
In the days and nights that followed
he was largely in Ochen's company, to the exclusion of all other, become once
more a scholar, his thirst for knowledge reawakened, titillated by the
recondite vistas the wazir gradually revealed, no longer abstract but of
practical, perhaps even vital, importance.

           
Tutored by the patient sorcerer, he
learned better to understand the nature of the aethyr, to see that plane not as
some arcane dimension, but as one simultaneous with the physical. It was, Ochen
expounded, as though two worlds existed contiguous, one—the aethyr—invisible to
most inhabitants of the other, only those gifted with the talent able to
perceive the existence of the neighboring plane through such windows as their
thaumaturgical skills created. Likewise there were doors could be built,
through which the inhabitants of one plane might enter the other.

           
"And like any door," he
explained one night as all around them the camp settled to sleep and Calandryll
struggled to hold open weary eyes, "they may close behind you. Be barred,
even, against your going back. Such is what Rhythamun attempted."

           
"And doubtless would
again," Calandryll returned around a stifled yawn. "Save this mystic
door be propped open."

           
"Which it may be," Ochen
assured, seeming not the least tired, so that Calandryll wondered if he needed
sleep at all. "One adept in the sorcerous arts does that instinctively.
But such a level of skill requires years of tutelage."

           
Calandryll nodded sleepily, and
Ochen chuckled and said, "Enough for now. Go find your bed, rest— and
we'll speak again come dawn."

           
That seemed not far off as
Calandryll stretched himself blear-eyed on his blanket, for the moon was past
its zenith and closing on the western horizon. He sighed, luxuriating in the
prospect of at least a few hours' sleep, and looked to where Cennaire lay,
little more than an arm's length from his makeshift bed. He did not know she
watched him from under hooded lids, marveling at all she had heard; only that
he was disappointed they had so little opportunity now to speak together.

           
No more was he able to converse much
with Bracht or Katya, for each morning he woke to Ochen's cheerful summons,
given barely sufficient time to perform his ablutions and snatch a plate of
food before the wazir embarked again on his tutoring.

           
He learned, slowly, how to recognize
those occult pressures that warned of aethyric scrutiny, and to wrap his tongue
around the complex syllables of the protective cantrips. Not yet so well that
Ochen failed to ward him round with gramaryes each night, nor yet so well that
he might defend himself, but enough he began to believe that in time he should
be able to master the sortilege, and that was a reassurance. So, too, was his
preoccupation with the task, for he practiced dutifully as he rode, and that
inured him to the still-present feeling of observation, that now better
understood as he learned more about the occult plane and the interaction of
aethyr and mundane.

           
It was both boon and bane, for even
as he came to accept that he did, indeed, possess some power unfathomable, some
occult talent that would, as time passed and he learned to employ it, stand him
in good stead to battle Rhythamun in the realm of the aethyr, so he began to
comprehend the enormity of that other world. He had pursued the wizard thinking
purely in terms of the physical—that he and his comrades must overtake the sorcerer
and face him with naked steel. Now, his knowledge daily broadening, he began to
understand that Rhythamun—the
essence,
the animus, of that being—barely existed in physical terms, save what he stole.
Now it came to him that he and his comrades—for still those prophecies that had
brought them together surely pertained—must confront the warlock on another
level. Rhythamun, he realized, had become over the centuries of his evil
existence a creature of almost purely aethyric energy, his fell powers waxing
ever stronger as he drew ever closer to Tharn. Calandryll began to doubt that
steel alone might end the threat.

           
That doubt he put to Ochen, and
more.

           
They sat, as had become their
custom, a little way distant from the rest, cloaked against the cooling of the
summer as the sky darkened and the fast- waning moon climbed above a range of
low hills. Timber grew thick along the flanks, leaves that began already to
assume the hues of autumn rustling in the wind that blew soft from the north,
the wells that had daily marked their passage no longer needed, for little
streams plashed down the ridges to striate the bottomlands with rivers. Chazali
had increased the nightly watch against the possibility of tensai attack, and
for a while each dusk the air grew pungent with the almond scent of Ochen's
sortilege. On the morrow, so Calandryll understood, they would reach a village,
a settlement of gettu, where there might be news of the war and the more
immediate danger of predatory outlaws. For now he felt a different concern,
outlining his doubts to the silver-haired mage.

           
"He can be slain," Ochen
said. "Doubt that not, for no man is truly immortal, and some part of
Rhythamun remains yet in this world. Were it otherwise, he should be a
ghost."

           
"And yet surely he
must
have outlived his mortal
span," Calandryll responded. "Is your—forgive me, for I intend no
disrespect—concept of the afterlife correct, then has he not entered your
Zajan-ma as each life terminates? And come back—escaped!— from there?"

           
"Likely so. Think you the
Younger Gods are infallible?" Ochen accepted the suggestion without demur,
chuckling. "Were that so, how should such as Rhythamun exist at all? Horul
and his kin would surely order the world to their design, and none should ever
threaten their dominance. But that is not the way of things—no, it seems to me
the gods are bound by some order beyond their breaking; certainly beyond my
understanding. Have you not said that Burash and Dera, both, spoke of a design
past their changing? I suspect the Younger Gods need men as men need them,-
that Yl and Kyta, or perhaps even a power beyond them, left behind a structure
neither man nor god can alter."

           
"So?" Calandryll demanded.

           
"So Rhythamun has attained such
knowledge as enables him to shake off the ties that bind other souls in
Zajan-ma," said Ochen. "He is . . . How shall I put this?. . . a free
spirit. He defies the bonds that govern our existence, defies the gods
themselves. He returns from Zajan-ma not as a ghost, neither as a reborn soul
sent by Horul, but as and by his own agency, escaping the judgment of mine or
any other's god. And that is surely an abomination."

           
"On that," Calandryll
said, "we agree. But still it's a metaphysical concern. I ask you
again—shall steel prevail against him?"

           
Ochen thought a moment, then said:
"I believe that did you put a blade in his fleshly form, then, aye, you
would slay his stolen shape. That blade Dera blessed likely has the power to
sever his hold and send his pneuma into the aethyr, where it would likely wander
in limbo forever. Unless . . ."

           
He paused and Calandryll demanded,
"Unless?"

           
"He has such power as could
bring him back again," said Ochen.

           
"Dera!" Calandryll drove
clenched fists against the wind, voice harsh and horrified. "You say he is
truly immortal! That even be he slain, he will come back. That his threat is
ever-present."

           
"Evil
is
an ever-present threat," Ochen responded. "But were he
thus slain, then that part of him that lived on might be hunted down within the
aethyr and destroyed. Do you not see? His strength is his weakness—he lusts for
domination, for mortal power. Why else should he seek to raise the Mad God?
Only because he looks to stand at Tharn's elbow, the god's temporal lieutenant.
He loves life too much to leave it—why else prolong his existence? Only because
he
cannot
let go his hold on this
world of men.

           
"That
is his weakness—that love of fleshly being. He is loath to quit this world; too
loath, and were his pneuma sundered from his flesh, then he must surely be
greatly weakened. Oh, aye, I know he counts his life by long ages, and must
certainly be most difficult to destroy, but still it can be done."

           
"To achieve that victory, we
must apprehend him before he has opportunity to use the gate in
Anwar-teng," Calandryll said carefully, exploring the tenons of his doubt.
"Or before he crosses the Borrhun-maj, no? Do I understand properly
everything you have taught me, then to be certain of victory, we must take the
Arcanum from him before he gains a portal to Tharn's limbo. And to take the
Arcanum from him must surely mean slaying him."

           
"Aye," said Ochen, face
bland and enigmatic in the pale light of the moon. "You put it well, and I
think you understand your lessons."

           
Calandryll nodded brief
acknowledgment and said, "And everything you teach me serves to protect
me.
Yet if the scryings I've heard are
true, then three must face Rhythamun—Bracht and Katya must stand with me. How
shall
they
be protected if we must go
into that place beyond the Borrhun- maj?"

           
Ochen drew golden nails down through
the strands of his mustache,- tugged a moment on the wisps of his beard. Then:
"I do not know."

           
“You
do not knowI”

           
The wazir shook his head; a slight,
wary movement.

           
"Nor if they
shall—can!—survive?"

           
Again that negative movement.

           
Calandryll stared aghast at his
mentor. He was tempted to shout accusations, arguments,- he forced himself to
calm, to reason, and when he spoke was pleased to hear his voice come even,
disciplined.

           
"Surely, then, you must tutor
them as you do me—afford them what defenses you can."

           
"Were that possible, think you
I'd not?" the wazir asked. "I cannot, for they've not the talent. You
alone command that power."

           
"Then I alone must do it,"
Calandryll said.

           
"I do not believe that is the
way of it," Ochen returned. "A design exists beyond my comprehension
and it binds you three to this duty. It may be broken, aye—you've but to turn
about, go back ..."

           
Calandryll cut him off with an angry
gesture. "No! That I'll not countenance; neither my comrades."

           
"Then you and they have little
choice," said Ochen. "Have you?"

           
"You say they're doomed,"
Calandryll sighed.