In the Earth Abides the Flame (53 page)

As they spoke thin sunlight shone about them as a small draught of air momentarily parted the mist-veil. The air was thicker down in the valley, Leith noticed; and much hotter than the biting cold of the mountain top. Or perhaps the run down the slide had tired him more than he credited.

'It would be best if we carried on,' Phemanderac argued, but his voice carried little conviction.

'Think of good food and a nice warm, soft bed. A real night's sleep.'

'I'm thinking, I'm thinking,' said the big man. 'I'm thinking maybe we won't receive a welcome from these people, coming as we are to claim their treasure. Maybe we'll get bread and water, and the chill of a cold dungeon wall on our backs. I'd rather take sleep now, when I need it, than run the risk of another night like last night. Don't you others feel the need for rest?' His voice had a strangely soporific quality. Beside him the Escaignian closed her eyes, and her chest moved up and down in a regular rhythm.

Some distance away, near the edge of the glade, Achtal and Hal were arguing; or, at least, the Bhrudwan was talking and gesticulating wildly at the cripple. Leith tried to follow the course of the discussion, but found it slipping away into sleep ...

'Listen, everyone! Listen carefully!' Hal stood among them, talking loudly and clearly. 'Achtal says there is some kind of enchantment in the valley, a sleeping enchantment laid to trap unwary travellers. He says he has come across them before, in Bhrudwo. We must not go to sleep. We must not! Can you hear me?'

One or two of the Arkhimm stirred, raising tired faces and weary, sleep-laden eyes in the direction of the voice. 'Enchantment?' Phemanderac said. 'I've been trained. I'd recognise any enchantment—'

Suddenly he jerked himself to his feet. 'You're right!' he cried. 'How could I have missed it!'

He turned to Hal and the Bhrudwan. 'Shake them awake! They must not remain asleep!'

'It's in the valley mist,' Hal said. 'Achtal says that it has no effect while we are moving; but when we stop the spell begins to work.'

'Magic in Faltha!' Phemanderac said, shaking his head. 'It's the first time I've come across it.'

The philosopher shook his head again, trying to clear the weariness from his mind. The call to sleep was elusive, seductive, just on the edge of consciousness but once the choice was made to fight it, once he was upright and moving again, his head cleared. Within moments the others had been raised, with the exception of one. A minute later eight alert and somewhat frightened men stood around the prone body of the Escaignian woman.

'How could that happen?' whispered the Haufuth. 'It can't have; I won't believe it. We're just overtired.'

'Then how do you explain her?' Kurr wanted to know, pointing at the Escaignian. Hal and Phemanderac were bent over her, and the philosopher whispered words in her ear. She stirred slightly, but did not wake.

'1 — I...' The big man stopped. Already, in spite of his awareness, he could feel waves of lassitude washing over him again, as though the air itself wanted to enfold him. 'We can't stay here,' he got out through thick lips.

'That's right,' Hal said tightly. 'If we remain much longer in this place, we'll never leave it. We must move on!'

'And leave our friend?' Leith asked. 'We can't! She's been faithful! We've already left her companion.'

'It may be that the Kantarans can help us,' Phemanderac said. 'It is my guess the inhabitants of that castle laid this enchantment on the valley. It is a simple matter if one knows how.

Rudimentary magic was taught in Dona Mihst, and though I was not much interested in it -

Pyrinius tried to dissuade me from ever using it - I found magic an easy skill to learn. I do know that only the ones who made the spell can break it. Almost certainly the only hope for this woman is for us to find the mistweaver and persuade him - or her - to free her.'

'Tall man is right,' boomed Achtal, his loud voice like a desecration smeared across the seductive silence of the forest floor. 'Leave fallen one, seek spell-maker and break spell.

Killing spell-maker will break spell.' Leith had always been nervous of the casual indifference with which the Bhrudwan referred to life and death, and had listened in fear to his father relate the tale of his capture and journey. But perhaps killing would be the only way.

* * *

'I won't believe it,' said the Haufuth stubbornly, as they made their way from the glade. 'It's not right. It doesn't feel right. If things like that can happen, who's to say what is possible?

How can one believe anything? It's like the world has turned inside out.'

'Proper magic feels a little like that,' Phemanderac agreed, 'but it is not as bad as ill-magic, so Pyrinius taught me. Proper magic merely uses the earth's natural processes and enhances them, or makes us more susceptible to them. What more natural thing than for travellers to feel tired and sleepy in a warm valley floor sheltered from the wind? Ill-magic, though, cuts across nature, making things that are not into things that are.'

'I thought you didn't go to the classes,' Kurr teased him. 'How do you know so much?'

'I didn't say I avoided the classes, just that my idominic tried to keep my attention on other things. Everyone in Dhauria knows as much,' the philosopher said. 'And the First Men brought the knowledge with them to Faltha. But at some time in the distant past it was abandoned, along with their belief in the Most High. The two go together, you see. Believe in the existence of a power outside nature, and you must allow the possibility that nature itself can be changed by that power - or by other powers with insight.' Phemanderac spoke to Kurr, but his words were directed at the burly headman.

'I've seen magic already on our journeys,' Leith said, keeping the edge of his eye on Hal. 'Of the ill kind. It was monstrous, and I have never had it satisfactorily explained to me.' The image of a pair of wings - black against the blue fire - was firmly fixed in Leith's mind.

'When was this?' the Haufuth asked him. 'Tell me about it.'

'It is not mine to tell,' Leith said, reluctant to name Hal directly. 'One among us knows much more about it, since it was of his working.'

Hal did not take the opportunity thus presented. Leith did not expect him to. They probably think 1 mean Phemanderac, Leith realised. But I can't take the words back now.

A few minutes later they came upon the path. A narrow, gravelled walkway, not wide enough for wagon or cart, but unmistakable nonetheless. After half an hour on this path, working their way steeply upvalley beside a small stream casting itself down a staircase of rapids, Hal touched Leith lightly on the shoulder, drawing him slowly back through the travellers until they walked alone at the rear of the group.

'It is time we cleared this up,' he said, looking with dark eyes on his younger brother. 'There is much between us.'

'The little matter of magic in the Hermit's cave, for one,' Leith replied, as though the incident had been a personal affront. 'It must have been ill-magic you used on him. You made him sick.'

'We've talked about this, remember? I was given permission to do what I did, and it worked for the Hermit's good, and for the Haufuth. Do you think that otherwise we would have this man with us now?'

'That's not the point, and you know it. When we were trying to see the Council of Faltha you yourself argued against using immoral means to achieve our goal. "No bribery," you said. But at Bandits' Cave you used ill-magic to achieve your ends. How can a moral perfectionist like you live with such a contradiction?' Leith thrust the words at his brother like knife-blades.

Bleed! Show some vulnerability! Admit you are wrong! How can I love you if you're not fallible?

'But, Leith, I did not use ill-magic on the Hermit. Listen as I tell you the truth. The Hermit had been bitten by a black fly a day or so previously. All I did was speed the natural workings of the poison so his illness might be recognised and healed while help was at hand. It was proper magic, for want of a better description. Would you rather I had ignored his plight and left him to die in agony a day or so after we'd left?'

'No!' cried Leith, and one or two of the others turned to see what troubled him. 'You can't get out of this so easily!'

'Is something the matter, Leith?' Kurr called back.

'Of course there is,' came his reply. 'But I'll work through it myself.' Clearly stung by the unearned rebuke, the old farmer turned back to the path.

'Of course you shouldn't have left him,' Leith whispered fiercely to his brother. 'But you are a healer. Why did you not stop the natural workings of the poison so that he got better?'

'That would have been ill-magic, Leith,' said Hal, not unkindly. 'Did you not hear Phemanderac? Ill-magic works against nature. I could not have sped his healing until the Fodhram man returned with a natural agent I could work with - unless you believe I should have used ill-magic. Did I do right?' There was a slightly aggrieved note in his voice.

'After the bark arrived, why didn't you heal him completely then?'

'You know the answer to that. His natural recovery aided the Haufuth. Please, Leith, I did not harm him. I sped up the passage of the poison, sparing him many hours of convulsions. I aided his initial recovery, stopping only when he was out of danger, and I brought two men back from the brink of self-despair. Why do you accuse me?'

Leith would not give up. 'What about the black wings?'

'I took on the form of the poison while I worked with it,' replied Hal. 'Black fly, black wings.

It is not really very deep magic. I am no beast. I am as I have always been. Since I was very young I have been able to do such things. What is my fault?'

'That you have no fault! How can you expect me to have regard for one who remains so totally unapproachable? You're like the Most High, lofty and aloof, only interfering in our affairs when it suits you; fiddling with us to achieve your own inscrutable purposes. I find myself speaking with your voice! I hear your thoughts in my head! Or not you - the Most High - what does it matter? I want to be left alone! I'd rather be caught in my own follies than be used like some poison, used unwittingly to scourge someone else! What are your - his -

plans to enhance me? How much will it hurt?' He looked his brother in the eye, half-blinded by the tears in his own. 'Not as much as you hurt me!'

Hal waited a moment, dignifying Leith's feelings with silence. Then he replied: 'Has it ever occurred to you that what you mistake for evil might actually be good? That your fear of losing yourself blinds you to what might benefit you?'

'Oh, so I'm not good enough at the moment, is that it?' Leith felt a desperate need to be angry at something.

Hal smiled in reply. 'Simply being alive changes you, for good or ill. You can't avoid it. Even our friend the Hermit couldn't avoid it.'

'But I had a dream,' said Leith. 'People love me - I saw how much. Nothing I could do would separate me from it.'

'A vision of truth, indeed. But to love someone is a different thing to having his trust,' said Hal quietly, and Leith noted a peculiar twist to his brother's smile. However, the moment passed Leith by. He was where he had always been: on the losing end of an exchange with his brother.

The mist thickened about them as they climbed, but they met no one on the path, and the enchantment did not assail them while they walked. 'It is growing darker,' Wiusago commented. 'Dusk draws near.'

A moment later he gave a shout: he had come out above the mist, or it had drawn back, and in a moment the Arkhimm stood below the walls of the castle.

Tall beyond reason, the white walls stretched up to ramparts so far above them that the soldiers with crossbows trained on them could hardly be discerned. At their highest the walls supported massive turrets that sprouted from the very rock, leaning far out over the northerners as though shadowing them in fear. It was a majestic place, a terrible place; a place like the Outer Chamber of the Hall of Meeting, only far larger; designed to quail the spirit, to be bigger than the hearts of men.

'It's only a wall,' Kurr said to nobody in particular.

The wall had in it a great opening, an arched entrance way barred by a portcullis more indomitable than the Iron Door of the Outer Chamber. Faces appeared through the interwoven bars.

'Strangers!' cried a strongly accented voice. 'What is your business here?'

Wiusago looked to the others for advice as to how to answer; the others returned his stare blankly. Should they state their quest openly, or dissemble by spinning some other story?

'Are we safe from enchantment here?' Kurr whispered.

'No,' Phemanderac replied, 'but now I'm prepared for them.'

While they debated the portcullis drew up soundlessly, and three heralds rode out on pure white horses. Their gear shone in the late afternoon sunlight, their silken clothes were of red and green, their spears long and held at the ready, the proud, high-stepping horses made no noise on the lush grass. The foremost herald dismounted and stood before them.

'Welcome, strangers,' the herald said courteously. 'You have journeyed through the mist, and must be very tired. Can we assist you in any way?' His voice was soft, gentle, polite, almost womanly.

A broad grin spread across the Haufuth's face. The offer of help was much more than he had hoped for. It looked like their fears had been unfounded.

But Phemanderac laughed. 'Come now!' he said, mirth lacing his words. 'Have you no more skill than that? Or is it because you are so far away from your master?'

The Haufuth stared at the philosopher, open-mouthed. 'Have you gone out of your mind?'

But his laughter had broken the spell. The three heralds and their horses vanished.

'Illusion,' said Phemanderac in the deep silence that followed, as though he instructed a class.

'A pretty trick. Suggestion operating directly on our minds. We are susceptible because we expect the miraculous in a place such as this. I wonder what else around here is illusion?' As the others gaped in wonder he walked up to the castle wall. 'Only the best illusionists can make a shape solid,' he said thoughtfully. 'I'm willing to bet you can't make an illusion this size solid. Am I right?' He made to strike the wall with his hand.