The Golden Shield of IBF (2 page)

The white mare cantered from the stables, Swan ordering the doors closed behind them. The pace quickened as they crossed the drawbridge, Swan ordering it raised after them.

Erg’Ran, chief scribe within the Company of Mir, had sent a message to her to meet with him, the arrow to which it was attached shot and re-shot twenty lancethrows distance or more before impaling itself in the door of the main hall. He had information for her which would change everything, the message had said. Swan had long contemplated risking the Memory Pool, and dismissed the idea as dangerous, foolhardy. Although she had no idea what information Erg’Ran now possessed, the tone of his written words was what forced her to make the decision. And she was glad for it.

The miller’s cottage that was the meeting place was half-burned, more than half-roofless, and remote in the extreme, accessible only by means of an eroded forest path well-overgrown. It was once a road, clear from being well-traveled when people still lived in this portion of the Land. But those who were not killed had fled, when the Horde of Koth swept through. Those who had neither died nor fled were impressed to slavery and taken off. Only the dark, evil, nameless things which had once hidden deep in the forests now dwelt here, free to roam about as they wished.

They would not usually see her or the horse that she rode. Swan’s magic could cloud their senses. But she dared not use it this day. Magic was additive, she had learned long ago. One could always close a door, light a fire, make a broomstick or lance shaft dance. But serious magic drained away and had to be replenished. And Swan had no idea how much of her magic she had used today to survive the Memory Pool. Rather than cloaking her animal and herself in invisibility, she held tightly to the mare’s reins with one hand and to the hilt of her saddle-mounted sword with the other. Despite her caution, she was still maintaining two very difficult spells. One brought confusion upon the Horde of Koth when they neared the hiding place behind the Falls of Mir where the Company of Mir took refuge. The other spell, admittedly less taxing, obscured both her and her horse from view by birds. Her mother was known to use the simple creatures as an extension of her second-sight.

The ride took longer than usual, because she rode more slowly, with greater caution than ever before. But at last she dismounted before the cottage.

Erg’Ran limped out to meet her, holding the reins of the white mare while Swan dismounted, as if she were somehow less than physically capable of handling her own horse. She did not resent the gesture, however. Erg’Ran was merely an old man with a wooden peg in place of a chopped off foot, robbed of everything except his dignity, subconsciously recalling that he had been raised well in better times, doing a gentlemanly service to a lady. It was something that came naturally to him despite the life he was forced to live.

As Swan’s feet touched the ground, Erg’Ran stepped back and bowed stiffly. Swan touched a gloved hand to his shoulder. Unbidden, she entered the cottage, leaned against the small table at its center and breathed. “I had to conserve my magic. Riding openly through the forest is a very scary thing. And you do it all the time!”

“Most of us have no significant magic, are merely mortal, Enchantress.”

“I wonder if I could ever get used to that.”

Erg’Ran laughed softly. “That’s the least of our problems, Enchantress.”

“My mother has given me a single day to break the spell which protects the Company of Mir or she’ll send the Horde of Koth to kill me.”

“Your father lives, Enchantress,” Erg’Ran told her, then lowered his still clear brown eyes to light his pipe.

Swan was content with her womanhood, except for one thing. Men’s clothes—she had worn them a few times out of necessity—had pockets. Anyone could wear a pouch or haversack, but pockets patched to the outside of a jerkin or slit within the side seam of a robe were wondrous. Only men had these. And Swan wanted desperately to do something with her hands, to hide them away. But she could not. She could clasp them demurely together at her abdomen, one cupped in the other as though she were a supplicant (but they would still shake), or let her hands lie limp at her sides, supported by skirt and petticoats, the trembling still obvious. Rather than either of these, and failing having pockets, she hugged her arms close to her body, hands hidden by her elbows.

Resolution of the hand problem accomplished, the next problem was speech. What should she say to this one she trusted so, who had told her—Nausea swept over her, but she held it back. Her father, alive!

As was usual for her more and more as she gained in wisdom and maturity, Swan said nothing, only listened. “I know that Eran, curse the Queen Sorceress—forgive my unintended rudeness, Enchantress. But I know that the Queen Sorceress told you that your father was dead. He is not and I know this for the truth that it is.” Erg’Ran exhaled a cloud of grey pipe smoke, sweet smelling. “He is and has been a prisoner these many years where you are forbidden to go—”

“Barad’Il’Koth,” Swan murmured.

Erg’Ran placed his clenched right fist to his forehead, invoking the courage of Mir to fill his heart, then spoke the name himself. “Barad’Il’Koth. He is there, your father.”

Swan’s momentary feeling of nausea was gone, in its stead a feeling she not often experienced and despised in her sex: faintness. Perhaps Erg’Ran noticed the blood draining from her cheeks, because he took her elbows in his hands and all but lifted her, taking her to the far side of the miller s cottage, easing her into a rough-hewn wooden chair. Swan covered her face with her hands, remembered at last to breathe.

“The secret of my mother’s evil is at Barad’Il’Koth. And so is the secret of my father.”

“And the Horde of Koth guards Barad’Il’Koth, thousands of men and other creatures and there are fewer than ten score of the Company of Mir. And even, somehow, if we were to defeat the Horde, there is the magic of the Queen Sorceress.”

Swan nodded, almost angry with Erg’Ran for stating the obvious. “Her magic is stronger than mine. Yes, I know, I know. G’Urg!”

Horrified, obviously embarrassed by her reference to fecal material, Erg’Ran said, “It is a testament to the times in which we live, I suppose, that the Virgin Enchantress, Daughter Royal, Princess of Creath should even know such a word, let alone utter it. Forgive my boldness, Enchantress, but—”

“You feel as if you are a father toward me—I know that and find that endearing about you, old friend.” Swan stood, ungloved her hand and outstretched it to him. As if he were the most elegantly costumed courtier from the days before her mother’s reign, Erg’Ran stepped back, bowed, a shock of his grey hair falling across his forehead. His lips lightly touched her hand. “I have less than a day,” she told Erg’Ran, “to master what spells I can which might prove useful against my mother and her armies, then forsake my castle and join the Company of Mir behind the Falls. Good will prevail over evil. Somehow it will.”

“Take Gar’Ath with you, then, Enchantress, to guard you lest the Queen Enchantress should count the time differently than you and catch you unawares. He is the greatest warrior in the Company of Mir. I can have him here in less than half a day, sword at his side.”

Swan shook her head. “No, my friend. That would be half the time I have to prepare. I will know if my mother sends the Horde against me sooner than she had promised. Gar’Ath should see to the defenses of the encampment, and you should help him to find routes to safety lest—”

“Lest the Horde takes your life and your spell can no longer shield us. Yes, I know. Perhaps you should break the spell and the Company can—”

“Can what? If I surrender to my mother, you might all die, and there would be no one remaining to stand against her evil.” Swan held Erg’Ran’s hand. “It is foretold in the Prophecies of Mir that in the future of Creath there would come a time when a Virgin Enchantress would attempt to seek the origin of her seed in order to break the power of evil. You are the one who taught me this prophecy, old friend, taught me that perhaps my mother was that evil, and that I was the Virgin Enchantress spoken of by Mir himself. You started me along this path. Would you have me deny what I’ve come to believe in?”

“You discovered the prophecy in the hidden writings your mother had thought she had destroyed. I only translated it from the Old Tongue with the help of your magic,” he reminded her. “You cannot win the day by yourself, or even with the Company of Mir fighting beside you. The prophecy in no way guarantees that you will be able to defeat your mother’s evil, only that you will attempt to. There is more to the prophecy, too, but it is a riddle.”

Swan sat down again, hands resting limply in her lap, her mind suddenly devoid of focus, certitude gone and resolve leaving her. “What riddle, Erg’Ran?”

He closed his eyes, cocked back his head, inhaled deeply and spoke haltingly, translating from the Old Tongue. “In a place that is not but is, the Virgin Enchantress will seek a champion who is not but will be. If death does not claim one or the other, the power of one will be the power of the other. Goodness is the fruit of evil and also its seed.”

“What does that mean?” Swan gasped.

Erg’Ran looked embarrassed, his face seaming with an odd smile. “I don’t know! All of Mir’s prophecies end cryptically, almost contradictorily. It must mean something, or Mir wouldn’t have said it.”

“How do we know Mir said it? Maybe somebody just wrote it down and said that Mir said it.”

“Well, I suppose that’s possible, Enchantress, but hardly likely.”

“Then where do I go to find this champion person?”

“Well, that’s right in the prophecy. You go to a place that is not but is.”

“What if there isn’t a place like that? Or, well, what if there are a thousand places like that? How do I find it, Erg’Ran?” He was searching for his tinderbox to relight his pipe. Perhaps pockets had their disadvantages, because he seemed unable to locate it. “Let me,” she offered, recognizing the edge of exasperation in her voice. With a look and a flick of a finger, a tiny tongue of flame licked upward from the bowl of his pipe.

“Thank you, Enchantress.”

“Where do I look?” Swan persisted.

“From my study of the Prophecies of Mir, from what I have seen happening in your life, Enchantress, I can only say that there is no answer which you can seek, only an answer that you will find.”

Swan stood up, on her toes, back arched, shoulders raised. “That word? The one you don’t like me to use? G’Urg! Hear it? G’Urg!!” She stomped from the miller’s cottage, calling out over her shoulder, “Be careful, Erg’Ran! And I’ll see you with the Company of Mir a little over a day from now.” Out the door, before she lost her temper with this wonderfully sweet old man and turned him into a frog or something and then felt guilty about it for the rest of her life. And if she didn’t hurry, that might not be too long. Swan hitched up her skirts, mounted less than gracefully and wheeled the mare toward the forest path...

The ride through the forest was frightening but also restored Swan’s resolve. If her mother triumphed all of Creath would be like that forest, no one would be safe and everyone who somehow managed to survive would exist in constant terror.

The trouble with looking up anything—she was in her tower, her sanctum of sanctums, where all of her precious spell books and her most special charms were hidden away for her use alone—was that as one searched, other things were noticed, catching one’s interest. Swan was searching for an herbal compound that would allow her to cast just one spell, then administer the resultant elixir to the Company of Mir in order to keep each member safe. She hoped to achieve the same effect with this elixir as the spell that she constantly kept reweaving by conscious and continuous force of will. But she found something else that attracted her attention. “I never heard of that,” she exclaimed aloud to herself. It was an incantation which could be used to turn the force of a volcanic eruption back into itself. “About as useful as a sword made out of bread dough,” Swan laughed. The last volcanic eruption on Creath near any populated area was in the time of Mir. And she was beginning to think, that was an awfully long time ago.

Swan returned to her search for the herbal compound.

She came across a spell which could change good wine into foul-tasting vinegar. The same effect could be achieved by leaving the wine too long in the bottle, no magic involved. The more she learned of magic, the more she realized that much of it was simply accelerating normal processes in an abnormal way. “Oh, well.”

Water clocks were the fashion for logging the passage of time, had been since before she was born. She never liked them. When she was just a child, she found a book which explained how to assemble gears and springs and make a time-telling device that was much more accurate (and never needed water). She glanced at it now. If her mother kept her word, time enough remained to gather together some special books and scrolls and favorite articles of clothing and use a compression spell to reduce them to a size that would fit in a man’s pocket, then get her horse and escape before the Horde came for her. Compression spells were long and involved to conjure, however.

Swan felt a subtle tingle along the back of her neck and in her fingertips. The guarding spell which she had set on the castle walls and gates (as she cast afresh once each day) was abruptly broken. Had her mother done it, Swan would never have felt it. Bridging spells would have been cast and the lifting of the guarding spell would have been unnoticed. Her mother, Eran, could do that sort of thing with ease. Swan had tried it, too, knew that such complicated spell casting was not beyond her capabilities.

But, whoever had lifted the spell had powers beyond those of an ordinary military spell breaker. Even those assigned to her mother’s elite guards, the Sword of Koth, were not that good. Probably a group of the Handmaidens of Koth had done it. Taken from their mothers at birth, the Handmaidens were taught the old Witchcraft. Individually, they had some basic magical skills. But in a group of six, one for each of the cardinal directions—above, below, right, left, before and behind—their powers could be significant enough to be dangerous. Confirming her suspicions, Swan felt her heart beginning to race.