The Horse Lord (30 page)

He had stood very straight and waited for the blast of magic which would strike him down, but even when a virtual blizzard of the things had straddled his position on the ridge and smashed his staff officers into so much frozen meat, he had been unharmed. Such a thing was not accidental; Santon had already guessed as much and his suspicion was confirmed as a great voice boomed out from the sombre fortress.

“Commander!” it blared. “Commander, I know that you can hear me! I know you are alive, commander. I intended that you should be. Go back to your King Rynert, commander, and tell him of the fate which befalls any who would oppose me. And commander, I thank you for the chance to exercise my skills once again. Quite apart from the reinforcements which you have given me. Get you to your king with all despatch, my lord—you may not die till then!”

“That was quite a performance you put on back there,” said Aldric, pouring himself a strong drink. Gemmel, intent on lighting his pipe, said nothing. “I mean,” the
eijo
continued, aware that he was babbling and equally aware of the nervous tension which made him do so, “if you’d been on the stage you would have got a standing ovation at the very least for the sheer intensity of that opening speech.”

The wizard stared at his foster-son through a veil of fragrant smoke, wondering just how much Aldric was Covering up and how much he actually knew. “Intensity,” he murmured. “Knowing that one’s words are true does give their delivery a certain weight.”

“Santon’s dead then—you’re certain of that?” Aldric spoke in much more sombre vein; he had not liked the saturnine lord, but had respected him as a proud, honourable, worthy gentleman of a kind nowadays growing rare. “Probably so—or as good as dead anyway. We’ll know soon enough, I fear. But Aldric, put other people aside for the moment. You heard me explain at some length about the Dragonwand’s properties and I presume you’ve been talking to King Rynert for the past half-hour…”

“Talking isn’t the way I’d put it,” Aldric said, with a small shiver of recollection. “There are things I did not want him to know—my use of magic, for one—but the way he can twist words around so that answering one question leaves you open for three more… Gemmel-
artrou
I tell you without shame he had me scared once or twice. Rynert’s worse than ar Korentin at that lawyer’s crooked questioning style—and Dewan’s bad enough, before Heaven.”

“It’s all in the degree of practice,” Gemmel said drily.

“They’ve both had far too much of that and most of it on me.”

“If you’ve quite finished…”

“Sorry! Yes, I have. Say your piece.”

“Thank you. Now you’d better know at once that I was lying about Ykraith’s protective powers.”

“What?”

“It’s a weapon first and foremost—an offensive weapon. Like a sword; you can parry with one, but its prime function is to cut and thrust. Any protection which the army receives will come from my own personal force and from this.” Gemmel took a small box from his belt-pouch and set it on the table before lifting off the lid. The blue aura of the Echainon spellstone pulsed out and over the table, giving as always the impression that it must leave a stain, so intense was its brilliant azure colouration. “I haven’t the time to explain why just now, but because Kalarr cu Ruruc once used this himself a simple charm will be enough to cause it to absorb any sorcery he invokes—without the usual drain on my physical and psychic strength. Duergar doesn’t really concern me; I’ve studied his methods and it seems he’s a necromancer, one skilled at giving life to dead things—and not necessarily corpses, as that bronze monstrosity in Erdhaven proved. As far as really dangerous weapon-magic is concerned, say the Invocation of Fire or the High Accelerator, he cannot be considered a serious threat.”

“But why lie about it?”

“Aldric, think of the military mind. If any of those legion lords knew this was a weapon they’d insist on using it their way and that would be fatal.”

“Then why—”

“I had to say something other than: ‘Unfortunately, king, my personal strategy is going to leave you virtually unshielded for a while. Bad luck.’ Rather than let that happen, Rynert would lock me up and throw away the key.”

“Personal strategy… ?” Aldric wondered shrewdly. “I have the feeling that includes me.”

“It does. There are certain rules which must be obeyed in this sort of business—and of course it’s your duty and no one else’s to kill Duergar Vathach. Correct,
venjens-eijo
!”

“Correct.”

“Then we understand one another. You’ll need me to prevent Kalarr from turning you to a small smear of crisped fat—”

“You have such a way with words, you know…”

“—and in that time the army will be without protection, other than the few charms I shall be able to lay on it before we go.”

“Go? Where?”

“Use your brains, boy. Where else but Dunrath? I’m quite sure there’s another way in, apart from the front gate. Mmm?”

“What if there isn’t?” hedged Aldric.

“Then I have ways and means of circumventing that difficulty if such should arise. But I feel certain that it won’t.”

“Exactly what will you say to King Rynert if anything goes wrong?”

“There are plenty of plausible explanations—perhaps his men went beyond the limits of my spell or something like that. But if anything goes really badly wrong, then making excuses will be the least of our problems. Assuming we or the king are even alive to worry about them.”

“Sometimes,
altrou-ain
, you say the most reassuring things. Just like Ymareth—now there was another… oh dear God in Heaven!”

“Aldric—what’s the matter?” Gemmel leaned forward urgently because the young
eijo
had gone suddenly, shockingly white. “Are you ill, son?”

“No… No, I’m all right.” Aldric smiled weakly. “Just bloody stupid.”

“Don’t take names to yourself without reason,” reproved the sorcerer.

“Oh, I’ve reason enough,” the
eijo
muttered. “You might think anything to do with a full-grown firedrake would stick in my mind, but I’d almost forgotten what Ymareth told me. Destroy any talisman of Kalarr’s that you hold, it said, and make sure he knows it—then await events. Ymareth’s words.”

“You forgot that… ?” Gemmel stared so hard that at last Aldric was forced to look away. Only then did he nod, once and hastily. “Then you
are
stupid! Listen: if I destroy the spellband, not only will it remove any threat which Duergar might hold over Kalarr—so that once they know it, their alliance will fall apart—but cu Ruruc will think I’ve failed to recognise the Echainon stone. The kind of mistake a petty wizard might make. So
he
might make a mistake of his own like leaving the security of his fortress—”

“My fortress, please.”

“His stolen fortress to defeat Rynert in open battle. That’s how he was destroyed last time, so such sweet revenge should be most enticing.”

“Well, then,” Aldric finished his wine and stood up, “let’s do it. Have you noticed any crows about Kerys?”

“A few. Foolish; gulls would be much less obvious round a sea-port.”

“Not very imaginative, are they? Come on,
altrou”
The regiments were already forming up as Aldric and Gemmel sauntered innocently through the streets of Kerys, both quite aware of the black bird which kept pace with them along the rooftops. Gemmel had slipped away briefly and had returned with a sapphire in his hand. Aldric had not asked where the gem had come from, but a word from Gemmel made it glow until now it was a convincing imitation of the Echainon spellstone. The wrist-band was tucked into his belt.

“Carefully now,” he said in a voice so soft that Aldric barely heard him. “If our spy guesses that all this is for his benefit, we’ll have wasted our time.”

“And started cu Ruruc wondering about just why we found it necessary to go through such an elaborate deception…”

“Precisely so.”

They were looking for some deserted courtyard which would be concealed from ordinary spies, but not from the changeling hopping cautiously in their wake. Though Aldric stopped now and then to glance about suspiciously, he always moved slowly enough for the crow to hide from view. It was more difficult than he had thought to make such a pretence seem convincing. Then Gemmel grabbed his arm and jerked him out of sight.

“In there!” the enchanter hissed in his ear and gave him a firm push between the shoulders. At the end of a narrow, sour-smelling alley Aldric found himself in an old stable, its roof collapsed and open to the sky. Something moved furtively between the broken rafters and the young
eijo
gave a small, grim smile. Gemmel appeared beside him, looking about with every sign of satisfaction. “This will do,” he said, and laid the spellband down on a heap of rotting straw. Above their heads, the crow almost fell into the stable as it tried to see what the sorcerer was doing.

Using a piece of wood, Gemmel drew complicated patterns on the dank floor; only he knew they were meaningless, but they looked significant and that was enough. He mumbled nonsense under his breath and accompanied the sounds with imposing gestures. The overall impression was of a fussy, inexperienced conjuror faced for once with an important spell, and Aldric was forced to hide another smile behind his hand.

Steam billowed from the damp straw as the bronze ring began to glow; then its metal ran like wax, exposing the glow of the false spellstone for a few vital seconds before the whole thing was swallowed in a white flash of heat. Only ash and a few spark-pitted cinders remained behind.

“So much for Duergar and Kalarr,” Gemmel announced confidently. Something rustled overhead—not the crow, which Aldric had been surreptitiously watching, but a large brown rat. Gemmel glanced up, catching his companion’s nod of approval before shouting: “What? A spy!” and pointing his finger at the rodent.

There was a hazy flicker in the dim light and a crack like the lash of a whip. The rat squealed shrilly and its body exploded, throwing bones and internal organs all over the stable as if shot from a
telek
. Though Aldric had been expecting something of the sort, the speed and violence of Gemmel’s reaction made him jump. Even so, he missed neither the crow’s hasty tumble out of sight nor the rapid clatter of wings as it made a hurried exit.

“I think he’s convinced we meant business,” he said, forcing a laugh as he glanced towards the messily-deceased rat. “What was that trick anyway?”

“A lesser form of the High Accelerator,” Gemmel replied, massaging the pins-and-needles it had caused in his hand.

“Why lesser?”

“Because I saw no need to flatten the stable, that’s why.”

“Could you have done that?”

“Could you stop asking questions for a while?” the wizard returned testily. His index finger, which had directed the spell, felt as always as if he had hit it with a hammer. Then he relented. “Yes, quite easily. The High Accelerator is a fierce magic, you know; it can make a man’s eyeballs jump out through the back of his skull, or push his skull out of his head. Hurling down a wall isn’t difficult. Satisfied?”

“For the time being…”

“He destroyed it?” Kalarr repeated softly. “Are you quite sure?”

One of the thin, yellow-eyed changelings nodded emphatically. “I saw it done, lord—and barely escaped with my life.”

“So…” The sorcerer stood up and crossed to a window, from which he stared down at where Duergar worked his necromancy on the wreckage of Endwar San-ton’s legion. Since the great spell two days before, Kalarr had felt drained, exhausted—but now his weariness was replaced by a fierce exultation. “Losing the stone is unfortunate,” he mused, then chuckled. It was an ugly sound. “But not so great a loss to me as the wristband is to you, Drusalan.”

Swivelling, he fixed both spies with a baleful glare. “Duergar Vathach must not hear of this matter,” he growled, and an ominous note in his voice made the changelings quake. Both knew the easiest way in which he could ensure their silence. Then he smiled cruelly. “Good! I see you understand me. Then remember. Now, get out!”

The spies needed no second bidding; they scuttled frantically away with cu Ruruc’s harsh laughter in their ears. He settled back in his chair once they had gone and began to plan his strategy, wanting the Albans crushed and under his domination but strangely unsure how to go about it. Now that the old Emperor was dead any aid from that quarter was unlikely—Grand Warlord Etzel was too busy jockeying for real power to be concerned with abstract notions of foreign conquest.

While Kalarr intended to enjoy Duergar’s death in the fullness of time, he realised now that the time would have to be deferred. He had nothing like the Drusalan’s skill in the art of necromancy, and it was that art which had created and maintained the
traugur
host which garrisoned Dunrath.

Using the same type of huge spell which had annihilated Santon’s army was physically impossible; Kalarr knew that it would be more than a month before he could take the physical strain of the High Magic again without hideous deformity. Besides, he knew that a military victory would entice certain ambitious lesser lords to side with him, since they would not be smirching their honour by aiding a wizard, merely a skilful general. Kalarr sneered to himself; he cared nothing for what they thought, but knew that certain proprieties had to be observed. It had been just the same before… the last time. Men remained human and never learned the lessons of their own past.

And defeating Rynert in battle would be such a deli-ciously ironic vengeance that he could scarcely be expected to forego the opportunity… Kalarr opened out Lord Santon’s battle orders and began to study them with care.

Both the great army roads which criss-crossed Alba and the legions which marched along them had been created by Rynert’s great-grandfather in the early days of the Imperial threat. Neither had yet been used against the enemy which had caused their birth, but had frequently seen service against Elthanek border reavers and recalcitrant lesser lords who fancied a return to the old independent days before the Clan Wars. The six legions had become little more than a huge police force with a kingdom to patrol, but that state of affairs was changing with every mile they marched further north and every man knew it, whether he was a peasant’s son who had joined the Standards because he expected no inheritance or the lordliest high-clan
kailin-eir
resplendent in the plumes and crests of a commander.