The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (32 page)

“Ah!” the Mage cried. “A noggin, my dear Zoda. A refreshing sup of our special reserve that will aid our guest to unburden himself of his apprehensions.” Then, as the servant hesitated, those aged eyes fell upon Alan and the thick brows arched in a moment’s benign contemplation.

“Forgive my boldness, yet I already know the reason you have come. I have been expecting you.”

“How do you know about me?”

“My goodness! He is the direct one, is he not, Zoda?”

Inclining his head, the rheumy eyes widened with a mischievous amusement. “Of course we adept have long awaited your arrival. You, my dear young man, are the incarnation of prophecy. But enough of this! Zoda! Have I not called for refreshment?”

Alan felt increasingly uncomfortable with the obsequious tone of the Mage. He nodded his appreciation while his voice remained firm. “I don’t have the time to chat. My friend, Mo, is missing. You sent me your runestone with Mo’s face in it. Can’t you just tell me where to find her?”

A more knowing smile crinkled the corners of the Mage’s withered mouth. “The young gentleman is in a great hurry. Ah, but surely we can help him, can we not, Zoda, on the condition that each of us is prepared to share a secret or two with the other?”

Alan sighed. “I don’t have any secrets.”

“No secrets! Hark at the gentleman!”

“I just don’t have time to be fooling around. All I want is your help in finding my friend.”

The Mage of Dreams nodded his wise old head. “It is true—I did send you her image. And I assure you that I will do all within my power to help you. But first I must have a little information in return. I am curious to know more about your companions. A she-cat of the Western Mountains, a Kyra who bears an oraculum of power upon her brow, and a rebel princess from the Council-in-Exile. Tell me more of these. Why have they accompanied you to Isscan? What business have they in coming here?”

Alan tried to conceal his surprise. How could the Mage of Dreams know about Ainé and Milish? He had no awareness of his mind being probed.

He wondered if he dared to use the triangle to probe the mind that lay behind the rheumy blue eyes. As he considered this the dwarf re-entered the chamber and handed Alan a goblet of heavy silver, chased with glittering symbols over its bowl. The dwarf filled the goblet almost to the brim with a clear, thick liqueur, poured from a decanter of turquoise crystal. The Mage studied Alan closely as he warily took a sip to find that it tasted sweet and strong. His senses reeled from an immediate intoxication.

“Where’s my friend?”

The Mage of Dreams accepted a similar goblet and he took a delicate sip from its contents before replying.
“We should not hurry this conversation. First, a toast! To the pleasure of your visit, my dear young sir!”

Though he was increasingly irritated by this time-wasting nonsense, Alan went through the motions of taking another sip. The Mage of Dreams also took a second, noisier, swig. “But to business! I can tell you that your friend has indeed been brought to Isscan. By a one-armed bear-man, one of the ferals.”

Alan sat back, startled. “Snakoil Kawkaw?” Somehow the traitor had not only escaped but must have known where Mo was and taken her with him.

“Is she okay?”

The Mage of Dreams shrank back, as if shocked. “Such concern! You really do care deeply about this young friend. To my knowledge, she is unhurt.”

“Why won’t you just tell me where she is?”

“Patience—
patience
! I must know more before I can help you. To answer your needs, I would know of your secret. What is the source of your power? Who bequeathed you, so obviously ignorant in such matters, such an oraculum of destiny?”

“I’ve had enough of your questions.”

“Had enough of my questions? Such discourtesy is disappointing. I merely enquire as to its source. Ah—hmm! I have in mind a perfidious being, enamored of spiders, worms and slime! But one who is yet careful to conceal her machinations. Have you by chance encountered such a being?”

“I don’t give a damn about this.” Alan attempted to stand up again, but immediately fell back in his chair, his senses reeling.

The Mage’s eyes glittered, then widened. “Ah—forgive my rambling! Replenish the goblets, Zoda. And you, my friend, drink up! It will relax your mind and help me to help you in your need. Yes, that’s it—that’s the way!” Suddenly Alan felt an overwhelming compulsion to take another drink of the clear liqueur. The Mage nodded, watching him lift the heavy silver goblet to his lips. He waited until Alan had taken a much deeper draught, then smiled a great wide yawn, with those four pointed teeth bared. “Yes . . . um! But can it be true that you know nothing at all about the source of your power?”

Alan’s mouth began to speak, as if against his will. “I . . . I might have seen somebody like you describe . . .”

“How fascinating! And did she give you a purpose—one that has led you here to my door in search of your poor friend, who, alas, is lost and calling out your name?” He clapped his hands and the sad-looking dwarf reappeared.

“More refreshment, clumsy oaf!” The Mage struck the dwarf a sharp blow across his face, causing him to totter back, striking the wall with a wince of pain. “Get to it!” The Mage dismissed the servant to take a rasping slurp at his goblet, draining its contents, before returning to Alan. “How should I put it, my fine young sir? Perhaps you have spent too much time in the company of witches.”

Alan was startled at the grimace of loathing that accompanied the Mage’s derogatory reference to women.

“Ummm—I wonder if these witches have been telling you lies? Oh, you will think me overly suspicious no doubt, but experience has made me wonder if all women are not born with lying tongues. Is it not conceivable that at the very least you have been misled by them—these witches who pretend to be your friends and yet have broken the edicts of their own High Council-in-Exile?”

The Mage’s tone had taken on a growling quality, and his brow had fissured into a spiderweb of wrinkles. “My good young man, you must ask yourself that simple question, as indeed have I. Have you been beguiled? Yes, beguiled I say!” The yawning smile appeared no longer to be a smile at all, but a triumphant baring of teeth. “Consider all that has befallen you since you first arrived in this blighted land.”

Alan felt the compulsion to reply, to tell all, to agree with the preposterous insinuations the Mage was making. Meanwhile, the Mage waited, with ill-concealed impatience, for the frightened dwarf to refill both goblets, all the while studying Alan with intense speculation. A covetous look flickered across a face that now seemed more scaly than lined. His lips drew back, thin and wide, to drain the contents of the goblet in a single swallow. His shoulders seemed to fill out and hunch massively about his neck. Suddenly Alan sensed a violent invasion of his mind.

A deeper growl replaced the old Mage’s quaver. “Do not have the insolence to resist me!” The changing figure stretched enormously long arms, as if to reach out to claw at Alan’s oraculum. Alan found a deep reserve of self-preservation that pulsed momentarily in the triangle, causing those long arms to retract. The Mage’s face contracted, revealing a huge, alien contortion, which he covered with a hand, as if to suppress a yawn, after which he widened his eyes and shook his weary head. “The first power you appear to have discovered—if poorly. You derive a modest strength from it. But still you have much to learn.” A hateful glee transfigured the Mage’s restored face. The inner beast was so close to the surface that his expression seemed to vary from moment to moment. “My, my . . . so much that puzzled me is now revealed. The witches’ plans—I see them now. Confound them and their execrable trinity!”

Alan was sweating freely from his struggle to block the mental probing. He found his voice, though it caught in his throat. “I—I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”

With what appeared an immense struggle, tranquility again cloaked the Mage’s features, though his eyes still stared suspiciously into Alan’s own. “Such a power, as you, young sir, have now discovered, may be a trial as much as a blessing. For nobody could carry this accursed mark without knowing the secrets of their plans. Secrets you will volunteer to me. Ah, confound the witches!”

Alan forced his will into the oraculum again, to discover some last well of strength to oppose the Mage. “You look sick, old man . . . confused?”

“Do not play games with me, foolish manling! Oh, devour the witches! Lick their blood!” Those bony fingers scratched at the ancient brow, the overly long nails in what were increasingly transforming from aged hands to claws, gouged the skin to either side of his wrinkled face. “How deviously they have plotted against the Master! Well, their plans are now undone.”

Alan had noticed how, with every slurp of his drink, the scarlet of the old man’s nose was spreading further to become a butterfly mask of thick red scales that was spreading over his cheeks. “Pain cleanses. Pain,” the monstrous face now seethed, “is the delight that lies at the core of debased womankind. Does she not cry out in the ecstasy of it as she gives birth to her foul progeny?” Two large animal eyes now peered out of their enfolding wrinkles with the hard black glitter of polished jet.

“Where the hell is my friend Mo?”

The transforming thing opposite growled, the words barely distinguishable. “Drink, manling! Zoda, you scabrous excrement! Fill the goblets—to the brim!”

Alan had no intention of drinking what the Mage was forcing on him. He tried to create a barrier within his mind. But he was unable to resist picking up the glittering silver goblet, unable to resist drinking again,
though his senses swooned until he was almost unconscious. And the Mage, with lip-smacking relish, drained his own in another noisy slurp.

“Soon you will stock my larder, you and all your brattish friends.” The Mage’s hands had tightened about the bony swelling that formed the head of his staff, fingers arched about it like claws over a skull. “You will forget all about the answers you seek when I introduce you to the delights of torment. In such circumstances your cries for mercy will become a music of their very own!”

With growing horror, Alan realized that he was losing control of his will. “You’ll never win!”

“Thus would you repartee with me?”

The increasingly beast-like face, with elongating snout, reached across the table to snap its teeth in Alan’s face. “Hark at the fool! What a poor rival you have proved, in truth.”

Through his increasingly clouded senses, Alan remembered the white-robed figure lifting the chalice to his lips before the exultant crowd in the plaza. He had been too distant to see that figure’s face. But now he knew who that figure must have been. He used the oraculum to enter the mind behind the curtain of those alien eyes. And in so doing, he confronted an alien intelligence, dreadful and ominous. A dew of sweat oozed out of his brow and plastered his hair to his head. There was nothing at all that he could do to prevent the talon that reached out to his brow, that
touched with a contemptuous ivory point the recoiling matrix of the oraculum.

“Ah,” growled the voice, now crackling with glee. “You so desperately wish to find your friend? Perhaps the information you seek is in the possession of my Master. Surely then it is my Master you would like to meet!”

Saving Mo

A black vapor materialized over the table that stood between them. It solidified as a perfect pentagon. Though it seemed smoother than still water, no reflection showed upon its surface. In its depths Alan perceived an expanding matrix of awesome power. With that twinkling smile returned to his malleable features, the Mage had taken a bloodred prism, shaped like a multifaceted inverted cone, from a pocket in his capacious robe and caused it to rise into the air, suspended, it seemed, without any visible attachment over the center of the pentagon.

Suddenly the bloodstone began spinning rapidly around its vertical axis, and the Mage’s growl became distant and hypnotic.

“In search of enlightenment you came to me. Well, now, enlightenment has found you. For this key will
open the door to the most secret and hallowed of labyrinths, my foolish young friend.”

The withered Mage was eclipsed by a third presence, a more formidable figure by far, its features shadowed like coals within a bloodred flame. Even to look at this presence pained Alan’s eyes. But he could not avert his gaze any more than he was able to blink. Slowly the cowled head lifted, and he saw there a being of utter darkness. The figure willed him closer, and his limbs ached to comply with that instruction, though he fought back with all of his might.

“No withholding. All resistance must be abandoned.” The voice of the Mage of Dreams echoed within his skull.

Then, abruptly, his mind was penetrated as sharply as if a blade had entered it, and Alan was gazing down upon himself and his three friends. Though he knew the scene, Alan felt a strange, cold detachment. They were gathered about the tumulus of stone on the summit of Slievenamon, under a dreadful sky that wheeled about them. He saw the expression on every face, including his own . . . the look of horror as the guardian of the gate attacked them.

“A pernicious little cabal!” exclaimed the Mage. “But now you will disown them. You will spurn them and kneel in homage of my Master!”

Alan resisted that command. Yet the compulsion to obey it overwhelmed his mind. “Surely my young friend has not imbibed enough. Another drink, scabrous Zoda—let our young friend show the Master a token of his veneration!”

Though he did not know the nature of the Mage’s poison, Alan’s mind reeled with its intoxication. Fighting back with every fiber of his resistance, he used the oraculum to scour his blood for evidence of the chemical nature of the poison, so he could fight it. But still he found nothing. A thought struck him with the suddenness of revelation: He remembered the spiritual essence that had charged the weaponry of the Kyra in the riverside battle. He felt certain that the Mage had infused some similar potion into the drinks, a potion that had no effect on the Mage but which was undermining his own spirit. Sweat poured from Alan’s brow as, physically weakened by the poison, he resisted the force of compulsion that rose again within him. As the dwarf brought the glittering goblet to his lips, an icy darkness enclosed him, as if to physically devour him.

A glimpse alone and Alan almost died from the horror of it: a vision as through the pupil of a monstrous eye that enclosed an entire universe of darkness. And the deep and dreadful voice that addressed him as a whisper in his mind was no longer that of the Mage, but his Master.

So we meet! And you, in your ignorance, imagine yourself my adversary?

“Who . . . who are you?”

Why, I go by many names. To those, such as my servant who has so readily trapped you in his lair, I am the cusp of reason and veneration. To the Shee-witch who ruled Ossierel until her final abject surrender to my conquest, I was the other side of grace, the left hand of darkness. Like
her you will discover, in opposing me, that my power, like my will, is infinite.

Alan shrank back into his chair by the fire, its flames now cold as tombstones, his limbs withering with an increasing paralysis, aware only of his hands writhing uselessly over each other, until the knuckles cracked.

That figure was gesticulating with a single ebony talon, its cowled head so close it could have stretched out and touched him.

There is an answer I would have of you before I leave you to the Mage’s passions. There is one among you who bears a secret name—Mira. I must know which of you it is.

He saw, as if through a pitiless eye, the four friends again. His gaze could not blink over the vision in which terror was frozen on all of their faces. A gigantic shadow was bisecting the sky. In his eyes the orange of flames, in his ears the howl of battle. The howling condensed, in a moment, to become a bell that was pealing, distant in his mind.

Very well, if you will not speak, I will enter your mind!

The figure extended an arm of darkness out of the cavern of its sleeve. The claw on the end of a stygian finger was reaching toward his brow . . .

“No!” Though his heartbeat faltered, like the irregular pealing of his own doom, he found the inner strength to resist it for one final moment.

In that same moment, a clatter startled him from his entrancement. The dwarf, who had refilled their goblets, stumbled as he left the chamber through the
door that now seemed more the portal to a shadowed crypt. The clatter was the turquoise decanter shattering against the floor, releasing elemental forces to flash and explode about the chamber.

The Mage’s howl of wrath filled Alan’s ears as the dwarf bowed repeatedly in a profuse apology, while collecting the fragments in his hands.

The black pentagon melted away.

The voice of the Mage was a snarl, issuing in slurring cadences through grotesquely elongating lips. “Clumsy fool—I shall take pleasure in the multiplication of your pain!”

Alan was still shaken with horror by the memory of that figure of darkness, yet he knew he had to deflect the Mage’s wrath from the dwarf. He intoned not through speech alone but subtly, through the oraculum, fawning over the beast’s head that now capped the figure of the Mage, a reptilian mask of black glistening eyes and slavering jaws from which protruded four venomous fangs.

“Anger does not become such . . . such a sublime mind.” He racked his brain to find the right flowery words to fit the archaic language of the Mage. “I have never encountered a mind as powerful as yours before. Not even, I daresay, the mind of the Tyrant himself!”

“A mind as powerful, you say?” the Mage growled. “None—not even the Great One—not even the Master?”

Alan saw in that moment how the dwarf was signaling to him. He made a drinking motion, then shook his head. With his face looking ominous, the dwarf pointed
to his own wide-staring eyes before he scuttled away, with head bowed, through the door.

A conflict of rage and self-preening fought within the grotesquely metamorphosing figure opposite Alan. For a moment, the kindly old man dominated. “But you flatter me, surely?”

Alan tried to continue his deception while struggling to interpret the dwarf’s signals. “I think you’d see through flattery in an instant, an intellect that’s so superior . . . well, I guess, in all that is ignoble?”

“Ah—indeed I would!” The Mage’s head became that of a bird, a tall bird, like a great heron, of snowy plumage with eyes of a sulphurous yellow, fissured with red. In a moment, the eyes switched back to the black of the reptile, lusting for blood. Only now did Alan understand what the dwarf had been trying to communicate. The power of the Mage—the entrancement—was not solely located in the drink. The greater danger lay in the eyes. He recalled how the enchantment had begun with the very first trick—the sapphire mask of the butterflies that had drawn his attention to the Mage’s eyes.

Alan broke eye contact, pretending to examine his silver goblet, as if in admiration.

“Yes!” The snout hissed, its mucousy breath right up against his ear. “We must partake of the civilities. Yeeesss!” A contemptuous gloating sounded at the back of a lengthening throat, edged by fangs. The eyes careened through hypnotic blue, yet all the while coldly observant, basking in the anticipation of devouring him.

“I can see,” gurgled the Mage, “how you might adore the likes of me. Savor, while you can, your eclipse by no small captain of darkness.” A muscular tongue, glistening blue-black and forked at its tip, darted from between the fangs in the gaping maw as it licked its stretched lips before swigging its drink in a single gulp. Alan watched with horror the changes that continued to invade the Mage’s body. He was rising out of his chair, a darkling shape that had abandoned any pretense to being human, elongating at one end into a tail and at the other into a gaping snout. From its paws sprang three claws as it reached out toward Alan’s brow.

The dwarf was back in the chamber. His face was contorted as if in an agony of effort. From behind the Mage, he was holding something in his outstretched hand—the runestone of polished jade. By some sleight of hand—or will, perhaps—during the confusion of the dropped ewer, he had stolen the runestone from the Mage. Now he was pressing it forward with an extended arm, fighting every inch against a resisting force that caused the veins on his temples to bulge and knot, and reaching toward Alan’s brow.

Still the distance that separated them, though mere inches, was too much for him.

The dwarf’s face was grotesque with effort. But he was losing his struggle.

Alan turned his head, willing his paralyzed limbs to move. The claws, like pincers, had caught hold of his hair. They twisted and turned, attempting to
bring his face closer to the slavering maw. He tried to tear himself loose. He focused his desperation, searching for the weakened power of the oraculum. Suddenly there was a thunderclap and a flash of lightning, causing the beast to stagger off balance. But its strength was enormous. The outstretched paw slackened momentarily, but did not release him. Instead, the claws tore deeper, twisting wildly, powerfully shackling his head.

Bringing himself an inch closer to the runestone, Alan felt blood start to trickle under his hair. He forced his head to move closer toward the jade, his scalp stretching through the hurricane of pain.

The beast roared, re-tightening its grip. Its head was lolling from side to side with the force of its struggle to pull him toward Alan. The jaws were gaping, the tongue flicking about violently, through and around the slavering fangs. The agony mounted until Alan could no longer see the dwarf, could hear nothing but the roaring of the beast’s fury, its ravening lust almost touching his face. Then, abruptly, he felt the oraculum make contact with the jade, and a force, like a breaking dam, flowed from him and into the runestone. The chamber exploded into a fury of thunder and lightning.

He found himself on hands and knees on the flagstones, in front of the extinguished fire. The storm raged about him, hurling the table and chairs against the walls and ceiling. The dwarf had been thrown down on the floor beside him, yet still he managed to
hold the runestone aloft, its matrix exploding a hurricane of power against the cowering beast.

Alan struggled to think. Somehow his oraculum had awoken great power in the runestone and the dwarf had known how to use it. But there was no time to dwell on this. Suddenly the jade was extinguished, pressed into some inner pocket of the small man’s tattered clothes, and he was helping Alan to his feet, taking hold of his face between his hands, rubbing Alan’s cold, perspiring skin, slapping him on either cheek to hasten his recovery.

Opposite them the Mage flickered uncertainly between metamorphoses, yet a single eye, alternately blue and dreadful yellow, still watched Alan as the tongue lolled over the fangs.

“Go! Run for your life!” the dwarf shouted. “The force of the runestone will not hold it for long.”

“Did you see?” Alan’s voice was croaky, forced from a throat still husky with horror.

“Yes, I saw. His fear of you must be great for the Tyrant to challenge you in person. But quickly now—we must escape this prison while there is time.”

“I came here to find my friend. But now I’ve failed.” Shaking his head in despair, Alan was still only gathering his own senses as the dwarf threw open the side door leading into a pitch-dark chamber. He disappeared into the gloom, then returned with his arm around the shoulders of a small and trembling figure. She rushed into Alan’s arms.

“Mo!”

“Alan! Oh, you’re hurt! You’re bleeding.”

“Nevermind me. How are you?”

Tears rushed into Mo’s eyes and she hugged him tighter. “I knew you’d come. I knew you’d find me.”

Suddenly Alan held her back from him so he could look at her in amazement. “Mo—you didn’t stammer.”

“No. I didn’t. Alan, there’s so much to tell you. I don’t know how I could even start to explain.”

But the dwarf interrupted them, grabbing each of them by the arm and hurrying them out of the Mage’s chamber.

“Thank you, whoever you are. I owe you my life!” Alan gasped his gratitude, as they arrived at the gate in the wall of boulders. It was still night, although the first promise of dawn was in the sky.

All of a sudden, the dwarf stamped his foot and, seizing both of Alan’s wrists in a fierce clasp, his face scowled and their eyes met. “Don’t you realize who I am?” In the half light of daybreak, Alan was confronted by those emerald-green eyes, which were blazing with pride. The dwarf struck his chest with a gnarly fist and stretched to his full height, his rage making him seem a foot taller than his diminutive stature. He raised the runestone out of a pocket. “My property—and so, with your help, I have reclaimed it. I am Qwenqwo Cuatzel, the true Mage of Dreams.”

Mo laughed with delight. “I knew it! I knew you were special when you risked your life to comfort me in that
terrible place!” She threw her arms around the dwarf’s thick neck and hugged him with all of her might.

“And I, in my turn, owe my liberation to you both. You are remarkable young people. It is my honor to consider you my friends.”

For a moment longer, all three held one another. But then Qwenqwo Cuatzel shook himself free, shaking his head. “Later! There will be a time for talking around a campfire. Now there is a need for haste.”