The Changing Land Page 13

  Abruptly, within an odd little piece of furniture at the farther side of the hall, music began…

  The blackness was back, half hidden behind a pillar which hid nothing on this side of the glass…

  He moved doggedly ahead now, ignoring everything but the scents.

  (Had the tapestry near the corner ahead, to the right, just stirred slightly?)

  The black thing slid out from behind a mirrored pillar, and he halted, staring at it.

  It was a huge, horselike beast fashioned of metal that pranced forward, tossed its head, and regarded him. It almost seemed to be laughing at him.

  He stared, and bewilderment mingled with disbelief upon his countenance as it seemed to be walking straight toward him. Then it turned abruptly and mimicked his advance into the hall, even pausing to inspect the image of the clock within its niche. When it came abreast of him, it halted and turned to return his gaze.

  Suddenly its eyes flickered and glowed, and a wisp of smoke rose from its nostrils.

  It lowered its head and leaned forward. A rush of flames emerged from its mouth, spreading about the hall, filling the entire wall of mirrors.

  The man raised his hand and turned away.

  The mirrors upon the opposite wall also contained the conflagration. The brightness became intense. Yet there was no heat, no sound…

  The black beast had disappeared behind the wall of flame, yet the man had the strange feeling that the glass could crack at any moment and the metal thing emerge, charging toward him.

  There was an oppressive feeling of ancient magic all about. Whether it emanated from the Old One somewhere within or was a part of the very structure of the castle itself, he could not tell.

  Dragging his gaze from the wall, he began to move forward again. The tapestry was stirring once more. It was obvious now that there was a large form hidden behind it. He headed directly toward it.

  Before he reached it, however, it was whipped aside and the mismatched eyes of a demon regarded him.

  "The flames made me think I was being sent home," he muttered. "But here is only a mortal man—not even one of those I may not harm."

  His long, forked tongue emerged to lick his lips.

  "Dinner!" he concluded.

  The man halted and his hands moved to his belt.

  "You are mistaken," said the man in the same language, "Melbriniononsadsazzersteldregandishfeltselior. And the flames were already banked on the day of your spawning."

  "How is it, kin of the apes, that you know my name when I do not know you?"

  "You are mistaken," the man repeated, "for you will be sent home. And before you go I will whisper the answer to your final question, and you will know me."

  He unfastened his belt and lowered it, with the heavy blade and scabbard, to the floor.

  The music grew wilder and the flames continued their dance as the demon came toward him. He moved to meet him, a grim smile upon his lips.

  "Presumption, thy name is man," said the demon as he sprang upon him.

  "You are mistaken," answered the other as he avoided the snapping fangs, blocked the slashing talons and seized hold of him.

  Quickly, they were knotted into a complex array of limbs and they fell to the floor and began rolling. Eyes seemed to open within the flames, to regard them.

  Holrun had hung the mirror upon a section of bare wall between a desk and the hearth, covering over threescore and eight interesting runes and symbols. Now he reclined himself upon a heap of cushions before it, drawing upon his water pipe as he considered the approach, slowing his heartbeat, tensing and relaxing groups of muscles. After a time, he set the mouthpiece aside, still thinking of the thing he had learned at the Council meeting, where they had hovered disembodied above the Kannais, considering the Castle Timeless. Jelerak employed a system of mirrors to transport himself between his strongholds. It would require access to one of the mirrors and a full knowledge of the governing spell to utilize the system as he did. The castle itself was surrounded by a hard, dark aura which completely shielded it against psychic penetration. It was too far away for immediate physical access, and the land about it might begin its mad dance again at any time, anyway. Holrun had committed the appearance and the feeling of the place to memory. Upon returning to his body and his quarters, he had checked in his voluminous library for any reference he could think of which might bear upon the subject of the mirrors.

  Now he released his spirit once more, to return to that place. Soon the Castle Timeless winked below him, immense and sinister. Its psychic shield still held, but there were places beyond places—planes where reality was reduced to a simple vision…

  He shifted to that of pure energy and found his way barred there, too. Then an archetypal place of pure forms, where he was also excluded. With considerably more effort than he had thus far employed, he moved to the plane of essences.

  Ah…

  The entire pattern of the castle was bizarre, one of the strangest things he had ever beheld. But he wasted no time cataloging wonders. Having already set his will upon locating the mirror, it stood out quite clearly for his inspection in what, in the mundane world, would be the north tower.

  He approached it cautiously, searching out unusual essences in its vicinity.

  There was a single man present, and from this plane the essence of an extra hand was visible. So that was Baran. Well, well…

  He saw the spell and shifted to the plane of structures, where he felt more comfortable. It became a series of interconnected lines of various colors, all of them pulsing, beads of energy passing in seeming-random fashion from junction to junction

  Interesting. Something else was studying it also, from closer up, over on the energy plane.

  He withdrew somewhat and watched the watcher. If it could locate the starting point for him, a lot of time and energy—not to mention risk —might be saved. He did not like that fuzzy blue coiled thing in one small corner. Upon careful inspection, it seemed to be touching yet unattached…

  His fellow student of the spell, upon closer inspection, appeared to be one of those vague, cislunar elementals normally of amorphous, fiery aspect when drawn to his own plane. Here it was an inquiring hook, pulsing redly. It traced the periphery of the spell several times, rapidly, without coming into contact with that cage of lines. It did seem to slow its passage at one sharp corner each time that it went by, however.

  Each line that he beheld represented a single unit of the spell, spoken or gestured. That power which filled it was, of course, entered by Jelerak himself in accompaniment to the ritual, drawn either from his own being or from a sacrificial source. The problem for Holrun was to determine the sequence in which the structure had been created back on his own plane—a difficult task, for the beginning was not readily visible, as it would be in the work of a neophyte or even that of a journeyman with no great passion for secrecy. It was an exceedingly intricate piece of work, and Holrun felt an unwilling admiration for the man's technical proficiency.

  The hook slowed at another place—a lower angle, as if suddenly attracted to something there—then passed on and paused again at the sharp corner. Holrun maintained his passive screen. He could get out now even if the spell were employed before him. It would be later that things would become dangerous. Better to let the elemental risk these preliminaries.

  It slowed again at the angle, almost halting, and Holrun focused his full attention upon that place.

  Yes. During the ebb of one of the pulsations he was certain that he had detected the web-thin line of an unnatural juncture where a microwedge of perception might be driven. The elemental did not seem to note it, however, and returned to the sharp corner, where it halted.

  He watched, certain what would follow.

  The hook extended its sharper end, making contact, applying psychic pressures at that point. The cold blue guardian sprang like an uncoiled spring into the adjacent angle. The hook struggled to free itself, then grew still. It began to shrink and moments la
ter was completely absorbed.

  The blue coil fell away and was still, pulsing more brightly now. After several more beats, it attached itself to another angle, and the additional brightness it had gained was drained out of it into the structure of the spell itself. It rolled away then and was still once more, a fuzzy blue thing.

  Holrun drew nearer. He could see now that the elemental had been blocking the spell as well as studying it. Features he had at first taken as part of the construct began to flicker and fade—wedges set between open areas which must close when the spell was called upon to function. As he observed their passing, he considered the person who must have introduced the elemental into the picture in the first place. Once he became aware that it had vanished, it would take him a time to set up the conditions to summon another, should he wish to continue the study and the blockage immediately, and additional time to charge one with its task. Which should leave Holrun sufficient time to do what needed to be done without interruption.

  Unless, of course, someone employed the spell while he was about it, in which case he would be destroyed.

  He advanced upon the lower angle. The only thing remaining to be determined was the direction in which the spell flowed. He had two choices. The wrong one would undo it, totally deactivating the mirror as he ran through it backward.

  One line was thinner than the other, indicating a high pitch to the sorcerer's voice as he had uttered that sound. Normally, a spell commenced on a lower note than it ended, though this was not always the case. Either line, for that matter, could also represent a preliminary gesture. He moved nearer and made momentary contact with the heavier line.

  The blue coil flashed toward him, but he had already withdrawn by the time it arrived, bearing one piece of information away with him: the line echoed on contact! Therefore, it was a word, not a gesture.

  He watched and waited for the coil to subside. It was not so quick to settle back this time, but drifted off, exploring the larger angles.

  Once he entered the spell proper, from either end, he would be safe from its attentions, which had to be put in abeyance during the structure's actual operation The only danger then would be if the spell were employed while he was tracing it.

  The coil subsided once again, and he sounded the thinner line, withdrawing instantly.

  The cold blue thing acted in a predictable fashion, and he ignored it while digesting the additional information he had gained: there had been another echo; therefore, it began and ended with a word.

  There was still no way of telling for certain which arm of the angle represented the beginning and which the end—save for the lower-note presumption. He retreated and regarded the spell as a whole once more, attempting to gain an overall impression of its pattern. He rummaged his memory for analogies, brooded upon them, decided that ultimately he must place his trust upon a totally subjective feeling which had been growing within him.

  He rushed forward and penetrated the end of the thinner line. The striking of the cold blue thing was beyond his perception, for he was already moving within the system of the spell by the time it arrived.

  He realized that he had guessed correctly as he heard the first word—a fairly standard opening—ringing all about him. He advanced through the spell, receiving impressions of each gesture, living within each word, burning them all into his memory. When he came to the end, he jumped the gap and commenced a second circuit. This time he fled through it for a total impression, rather than for a rehearsal of particulars. Again…

  He marveled at the cunning manner in which it had been contrived, knowing full well that he would one day require a set of similar transportation devices himself. You just didn't see that sort of spellmanship these days…

  Again.

  Now it was with a more critical eye that he ran through it, seeking precisely the right point of attack…

  Aha!

  The seventh term ended with a hard consonant and the eighth began with one. The same applied to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth words. He ran by them again. The caesura between the seven-eight pair was slightly longer.

  He halted and inserted a soft "t" into the gap the next time around. Even if Jelerak were to audit his own spell, it would not be detectable between a pair of consonants. Then he spun off from his special element, creating a simple subspell system, all of whose lines paralleled and were superimposed upon existing spell-elements. When he had finished, he ran through the spell proper once again, deleting nothing. Another time around and he activated the "t" and dropped through into his own system. Perfect. The subspell actually utilized the heart of Jelerak's own system, but the linkage should be—

  He trickled energy from his own being through his system, activating it, and mentally thumbed his nose at the cold blue thing as the entire construct vanished and he found himself within his own mirror, regarding his reclining form.

  He departed the mirror, lowered his vibration rate, and opened his eyes. He stretched and smiled. He had done it, and he had left no footprints.

  Rising, he stretched again and massaged his forehead and temples, rubbed his eyes. He began yawning as he obtained the black crystal and set it up. But he gathered his forces, focused his attention, and spoke Meliash's name.

  The image appeared.

  "Hi," he said. "How are they hanging?"

  "Holrun! What's happened? It's been so long!"

  "I've been working on this damned thing. Let me tell you about Jelerak's mirror—"

  "His transport mirror?"

  "The same. I just trapdoored the spell on the one in the castle."

  " 'Trapdoored'?"

  "Right. If that damned elemental is not in the way, it will work just as he wants it to, as often as he likes, without his ever being aware that I now have access to the spell, the mirror, the castle—at will."

  "I've never heard of such a thing."

  "It's a sneaky technique I developed myself."

  "What are you going to do with it?"

  Holrun yawned.

  "I'll know when I wake up. Right now I've got to soak and take a nap. I'm dead."

  "But this must mean you persuaded the Council to do something."

  "Come on, Meliash! You know better than that. All I got out of them—accidentally, at that—was the knowledge that there were such things as the mirrors. They wouldn't touch Jelerak with a hawking gauntlet."

  "Then who authorized you to trapdoor the spell?"

  "Nobody. I did it on my own."

  "Won't you get in trouble if they find out?"

  "Not as a private citizen. I resigned from the Council in protest at the end of the meeting."

  "I—I'm sorry."

  "Oh, it wasn't the first time. Look, I've got to get some rest before I do anything else. Bye-bye."

  He blanked the crystal, cased it, and walked to the door. He snapped his fingers as he departed and did not look back.

  At first, Semirama ignored the knocking at her door. But when it was repeated and Lisha still did not appear to answer it, she rose from her mound of furs and cushions and crossed the chamber.

  "Yes?"

  Seeing no one when she cracked the door, she opened it wide.

  The hall was empty.

  She closed the door and returned to her nest of softness and incense, old wine and memory. The air seemed to sparkle for a moment, and tapestries and draperies fluttered as if a breeze were passing through the closed room.

  "My Lady Semirama, Queen. I am here."

  She looked about, saw no one.

  "Here."

  A dark-haired man in yellow tunic and fur leggings was staring off to her right near the foot of the bed, head lowered. He raised his head and smiled.

  "Who—who are you?" she said.

  "Your servant—Jelerak. I required a disguise in order to reach this place. It amuses me to retain it. I hope that it meets with your approval."

  "Indeed," she said, smiling quickly. "When did you arrive?"

  "But moments ago," he
replied. "I came here directly, to pay my respect and to learn the nature of the difficulty with our Old One."

  "The difficulty at the moment," she said, "is that he is quite mad."

  "Ah. And how long has this condition prevailed?" he inquired, studying her intently.

  "For about half an hour. He anticipated it and told me of it. I was with him when it began."

  "I see. Yet the land hereabout has been disturbed by his emanations for a somewhat longer period. How might these be reconciled?"

  "Oh." She raised her glass and sipped from it, gestured with her head toward the cabinet. "Please help yourself to a drink, if you'd care to."

  "Thank you. I seldom indulge."

  She nodded, already knowing this.

  "He did it on my instructions."

  "That does explain the patterning. I thought I saw a human mind at work there. Would you care to tell me why?"

  "To keep out the adventurers who have been trying to break in during your absence. They were getting to be a nuisance."

  "It worked against me also."

  "But you had the mirror."

  "The mirror was not functioning."

  "I began to suspect that only this evening, from something Baran had said, and I had Tualua clear it before his lapse. Isn't that how you got here?"

  Jelerak shook his head and smiled again.

  "I had to do it the hard way. Are you implying that Baran is up to something that goes against my interests?"

  "I'm not certain. He may have been trying to repair it for you, also, working to remove some interference."

  "We shall see. Does Tualua's problem mean what I think it does?"

  "His dark nature is rising and he is struggling against it."

  "Hm. Unfortunate, in that it will make him harder to deal with. Too much egotism will accompany some otherwise laudable sentiments. My first order of business had better be the restoration of his sanity so that he can help me to recover from certain debilities."

  "Can you help him at all—beyond temporary relief?"

  "Alas, lady, no. For who can triumph over his own darker nature? You wouldn't know where I can locate a virgin quickly, would you?"