Haramis knew she would have been able to safeguard them. And having the three pieces, she would now be able to reassemble them into the Sceptre of Power to deal forthrightly with this Portolanus, whoever he was. But with the present impossible situation … she might as well surrender as wait fearfully here in the Tower for the sorcerer of Tuzamen to come against her, armed with the other two talismans.
“Great God and Lords of the Air defend me,” she whispered, feeling her eyes begin to burn. “The world indeed is coming undone—not only this little Peninsula which I have guarded—and I am behaving like a contemptible fool, blaming my sisters for the disaster and ready to give in to Portolanus without even a struggle!”
Take action.
Haramis stopped short, near to weeping with futile rage. “Action? What kind of action? Shall I fly on voorback to the South and confront the sorcerer on the Pirate Queen’s ship? Long before I reached him, he would almost certainly have Kadiya’s talisman in hand—bonded to him through that damned star-box! Why did you let him have that thing? Why did you let him find the Kimilon? Why did you let Orogastus live?”
A great blast of wind roared down the chimney, flinging a barrage of sparks at her like a divine admonition. One stung her hand and she dropped the talisman on its chain and screamed. The burn was insignificant. Muttering under her breath, she set about to stamp out the live embers that smoldered on the hearth rug, trying at the same time to regain her composure. Then she adjusted the flue damper and sank down on the rug, staring into the flames while tears blurred her sight.
The storm winds moaned about the battlements of the Tower like choristers singing a funeral hymn, and the thought of music brought back to her a sudden poignant memory of good old Uzun, the Nyssomu harper and flute-player who had been the dear friend of her youth. Whenever she was downhearted, he had worked tirelessly to cheer her. Funny, wise old Uzun, with his bottomless bag of tall tales, who had accompanied her faithfully on her talisman-quest until his own bodily frailties had forced him to turn back. Uzun, who had gone safely beyond these five years, leaving her now with no one to confide in, no one to accept her and love her for all her imperfections. She had not a single true friend. Her only companions were the overawed Vispi servants who called her White Lady and believed that, because she wore the old Archimage’s cloak, she also had Binah’s power and wisdom.
How laughable … Despite all her study, she still knew so very little of her talisman’s powers. It seemed she would have to blunder on for endless years, slowly discovering how to use it. The Archimage Binah had lived to an incredible age and wielded great magic even without a talisman, but she had left no manual of magecraft for her successor. Haramis had done her best—but now, at the time of greatest crisis, she was helpless, her efforts mocked by the enigmatic thing that hung about her neck.
Others. Seek the good counsel of others of your kind.
Others?…
Her brow furrowed, then cleared. For the first time, the words the talisman had spoken penetrated her mind and took on meaning. Others? Not her sisters then, but—but—It was not possible! Binah would have told her!
But what if Binah had not known?
Haramis turned away from the fire, dashed the tears from her eyes, and lifted the talisman again with trembling hands. She asked: “Am I the only Archimage in the world?”
No.
She gasped. “Quickly! Show me another! Any other!”
The circle filled with pearly mist. But once again there came the peculiar whorls that had earlier indicated to her that Portolanus was shielded from scrutiny by strong magic. She groaned. “Of course. They would also be shielded, as I am myself.” She addressed the talisman again: “How many Archimages are there?”
One of the land, one of the sea, and one of the firmament.
So! She herself was certainly of the land, and so that left two others. “Would—would any of them speak to me? Help me?”
Only if you went to them.
“How can I find them?”
There are two ways: The first is through their invitation. The second way is to be found at the Inaccessible Kimilon.
Haramis uttered a cry of joy. “Thanks be to the Triune God! I will go there at once!”
The library door opened and Magira peered uncertainly inside. Several other tall Vispi were behind her. “White Lady? Did you call? We seemed to hear a cry of pain …”
Now radiant with excitement, Haramis shook her head. “It was only a spark from the fire striking my hand. A trifle. But I am glad you are here. Notify the voorkeepers! At first light tomorrow I will fly to the Kimilon. Send our guest Shiki to me at once, so that I may ask if he will accompany me. Prepare foodpacks, portable shelters, and whatever else will be needed for the journey, plus a sojourn of at least ten days in the icy wilderness.”
“But, Lady!” Magira cried, dismayed. “This magical storm! And if the volcanoes of the seacoast are belching fire, might not those of the Kimilon also be erupting?”
“Any storm Portolanus can conjure, I can withstand,” Haramis declared. “I have learned that much in my study of the talisman. As for the volcanoes and the other disturbances, I am confident that I can calm them also if they threaten me or mine. This trip is essential if I am to counter the threat that Portolanus poses to the world. Go now, and do what I have told you.”
She sat again at the table and held her talisman before her. Before she went off adventuring herself, she must survey again the chaotic situation in the south and advise Anigel how to proceed. Acting on her own, the Queen would very likely make a botch of it! But first, the middle sister.
“Show me Kadiya,” the Archimage commanded.
She saw a rainswept narrow street in a shabby town—Zinoran by the style of the buildings, and a seaport by the extraordinary number of taverns thereabouts, many with nautical motifs on their signboards. Kadiya, Jagun, and a troop of more than a dozen tall, fierce-looking Wyvilo were tramping along the cobbles, bearing their dunnage in sacks over their shoulders and wearing grim faces. It was obvious that they still had not secured a boat to take them back to the Windlorn Isles.
Haramis placed two fingers upon the inset trillium-amber in her talisman and closed her eyes. The vision of her sister and her friends now filled her entire mind. She could feel the battering rain in Kurzwe, and hear the tavern wind chimes and the melancholy croaks of grounded pothi-birds, and smell the sea-wind and the stench of the squalid alleys.
“Kadiya! Kadiya! It is Haramis who calls. Can you hear me?”
The expression on her sister’s face did not alter. It was obvious that Kadi’s thoughts were fully occupied with her own problems and not at all receptive to mental contact with Haramis.
The Archimage sighed, opened her eyes, and banished the vision. “Perhaps I can try to bespeak Kadi in her dreams. There must be someway to communicate with her over the leagues, even if she does not have her talisman.”
Now to look again at the pirates and Anigel. Haramis reached for a nearby parchment bearing a chart of the Zinoran Coast, unrolled it, and weighted down its corners with a book, the candelabrum, a black cube of the Vanished Ones that sang mysterious songs if one pressed its wart, and an empty tea-mug. Then she made a request of the talisman.
“Show me clearly Queen Ganondri’s ship in a view from high above, that will also show me whatever land or islands are nearby. Orient this vision so that the southerly direction is toward me and the northerly away.”
Again she closed her eyes. The vision that sprang to life in her mind was not so easily comprehended as the elegant map displays of the now defunct ice mirror of Orogastus had been. The talisman had resisted her attempts to teach it to indicate physical scale and to label landforms, rivers, or other identifying geographical features. But years ago she had learned how to interpret the more anonymous overviews that the talisman did vouchsafe, using the library’s great store of maps and charts to distinguish the exact region descried.
This was the second t
ime she had spied on the position of the Pirate Queen’s trireme this night. Because it was dark and stormy, she saw a depiction without the bright colors that daylight would have shown, a vision in tones of gray and black. The Raktumian flagship was a dot between two small islets, barely visible and now evidently far ahead of the four other vessels that had accompanied it earlier in the evening. A portion of a large landmass was partially visible on the left. It was necessary for Haramis to fix the terrain shapes in her mind, then study the chart until she determined the ship’s location.
“Aha! Got you!” The vessel was more than a hundred leagues southwest by south of Taloazin. Just as she had feared, it was not heading for home, but was on a direct course for the Windlorn Isles, with Portolanus and the captives aboard. She marked the position of the Raktumian flagship on the chart, then ordered the talisman to show her the other Raktumian vessels, and the Tuzameni ship belonging to Portolanus, and also Anigel’s flotilla of four that chased them. The deadly waterspouts had discouraged the other nations from joining in pursuit.
The slower Raktumian ships and the lone Tuzameni were twenty leagues or so behind the trireme, with the distance widening as the Pirate Queen’s vessel raced along on the storm-wind. Anigel’s flagship was fifteen or sixteen leagues behind the pirates, with her three escort vessels trailing.
“Now show me King Antar,” Haramis commanded the talisman.
Her vision of him was all but unchanged from the one she had seen three hours earlier. He still lay senseless on a rough galleyman’s bunk in some filthy part of the ship’s hold, bound hand and foot, guarded by a pair of ruffians. Shaking her head for pity, Haramis ordered a view of the three children.
They were no longer in the cabin assigned to the perfidious Lady Sharice, but had been put into a cramped, dark compartment with a barred door. The vision of them rose up and down violently with the movement of the ship in the storm, and there was a periodic booming sound, as well as a constant noise of creaking timbers. Great piles of wet, rusted chain with huge links loomed over the thin mats where Nikalon, Janeel, and Tolivar lay sleeping. Their festive garments were stained with dirt and rust.
“The chain locker at the ship’s bow: that is where they are confined. Poor little things! Ani’s heart must be breaking as she views them through her talisman. Still, they seem to be unharmed.”
She summoned a vision of her sister. The Queen was a pathetic sight, wrapped in a leather seaman’s cloak as she clung to the quarterdeck rail of the Laboruwendian flagship, face to the storm. Her talisman, the Three-Headed Monster, was on her head and it was evident that Haramis had interrupted Anigel’s own scrutiny of her lost loved ones.
“Hara! How far are we from them?” the Queen asked. “I can make no sense of what my talisman shows me of their distance.”
“You must tell your captain to change course slightly,” the Archimage replied, and she described the exact position and course of the Raktumian flotilla. “The sorcerer and the pirates are hell-bent for the Windlorns, not heading for home as we first thought. They are after Kadi’s lost talisman, and this devil’s wind Portolanus has whistled up will likely bring them to Council Isle in less than three days, if it holds.”
“We shall never catch them.” Anigel’s eyes betrayed hopelessness.
“There is a chance. Once the trireme crosses the reach of open sea between the mainland and the islands, it will be caught in the calms that prevail there. They are not called the Windlorn Isles for nothing! I doubt that even sorcery could conjure up a reliable breeze in that maze of sea-stacks and islands and rocks and reefs. Your ship is less massive than the Raktumian and your oarsmen free and willing. You might overtake them rowing.”
“Has Kadi set sail from Kurzwe yet?”
“Unfortunately, no. She seems still to be trying to hire a ship. I tried again to bespeak her, but without success. Ani, you must try. You are closer to her heart than I—”
“Don’t say that! She loves you as much as she loves me, and I know your own love is as strong.”
Haramis sighed. “At any rate, try your utmost. If she left Kurzwe at once in a fast ship, she could reach the site of her talisman’s loss before Portolanus.”
“But we had originally planned to use my own talisman to summon Kadi’s from the depths. How can she retrieve it without my help?”
“I don’t know. It would suffice if she could find some way to deny it to Portolanus until you and your ships arrive. Try to bespeak Kadi in her sleep. She may be more susceptible then. She must reach the talisman before the sorcerer!”
“Very well. I shall try with all my strength. But keep watching over us and guiding us, Hara.”
The Archimage hesitated. “I have a new plan for confounding Portolanus—but I do not wish to talk of it yet. Do not be dismayed if I do not bespeak you frequently from this time on. If you have true need of me, however, call upon me at once.”
Anigel’s face brightened. “A new plan? Oh, Hara, tell me!”
The Archimage shook her head. “It may be futile if Portolanus should get hold of Kadi’s talisman—or your own. You will remember that the sorcerer returned a second time to the Kimilon and took away only a mysterious box. I asked my talisman what this box might be—and it told me that the thing was capable of unbonding the talismans from their owners. All that is needed is to place them inside this magical box and cast the appropriate spell.”
“Do you mean that the sorcerer would be able to touch our talismans without being harmed?”
“It is perhaps even worse than that: he might be able to bond them to himself and use them, once they are released from you.”
“By the Flower!”
“Ani, dear, I know you are heartsick over the fate of your dear husband and children. But you must not be tempted to pay the ransom Portolanus demands. He would surely lie about returning Antar and the children unharmed in exchange for your talisman. Our only hope is to rescue the captives. Swear to me that you will not give in to the sorcerer!”
“I—I shall be steadfast. Lord Owanon and his brave knights will help me to save Antar and the children from the pirates somehow. Ah, if I could only get close enough to the whoreson wizard so the Three-Headed Monster might smite him! He would never have been able to seize my loved ones if I had realized what he was about.”
Haramis spoke more words of reassurance to her sister, then let the vision fade. Rising from the table, she went to a set of pigeonholes that contained many rolled charts and commanded her talisman to find one that would show the icecap region to the west of Tuzamen. But evidently no such map existed. Haramis rummaged through the compartments, discovering maps of Tuzamen itself (although none with much detail) and a single map of the mountain range where the Dorok Folk lived. There was nothing at all showing the Inaccessible Kimilon.
Haramis had descried the place through her talisman, of course, flinching at the view of the glacier-bounded little enclave all crowded with smoking volcanoes. But in no way had she been able to obtain a bearing upon its exact location, nor did any book in the vast library offer any hint of it. It seemed obvious now that the Archimage Binah had not used the Kimilon as a depository after all. Perhaps it predated her term of office and was of an antiquity unimaginable. Or perhaps the place belonged to one of the others, the Archimage of the Sea or the Archimage of the Firmament …
There came a soft scratching at the library door.
“Enter,” said Haramis. She abandoned the maps and went to welcome Shiki.
The sturdy little aborigine was almost fully recovered from his ordeal of seven days ago. His enormous eyes were bright gold, free from blood-webbing, and his face with its near-human features and his hands were healing nicely from frostbite. He had lost the tips of both upstanding ears to the cold, and these were still bandaged. The Vispi retainers of the Tower had made him new garments, and he proudly wore a medallion with the Archimage’s Black Trillium emblem on a chain around his neck, having dedicated himself to her service.
“Magira says you would travel to the Kimilon, White Lady.”
“If you are willing to guide me, Shiki. My maps and magical arts give me no clear picture of where the place might be. It must be guarded by some enchantment, as well as by leagues of encircling ice.”
The little man nodded, his face solemn. “I will lead you there gladly, and lay down my life for you if the Lords of the Air demand it. No task would give me more happiness than helping you to bring down the foul sorcerer who murdered my family and my friends. Will others of the Mountain Polk accompany us on voorback?”
“No. Only you and I will go. And we may … have to travel even farther than the Kimilon before our journey ends. To places no one of the Folk or the human race has ever seen. Fearful places.”
Shiki held out his three-digit hand, smiling. “I am willing, White Lady. We are strong, both of us, and we will go wherever we must and return safe together. I know it.”
Haramis clasped Shiki’s hand in her own, returning his smile. “You will know exactly what supplies we will need. Will you go to the voorkeepers and see that everything is ready for our departure early tomorrow?”
“I will.” He bobbed his head cheerfully and was gone.
Take action.
Thus had the talisman commanded. No more studying, no more observing or pondering. She had been forced into strenuous physical activity earlier in her life, drawn along through perilous mountains by the flying Black Trillium seeds that had guided her toward her talisman. But there were no magical seeds to help her now—only a single vulnerable little man who had come by fortuitous accident to her Tower.
Accident? Oh, Haramis …
“Silence,” she said firmly. She tucked the talisman into her robe, turned out the candelabrum, and started to walk out of the library.
But suddenly a thought struck her. How to bespeak Kadiya? Of course! She cried out loud: “Haramis, you simpleton!”