The Old One stood in his Temple of Time and considered the images on the twelfth floor. Overnight they’d multiplied so fast and taken on so much life that he knew his plans were rushing toward their crux. At one window stood Nevyn, grown huge and towering; round his feet like so many toys huddled the figures of a dozen men on horseback, and at their head was Rhodry, about twice as large as the rest. Off to one side, and a normal life-size, were Jill and the image of a man he didn’t recognize, though he was willing to wager a guess that it was Nevyn’s disciple. At another window across the room stood the enormous image of the Hawkmaster, and again, at his feet crouched a huddle of followers, Baruma among them. Since he was planning on defeating Nevyn out on the etheric plane, where armed men would be of no use to either side, it was the Hawkmaster’s followers that particularly interested the Old One. When he’d scried through Baruma’s eyes, he’d seen only two other Hawks with the Master. Now there were twelve. Treachery? Perhaps. The Old One was willing to consider that the Hawkmaster might merely have summoned reinforcements against the master of the Aethyr. He was not, however, willing to ask him directly.
He returned from the temple, banished the mental construct, and opened his eyes. He was sitting in his favorite chamber below a ceiling painting of the zodiac and in front of a desk heaped with scrolls and sheets of bark-paper. In the midst of the litter stood a small bronze gong. When he rang it, Pachela, the middle-aged slave woman who ran his household, opened the door and stepped in.
“Do you wish food, master?”
“No. What are you doing, tending my door? One of the boys is good enough for that.”
“I have accounts for you to look over, when you have time.”
“They’ll have to wait, probably till tomorrow. Send someone up here to keep everyone out. I have important work to do.”
She bowed and slipped out, shutting the door softly behind her. He waited until he heard the slave come take up his guard, then brought out his consecrated mirror of black enamel to scry. As soon as he sent his mind out searching for Baruma, he saw the image of his erstwhile student flickering on the surface. Since Baruma was asleep, it took him only a few moments to steal his body for his own use. Once he’d gained control, he made a show of waking up, yawning and stretching as he opened the body’s eyes.
He found himself sitting on the bare ground in a little valley. Off to one side, not far away, was a campfire; sitting near it were a handful of men, armed and grim. To the other, the Hawkmaster was walking up and down while he talked to someone that the Old One not only recognized but hated with all his heart: Dargo, the Hawkmaster who ran the Indila guild. His hatred for this particular master was one of the reasons, in fact, that the Old One had hired his assassins from another island. Secrecy, of course, was the other, but as he listened, he realized that the two Hawkmasters were discussing everything they’d gleaned about his plans, and that they knew a very great deal indeed.
“I’ve been laying a trail to lead Nevyn right to the Old One’s villa. If we get there first, so much the better.”
“Yes, indeed,” Dargo said. “If the Old One’s dead or weakened. A cave’s a good place to lay an ambush, but not if you’re sharing it with an angry bear.”
So it was treachery, then. His wave of rage broke the Old One’s concentration and threw him clear of Baruma’s body. Once he transferred his consciousness back to his own, he snarled like the bear of Dargo’s figure of speech and dug his fingernails into the wooden arm of the chair. So. They thought they’d hang around like jackals at a hunt and pick up whatever spoils the lions left them, did they? They would be very surprised when they felt the power of the Clawed Ones unleashed upon them. The Old One decided that he would destroy them first; it was the easier job, after all, and one he could do through ritual.
For a long time that night he sat and brooded, while the room slowly darkened as the oil lamps burned down and the glittering zodiac above lost itself in shadows. At last, some hours before dawn, when the tide of Earth was running deep out on the astral, he roused himself and rang the gong. Once the slaveboy had fetched him a lantern, he hauled himself out of his chair with the boy’s help and made his slow way to his ritual chamber, but he dismissed the slave before he opened the hidden door into that black pit of a room. As he waddled in, a wave of scent, stale incense and long-dried blood, washed over him with comfortable familiarity.
As soon as he’d set the lantern down on the altar, he knew that something was wrong. He and his various students had worked so much magic in this room over the years, and so many human beings, to say nothing of animals, had died in it, that it normally had a malignant life of its own. Any person sensitive to such things would feel, walking in there, as if the very air quivered with the hope that he’d spill both blood and power. In a sense, the Old One’s workings had turned the entire room into a talisman, vibrating with and radiating back all his evil lusts. Yet that night he felt that it had gone dead, as lifeless and spent as any other broken talisman—a smashed crystal, say, or melted bronze disk. It was merely a black chamber with odd marks on the walls, filthy and smoke-stained, reeking of sour perfume and the memories of death—nothing more.
“Nevyn!” he snarled. “It has to be Nevyn!”
No Hawkmaster would have either the power or the knowledge to exorcise a ritual chamber at all, much less from some great distance. In fact, the Old One had absolutely no idea of how Nevyn could have done such a thing, and with good reason, since the job was impossible for any human or elf, even one of Nevyn’s power and learning. For a long time the Old One paced back and forth and swore with the pettiest foul oaths of the marketplace and gutter until at last, shaking and out of breath, he stood before the altar and stared up at the banner of the reversed pentagram on the wall behind it. In the flickering lantern light the star seemed to swell and glimmer. All at once the Old One was afraid; he felt power gathering around him of a kind that he had never invoked. In the central pentagon of the evil star a point of light gleamed, spread itself into a thin glowing mist, and as he watched in horrified fascination, images appeared in that mist.
They were persons of some sort, but nothing so earthly as human beings or elves or as otherworldly as pure spirits, presences rather that had form and shape but no true bodies. Since he was, after all, a master of magic in his twisted way, he knew that he was seeing only reflections or perhaps projections of these beings from some plane as far removed from the astral as the astral is from us, and that trying to communicate with them directly would be a waste of power and nothing more. At first he assumed that they must be beings of great evil, since they were appearing on a ground prepared for the working of evil, but then he remembered that his ritual room was dead and empty, and the goat-star banner nothing but a barren sign as well. In an electric stab of fear he gasped for breath.
At that precise moment three great knocks boomed out, rolling through the room and shaking the walls. The altar on which he was leaning cracked from side to side with a noise like the stroke of an enormous gong, and stone dust plumed in the trembling air. With a shriek the Old One pitched forward, but such was his presence of mind and true strength of concentration that he grabbed the lantern as he fell and blew out the flame, or the room would have caught and burnt with him in it. In the midst of the rolling thunder of the knocks, he heard or thought he heard a voice, a single word that was another crash of thunder in itself.
“Unclean!”
Lying in the dark the Old One shrieked again, wallowing from side to side as he tried to rise, as trapped as a tortoise turned onto its back. He could feel his ancient heart pounding, the blood throbbing in his neck and temples, and for a moment he thought his death was bursting out from within him the way a plant bursts open its seed. Then the door, which he’d never properly shut, was flung open, and slaves came rushing into the room, light blossomed from other lanterns; he could hear Pachela’s voice giving orders as well-trained hands grabbed him and hauled him to his knees.
?
??Earthquake,” he gasped. “Must have been an earthquake.”
“Yes, master.” She sounded panicked and puzzled all at once. “We all felt it. Can you see?”
He realized, then, that she thought he’d had a stroke.
“Yes, yes. It was just the shock.”
With the slaves’ help he got to his feet and realized in a kind of horror that half his household was there and that they’d all seen the forbidden chamber. They would have to die, but without Pachela to care for him, what would he do? He also realized that, although the slaves were frightened of what they took to be a natural disaster, none of them showed the slightest trace of that screaming panic which the room used to induce in its victims. Still gasping and muddled, he smoothed down his tunic and shook off the hands that held him. Though he swayed, he managed to stay on his feet. When he looked around, however, he nearly fell again in a panicked faint. Not only was the altar lying in pieces, but the tapestry of the pentagram was gone—not merely torn, or shriveled, or ripped from the wall, but gone. Only an oblong of scorched paint, already cold, showed where it had hung.
And with a cold stab of certainty, the Old One knew that he had already lost his war. All that remained was to make his enemies pay high for their victory.
“Here, master.” With clumsy fingers Baruma fumbled through the saddlebag and found Rhodry’s silver dagger. “This was his. I used it to scry him out. It made it easy.”
The Hawkmaster took the dagger and hefted it, then peered at the graved falcon on the blade.
“What’s this? Some sort of magical symbol?”
“No, master. It’s probably his mark. The barbarians can’t read.”
“Ah.” The Hawkmaster flicked a thumbnail against the blade, which rang ever so softly. “Well, it’s certainly an alloy you won’t find in the islands. Good, little piglet. This will do splendidly for our last clue.” He waved to one of the Hawks. “Take this into the Ganjalo marketplace and sell it. Make sure the buyer remembers you.”
Once the runner was on his way, the Hawkmaster turned his attention back to Baruma, who was squatting by the dead campfire and shoving food into his mouth with both hands. He was drooling and gobbling so loudly that the Hawkmaster nearly killed him then and there, but he restrained himself. That pleasure would come later, after they’d taken over the Old One’s villa.
“Stop stuffing yourself for a minute and answer me. How far are we from your master?”
“Is it sunset or dawn now?”
“Dawn.”
“We ride all day. Then we’re there.”
“Good. We’ll wait in the hills until the Master of the Aethyr’s nearby, and then we’ll spring our trap.”
It took all day and well into the night for the Old One to recover. As he lay gasping and wheezing on his bed, he realized that his body was reaching the end of its unnaturally prolonged endurance, that even if he could kill all his enemies, Nevyn and the Hawks both, he would die soon anyway. At first he raged and swore; then he wept and trembled; finally he lay still, his feelings spent, and considered the situation. The Clawed Ones were deserting him, he supposed; they always did desert a master of his craft, sooner or later, as one last test to see if that master could stand without them. Only then could he pass into the life that was death.
Regret it though he did, it was time for him to die. No doubt his enemies thought that his death would mean the end of him and his power; no doubt they thought that they’d be rid of him forever once they killed this loathsome husk that weighed him down. He knew that he was only going to another place, where he would live on and find unlimited power to take his revenge.
“Fools!” he whispered. “Someday soon I’ll suck their souls dry.”
“Nevyn?” Jill said. “You seem to know exactly where we’re going.”
“I do. I’m afraid I was being a stiff-necked dolt, trying to do everything in exactly my way and in my own time. Fortunately, I had the wit to accept help when it was offered.”
“From the Wildfolk?”
“From their kings and their lords. Those are beings with a full consciousness—a very different sort than ours, but a true consciousness all the same. They stand in the same relationship to the Wildfolk as the Great Ones do to us.”
“I don’t know why, but whenever you talk about the Great Ones, I feel terrified.”
“Why? Because you’re a sensible sort of person, that’s why. They’re not all cozy and comfortable, you know.”
They were riding at the head of the line, a little ahead of the others so they could talk privately. That morning when they broke camp, Nevyn had led them off the road with the remark that he didn’t see any reason to give Ganjalo the scare of its life and then taken them straight through the wild hills. Now they were following a stream, running full and wild from the floods, that would—or so Nevyn said—take them right to the Old One’s estate.
“Why isn’t the Old One trying to stop us?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect that he’s getting ready to run for his life. Or, truly, that’s not quite the right way to put it. Listen, Jill, you’ll find out soon enough. I only ask one thing from you: whatever I tell you to do, do it. I don’t care how badly it aches your heart—do what I say.”
“Of course. I promised, and I will.”
Toward noon Nevyn called a halt. While Jill fretted, pacing back and forth and wondering what he was up to, he went alone to the top of a nearby hill and sat in the grass for close to an hour. When he returned, he announced that the Old One’s compound lay just ahead. As they rode that last few miles, Jill noticed how quiet Nevyn was, slumped a little in his saddle as if he were lost in thought. At that moment he reminded her of her father; he looked every bit as bored and distant as Cullyn did when he was about to charge into a battle against bad odds. At the crest of one last hill they paused their sweaty, blowing horses, and Nevyn rose in the stirrups to shade his eyes and look out.
“There it is.”
Like a piece of jewelry in the palm of a hand, the villa lay in a green valley. White stucco walls set off the gardens and the buildings—a main longhouse, a stables, a scatter of square sheds—which were all roofed with the usual Bardekian shakes of reddish wood. From their vantage point Jill could see nothing moving, not so much as an animal.
“Nevyn?” Jill said. “Are there wards over the compound?”
“You have been studying, haven’t you? There are indeed, but I’ll just do somewhat about that now.”
Nevyn clutched his saddle peak with both hands, shut his eyes, and went limp, bowing toward his horse’s neck. For some minutes nothing seemed to happen; then his head jerked up—though his eyes stayed shut—and his whole body twitched and shuddered.
“There.” All at once, he was awake again. “Well, I was right about one thing: the Old One’s gone. Finding him again could be a problem, I suppose.”
“Do you mean we’ve won?”
“I only wish. There’s a small army of Hawks down there, all hidden and waiting.”
“Do we charge the gates, my lord?” Rhodry guided his horse up closer. “Me and my men are ready.”
“Your men, and Gwin and Perryn, too, are going to stay up here with the horses. You may come down with me and Jill and Salamander, if you promise not to get in the way and to leave the fighting to me.”
“What? Have you gone daft?”
“Not in the least. There’s a thing in that villa that I absolutely have to have if I’m going to track the Old One.”
“Walking right into a nest of assassins and asking for it sounds daft to me.”
“No doubt, but I won’t exactly be asking, bargaining, more like.”
“Nevyn,” Jill broke in. “I feel cold as ice. There’s danger all around us.”
“Of course. I’ll admit it’s somewhat of a gamble. If I thought they’d kill us the moment I opened the door, I wouldn’t go, but they’ll want a look at me first, to gloat if naught else. You see, I’m willing to wager that they’re as sure
as sure that I’m helpless against armed force. Those of us who study the dweomer of light would generally rather die ourselves than cause another man’s death and these stupid piss-poor excuses for sorcerers have always taken that for a sign of weakness.” Nevyn actually laughed, a rusty-sounding burst of good humor. “Now, Rhodry, are you staying here or are you coming on my terms?”
“I’m coming to guard Jill if naught else.”
“Well and good, then. Remember your orders.”
Nevyn dismounted, tossed his reins to the startled Gwin, then strode off downhill, leaving the others to follow as fast as they could. By the time everyone caught up with him, he was knocking on the front gate as calmly as a peddler with trinkets to sell. Jill began to think that Rhodry was right and the old man’s wits were going.
“Er, my lord?” she said. “I doubt me if they’re just going to answer as courteous as you please.”
“I wasn’t putting that kind of knock on the door.”
Nevyn raised both hands over his head, held them there for a moment, then slowly brought them down in one smooth sweep until his fingers pointed right at the ironbound double gates of the compound. With a roar and a gust the wind rose and slammed into them like a battering ram. Wood splintered, iron bands snapped, one gate shattered right then; the other flew open and shattered against the wall behind it. Over the roar and the pounding Jill heard screams, prayers, and the sobs of terrified men as well as women.
“Well, come along,” Nevyn snapped. “No need to dawdle.”
As he strode through the broken gates, they crowded in after him. In the lush garden trees still quivered and rustled from the wind; ancestor statues lay broken on the ground. Out in the middle square of lawn huddled the Old One’s slaves while all around them, as if standing guard, clustered a veritable army of Wildfolk. Jill had never seen so many—big burly gnomes standing grim and attentive, hordes of sprites hovering like wasps in the air, smaller gnomes dancing and baring their needle-sharp teeth.