“Flee, all of you!” Nevyn called out. “Run for your lives and now! Run to the town and beg for help, go hide in the mountains—but run!”
When he waved his arm, illusory lightning plunged and thundered among the trees. Screaming, shoving each other, the slaves bolted and raced ahead of him, panting and yelling and sprinting round the longhouse toward the back gate. In a swirling pack the Wildfolk followed, pinching, poking, biting the poor souls to keep them moving out to safety. Nevyn walked up to the front door, shoved on it, found it open, and flung it aside. Jill gasped, half-expecting an arrow or knife to come flying out. Nothing moved; the rustling trees fell silent; there was no challenge, no taunting, nothing.
“Very well, then we’ll go in after them.”
As they walked down the long corridor, the Wildfolk came back, materi alizing in midair and drifting down like drops from a leaky roof. Jill was so sure they were walking into a trap that she could barely breathe when they stepped into a modest reception chamber of the usual sort, the walls painted with fading flowers, the dais died in restful blues and hung with blue-and-purple silk drapes. Sitting in a low-backed chair on the dais was an enormously tall man with the dark skin of Orystinna; around one wrist he wore a tattoo of a striking hawk, and his face was masked with a red silk hood. Crouched at his feet was a Bardekian whose black hair and beard were so slick that it looked as if they’d been oiled.
“Baruma,” Rhodry hissed.
When the Bardekian raised his head, Jill saw that he wore a collar and a chain. The other man jerked the chain and smiled at her, as if he’d read her mind and was underscoring her point.
“Greetings, Master of the Aethyr,” the Hawk said in Bardekian. “How sad that we meet only to say farewell.”
“Oh come now!” Nevyn answered in the same. “Do you really think your paltry brigands are capable of killing me?”
“What’s to stop them? You’ve left your only hope up on the hill. Slaves may run from your tricks with the wind, but my men won’t.”
“No doubt, no doubt. And truly, you must be far stronger than I thought to chase the Old One out of his hole.” Nevyn glanced around the room. “I never thought he’d have such good taste in furnishings. I was expecting something gaudy and morbid. Rather like your taste in hoods.”
The Hawkmaster hesitated, then shrugged.
“Bluster all you want, old man. You followed my bait and walked right into the trap. You’ve got to admit that—you tracked me exactly like I wanted.”
“Nothing of the sort, actually. My spirits showed me where the Old One lived, and you were a mere incidental. But come along, if you’d go to all the trouble to lay some sort of abortive trap, there must be somewhat you’re after. Let me guess—if I do some thing for you, you’ll let my companions go.”
“That was the bargain I had in mind, yes. I’ll even make sure that they reach their ship without anyone else giving them a moment’s trouble. You know, when the Hawks bargain, they keep their word. We’re not like the Brotherhood. No one would hire us if we reneged on our contracts.”
“I’ve always heard that, and I believe you. What do you want from me?”
He sounded so calm, like a farmer haggling over cabbages in the market square, that Jill wanted to scream just to break the tension. On either side of her Salamander and Rhodry had gone as still as the statues in the garden outside, and both of them were a ghastly sort of pale, too, looking at that moment more elven than human from the wild fury in their eyes. The Hawkmaster smiled and lounged back in his chair to cross one ankle over the opposite knee.
“It’s nothing that will even trouble your conscience, Master of the Aethyr. You came here to kill the Old One, didn’t you? Well, so did I, but he’s escaped. Tell me where he is. Which way he’s running will do. You can die content, knowing that we’ll finish the job for you.”
“Well, that certainly sounds like a fair bargain.”
“Nevyn, no! You can’t!” Jill felt all her hard-won strength slip away like a doffed cloak and leave her sniveling and shaking. “I’d rather die than see you—”
“Whist!” Nevyn snapped. “Every man comes to his time, child. Mine is now. Get Rhodry back to Eldidd—I enjoin you, I lay this task upon you, I insist upon it in the name of the Holy Light itself. Will you promise me?”
Through a blinding scald of tears she nodded her agreement. When Salamander opened his mouth to argue, Nevyn silenced him with a black look and threatened Rhodry with a slap across the face. Then he turned back to the Hawkmaster, and at that moment he seemed taller, young and proud and straight, standing in an unearthly light as the Wildfolk came to cluster around him and lend him their strength and wildness.
“Very well. I’ll find the Old One.” Nevyn even smiled at the Hawkmaster. “But do you have somewhat of his that I can use for a focus? Some thing he worked dweomer with.”
“It’s right here, all ready for you.”
When the master snapped his fingers, Baruma picked up a bundle wrapped in black velvet and shuffled to the edge of the dais. Whimpering all the time, glancing Rhodry’s way in abject terror, he handed the bundle to Nevyn, then in a clank of chain rushed back to his master’s feet. Although Rhodry’s eyes followed him, his expression of utter impassive blankness never changed. Nevyn unwrapped the bundle to reveal a silver chalice, engraved with a welter of peculiar symbols and sigils and crusted, just here and there among the engraving, with drops of dried blood.
“The Old One’s slaves were careless when they cleaned the silver.” Nevyn wrapped it back up again. “This will do splendidly.”
“I have some small knowledge of these things.” The Hawkmaster smiled as if at a compliment. “You best had send your companions away.”
“I’ll just walk with them to the door.”
In a silence that seemed as thick and cold as seawater, Jill and the others followed Nevyn down to the chamber door. Just outside, blocking the corridor, she could see two men, armed and at the ready. Nevyn bent down and kissed her on the cheek.
“Kill those men without any compunctions,” he whispered in Devenían, then raised his voice and changed his language. “Farewell, child. Remember me in your heart.”
Hope stabbed her very soul.
“Always, my lord,” she said. “And may the gods go with you on your last journey.”
“Well spoken, isn’t she?” The Hawkmaster called out, “Very well, all of you. Get out of here, fetch the rest of your men, and get on your way to Indila. No one will harm you. I’ve given my word, and I keep it. Nevyn, as for you, come back here. It’s time to perform your last little trick.”
“Oh, gladly.” Nevyn turned to face him and raised one hand, a gentle gesture as if he were about to point out some small error of discourse. “What about a trick with fire?”
The draped silk caught with a hiss.
“You may keep your word.” Nevyn smiled gently. “But I never swore mine. I’ll find the Old One after you’re dead.”
Flames leapt to the walls, crackled, and spread in the dweomer-wind that rose and charged across the dais. The Hawkmaster dropped Baruma’s chain and jumped up, screaming, his tunic blazing as he ran panicked for a side door in a stream of sparks that fell to fire the scattered cushions. Tiles began to crack and burst from the wall with booms and explosions like in one of Salamander’s shows. Just as the master reached the door, Baruma rushed after. He held his own chain in both hands and swung it hard, lashing the Hawkmaster across the head and knocking him sideways into the flaming wall. The enormous assassin grabbed the burning curtains and fell, pulling them down with him into a writhing, blazing heap. With a shudder the side wall collapsed on top of him.
“The ceiling will go in a minute,” Nevyn yelled. “The Wildfolk are firing the upstairs chambers—anyone hidden up there is beyond help, so let’s get out of here.”
As Jill turned and raced out through the billowing smoke, she was drawing her sword. Screaming out curses the two assassins charged, but she spun t
o one side, let her man overrun his mark, and slashed him across the neck as he tried to catch his balance. Grunting he went down, folding into death at her feet just as his fellow dropped on top of him. With a bloody sword in one hand Rhodry grabbed her shoulder with the other.
“Baruma!” he screamed over the roar of flames. “Where’s Baruma?”
“No time! Let’s get out of here! Look, Nevyn and Salamander are already gone.”
When he took out running down the long corridor, Jill followed, thinking that he was heading for the gates out of the compound.
When the flames on the floor above began scorching the ceiling of the reception chamber, Nevyn and Salamander raced across the room and out the side door, which led into a big disorganized courtyard in back of the house itself. Nevyn clutched the precious scrying focus with both hands as they dodged through sheds and storage huts, rounded the empty stables and ran across the kitchen garden to the back gates, which were standing wide open from the earlier flight of the Old One’s slaves. Nevyn glanced around to make sure that the Wildfolk had followed his orders to carry or chase to safety all the various animals that were bound to be part of an estate like this, then led the way out the gate. Beyond the villa walls lay the wild grassy hills, rolling away to far-distant mountains. As they ran, heading far away from the burning compound, Nevyn seemed to pick out something moving among the hills.
“There he is! Can you see him?”
“Not one thing,” Salamander was panting for breath. “And I’m the elf.”
Only then did Nevyn realize that he’d already slipped into a light trance, that he was seeing the small group of men, carrying some large and lurching thing up a hill, only in his mind.
“It’s Tondalo in a litter. This hideous chalice is practically throbbing in my hands, it’s so linked to him. Well and good, then. You guard my body while I go into full trance. If this wretched fool thinks he can escape me as easily as he fooled the Hawks, then he’s stupid as well as evil to the core.”
Panting and gasping under the weight of the Utter, the slaves staggered up the hill. Inside, thrown this way and that, grabbing at window frame and curtains indiscriminately to steady himself, the Old One was already making his mental preparations. Across from him Pachela moaned as she clutched a padded box with one hand and the litter frame with the other. Her gray hair was slipping from her coiffure in big wisps. Suddenly the motion of the litter eased somewhat as the slaves reached the crest of the hill.
“Stop here!” the Old One called. “Put me down here.”
The litter jerked to the ground, and the door flung open of its own accord. Pachela scrambled out first, then helped the Old One haul his bulk free and stand up. Far down below him the smoke from the burning villa rose in an oily plume. The Old One turned and found the slaves huddled together by the tipped litter.
“As of now you’re all free, for all the good it will do you. Pachela, get out the bottle of the poison. I brought a wineglass, too. If it hasn’t broken, I might as well die in proper style. The rest of you, run away now! Fast! Head to town and tell everyone that brigands have fired the villa. If you’re lucky, they’ll believe you before the Hawks get you.”
Half-slinking, half-scrambling they hurried off downhill. The Old One lowered himself to the grass and patted the ground with one hand. It was such a distasteful feeling, the ground hard, the grass slick and somehow oily on his parchment-dry skin, that he realized with some surprise that he hadn’t been outdoors inside his own body in over fifty years. Shaking with fear, Pachela opened the prepared poison, dissolved in wine, and poured it out. The Old One held up the glass goblet and swirled the dark red wine, a Myleton vintage, raw and brash enough to cover the acrid tinge. Far below the greasy plume of burning had climbed to the sky.
“Pachela, you may go now. I see that Nevyn’s worked my revenge for me.” He took the first long swallow of wine. “The Hawkmaster is—was—a very stupid man, good with knives, no doubt, but not with his wits.”
As he sipped the second dose, he looked round to note the details of this early spring day: the view of the mountain peaks far away, pure and shining in the warm sun, Pachela herself, once a beautiful girl with ensnaring dark eyes instead of this thick-waisted matron with gray hair, who was walking slowly, with dignity, down the hill toward the burning ruin of the only life she’d ever known. No doubt she was glad that he was dying. Here in the soft sun, with the wind picking up cool and flower-scented, he couldn’t begrudge it to her.
“Everything changes,” he mumbled. “It’s the curse of the world: everything changes. But I—I go beyond all that.”
Although his hand responded slowly and trembled all the way, he got the goblet to his mouth and gulped down the last of the wine. A dribble ran from the corner of his mouth, but when he automatically tried to wipe it away, his hand spasmed, tossing the glass against the earth to shatter there.
“It is time.”
His eyes shut of their own will, but he stayed conscious, his mind alert within the dying lump of flesh. Even though his body of light would be useless in a few minutes, he summoned it as a bridge to the etheric and transferred his consciousness over to the simple thought-form, a slender man in a plain tunic. The relief of finally being free of his huge and deformed body was so great that he swooped up to the sky and fluttered once round the hilltop. He could see Pachela, a dim shape inside her pale aura, making her slow, proud way along through the waist-high waves of grass. When he flew off to the north, he glanced back to see that the silver cord joining him to his body was growing very thin and pale. It was time to change levels while he was still somewhat alive and in firm command of his mind.
He pictured a circle divided into quarters, each a different color: olive, russet, citrine, and, in the bottom quadrant, black. He held the image in his mind until it stayed clear and solid, then slid it out so that the circle seemed to hang like a vast curtain before him. Just then, he felt the silver cord snap. Like pieces of unstitched cloth, chunks of his body of light slithered and fell away, leaving him a naked bluish form hovering amid the billowing energy waves of the etheric plane. He bent all his concentration to the circle, which now changed from a painted-looking figure to a solid disk. The blackness was swirling within its bounds like trapped smoke. In thought only, the Old One called out the names of the Lords of Husks and Rinds, but there at the gate between worlds the thoughts seemed to boom like gongs. On that quiver and rage of sound he slid forward into and through the swirling blackness into the Earth of Earth, the lowest point of the world that knows the Light.
He felt it more as a smell than as a space, a thick mustiness of decay, yet perfectly benign, like leaves crumbling to enrich good soil, perhaps. As he burrowed his way deeper in, he felt pressure, as if the earth grasped him with firm hands. It became harder and harder to move, even though he was now pure mind scrabbling molelike into the astral plane. A desire filled his being, a lust for sleep, for resting there forever in the clingy dark, but he had trained his will for a hundred years in preparation for this exact moment. As he clawed onward, he envisioned himself going down, pictured in his mind that he was digging his way through to a darkness that lay below the universe and that touched it only at this one point. Earth of Earth began to fight him, as if its King had somehow discovered his evil intent. The dark turned crystalline and hard, gleamed briefly with an oily copper light, formed into vague faces and hands that clutched him and whispered with voices that all cried, “Go back! Go back to the Light!” Yet raging and cursing he smashed his way on, hammering at the faces and crushing the little hands with the huge steel clubs he visualized for weapons.
With one last howl of rage he broke through. Since his mind was still bound by earthly concepts, he saw everything very concretely. He was a tiny naked human figure clinging by its fingers to the bottom of a vast black sphere. Below, storm-tossed and infinite, spread a black sea. There were no stars, only currents of greater darkness, no true forms, only shifting pale images that alter
nately beckoned and menaced. The Old One felt his terror like a biting cold, smelt it as an acrid stink. This was the gate to the Dark of Darkness, the world of Husks and Rinds. Here, if he could claw and fight his way to power, he would exist forever as a separate soul, beyond all judgment of the Great Ones, beyond death though beyond all life as well. During every moment of his unnaturally long life, he had trained and planned and longed for this moment, but now he hesitated, stunned by the loathing that welled up within him.
For those moments beyond time he wanted to turn back. Earth of Earth would receive him; even as he had the thought, he felt his grip upon the sphere grow more secure, as if something had reached out and caught his wrists to steady him. Yet turn back to what? Nevyn? That meeting, perhaps, he could have faced, but behind the barbarian dweomermaster stood the Great Ones and their ultimate threat: the utter annihilation of a soul as unclean as his. Besides, he had a certain stubborn dark honor of his own. All his life he had longed for the manhood stolen from him by the slaver’s knife, longed for power to replace it and longed, too, for vengeance. What was he to do now? Crawl back to Nevyn like a whimpering puppy and grovel before the Lords of Light?
“Never! I swore that from evil I would forge my good, and I hold myself to that vow!”
He let go the sphere and dropped. Yet, even as great black waves lapped up to receive him, he saw, plunging out of the storm-tossed sky a figure of shining light, and as it plunged, it threw before it a gigantic shimmering net. With a howl of rage the Old One tried to dodge to one side, but too late. The net caught him, spread out, and wrapped him round. In the gust of triumph that echoed over the sea, he recognized the touch of Nevyn’s mind. Sea, storms, the sphere itself—they all vanished in a blaze of light as he felt himself swung round and round then slung clear of the net in an arc like a cry of triumph. On and on he tumbled through the silvery billows of the astral light to fetch up at last in some uncertain place.