That Way Lies Camelot

  Iveldane's smile broadened. 'Does my return from the prison you fashioned for me surprise you?'

  He loosed his grip, slightly, allowing the Wizard enough will to reply. But the silence was disturbed only by the crisp speech of flames, and the Wizard did not imprint the inanimate with any message. Through the heat of his triumph, Iveldane sensed frost. It made him laugh.

  Still, the Wizard said nothing. Iveldane borrowed current from the stars and banished the study with all its ruined comforts. For half an age, he had planned this. Spells spiralled and wove through his slim fingers. His dark brow shone damp with sweat. Presently, the Master of Trevior stood before him, bound in glassy chains of wizardry and ice.

  'Do you fear me, Master?' The tone was mocking.

  The Wizard's black eyes met blue ones without expression. 'I fear only a past misjudgment.' His words were calm as the sea's depths.

  Iveldane felt his heart twist, but hatred did not shake his control. 'And was a thousand years of agony confined in a volcano's fiery core a misjudgment?' Iveldane stared at his enemy, weighted with the bitterness and suffering of days past.

  The Wizard bore his stony gaze, patient. 'Was it?'

  Iveldane's expression soured, and echoes of his laughter bounced off pillared shafts of icicles. 'You'll answer, before I have done.'

  The Wizard bowed his head.

  Iveldane's confidence wavered. An icy draft tumbled across the chamber momentarily raising gooseflesh on his braceleted arms. The ornaments hid scars left by fetters of fire, and that nod had been the same gesture which condemned him to torment ten centuries past. But this time, nothing happened.

  He taunts me, Iveldane thought. Rage clamped his gut like iron. He called upon the earth, and dirt rose from the floor like a gaunt old hound, circling the Wizard's feet.

  'I will seal you, living, into your grave, even as you did to me.' Iveldane's whisper carried clearly over the grind of soil and stones. The Wizard made no reply, though that freedom had been left him. Once, with a word, he would have smoothed the earth to rest. Iveldane waited, then wondered why he did not. 'I don't understand,' he said.

  The Wizard looked up. 'You never understood.'

  Iveldane unleashed his anger. Dust rose in screaming fists of maelstrom. When it settled, the Wizard was buried wholly beneath a barrow of earth. Iveldane sat, with his chin on his fist, and waited for the Wizard to tumble the barriers that imprisoned him from the light. Yet he did not.

  'You were once my Master, and my friend.' Iveldane stared at the mound of rubble, and memory surged over him like the tide ...

  * * *

  He saw himself as a boy again, frightened of the night and soaked by driving rain. The door against which he huddled, shivering, suddenly opened, spilling him awkwardly across a marble floor at the feet of the Master of Trevior.

  'Why have you come here?' said the Wizard.

  Iveldane looked up, and it seemed those dark eyes saw only the water which dripped from black hair onto the ragged cloth of his shirt. 'My Lord, I wish to learn.'

  The Wizard's veined hand tightened on the door panel as he pushed it shut. 'Do you think I will beat you any less than the smith you ran away from?'

  Iveldane flinched. Yet his reply was bold. 'My Lord, you are the World's Master. Should you beat me, then surely I will have earned it.'

  The Wizard looked abruptly away, and a small shiver seemed to grip his thin frame. 'Remember this. The lesson of wisdom can be painful. And only one can be Master.' Flat as dark obsidian, his eyes returned to the boy. 'Do you understand?'

  'Oh, yes, my Lord.'

  The Wizard extended a strong warm hand, and helped the boy to his feet. 'Then let us start with dry clothes and warm soup.'

  * * *

  You never understood. The words mocked, sharp as needles. Iveldane stared at the rubble which covered the Wizard who had uttered them, and felt the hair on his nape stir. He tried to laugh, but it felt wrong. 'Never once did you beat me.'

  The earth was still.

  'Instead you betrayed me. Are you listening?' The anguished words shattered into echoes against the glassy rungs of ice. When no answer came, Iveldane looked once more into the past...

  * * *

  'I have taught you all I know.' Cloaked in the golden glow of candles, the Wizard stood with a shadowed face. 'The time has come for you to leave me.'

  Iveldane raised eyes pale as frost. His hair glanced in the light like a raven's wing. 'You are the World's Master. There is no place I can go where I will not walk in your shadow.'

  The Wizard spoke with sorrow. 'Some things cannot be taught. If you have loved me, go, and learn contentment.'

  'That is a poor return for the years and the knowledge you have given me, Master.' Iveldane knelt on the patterned carpet, unashamed. 'Let me stay and serve at your side.'

  'Service is not your fate.'

  Iveldane looked up, and saw an old man with tears on his face. His own heart turned in anguished response. 'I beg you, let me stay.'

  Salt-drops fell like sparks in the candlelight. The Wizard cried out, once, in protest, before steadying his control. Then he raised his Mastery, and sure hands carved the air like ice. 'There is only one reward I can offer for such loyalty.'

  The room crumbled out of solidity with a sigh. Iveldane felt himself lifted as though weightless. His sight blurred into blindness. All bodily sensation fell away, until his spirit seemed to stream across eternity like blown smoke. Held fast by shackles of wind, Iveldane made no attempt to resist. If the World's Master saw fit to imprison him, no skill he possessed would avail.

  Air was a gentle jailer. Iveldane knew neither pain nor want, and his thoughts were his own, for the Wizard left him alone. He tests my love, Iveldane thought. Certain in his loyalty, he waited one thousand years with flawless patience. Yet the Wizard never came.

  'Have you forgotten me?' Snatched by tireless currents of wind, Iveldane's appeal went unregarded. Doubts assailed him. He fought them, when they grew too strong. His beleaguered mind imagined the world swept by flood, famine, and earthquake.

  'Disaster would keep my Master from me,' Iveldane reasoned aloud, and he wept. 'Free me, Lord. Gladly would I lend my strength to yours.'

  But if the winds carried the words to their Master's ear, he did not respond. Perhaps he, too, is prisoner, Iveldane realized. Desire for freedom arose within him like a wave. Tireless as the tides, it battered his patience until he could no longer endure.

  Iveldane struck at his bonds. He struggled until his muscles burned with exhaustion, and the sweat of exertion chilled on his skin. The wind's whisper mocked his efforts. To silence it, he raised glittering webs of enchantment, and discharged them as blazing white wheels of fire. The wind swallowed his energies, scatheless. It would heed but a single master's word, and that one, the Wizard of Trevior. But confinement had robbed Iveldane of reason. He fought, until weariness claimed him, then woke and fought again. Yet against his prison of air, all efforts were vain. Centuries passed. His passion cooled to listless despair.

  Sucked clean of emotion, Iveldane lay passive. The wind gradually claimed the hollow place his thoughts had abandoned. Its sibilant voice filled his battered mind until sight and sound were forgotten, and former experience became shadowy and insubstantial as a dream. Iveldane merged with the wind, became the wind, and so inherited its secrets.

  Years went by before that knowledge held meaning. Startled to tears, one day, by realization he held the key to his own freedom, Iveldane spoke with a tongue long unaccustomed to words. His bonds dissolved. The air turned around him. His feet struck ground and he stumbled, unprepared for his own weight, and landed on his knees in sand.

  For one unbelieving moment, he knelt, blind with weeping, nostrils filled with the salt breeze off the sea and the sour scent of marsh grass. The earth was whole, untroubled by the nightmares his captive mind had imagined. Relieved, Iveldane raised his eyes to the sunlight, and saw the Wizard waiting for him on a rock-strewn rise
a short distance away. The breezes toyed with blue and gold robes, rippling the sleeves like banners.

  Iveldane rose, aflame with the joy of reunion. 'My Lord, I am your servant, still.' Naked and polished to slenderness by long years as the wind's captive, Iveldane crossed the sandspit.

  The Wizard watched his approach with black, fathomless eyes, no welcome at all on his face. 'I never doubted your love.'

  Iveldane checked, wrenched by sudden confusion. Elation drained from his heart, leaving terrible emptiness. 'Then, my Lord, why did you banish me?'

  The Wizard stared at the breakers, silent.

  Iveldane bent and scooped a palm full of pebbles from the soil at his feet. Their roughness scoured at his skin, as one by one, he cast them tumbling, into the teeth of the surf. 'Did you take the idea from Maegrel?' Unwanted bitterness threaded his tone. 'He did the same with his apprentice, apparently for sport.'

  'True enough.' The Wizard watched the last stone's flight, the brief splash of impact drowned in the rush of incoming tide. 'Can you name Maegrel's apprentice?'

  Iveldane's hands hung at his sides, empty. Wind teased his black hair back from features stippled with sweat. 'Does it matter?'

  'Perhaps. He still lives.' The Wizard's gaze never left the sea.

  'You told me he killed his master.' Iveldane's words were edged with self-doubt. But he did not add, as I suddenly long to kill mine.

  The Wizard fixed unfathomable eyes on his face. 'I know.'

  Chilled, shaking, Iveldane shouted back. 'But I never wanted to challenge you! I was content with what you taught me. Did you think I would ask anything more?'

  Still as stone, the Wizard said, 'Do you recall the warning I spoke when first you came to me?'

  'Only one can be Master.' Iveldane shook his head, puzzled.

  The Wizard glanced down at his hands and spoke a word. Flecked with chips of mica, a small pebble appeared in his palms. A quick, hard gesture sent the stone spinning in a high arc. Iveldane's eyes followed its plunge toward green, foam-laced waves.

  'So be it,' said the Wizard.

  The stone struck with a splash. Water closed over Iveldane's head. Aware too late of the trap, he screamed protest. But shadowy depths had already claimed him, and the sea's chill embraced his flesh, unyielding. Iveldane's heart ached like an old wound. For uncounted years, salt-tears mingled with salt water ...

  * * *

  Iveldane shivered free of memory's grasp. He stared at the mound he had raised, as though his eyes could read the Wizard's thoughts written on the earth itself. if you had been on the shore the day I won free of the sea, I would have left you,' he said to the still air. instead, I learned hatred. You taught me, when I reached dry soil, and you bade the earth imprison me in turn. Tell me, how does it feel?'

  Iveldane smiled, accustomed now to silence. 'But it was the fire which came after that made me desire your death .. .'

  * * *

  For fire had been a cruel warden. Iveldane had needed every secret he had gleaned from earth, sea, and air for bare survival, and even that knowledge was not enough to ease his agony. Of all elements, flesh was least tolerant of fire, and the volcano in which the Master of Trevior had chained him was far hotter than any flame. Iveldane's screams had shaken the roots of the mountain. Desire for vengeance alone bound him to life. Ten centuries, he endured unimaginable torment, all for hope of the chance to trap the World's Master at his mercy.

  But his strength had run out. Cursing, he had lost his battle, and flame had consumed him, utterly. Yet he did not perish. Possessed by the volcano's molten core, its lessons had scarred his soul. He emerged with mastery of fire, and an unquenchable passion to inflict punishment on the Wizard who had consigned him to torment...

  * * *

  Restless in his triumph, Iveldane released his binding spell. Soil slithered back, exposing the Wizard's torso. The Master's face was streaked with dirt. Grit had brought tears to his eyes.

  'What a sorry sight you are.' Iveldane rose and leaned close. 'I haven't the patience to waste centuries for your secrets.'

  The Wizard stirred dusty shoulders. 'Between us there are no secrets. I was Maegrel's apprentice.'

  'You!' Iveldane stared, and the ice cave rang again with his laughter. On impulse, he seized the Wizard's arms and, with cruel force, jerked them free of the earth. The Wizard blanched in pain. Yet he did not resist as Iveldane twisted his wrists and bared scars twin to the ones the bracelets covered.

  'This, for loyalty?' Iveldane released his enemy and stepped back.

  'No.' The Wizard's voice caught. He paused to cough up dust. 'Maegrel thought me ambitious.'

  'You returned and killed him.' Iveldane waited, still as a serpent.

  'To my sorrow.' The Wizard spoke without bitterness, it was not necessary.'

  Iveldane smiled with poisonous delight. 'Do you plead with me for your life? I'm amused.' Suddenly his expression darkened like a stormfront, and a sharp word left his lips. Fire rose, crackling from the torn earth. The Wizard screamed, even as his apprentice had screamed when the lava had seared his flesh. 'Master, one day you will plead with me for death.'

  Iveldane turned his back on the Wizard's suffering and retired from the ice cave to more comfortable quarters above ground. The setting of the snare had taxed him, and though the Wizard's demise rang sweet in his ears, he wanted rest. Settling himself on a silken bed, he slept...

  * * *

  ... and dreamed. Cold with horror, he saw the earth stripped of life. Trees cast shadows gaunt as skeletons over sere ground. Lake basins shimmered under mirage, dust-dry, and webbed with fissures. The air was poisoned by the stench of death. Pierced to the soul with unnameable pain, Iveldane opened his mouth to cry out. No sound came.

  He fell upon the ground, dug his hands to the wrists in ruined soil. Great, hoarse gasps ripped his throat as he shaped the commands which would call air, water, earth, and fire to his will. Emotionally flayed by the earth's torment, he stared as the sky wheeled above him, yet no response came. No living force answered; even the oceans were dry.

  Crushed by despair, Iveldane wept. The soil drank his tears. Night fell, garish with stars, and a three-quarter moon rose, grinning like a skull. Iveldane covered his face with his fingers. The earth's wounds pained him as the fires never had. Racked by inconsolable loss, Iveldane screamed at the empty sky.

  'Who has done this?' The shout lost itself without echo. Rage flared in his gut. 'Who has done this?'

  'I.'

  Iveldane flinched at the sound of that familiar, hated voice. Slowly he rose to his feet.

  Sure and unmarked in blue and gold, the Master of Trevior stood at his shoulder. 'I have caused the death of the earth. Dare you return and avenge it?'

  Iveldane stared into eyes as reasonless as a snake's. His shaking hands reached to throttle the pale, soft throat of his enemy. But the Master's form shimmered and vanished.

  * * *

  Iveldane woke weeping. Anger shook him like a stormwind. He flung the coverlet from him with violence enough to tear it. Back, he went, to the ice cave, possessed by fury no pity could contain. Icicles flashed, prismatic in the flickering light, until his shadow quenched them. Captive still, the Wizard of Trevior writhed in his chains, tormented by a crown of fire. Iveldane banished the flames with a glance.

  Coarse against sudden silence, the sound of his breathing mingled with its own echoes. 'I am going to destroy you. Do you hear me?'

  The singed head stirred. The Wizard looked up, his cheeks crystalline, awash with tears. 'I hear.' His voice was serene, even joyful.

  The incongruity struck Iveldane like a blow. The great anger in his soul faltered and, dizzied suddenly, he staggered back. 'Filth! Earth-murderer! As World's Master, how can you weep for joy?'

  'That title is no longer mine.' The Wizard raised eyes that were clear of deception. 'You, as my successor, at last have delivered me from that responsibility, and the power with it.'

  Iveldane drew a harsh, s
obbing breath, and saw it was so. Water, air, fire, and earth had each impressed him with their secrets, and the dream had shown him how deeply ingrained was the instinct to protect all that lay under his charge. Like a blind man given sight, Iveldane reached out with his mind, and saw the earth whole in the moonlight.

  'Did you think I would punish you for nothing?' The Wizard spoke with such trepidation, Iveldane laughed and made haste to release him.

  Dreamsinger's Tale

  The spring grass grew long and lush in the glade, and a brook where peepers shrilled in annual courtship ran close by. There, Huntress Skyfire flung herself down, panting and hot after a long run through the forest. She drank and splashed cold water through her hair, then shed her bow and her spear and her sweaty, winter-musty furs and rolled onto her back. Mother moon peeped like a needle of bone through the leaves. Skyfire regarded its thin crescent and sighed, not quite content. Something was missing, lacking, not right. Hard as she ran, fast as she could shoot an arrow into fleeing prey, she could not quite catch up with whatever it was.

  Her wolf-friend, Woodbiter, arrived at the clearing. Old now, and surly where he had once been full of antics, he had leaves sticking in his coat. With his ears canted back, he crouched in the grass, panting also. The breeze that wafted through his fur carried the scent of something dead.

  ** Rolled in a scent patch. Again,** Skyfire sent. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  Woodbiter regarded her with unwinking yellow eyes. **Go hunting now.** The wolfs image held the savory taste of hot blood, the thrill and the kick of prey as his jaws closed and snapped the spine.

  **No.** Skyfire rolled onto her elbows, irritable as a she-wolf past her heat. **No.** She was hungry, but hunger was not what drove her. She would go hunting, but not now, not tonight.