Sorcerer's Moon

by Julian May

  The Conservator blinked his feebly glowing eyes. ‘Is there any alternative to this proposal?’

  ‘Only an ignominious retreat to Moss,’ said the Warrior, ‘with a renewed assault in spring. This is what the foe will expect us to do, of course. But they will be taken completely by surprise if we strike from the Western Ocean this year.’

  ‘Do we have the resources to accomplish this?’ asked the Master Shaman.

  ‘We do,’ Ugusawnn stated, ‘if we act without delay. And this new scheme also enables us to reclaim the element of shock that was lost when we stalled at Beacon Lake.’

  ‘Well thought,’ said the First Judge. ‘Shall we agree to put this plan into action?’

  The others concurred unanimously. The Warrior displayed a frightful smile of triumph and began to gather the map figurines into a golden box.

  ‘Before we disperse,’ the Conservator of Wisdom muttered, ‘I must return to Kalawnn’s earlier news of significant import. What was the nature of the sorcery channeled by the vile Likeminded Lights to the humans who climbed Demon Seat?’

  ‘I’m not certain, Wise One, but I believe it was a fairly insignificant display of power,’ the Master Shaman said. ‘A mere trifle. You must understand, colleagues, that the truly remarkable thing is the fact that the Defeated Remnant had the ability to channel sorcery at all! One wonders whether the struggle between the two factions of Lights might be entering a new phase.’ He studied the enigmatic sigil called the Known Potency, which he still held in his tentacle. ‘Perhaps the Great Lights would tell us what happened if I inquired.’

  The Warrior gave a thunderous snort. ‘We’d do better to ask them whether the human who used the Moon Crag’s magic had any notion at all what he was doing!’

  ‘True,’ the First Judge agreed. ‘Find out who this person was. Was he sent by the One Denied the Sky, who is called the Source by humankind? What favor was obtained? Do humans now intend to create new Sigils of Supreme Power from the second crag to oppose our conquest?’

  ‘I will attempt to ask the questions –’ Kalawnn began to say. But almost simultaneouly a call came to him on the wind. ‘Colleagues, be patient while my associates bespeak me concerning their work on the Barren Lands mineral.’ He closed his eyes, then almost immediately reopened them. ‘Ahroo!’ he roared. The force of his breath blew away several of the map’s miniature ships.

  ‘What?’ the other three Eminences demanded.

  ‘The lapidaries have cloven the chunk of raw moonstone successfully, making not just one flawless blank, but two.’

  ‘Congratulations, Kalawnn!’ said the First Judge. ‘A notable feat!

  The Master Shaman continued. ‘The first piece of raw stone is much smaller, a mere wafer. We must decide which sigil it is best suited for – but I incline toward a Subtle Gateway, even though that particular Great Stone is quite difficult to carve.’

  The Conservator inclined his head in approbation. ‘If we possessed one of those, we would have easy access to the Demon Seat Moon Crag and all the raw mineral we could possibly use!’

  ‘How long will it take your lapidaries to make the two sigils, Kalawnn?’ the First Judge asked.

  ‘The Destroyer, twelve or thirteen days. The Gateway, a few days less – if the supremely delicate sigil doesn’t shatter during manufacture, as is all too likely. Two teams of carvers will be working separately. The most experienced will be assigned to the Gateway project.’

  ‘We must have a contingency plan,’ the Supreme Warrior said, ‘in case of failure. Two new sigils won’t reconquer the whole island. We need more – and we need them soon. Perhaps the Lights can advise us on this matter, as well as answering the Wise One’s inquiries about the humans who climbed the mountain and the nature of the magical boon granted to them by the Likeminded.’

  Kalawnn said, ‘I will attempt to bespeak them now.’ His eyes closed.

  The other three Eminences waited: Ugusawnn reining in his impatience, the First Judge seeming to be interested only in a fresh snack, and the venerable Conservator doing his best not to nod off.

  At last the Master Shaman reopened his eyes. ‘I am told that three sons of High King Conrig ascended Demon Seat together. They were not sent by the Source and knew little of the second Moon Crag’s potential, save that it might grant a miracle to a worthy petitioner. They know nothing at all about sigil-making.’

  ‘Ahroo!’ The Supreme Warrior vented a sigh of relief.

  ‘What favor was granted?’ the Judge asked, picking a bit of prawn shell from his back teeth.

  Kalawnn cocked his head-crest in bemusement. ‘The Prince Heritor of Cathra asked that he be spared from mating with a princess of Didion, since he did not love her.’

  ‘What?’ cried the others.

  Kalawnn shrugged. ‘It’s hardly believable, yet this royal tadpole was silly enough to beg such a mundane boon – and the Defeated Ones complied in the only manner possible. They burnt off his sword arm. A prince lacking that appendage is deemed unworthy to inherit the throne of either Cathra or Didion.’

  The other Eminences fell about laughing at the eccentricities of humankind until Kalawnn brought them up short. ‘I asked the Light who responded to me one other question. The most important of all, I think: What is the best possible way for Salka to obtain raw moonstone from the Demon Seat Crag?’

  ‘The answer?’ the Conservator demanded.

  Kalawnn lifted both tentacles in a helpless gesture. ‘Colleagues, the Light spoke only two words: Ask Beynor.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you remember how to say the spell, Jegg?’ the sorcerer asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, master!’ The servant lad’s coarse features were ruddy with excitement. A north wind had risen, carrying the first fat drops of rain from the darkening sky. The two of them stood on a stony slope a dozen ells below the cave where Gorvik had been ordered to wait.

  ‘Let’s go over it one final time. I’ll ask the questions the Great Light will put to you in the Salka language, and you answer in a loud, gruff voice.’

  Jegg did as he was told. His accent was still a little off, but it would do.

  ‘Very good.’ The sorcerer opened his belt-pouch. He placed one moonstone on the ground and offered the other one to the boy. ‘Now hold out your hand. It’s time to put on the power-giving sigil.’

  ‘I can’t believe it’ll really happen,’ Jegg gushed, staring at the simple ring of carved mineral that had been placed on his right index finger. Its name was Weathermaker. ‘I’ll be a magicker, too – better’n Gor, almost as great as you! The ring’ll let me command rain and snow and sunshine – even whirlwinds and lightning!’

  ‘It will all come true if you perform the ritual properly and are steadfast in enduring the necessary pain.’

  ‘Oh, master, I will!’ The servant boy was twelve years old. He believed everything that Beynor of Moss had told him.

  ‘Now we’re ready. I’ll go up to the cave and wait there with Gorvik. You count to one hundred, then begin. Kneel down and press the ring to the moonstone disk lying there. Remember – no matter what happens, you must keep the two stones together.’

  The sorcerer hurried to the cleft in the rockface, a disused bear’s den. The Didionite hedge-wizard Gorvik Kitstow lurked just inside the entrance, eyeing him in shifty silence.

  Beynor thought, Yes, you know what I’m doing, and why! But it doesn’t matter anymore –

  The abrupt blaze of emerald flame and the thunderous concussion made both men flinch.

  ‘Frizzle me fewmets!’ Gorvik cried. He took a few unsteady steps out of the cave, but the entire area was swathed in malodorous smoke and nothing could be seen clearly. The rustic magicker muttered more obscenities under his breath.

  Beynor ignored him until the cleansing wind had done its work. Then he returned to the scene of the experiment with Gorvik trailing after him. All that now remained of the unfortunate Jegg was a heap of foul-smelling ash lying on the hillside amidst scorched remnants of gorse a
nd heather. Slow rain extinguished the last burning bits of vegetation.

  ‘Not even a bone left!’ Gorvik wagged his uncouth head in disbelief. He had the physique of a blacksmith and a face that looked as though it had been well and truly smashed, then re-molded into an approximation of human features. ‘Nary a scrap o’cloth or bit o’ shoe-leather. The poor li’l sod’s vanished off the face o’ the earth. That’s some terrific sorcery!’

  ‘It’s Beaconfolk sorcery, the greatest there is – and the most dangerous.’

  Beynor drew Moss’s magnificent Sword of State, the only relic of his aborted reign as Conjure-King, and stirred the gritty ash with its tip. After a few moments he uncovered the ring carved from moonstone, together with a thin disk of the same material, narrowly framed in gold, that was less than a handspan in diameter. He stooped and retrieved them, and after wrapping each one carefully in cloth, slipped both objects into his wallet. He cleaned the sword against his bootcuff and replaced it in its scabbard.

  ‘Didja know Jegg ‘uz gonna die?’ Gorvik asked offhandedly. ‘I heard ye tell ‘im the Coldlight Army’d put power into the ring if he spoke the spell ye taught ‘im. But sumpin’ went way wrong, di’nit?’

  The rain fell harder. Beynor started back up the slope toward the shelter of the den, where the three of them had camped out during the final summer of searching. ‘So you eavesdropped on us.’

  ‘Nay, master. Just caught a few words by chance, like. And wondered why ye’d let a simple knave like Jegg do conjurin’ for ye, steada doin’ it yerself – or givin’ the job to a born wiz like me.’

  ‘It was a test,’ Beynor said shortly. ‘One that was regrettably necessary. And whether you realize it or not, the test was a success.’

  The hulking Didionite grinned, revealing a mouthful of stained broken teeth enriched by a single incongruous gold incisor that gleamed like a bright coin lying on a dungheap. ‘Not a success for Jegg, I’m thinkin’! Still, he weren’t much of a servant to ye, and none back in Elktor will miss ‘im. What went wrong? Why’d the Lights smite ‘im with their thunderbolt?’

  Beynor re-entered the cave, not bothering to hide his impatience. He had not borne the long years of frustration easily, and his gaunt frame and sunburnt narrow features framed by sparse platinum hair made him look much older than his seven-and-thirty years. Once inside he doffed his wet cloak and hung it on a peg pounded into a crevice. He was attired in a grey leather hunting habit, well made but worn from rough usage and badly scuffed about the knees. After removing his sword belt and hanging the heavy weapon from a second peg, he put more fuel on the smoldering fire and sat down on a flat stone opposite the flow of acrid smoke. The vagrant wisps that threatened him he diverted with his talent.

  ‘Fetch me a double dram of spirits,’ he commanded Gorvik.

  ‘There’s only a wee bit left, master,’ the wizard protested. ‘I was savin’ it for –’

  ‘Pour it out, damn you! There’s no need to stay here any longer. Don’t you understand that our endless searching in this miserable place is done? I have the three Great Stones. It matters not if there are lesser ones still lying about somewhere. I’m leaving. I won’t return.’

  ‘But the magical book –’

  ‘The bear who scattered the contents of the bag originally hidden in this cave obviously left the book in an exposed place where it was destroyed by vermin and the elements. That moonstone disk you found this morning in the ravine is all that remains of it. The disk was once fastened to the book’s cover.’

  Gorvik’s piggy eyes gleamed in sudden understanding. ‘Ah! Then it’s the disk you needed to conjure yer three sigils – not the book itself.’

  ‘Using the spells written down in the book would have been much safer. But, yes: the stones can be brought to life in another way with the disk. A more perilous way, as young Jegg discovered.’

  The big magicker took the jug of liquor and two dented pewter cups from the rocky shelf that held their nearly depleted supply of food and drink. He was dressed in a ragged fustian tunic and cross-gartered leggings, and had only a short hooded cape of ill-tanned goatskin to keep off the elements. He thrust a half-cup of malt into Beynor’s outstretched hand, then poured a generous noggin for himself and sat down on another rock, mumbling under his breath.

  ‘What did you say?’ Beynor asked sharply.

  ‘I said ye killed that lad on purpose, master. Or rather – ye let the Beaconfolk blast ‘im to ashes and soot. I’m wonderin’ why. What good are magical moonstone amulets if the Lights slay the one who uses ‘em?’

  Beynor stared at the fire and sipped his drink. Almost absently, he said, ‘They only slay persons they consider unworthy.’

  ‘And Jegg was?’

  ‘Yes. Obviously.’

  ‘But ye di’nt know that aforehand?’

  ‘Not really,’ Beynor admitted with peevish reluctance. ‘I hoped he would survive but was almost certain he would not.’

  Gorvik nodded in slow satisfaction. ‘And that was the test. I see. Now I unnerstand.’

  Beynor lifted his head and shot a glance like a steel dart at the big man squatting near him. Yes, the cunning rascal had almost certainly guessed the truth…

  Beynor had searched for the three lost Great Stones of Darasilo’s Trove and the book that accompanied them for sixteen years, combing the region around the bear’s lair in the high moorlands east of Elktor in Cathra where he knew the trove had disappeared. Sigils, even the inactive ones he hunted, could not be perceived through windsight; they had to be sought using the naked eyes. He made a map of the area, drew a grid of squares upon it, and set out to search each square, patiently lifting every rock and bit of vegetation that might conceal a small amulet.

  He labored throughout the temperate months of each year, then retired to lonely rooms in Elktor City during the winter, when snow and severe cold made spending long hours outdoors impossible, occupying himself by windwatching his foes and trying to invade their dreams.

  During the early years of his search Beynor had hired sturdy dullards such as Jegg to assist him in his fatiguing work, men or boys he was confident would not understand the value of the things he sought. But the kind of helper he really needed was a fellow-adept – not a brilliant magicker, but one he could dominate and use as a cat’s-paw, thus circumventing the curse laid on him by the Beaconfolk.

  Long years ago, when Beynor lost his throne, the Great Lights had told him that he would be cast into the Hell of Ice if he attempted to activate and use any moonstone sigils. He still possessed powerful inborn magical talents, but these were inadequate to raise him to the lofty position his twisted ambition craved.

  A scheme of his to neutralize the Beaconfolk’s curse with the help of the Salka had fallen apart on the day the huge amphibians invaded the Conjure-Kingdom of Moss and discovered that Queen Ullanoth’s collection of sigils, which Beynor had promised to turn over to them, was inexplicably gone.

  In the months that followed, the sorcerer had lived furtively, outlawed by Somarus, King of Didion, whose Lord Chancellor had once been Beynor’s co-conspirator and was now his mortal enemy. The faint hope of finding some of Darasilo’s lost sigils and using them to bring down two kings – and his nemesis Kilian Blackhorse as well – then became Beynor’s principal motive for living.

  He knew the remains of Darasilo’s Trove had been hidden in a rocky den on the high moorlands east of Elktor in northern Cathra. But soon after reaching the place, he made the heartbreaking discovery that a cavebear had chewed up the leather fardel holding the precious items and scattered its contents about the hillside. Beynor slew the animal by flinging a magical fireball into its wide-open jaws. Then he began what he feared would be a futile search for the sigils and the magical book.

  Luck was with him, however. After only a few weeks, he recovered the first missing Great Stone.

  It was a sigil named Ice-Master, a moonstone pendant shaped like an icicle the size of a man’s little finger, lying in pla
in sight on the bank of a stream below the mouth of the cave. Of course the stone was inactive, not bonded to any groundling person and so unable to draw power from the Beaconfolk. The Ice-Master was only a bit of carved rock, as harmless to Beynor as it was worthless…for the time being, at least. Until he chose a loyal and amenable person to conjure the sigil for him, who would only use its sorcery as he commanded.

  That encouraging first discovery had to sustain Beynor throughout nine more weary years of searching, when he finally found the second important moonstone, a finger-ring called Weathermaker. When he was Conjure-King of Moss he had owned another Great Stone of this type, and it had been his undoing. He had used it in a manner that the capricious Beaconfolk disapproved, and they’d snatched it from him, called down the curse, and driven him from his throne into exile among the Salka.

  Now he possessed a second Weathermaker and an Ice-Master as well. Only a single major sigil from the depleted trove – Destroyer, the greatest of them all – remained to be found, along with the ancient book written in the Salka language containing spells for activating and controlling all manner of Great Stones. At that point, Beynor began thinking seriously about recruiting the necessary cat’s-paw who would enable him to evade the Lights’ curse.

  He was almost – but not quite – certain that the puppet would have to possess windtalent.

  Magickers not affiliated with the abhorrent Brothers of Zeth were uncommon in the nation of Cathra. But Elktor, Beynor’s base of operations, was close to the Didion border, and now and then an itinerant conjurer of that country would pass through the city. Those that Beynor encountered early on in his long quest he had deemed unsuitable for various reasons. Gorvik Kitstow, who had shown up in Elktor late the previous winter, was different. He was mildly talented, sharp as a bodkin in gulling the yokels out of silver pennies, yet not possessed of deep intelligence…or so Beynor had thought.

  He decided to take Gorvik partially into his confidence, tell him something of the sigils’ background, and determine whether he might make a suitable collaborator. Meanwhile, the burly hedge-wizard could assist in the search, along with the boy Jegg.