by Julian May
They walked together up the path leading to the longhouse, which was a low building thatched with a deep layer of swamp grass. It had four chimneys and shuttered windows. The sheltered entry-way was adorned with the skulls of many small wild animals, strung into macabre garlands and hung from pegs. The door opened before they could knock. The Mossland sorceress Thalassa Dru emerged and immediately folded them both in her enormous soft embrace. She smelled of wild roses.
‘Induna! Deveron! I was so sorry to miss your wedding. You must tell me all about it.’
‘Perhaps later, Conjure-Princess,’ Deveron said. ‘We ask that you first recount your visit with the Source, and let us know what special duties he has planned for us.’
Cray, who had been almost hidden behind the voluminous robes of the larger woman, popped out smiling. ‘Welcome, children! Come inside and you can eat as we talk. Everything’s ready.’
The house had a central corridor illuminated by oil lamps, with many chambers opening on either side. In most of them nonhuman little shaman-crafters were at work on mysterious projects. They looked up and smiled briefly at the sight of the human visitors. Cray led the way to a larger room at the far end of the building, a kind of refectory and meeting-hall with several tables, chairs and benches, and a large fireplace holding a brisk blaze.
She seated Deveron and Induna at a low table near the hearth where two place settings waited, opened the warming oven, and removed a crock of oat porridge, two spit-roasted quail, and a dish of hot apple-bilberry compote. An adjacent pantry yielded honey, clotted cream, butter, and half a loaf of barley bread. She set out the food and poured four cups of mint tea, after which she and Thalassa Dru joined the newlyweds at the table.
‘Won’t you eat with us?’ Induna protested.
‘We broke our fast hours ago,’ Cray said, ‘when we emerged from the trance state after dwelling subtly beneath the Ice visiting the Source. We let you two sleep in as long as we could.’
‘One doesn’t experience hunger or, thirst while traveling entranced,’ Thalassa explained. ‘But when the soul and mortal body re-unite, one is ravenous!’ She stirred a spoonful of honey into her tea and settled into a sturdy chair that had obviously been provided especially for her. ‘Hmm. Perhaps I’ll have just a bit of bread and butter!’
‘Before you summoned us this morning,’ Deveron said, I was bespoken by Lady Ullanoth. She said she had already told you of the strange statement made by Ansel Pikan as he lay dying – that our mission in the New Conflict is not to assist Conrig Ironcrown, but rather another Sovereign of Blenholme. Can you clarify this?’
‘In good time,’ Thalassa Dru replied. ‘But first, tell me what you already know about the Old Conflict.’
‘Very little,’ Deveron admitted, while helping himself to the roast quail. He was also extremely hungry. ‘At various times, the Source and Ansel spoke of a great battle between good and evil Lights that took place long ago and now is about to be resumed.’
Induna put cream on her porridge and mixed in some of the luscious stewed fruit. ‘My mother Maris told me that the good Lights were defeated during the time that Emperor Bazekoy’s invasion took place. Their leader was imprisoned beneath the Barren Lands icecap. Mother said that certain assistants – including herself – have worked throughout the centuries to liberate the leader, who calls himself the Source of the Conflict, and help prevent the Beaconfolk from extending their depraved dominion to humanity. The work of the helpers has mostly involved collecting inactive moonstone sigils that were left scattered about the island by the Salka who fled Bazekoy’s host.’
Cray nodded. ‘We Green Folk also serve as helpers. Each time one of those recovered sigils was annihilated by the One Denied the Sky, he regained some of his lost strength. But let Thalassa tell the tale in an orderly fashion.’
It began in distant prehistoric times, when the Great Lights were a group undivided and incorrupt, only somewhat bored with their tranquil aetherial existence in the Sky Realm above the northern part of the world.
A certain Light conceived a great game. Its rules are unimportant – and indeed are rather incomprehensible to corporeal beings, except insofar as the game-pieces are concerned. For the inventor of the game used self-aware nonhuman creatures living on High Blenholme Island as unwitting pawns. First the Salka, and later the Small Lights, Green Men, and Morass Worms were drawn into the contest which was, in its early stages, almost entirely harmless to the game-pieces.
Each Great Light playing the game was alloted a number of pawns, who were subtly encouraged to choose one moonstone sigil from a collection of many different kinds. The sigils were supernatural conduits that channeled Beaconfolk sorcery from the Sky Realm to that of the Ground. Some of the stones vouchsafed fairly inconsequential benefits to the user-pawn, while others were virtually miracle-working. The pawn was obliged to pay a price of physical discomfort in exchange for each magical deed performed with its sigil: the greater the magic, the more intense the discomfort.
The Light whose pawns were brave enough – or foolish enough – to rack up the greatest debt during a measured time period was declared the winner of that contest.
As time passed, the game changed character. While the spunkies, the Green Folk, and the Morass Worms eventually became wary of the insidious appeal of Beaconfolk sorcery and declined to participate any longer, the slower-thinking Salka grew more enthusiastic. Many were so eager to enjoy the magical rewards of the game that they manufactured their own sigils and clamored to become pawns.
Encouraged, the more unscrupulous players among the Lights created ever more powerful moonstones that demanded a genuinely painful – or even a deadly – price. In a terrible paradox, certain Lights began to revel in the torture that the Salka inflicted upon themselves. They learned to feed on the foolish amphibians’ pain and became addicted to it. The original purpose of the game became perverted into a contest of sadistic gratification.
The Source realized too late the sinful thing he had done. He prevailed upon Likeminded Lights who were also dismayed by the burgeoning tragedy to help persuade the player-Lights to abandon their activities and close the channels that carried both power and pain. This effort was a failure. The Source then took on the material form of a Salka and entered the Ground Realm, where he hoped to end the game by convincing the amphibians that they were being shamefully exploited.
When most Salka refused to listen to him, the Source devised a unique sigil – the Potency – that he hoped would abolish the pain-debt associated with the moonstones and in time close the conduit. But when it came time for him to activate the Stone of Stones, he held back, not knowing for certain how the Potency would work. What if it made the situation worse, by enabling the Salka to use the sorcery of the Lights without any restrictions or consequences?
The pain-eating Beaconfolk were infuriated when they learned what the Source and the Likeminded had planned to do. They formed a Coldlight Army and initiated a mortal Conflict that spread throughout the Sky Realm and eventually affected the groundling inhabitants of High Blenholme as well.
The Likeminded were outnumbered and finally overwhelmed. Their selfless effort to save the Salka from the consequences of soul-destroying magic failed and they faced being extinguished. To spare his associates, the Source agreed to submit to the enemy’s condition for an armistice. He would retain his Salka body and submit to imprisonment beneath the Ice. There he would suffer indefinitely as One Denied the Sky, while the evil Lights savored his pain and continued to oppress the Salka. Meanwhile, most of the vanquished Likeminded withdrew to the dark void between the stars, sunk in despair. They were immortal and immune to pain, since they lacked physical bodies, but their power shrank like the diminishing vitality of plants denied sunlight and water. Many of them forgot who they once had been.
A very few Likeminded, called the Remnant, remained on the periphery of the Sky Realm even though they risked being quenched by the Beacons. These good Lights stayed in contact with t
he Source of the Conflict and hoped that one day the situation might change.
Strangely, the triumph of the evil Beaconfolk was shortlived, thanks to an extraordinary human being. The Emperor Bazekoy invaded High Blenholme Island even as the two factions of Lights battled in the Sky. With the Beaconfolk game-players distracted and unable to guide them, the clumsy and slow-witted Salka were no match for a massive army of well-trained human warriors fighting on dry land. Not even their most powerful Great Stones could save them for long. They were ambushed by Bazekoy’s troops and slain from afar by spears and arrows. They died by the thousands – and their sigils died with them, converted into useless bits of rock as the bonded owners perished.
The Salka survivors fled, some to the remote fens of Moss and some to the Dawntide Isles. Most of their Great Stones had long since been lost in futile skirmishes with the human foe. They continued to utilize their minor sigils only in a half-hearted way, and eventually allowed themselves to be duped by the human sorcerer Rothbannon, who took away their few remaining major sigils – including the Source’s inactive Potency.
The frustrated Coldlight Army, now feeding on only meager amounts of pain, decided that the exiled Salka were a lost cause, unlikely ever to play the game again with their old enthusiasm.
So the Lights patiently began to target a new sort of pawn.
Cray the Green Woman now took up the tale from Thalassa as Induna and Deveron listened raptly.
The memory of the Old Conflict and the fate of the Source was for the most part safeguarded and passed from generation to generation by Cray’s own people, who had resigned from the game long before Bazekoy’s invasion. The Green Men, unlike the spunkies and Morass Worms, who also rejected the temptations of the Beaconfolk, had a culture that encouraged storytelling and the relating of racial history.
By and large, the first human settlers on High Blenholme had little interest in the Sky Realm, although they had a healthy fear of the demons who lived there. Very few of the newcomers possessed windtalent, so the sigils they sometimes found could never be empowered or bonded to them by the Beaconfolk.
Early on, the great human scholar of magic called Saint Zeth – one of the few talented associates of Emperor Bazekoy – made a special study of sigil sorcery and the uncanny power of the Boreal Lights. He deduced the danger posed by the moonstones and declared them anathema. The Mystical Order he founded would enforce this prohibition. Several centuries later, a certain Royal Alchymist of Cathra named Darasilo discovered a large collection of extinct sigils, together with two books in the Salka language describing their conjuration. He possessed talent but was too cautious to experiment with the moonstones, which he passed on to his successors as occult curios, along with a smaller book by an unknown sage which contained a partial translation of the Salka volumes into the Cathran language.
As humankind spread over the island, they mingled their blood with that of the curiously attractive and bewitching little Green Folk. These unions increased the number of talented humans, especially amongst the populations of Tarn and Moss.
Tarnian shamans were the first to travel successfully through so-called subtle corridors. In time – perhaps aided by the Green Men or the Likeminded Remnant – they learned the even more difficult art of soul-travel, which enables the practitioner to enter realms totally inimical to the human body. Thus they made contact with the imprisoned Source and began to help him. By doing so they put themselves in great danger; but the price seemed worthwhile when the Source explained that the Beaconfolk planned to shift the focus of their game from the Salka to human beings.
Thus the New Conflict was born.
‘Some of your people enlisted freely in the cause,’ Cray concluded. ‘Other important humans, such as the Sovereign of Blenholme, Conrig Wincantor, were made use of without their knowledge, coerced by magic or otherwise influenced to act in a manner that would prevent the Beaconfolk from seducing humanity as they had seduced the amphibians. Conrig’s unification of the island nations saved Blenholme from being invaded by Continental adventurers working in collusion with the criminally ambitious Conjure-King Beynor, a sigil-user himself. Certain persons close to Conrig – particularly you, my dear Grandson! – aided the Source significantly and set in motion the final phase of the New Conflict.’
Thalassa Dru took up the thread of the narrative.
‘My nephew Beynor is afflicted with the unstable mentality that brought on the insanity of his late father. When the Lights realized they were backing a young lunatic who posed a danger to the Known World through wanton misuse of sigils, they first considered slaying him – just as they had earlier killed his imprudent mother Taspiroth. Instead, they contrived a way to use him.
‘Cursed and deposed from his throne, Beynor was exiled to the Dawntide Isles. His persuasive schemes roused the Eminent Four Salka from their longstanding torpor and inspired them to begin a fresh war against humanity – which it seemed only Conrig and his Sovereignty could thwart. And this Conrig did. For sixteen years he held the monsters in check. But now the Source and the Likeminded Remnant sense a change in the offing. Triggered by Beynor.’
‘It seems he’s wormed his way into the Sovereign’s good graces,’ Deveron noted, pulling a face. He had finished both quail when Induna declined her share and now attacked a large bowl of honeyed porridge. ‘But I can’t believe the High King would trust the fealty of such a rogue magicker, nor put him into a position where he could influence matters of state.’
‘Conrig hasn’t done so yet,’ said Thalassa in a bleak tone. ‘But the one person who might have prevented that calamity – or even delayed it – has just died. Last night, just before Cray and I returned from our sojourn beneath the Ice, every adult person living in this village heard a singular shriek on the wind. Kilian Blackhorse perished of a broken neck at the hands of Beynor. Several of our more talented scriers traced the outcry to Boarsden Castle and observed the Conjure-King fling the corpse of his old crony into the moat. The body was recovered from the River Malle this morning.’
‘God’s Truth!’ Induna exclaimed.
Thalassa nodded. ‘Indeed. When I recovered sufficiently from my entrancement to be told of it, I bespoke Stergos, the Royal Alchymist, at the castle for details. He is a good friend of our cause who joined the New Conflict willingly. According to Stergos, the consensus among the distinguished guests of Duke Ranwing is that the Lord Chancellor was deeply depressed over a certain scheme of his that had come undone, and took his own life.’
‘Kilian dead!’ Deveron finished the last of the oatmeal and licked his spoon. ‘I suppose King Conrig is overjoyed that his wicked old uncle is gone.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the Conjure-Princess. ‘In late years, the chancellor was an ally of the Sovereignty and did his best to convince King Somarus not to rebel against it.’ The sorceress related how the royal marriage was to have strengthened Didion’s loyalty, how Prince Heritor Orrion came to be maimed and degraded, and how the Princess Royal herself had rejected Kilian’s compromise that might have seen her betrothed to Corodon.
‘Prince Orrion lost his sword-arm through Beaconfolk sorcery?’ Induna cried in disbelief. ‘How could this happen if he had no sigil?’
‘He and his brothers hardly knew what they were doing when they climbed the Demon Seat hoping for a miracle. The entire summit of the mountain is an outcropping of raw moonstone mineral, and this was sufficient to channel sorcery from the Sky. But the true miracle that took place is one that none of the princes expected – for Orrion’s rash petition was answered not by the evil Great Lights but by the Likeminded Remnant, who were thought to be too feeble to use the power conduit to the Ground Realm.’
Cray added, ‘The Source was able to confirm that it was his benevolent allies who answered Orrion’s misguided prayer. The Remnant were confused when the prince’s petition reached them. But their intention was only to do good, to give Orrion the wife he wanted.’
‘And instead they contrived
to get the poor devil disinherited and disgraced,’ Deveron observed scornfully, ‘and they may have destroyed Conrig’s Sovereignty to boot! Do you call that a miracle?’
‘The miracle,’ said the Green Woman with great patience, ‘is that the good Lights are no longer impotent. The second Moon Crag may in some way enable them to resume the fight against the Coldlight Army. The Source is as yet uncertain how this might be accomplished, as are we. But we hope to learn more as time goes by.’
Deveron heaved a rather exasperated sigh. ‘Meanwhile – what am I supposed to do? And Induna?’
‘We have no instructions concerning your wife,’ Cray admitted.
Thalassa Dru rose from her seat with easy dignity. Her head with its coronet of braids nearly touched the rafters of the low-roofed lodge. ‘But your orders, Deveron Austrey, are to free a woman named Rusgann Moorcock, who has just been captured by the henchmen of the Lord Constable of Cathra and is being taken to Boarsden Castle for questioning under torture. Rusgann carries a secret letter. It is imperative that this missive be delivered to Prince Dyfrig Beorbrook, who will soon arrive at that castle after having concluded a military mission –’
‘But we know this Rusgann!’ Induna exclaimed in surprise. ‘She was the dear friend of Princess Dowager Maudrayne during her captivity in Tarn. Deveron and I participated in the rescue of both women, together with Maude’s little son Dyfrig.’ Her face fell. ‘But as I understand it, the princess took poison when King Conrig decreed that she would never see her boy again.’