“Yes, Master, certainly you can.” Impish little Tigris nodded violently.
Squinting at her, her master thought to himself that she was almost certain to prove something of a distraction in the staid Blue Temple offices, into which he planned to bring her very soon. Very likely, Wood considered, he would have to dismiss Tigris—or else effect a drastic though temporary change in her appearance—before the conference got very far. But that decision did not have to be made now.
The girl began to fidget, as if rendered uncomfortable by an overabundance of energy. She moved a step away, and with a dancing glide came back again. “If it is permitted to ask, Master, why are we waiting? Are those moneybags in the Blue Temple expecting us at a particular time?”
The young man grinned. He was not really a young man, for even now his eyes looked very old. “My dear Tigris, they are not expecting us at all. I expect that an unannounced arrival will produce a more co-operative attitude on their part, once they have recovered from their initial … yes?”
This last word was not addressed to Tigris, but to a sudden blurring of the atmosphere approximately a meter above her blond head. Out of this miniature aerial vortex proceeded a tiny inhuman voice, speaking to Wood in squeaky, deferential tones:
“The man Hyrcanus is now alone, Master, inside his private office. Do you wish me to accompany you inside the building?”
“Yes, but see that you remain invisible and impalpable in there. Unless, of course, you hear me suggest otherwise.” Wood was standing erect now, the air of indolence having fallen from him like a shed cloak. “Tigris?”
The disturbance was already gone from the air above her head. “Ready, as always, Master.”
Wood gestured, and their two human bodies instantaneously disappeared.
* * *
The locus of their reappearance a moment later was a tall, narrow, dimly lighted chamber deep in the bowels of Blue Temple headquarters. Though the room was obviously only an anteroom of some sort, the visitors found it elegantly furnished, with a thick carpet underfoot. The walls were paneled in exotic wood, subtly lighted by Old World lamps that burned inside their glassy shells with a cold and practically inexhaustible secret fire.
Wood and Tigris came into existence standing side by side and almost hand in hand, before a cluttered desk behind which a male clerk or secretary looked up in petrifaction at their unanticipated presence.
The thin man in a tunic of blue and gold stared at them uncomprehendingly, his eyes watering as if from long perusal of crabbed handwriting and columned numbers. Even now, in what must have been a state of shock, the words that fell from his lips were trite; perhaps it had been a long, long time since he had spoken any words that were not.
Clearing his throat, the clerk said in a cracked voice: “Er—you have an appointment?”
Wood smiled impishly. “I have just made one, yes.”
“Er—the name, sir? Er—madam?”
“I’m hardly that.” And Tigris giggled.
The assured, undeniable presence of the pair seemed to place them beyond the scope of any fundamental challenge.
“I will see … I will … er …” Almost choking in confusion, the clerk bowed himself away through a door leading to an inner office.
The two visitors exchanged looks of amusement. A few moments later the thin man was back, ushering Wood and Tigris into the next room. There they confronted the Chairman of the Blue Temple himself, a man known to the world by the single name of Hyrcanus.
Here, in the inner sanctum of power, the furnishings were more sumptuous, though still restrained, their every detail tastefully thought out. Wood had expected nothing more or less, but Tigris was somewhat surprised.
“I thought to see more gold and jewels,” she murmured. Wood shook his head slightly. He understood that splendor here would have been out of place; the finest appointments could have done no more than hint at the immensity of the temple’s wealth.
The Chairman was small, rubicund, and bald, with a round ageless face and a jovial expression belied by his ice-blue eyes. He was seated, flanked by ivory statues of Midas and Croesus, behind an enormous desk, engaged in counting up some kind of tiles or tokens. A large abacus, of colored wood in several shades, stood at the Chairman’s elbow. The walls of the chamber were lined with account books and other records, some of them visibly dusty. Spiders had established themselves in at least two of the room’s upper corners. The windows were barred, and were so high and dark that it was impossible for ordinary human eyes to see outside.
Raising his gaze from his desk, Hyrcanus stared at Wood in utter blankness for a long moment. His eyebrows rose when he looked at Tigris. Then he snapped irritably at his visitors: “Who are you? What are you doing here? I have made no appointment for this hour.”
“But I,” Wood retorted, “have made one to see you.” Such a response, from an utter stranger, evidently could not be made to fit into the Chairman’s view of life’s possibilities. Hyrcanus fixed a stern gaze upon his shaken underling, the thin clerk who still hovered near. “What possessed you to schedule an appointment at this time?”
The man’s fingers fumbled with imaginary knots in the air before him. “Sir, I—I have scheduled no appointment. I thought perhaps that you had done so privately. I have no idea who these people are.”
“My name is Wood,” said the male visitor in a languid voice, speaking directly to Hyrcanus. “I should think it almost impossible that you have not heard of me.”
The name took a moment to sink in. Then, with a slight movement of one foot beneath his desk, a gesture quite imperceptible to ordinary visitors (but noted at once by these two callers, and dismissed as harmless), the Chairman sent a signal.
Wood made a generous, open-handed gesture. “By all means,” he encouraged, with a slight nod. “Summon whatever help will make you feel secure.” Tigris, at her master’s elbow, giggled. It was a small sound, almost shy.
In response to the Chairman’s urgent signal, there ensued a subtle interplay of powers within the chamber’s dusty air, much of it beyond the reach of the Chairman’s senses, or those of his secretary. Powers charged with the magical defense of this room and edifice clashed briefly, trying immaterial lances, with the invisible escort of the two human visitors. The trial was brief but quite conclusive: the defenders of the Temple retreated, cowed.
Moments later came sounds of hurried human movement in an adjoining room. A door, not the one through which the callers had come in, opened quietly, and another bald man, this one obviously elderly, looked in with a wary expression.
“I assume,” Tigris said to him, smiling brightly, “that you must be the Director of Security?” She almost curtsied.
The newcomer glanced at her, frowned, and kept silent, looking to his chief for orders.
“I would like to know,” Hyrcanus grated at him, “how these two got in here.”
The man in the doorway cleared his throat. “Sir, I recognize this man as the well- known wizard, Wood. The woman with him—”
“He has already told me his name,” Hyrcanus interrupted. “What I want to know is how —”
“And someday perhaps I will tell you how we got in,” said Wood, interrupting the interrupter. “But there are other matters I wish to discuss first.”
The Director of Security, seemingly unimpressed, stared at his fellow magician. “I know your name, and I warn you that you had better leave. At once.”
“You? Warn me?”
The elder nodded impressively. His face had become lugubrious. “I am indeed the Director of Security here. We here do not fear your powers.”
Wood’s eyes were twinkling dangerously. “Only because you do not comprehend them.”
“I believe,” the Director remarked drily, “that you are the same Wood who about two years ago visited Sha’s Casino, a Red Temple establishment in the city of Bihari.” “And so?”
“On that occasion—correct me, sir, if I am wrong—you encountered cert
ain enemies and were forced to make a swift retreat. It has further come to my attention that you entered Sha’s Casino armed with the Sword Shieldbreaker, and that you left without that weapon—and lacking any compensation for it.” The elderly man in the doorway smirked faintly.
Tigris, looking at her master, paled a trifle.
Wood put his fists on his hips. His voice was ice. “On that occasion, my man, I was opposed by forces well beyond your ability—let alone that of your money-grubbing masters here—to understand, much less to deal with.”
A moment of silence followed. It was plain from their expressions that Wood’s current hearers—except for Tigris, of course—remained unconvinced.
The wizard nodded briskly. “Very well, then. I see that a demonstration will be necessary.”
The Director’s expression became uncertain. Hyrcanus behind his desk started to say something, then remained quiet.
Silence held for a long moment.
Wood’s eyes closed. His left hand extended slightly in front of him, palm upward. The long fingers quivered. Then the hand moved, and the forearm, slowly, made a gentle lifting gesture. Near the high ceiling an almost imperceptible turmoil in the air grew briefly, lightly sharper.
In moments this gentle disturbance was answered by a much heavier vibration. An inhuman groaning and thudding seemed to start in the roots of the huge building and progress slowly upward. Soon distant frightened yells could be heard, rising from somewhere below the thickly carpeted office floor.
Tigris was smiling faintly now, watching the Blue Temple men for their reaction. Neither of them had moved, though the eyes of the Chairman seemed about to pop.
Wood’s face, his eyes still closed, had hardened into an implacable mask.
The door to the secretary’s anteroom burst open, to frame the large form of an armed guard officer. “Sir! The gold—” The man had trouble finishing his sentence.
Hyrcanus snapped: “What of the gold?”
The guard turned halfway round, gesturing over one beefy shoulder. “It’s—coming—up the stairs—”
The Chairman leapt up from his chair, trying to see out past him.
The deepest rumbling, which had begun down around the massive, vaulted foundations of this Mother Temple, was now gradually shaping itself into a heavy, metallic rhythm. It sounded like a company, perhaps a regiment, of heavy infantry, clad in armor, marching upstairs in close formation.
There were continued cries of alarm, and more security people came pressing up behind the officer in the doorway.
Hyrcanus started to come around from behind his desk, and then went back.
The guards now crowding the doorway were pushed aside. But not by human force.
Bursting past them, into the Chairman’s private office, came moving gold, coins and bars and works of art, all moving as if alive. The yellow treasure had somehow been conglomerated, magically held together, into the shape of a huge and heavy many-legged creature, a gigantic centipede. At intervals this animation broke apart into separate marching figures, all headless, some in the shape of men and some of beasts. Whether in the form of many bodies or only one, the gold tramped upward and forward, the several shapes enlivened by Wood’s magic all glowing dull yellow in this chamber’s parsimonious light.
The Director of Security, jabbering incantations, avoided the score of trampling golden legs. Gesturing, he intensified his magical efforts to undo what Wood was doing.
But it was obvious to all that the Director’s attempted counterspells were failing miserably. Losing his temper, he rushed at his rival.
That was a serious mistake.
Halfway toward the object of his wrath, the Director slowed, then staggered to a halt. It was as if he had forgotten where he was going. Worse than that, it was as if he had almost forgotten how to walk.
Turning now to Hyrcanus, and then to all the others in the room, a smile of infantile imbecility, the Director of Security sank slowly into the nearest chair. Simpering vacuously at nothing, he appeared ready to be entertained by whatever might happen next.
His eyes lighted on the inexorably marching metal. “Gold,” the old man whispered, obviously delighted. “Pretty, pretty.”
Meanwhile Wood, his arms folded, had turned away from the Director and sat down on the edge of Hyrcanus’s desk. He was watching the proceedings with an abstracted look, as if he were not personally very much involved. Tigris, taking her cue from her master, was now seated also, in a leather chair. From a purse that had appeared as if from nowhere she had actually brought out some knitting, with which she appeared to be fully occupied.
With the intrusion of the marching gold, and the ruthless disabling of his first assistant, Hyrcanus abandoned all pretense of calm control.
He jumped up onto his desk. With screams he rebuked his Security forces. Then he turned to Wood, pleading: “Put the gold back! Send it back at once!”
“And you will listen to me if I do?”
“Of course, of course. And this fool here” —the Chairman indicated his chief aide, now smiling as he counted up his fingers— “can you restore him to what ordinarily serves him as his right mind?”
“If you will listen.”
“I will. I swear it, by Croesus and Midas. What was it you wanted to discuss?”
Accepting this surrender graciously, Wood slid off the desk and with a few gestures quickly restored Blue Temple headquarters more or less to normality. The weird upward progress of long-hidden treasure ceased. The marching golden centipede and all its fragments, immediately obedient to Wood’s most subtle command, reversed direction, and headed docilely downstairs. And at the same time the Director lost his carefree interest in his own fingers; his eyes closed and his head sank slumberously upon his chest.
Within moments after the tramping treasure had retreated, the building ceased to vibrate. Inside the Chairman’s office only the shouts of guards, somewhere in the middle distance remained as evidence that something remarkable had occurred.
Slowly, shakily, Chairman Hyrcanus resumed his seat behind his desk. He wiped his brow. With a gesture and a few muttered words, he offered Wood and Tigris chairs. The three were now alone.
With the opposition satisfactorily crushed, Wood was calm and reassuring. He glanced at the Director, who was snoring faintly. “He will regain his wits—such as they were.” Then Wood focused an intense look on the Chairman. “Hyrcanus, understand me. Your wealth is safe, for the time being—safe from me, at least. Every coin is now back where it was. I do not crave Blue Temple gold, or any other treasure you may possess.”
Hyrcanus, smiling glassily, murmured an excuse. Then, turning away momentarily, he beckoned the clerk to him from the next room, and dispatched the man with orders to take a complete inventory of the wealth down below.
Wood shook his head impatiently at this interruption. “Depend upon it, Hyrcanus, not a gram of your metal will be missing. I am not your enemy. Rather we have enemies in common, and therefore should be allies.”
The Chairman brightened a trifle. “Yes. Enemies in common. Certainly we do.”
Tigris had put aside her knitting, and was now sitting with folded hands, paying close attention to the men.
Her master said to Hyrcanus: “I am thinking in particular of Prince Mark of Tasavalta. I suppose you may rejoice almost as much as I do over his recent misfortunes.”
The Chairman, relaxing just a little, nodded heartily.
His formidable visitor said: “I am told that Mark is making every possible effort—so far to no avail—to heal his wife of the injuries she sustained last year.”
“A pity,” said Hyrcanus, and uttered a dry sound intended for a laugh.
“Indeed. My agents assure me that Princess Kristin is hopelessly crippled, and in continual pain. The only real hope of ever helping her lies in the Sword Woundhealer.”
Mention of the Sword concentrated the attention of the red-faced man behind the desk. “Ah. And where is Woundhealer now?”
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Wood’s eyes twinkled again. “Your question brings us to the very point of my visit. The best hope of anyone’s getting Woundhealer in hand lies in the Sword Wayfinder—would you not agree?”
Hyrcanus responded cautiously. “It is said that Wayfinder can guide its holder to any goal he wishes.”
“Even, as has happened at least once in the past, into the deepest Blue Temple vaults of all … but I have no wish to remind you and your associates of past sufferings and embarrassments. Hyrcanus, I have come here to offer you a partnership.”
“What sort of partnership?”
“The details can be worked out later, if you will agree with me now in principle. You were already Chairman of the Blue Temple nineteen years ago, at the time of the great robbery. I believe I am correct in thinking that you and other insiders still consider that the worst disaster that your Temple has ever suffered?”
The Chairman’s face grew somewhat redder. “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are right—what then?”
Wood put on a sympathetic expression. “And Ben of Purkinje, the wretch who was chiefly responsible for that calamity, still lives and prospers, as the right-hand man of our mutual enemy Mark of Tasavalta.”
The Chairman nodded gloomily. Ever since Mark had become Prince of that generally prosperous domain, there had been no new Blue Temple installations at all in Tasavalta—the organization maintained in that land only a single banking facility, relatively unprofitable, in the capital city of Sarykam.
Tigris so far had been maintaining a demure demeanor, so it had not become necessary for Wood to banish her, or take any steps to alter her appearance. Brightly and alertly she continued to pay attention to everything that was said and done between her master and their reluctant hosts.
Genial-sounding Wood now inquired after the health of legendary Old Benambra, founder an age ago of the Blue Temple.
Hyrcanus assured his guests that the Founder (“our Chairman Emeritus, in retirement”) was still very much alive—more or less alive, by most people’s standards, since he was now turned completely into a Whitehands, and lived underground somewhere, jealously counting up the bulk of his remaining treasure. Then the current Chairman, supremely stingy unless he made an effort not to be, belatedly ordered some refreshment to be served.
The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story Page 3