The Horse Lord

by Peter Morwood

  "Joren said that somebody helped him on his way. I thought the Warlord might—but from what you say, I doubt it."

  "He probably helped himself, with a bellyful of wine and a headful of smoke. Or his brother could have done it."

  "His brother?" Aldric sounded disgusted and Gemmel remembered the closeness of Alban family ties. "Baiart didn't like me, but he wouldn't have— Or I don't think he… might well, given the chance," he finished lamely.

  "How much better reason with an Empire as your prize, eh? But Ioen is a better man than his brother. Much better—or will be. He's only sixteen. Though since he wasn't brought up in the sort of decadence Etzel provides for his puppets, he's probably more adult now than his dear, late brother ever was." Aldric had been paying attention once his interest was aroused and he could see how things fitted together now.

  "So like it or not, the next Emperor won't be just a figurehead. And the Warlord is going to do what he can, while he can, because if the Empire stops expanding by war, there will be no need for a Warlord. And he picked on Alba because—because if the worst happens, he'll have a bolt-hole out of the Emperor's reach. And the fact that he's using a filthy, treacherous, back-stabbing…" The boy took a deep breath and calmed down a little. "The very fact that he's using a necromancer as his agent, when all sorcery is forbidden in the Empire, shows how desperate he must be to succeed."

  Gemmel applauded, with only the faintest trace of an ironic smile creasing his lean face. "And the fact," he mimicked Aldric's slightly pedantic tones with good-humored mockery, "that Alba's king has condoned acts of piracy against Imperial shipping, has drawn up letters of marque for the commissioning of privateers, already signed and only awaiting issue, and that his High Council has been instrumental in the smuggling of arms and gold to insurrections in the Imperial provinces… all these have nothing whatsoever to do with it."

  "Ah…" breathed Aldric. Then with sudden violence: "How in the name of the Highest Hell did you learn all that?" There was no anger in the outburst—just an extreme curiosity.

  "I am a wizard, you know," Gemmel pointed out. "Though friends in high places are also useful. But…" He paused, deliberately.

  "Bui what?"

  "But I think you may have it all wrong." Aldric eyed the enchanter and gave up. Trying to keep track of Gem-mel's mental processes was worse than trying to read a book at night, without lights, in a thick fog.

  "So what is the solution?" Gemmel stood up and wandered across his study to the big oak desk, returning with a long slender pipe which he proceeded to carefully fill and light. Since it was obvious that he was not going to get an answer until the ritual had been concluded, Aldric also rose and helped himself to the sorcerer's wine.

  "Now why would Vathach have been sneaking about the old Baelen battlefield?" Gemmel muttered to himself. Aldric glanced towards the enchanter, drained his goblet and then filled it again in anticipation of more convoluted discussion. Then he spilt about half the contents as Gemmel thumped his chair and barked, "Yes, of course!"

  "Of course what?" Aldric shook wine from his fingertips into the fire and finished what was left before it too was spilt. "I grow tired of asking simple-minded questions which you never seem to answer." Raising his eyebrows, Gemmel looked at the young man with new respect. There had been an edge to his last words that was more than mere petulance; he had sounded like someone accustomed to obedience—like a kailin-eir.

  "The sword-hilt which you found," Gemmel explained, only to be met with a quizzical blankness. Then he recalled how the images in Aldric's mind had faded during the ymeth-trance. There had been a charm of forgetful-ness cast across the valley—but one cast hastily and without due care, or there would have been no trace of the hilt in Aldric's memory at all. So Duergar had been watching the valley either in the form of a wolf, or with witch-sight from a distance. He had been searching for one particular artifact, had been interrupted by the boar-hunt and had seen his trophy unearthed quite by accident. After failing to make Aldric drop the old hilt, he had followed it to Dunrath and laid his plans accordingly. The Talvalins had simply been in the way, and as was the manner of such wizards he had snuffed them out without a thought. That thought might have made him more careful to do a thorough job—and the lack of it, Gemmel realised grimly, could prove the end of his scheme. The old enchanter told Aldric his theory, for once without rhetoric, and waited for a reaction.

  "It must be Kalarr cu Ruruc's sword!" the boy said firmly. "I can't think of anything else—especially after Vathach took such pains to bore me out of any curiosity on the subject." Gemmel smiled around his pipe-stem.

  "He must have considerable talent to do that," the wizard observed dryly. Getting to his feet, he faced one of the bookcases which ran from floor to ceiling around the walls of his study. "There should be something here to enlighten us on why… ah, and indeed there is."

  He pulled down a thick leather-bound book and leafed rapidly through its pages, then marked one with his finger. "This is not unlike your clan Archives, Aldric," the old man said. Then his teeth showed in a crooked grin. "Except that no hall-scribe would dare write some of the things this book contains, for fear of his very soul." It was an explanation which did nothing for Aldric's peace of mind. "Now let me see…"Gemmel read the page quickly, muttering some of the words under his breath; what Aldric caught of them sounded like an archaic form of Alban, not quite the ancient High Speech of religion and ceremony but certainly closer to it than to the language Aldric spoke. He felt suddenly reluctant to hear whatever it was the sorcerer was reading, and was about to say as much when Gemmel set down the book on his desk and stared hard at him.

  "Aldric, would you go now and fetch me your old jerkin?" he said, and his voice was strange. Aldric went at once. When he returned, the sorcerer was toying with the pen he had been using to construct a complex table of words and symbols. He tapped his chin with one finger, then drew a large question mark right in the centre of the page. "Turn out your pockets, please," he told the boy without looking up. This revealed the usual mixture of fluff, small coins, notes on scraps of parchment and threads from a hole in the pocket lining.

  Gemmel looked at the unprepossessing rubbish, then lifted one of the broken threads and frowned. The frown deepened when scrutiny revealed the jacket's lining to be still intact. A moment later it was anything but, as he took a knife from the desk and sliced the seams apart. Opening his mouth to protest, Aldric quickly closed it again. Something had fallen from the rent and rolled clattering across Gemmel's desk; as it stopped and fell over sideways, the boy could see quite clearly what it was. The wrist-band of a horseman's sword, with three links of rusty chain remaining of the length which had once threaded through a pommel.

  "So then," said Gemmel quietly, "Duergar has the hilt and we the band to it. Which is more important, I wonder?" He made no move to touch the age-corroded bronze, but Aldric did. Save only where the chain had left russet flecks, the band was green with verdigris, covering even the studs decorating its surface. The more Aldric studied it, the less he felt it had anything to do with Kalarr. Plain bronze was too…too cheap for the trappings of a master sorcerer. With a disgusted noise he dropped it on the table.

  "Deceptive, is it not?" Aldric cocked an eyebrow, not quite understanding Gemmel's comment. "But then, such things were meant to fool more than your uninformed scrutiny." He began scratching the band with his small knife, talking the while. "The outward appearance of any object is seldom an indication of its true worth; an older man may be stronger than a young one; a ring plain and unadorned may have greater value than any set with gems; and a band of rusty bronze with simple ornaments may prove of—ah!" Metal squeaked under stress as Gemmel prised back his blade.

  "Has proven of greater interest than one made of jewelled gold. Aldric… look!" He twisted the knife away and a flickering nimbus of pale blue light sprang up around his hands. The radiance poured from one of the studs on the wrist-band, from which Gemmel had scraped a conceal
ing layer of metal, and which now glowed like a sapphire lit from within by cold, fierce white light. It was altogether beautiful—and at the same time as awesome as the vast dark shape Aldric had half-glimpsed in the cavern.

  "This," said Gemmel, holding it up carefully, "is one of the seven spellstones of Echainon. They have been lost for a long time—and now I have one in my hand. But I can guess from this what Duergar has in mind." Gemmel laid down the spellstone and gazed for a while into its throbbing core. "And Aldric, had I the choice, an Imperial invasion would be preferable by far."

  There was a slab of crystal resting on top of the stone plinth, making it look like a catafalque for the lying-instate of some great man. A slow dance of green flames surrounded it, burning without heat, without smoke and without fuel.

  Duergar dozed before it in a cushioned chair, undisturbed by the shifting light. He was so weary that little could disturb him now; the rituals had lasted four days and their completion had left him with an exhaustion such as he had seldom experienced. Held firmly in one hand was an old sword-hilt, scratched and shiny from a recent, over-vigorous cleaning but the letters on its guard and pommel carefully outlined in fresh black ink. Duergar had read them and others like them from the many gri-moires scattered about the room. Intricate symbols covered the floor, some drawn with chalk and others outlined in coloured sand. The square, heavy letters were everywhere. A casual observer would have called them ugly, but even the least of closer glances would have changed the adjective to brutal—sinister— menacing. They were all of this and more besides.

  Settling in his chair, Duergar drifted into a deeper sleep. As he slept, he dreamed that the sluggishly fluttering flames swirled upwards into a tapering needle like translucent viridian ice. A globe of amber radiance grew at the heart of the fire until its golden fight swallowed every trace of green, and then the honey colour darkened through incandescent scarlet to a smoky crimson. The globe began to spin, attenuating to a spindle of dark red poised atop the catafalque. Then even its sullen glare faded and everything grew dark.

  Waking with a nervous jerk from something close to nightmare, Duergar found that his dream had become reality. A solitary candle was the only illumination, barely enough to discern outlines, but even so he could see… something… standing on the granite plinth. Fear rose within him, for like all sorcerers who meddle in such things he lived in dread of the day when the thing he had summoned up was not that which appeared. Today was that day, for whatever he had expected this tall, rustling object was not in any of the possible shapes his grimoires had described. The candleflame sparkled back at him in a hundred ruby-red reflections, from polished metal, from cut gemstones—from gleaming eyes…

  The eyes blinked lazily, savouring his terror, and then with a susurrant motion glided closer. Sweat coursed down the necromancer's face and his tongue stuck within a dry mouth as he fought to utter the words of a defensive spell. Then the being stopped abruptly and the glowing eyes glanced down. A vivid white line crossed the floor, blocking its path, before joining another part of the pentacle Duergar had drawn so carefully around the catafalque. There was a soft, venomous hiss of indrawn breath, and the dark outline moved unhurriedly sideways, but always the lines of the pentacle flared before it as if tracking its movements. At last the thing retired to the plinth, and Duergar found he could breathe again without the constriction of fear clenched in iron hoops round his chest.

  "Who… who are you?" he quavered. There was no reply, and made confident by the power of his restraining-spell Duergar began to grow angry. "I summoned you, I command you!" he snapped in a voice very different from his first thin tones. "Give me your name!"

  There was a noise almost like a sigh of boredom, and suddenly all the candles sprang to life revealing a man leaning nonchalantly against the catafalque, smiling, but with a glint in his dark eyes that suggested he was anything but amused. "If you could remove this obstruction…" he said in a deep, urbane voice, gesturing towards the pentacle with a crystal-topped staff. The unwary could drown in that voice, thought Duergar apprehensively, and made no attempt to do as he was asked.

  "What is your name?" he repeated. The man regarded Duergar with a trace of contempt from eyes resembling bottomless pits bored into his sombrely handsome face. His stare burned into the necromancer as if determined to read his innermost thoughts, then withdrew, leaving Duergar with the uneasy feeling of a hand unwrapping from his throat.

  "You summoned me, you command me," the man echoed Duergar's words with undisguised sarcasm. "Are you so unsure of yourself that you dare not also name me? Then I will spare you the trouble." He left the stone plinth and sauntered with a predator's grace to the edge of the pentacle which flared with intolerable brilliance to hold him back.

  "I am Kalarr cu Ruruc." He made a complex sign in the air with his hand; it was one of the sigils which identified him as a true summoning and not some shape-shifting demon. Almost shaking with relief, Duergar bowed low, almost but not quite abasing himself.

  "Your pardon, my lord, but I was not sure… welcome, welcome! Let me open a way through the pentacle for you."

  Kalarr studied him with icy humour. "You bade me welcome, so there is no need. The ancient binding-spell still holds good, does it not? Somebody invited you in, eh? Foolish of them." He jabbed the staff at the glowing line before his feet and it split asunder, leaving his path clear. "You see…" He stepped through, smiling.

  Duergar cringed like a dog before a beating, but failed to sidestep the long-fingered hand which wrapped around his head. "Don't be concerned," Kalarr reassured him. "I merely want to learn. Although I feel ymeth takes too long." The sorcerer drew in a deep breath and tightened his grip.

  It was not the grip but a feeling of having his mind wrenched asunder which sent Duergar reeling backwards with a harsh scream of agony. Kalarr did not follow him; he flexed his fingers and nodded slowly, then smiled again, like a shark. "And that method doesn't give me a headache."

  His face was lean and high-cheekboned, with distinguished features framed by dark, grey-flecked hair swept back showing a widow's peak on his lofty brow. The nose was thin, high-bridged, bounded above by the notch of a slight frown and below by a mobile, ruthless mouth and a heavy moustache. It was a face of saturnine humour; of suppressed power; the face of a man who seldom hears refusal of his wishes.

  "So you want my aid in wrecking this kingdom of Alba, because you think I would enjoy taking revenge for my defeat… ? How very true. But instead of turning it over to your Imperial masters, you would hold it for yourself. Laudable ambition—if you succeed. And since you hold the last thing I touched in life"—Duergar nervously raised the sword-hilt as if it was a protective amulet—"I have no choice but to obey your wishes." Cu Ruruc's smile faded as if the implications of what he had said were sinking in, although if Duergar had seen the sardonic glitter in his eyes when they observed the broken chain, he would not have felt so comfortable. "So be it, then," Kalarr's voice was resigned. "I shall obey."

  He turned away and as if for the first time, though he had known it all along, Duergar realised that his… guest was dressed entirely in red. He had intended to ask how a summoning came into existence fully clothed in the height of half-millennium-old fashion, but thought better of it. No Alban would ever wear red without some other colour; red and particularly vermeil, that shade of deep scarlet or rich crimson which Kalarr wore with such arrogance, was the single most unlucky colour in the spectrum. It was associated with blood, with misfortune and violent death.

  Cu Ruruc and his chosen colour were well matched.

  Four

  Isileth—and Kyrin

  Aldric lay back, half-dozing, and let his mind wander over the past three years. It still surprised him that they had passed so quickly and that he was already into the spring of his twenty-fourth year. He felt no different, even though he was: not merely older, but with a thin white scar under his right eye and a mind better versed in certain subjects than an honourable kai
lin-eir would care to own. Gemmel called it "survival."

  Gemmel… When he first told Aldric how long he was to stay, there had been an undignified scene when the youngster lost his temper. To defer his vengeance for so long was the act of a coward, he had snarled, and whatever else he might he be, Aldric, was no coward. Gemmel had weathered the storm of abuse with a little half-smile on his face, thinking to himself how very fitting was the kourgath wildcat on Aldric's crest-collar. His smile was that of a man who knows he will always have the last word in any argument, and this one was no exception.

  An eijo, an honourless wanderer, had nothing to lose by accepting some tuition in the Art Magic. So Aldric thought when the old enchanter offered, since he had already picked up a few pesok'n, as the little spells were called, from old books filched from his father's library. Filched, because Haranil-arluth considered sorcery sly, devious and no concern of a warrior. Not that ability with dogs, cats and horses, or finding lost trinkets, was anything more than toy magic for women and children. Aldric came face to face with the real thing that day and saw how much chance his intended revenge would have had against Duergar.

  None at all.

  A few days later he was calling the old man altrou, meaning foster-father. It seemed fitting somehow, and Gemmel's unfeigned pleasure at a title meaning more to him than a lordship had broken down the sometimes formal host-guest attitudes once and for all.