Sam Salazar hung his head. “I have no definite purpose. Undoubtedly there was wisdom—or at least knowledge—among the ancients; perhaps I can use these symbols of knowledge to sharpen my own understanding.”
Comandore threw up his hands in disgust. He turned to Hein Huss who stood nearby. “First he fancies himself a tree and stands in the mud; now he thinks to learn jinxmanship through a study of ancient symbols.”
Huss shrugged. “They were men like ourselves, and, though limited, they were not entirely obtuse. A certain simian cleverness is required to fabricate these objects.”
“Simian cleverness is no substitute for sound jinxmanship,” retorted Isak Comandore. “This is a point hard to overemphasize; I have drummed it into Salazar’s head a hundred times. And now, look at him.”
Huss grunted noncommittally. “I fail to understand what he hopes to achieve.”
Sam Salazar tried to explain, fumbling for words to express an idea that did not exist. “I thought perhaps to decipher the writing, if only to understand what the ancients thought, and perhaps to learn how to perform one or two of their tricks.”
Comandore rolled up his eyes. “What enemy bewitched me when I consented to take you as apprentice? I can cast twenty hoodoos in an hour, more than any of the ancients could achieve in a lifetime.”
“Nevertheless,” said Sam Salazar, “I notice that Lord Faide rides in his ancestral car, and that Lord Ballant sought to kill us all with Volcano.”
“I notice,” said Comandore with feral softness, “that my demon Keyril conquered Lord Ballant’s Volcano, and that riding on my wagon I can outdistance Lord Faide in his car.”
Sam Salazar thought better of arguing further. “True, Jinxman Comandore, very true. I stand corrected.”
“Then discard that rubbish and make yourself useful. We return to Faide Keep in the morning.”
“As you wish, Jinxman Comandore.” Sam Salazar threw the books back into the trash.
VI
The Ballant clan had been dispersed, Ballant Keep was despoiled. Lord Faide and his men banqueted somberly in the great hall, tended by silent Ballant servitors.
Ballant Keep had been built on the same splendid scale as Faide Keep. The great hall was a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, fifty feet high, paneled in planks sawn from pale native hardwood, rubbed and waxed to a rich honey color. Enormous black beams supported the ceiling; from these hung candelabra, intricate contrivances of green, purple, and blue glass, knotted with ancient but still bright light-motes. On the far wall hung portraits of all the lords of Ballant Keep—105 grave faces in a variety of costumes. Below, a genealogical chart ten feet high detailed the descent of the Ballants and their connections with the other noble clans. Now there was a desolate air to the hall, and the 105 dead faces were meaningless and empty.
Lord Faide dined without joy, and cast dour side glances at those of his kinsmen who reveled too gladly. Lord Ballant, he thought, had conducted himself only as he himself might have done under the same circumstances; coarse exultation seemed in poor taste, almost as if it were disrespect for Lord Faide himself. His followers were quick to catch his mood, and the banquet proceeded with greater decorum. The jinxmen sat apart in a smaller room to the side. Anderson Grimes, erstwhile Ballant Head Jinxman, sat beside Hein Huss, trying to put a good face on his defeat. After all, he had performed creditably against four powerful adversaries, and there was no cause to feel a diminution of mana. The five jinxmen discussed the battle, while the cabalmen and spellbinders listened respectfully. The conduct of the demon-possessed troops occasioned the most discussion. Anderson Grimes readily admitted that his conception of Everid was a force absolutely brutal and blunt, terrifying in its indomitable vigor. The other jinxmen agreed that he undoubtedly succeeded in projecting these qualities; Hein Huss however pointed out that Isak Comandore’s Keyril, as cruel and vigorous as Everid, also combined a measure of crafty malice, which tended to make the possessed soldier a more effective weapon.
Anderson Grimes allowed that this might well be the case, and that in fact he had been considering such an augmentation of Everid’s characteristics.
“To my mind,” said Huss, “the most effective demon should be swift enough to avoid the strokes of the brute demons, such as Keyril and Everid. I cite my own Dant as example. A Dant-possessed warrior can easily destroy a Keyril or an Everid, simply through his agility. In an encounter of this sort the Keyrils and Everids presently lose their capacity to terrify, and thus half the effect is lost.”
Isak Comandore pierced Huss with a hot russet glance. “You state a presumption as if it were fact. I have formulated Keyril with sufficient craft to counter any such displays of speed. I firmly believe Keyril to be the most fearsome of all demons.”
“It may well be,” rumbled Hein Huss thoughtfully. He beckoned to a steward, gave instructions. The steward reduced the light a trifle. “Behold,” said Hein Huss. “There is Dant. He comes to join the banquet.” To the side of the room loomed the tiger-striped Dant, a creature constructed of resilient metal, with four terrible arms, and a squat black head which seemed all gaping jaw.
“Look,” came the husky voice of Isak Comandore. “There is Keyril.” Keyril was rather more humanoid and armed with a cutlass. Dant spied Keyril. The jaws gaped wider, it sprang to the attack.
The battle was a thing of horror; the two demons rolled, twisted, bit, frothed, uttered soundless shrieks, tore each other apart. Suddenly Dant sprang away, circled Keyril with dizzying speed, faster, faster; became a blur, a wild coruscation of colors that seemed to give off a high-pitched wailing sound, rising higher and higher in pitch. Keyril hacked brutally with his cutlass, then seemed to grow feeble and wan. The light that once had been Dant blazed white, exploded in a mental shriek; Keyril was gone and Isak Comandore lay moaning.
Hein Huss drew a deep breath, wiped his face, looked about him with a complacent grin. The entire company sat rigid as stones, staring, all except the apprentice Sam Salazar, who met Hein Huss’s glance with a cheerful smile.
“So,” growled Huss, panting from his exertion, “you consider yourself superior to the illusion; you sit and smirk at one of Hein Huss’s best efforts.”
“No, no,” cried Sam Salazar, “I mean no disrespect! I want to learn, so I watched you rather than the demons. What could they teach me? Nothing!”
“Ah,” said Huss, mollified. “And what did you learn?”
“Likewise, nothing,” said Sam Salazar, “but at least I do not sit like a fish.”
Comandore’s voice came soft but crackling with wrath. “You see in me the resemblance to a fish?”
“I except you, Jinxman Comandore, naturally,” Sam Salazar explained.
“Please go to my cabinet, Apprentice Salazar, and fetch me the doll that is your likeness. The steward will bring a basin of water, and we shall have some sport. With your knowledge of fish you perhaps can breathe under water. If not— you may suffocate.”
“I prefer not, Jinxman Comandore,” said Sam Salazar. “In fact, with your permission, I now resign your service.”
Comandore motioned to one of his cabalmen. “Fetch me the Salazar doll. Since he is no longer my apprentice, it is likely indeed that he will suffocate.”
“Come now, Comandore,” said Hein Huss gruffly. “Do not torment the lad. He is innocent and a trifle addled. Let this be an occasion of placidity and ease.”
“Certainly, Hein Huss,” said Comandore. “Why not? There is ample time in which to discipline this upstart.”
“Jinxman Huss,” said Sam Salazar, “since I am now relieved of my duties to Jinxman Comandore, perhaps you will accept me into your service.”
Hein Huss made a noise of vast distaste. “You are not my responsibility.”
“There are many futures, Hein Huss,” said Sam Salazar. “You have said as much yourself.”
Hein Huss looked at Sam Salazar with his water-clear eyes. “Yes, there are many futures. And I think that tonight sees the full
amplitude of jinxmanship. … I think that never again will such power and skill gather at the same table. We shall die one by one and there shall be none to fill our shoes… . Yes, Sam Salazar. I will take you as apprentice. Isak Comandore, do you hear? This youth is now of my company.”
“I must be compensated,” growled Comandore.
“You have coveted my doll of Tharon Faide, the only one in existence. It is yours.”
“Ah, ha!” cried Isak Comandore leaping to his feet. “Hein Huss, I salute you! You are generous indeed! I thank you and accept!”
Hein Huss motioned to Sam Salazar. “Move your effects to my wagon. Do not show your face again tonight.” Sam Salazar bowed with dignity and departed the hall. The banquet continued, but now something of melancholy filled the room. Presently a messenger from Lord Faide came to warn all to bed, for the party returned to Faide Keep at dawn.
VII
The victorious Faide troops gathered on the heath before Ballant Keep. As a parting gesture Lord Faide ordered the great gate torn off the hinges, so that ingress could never again be denied him. But even after sixteen hundred years the hinges were proof to all the force the horses could muster, and the gates remained in place.
Lord Faide accepted the fact with good grace and bade farewell to his cousin Renfroy, whom he had appointed bailiff. He climbed into his car, settled himself, snapped the switch. The car groaned and moved forward. Behind came the knights and the foot soldiers, then the baggage train, laden with booty, and finally the wagons of the jinxmen.
Three hours the column marched across the mossy downs. Ballant Keep dwindled behind; ahead appeared North and South Wildwood, darkening all the sweep of the western horizon. Where once the break had existed, the First Folk’s new planting showed a smudge lower and less intense than the old woodlands.
Two miles from the woodlands Lord Faide called a halt and signaled up his knights. Hein Huss laboriously dismounted from his wagon, came forward.
“In the event of resistance,” Lord Faide told the knights, “do not be tempted into the forest. Stay with the column and at all times be on your guard against traps.”
Hein Huss spoke. “You wish me to parley with the First Folk once more?”
“No,” said Lord Faide. “It is ridiculous that I must ask permission of savages to ride over my own land. We return as we came; if they interfere, so much the worse for them.”
“You are rash,” said Huss with simple candor.
Lord Faide glanced down at him with black eyebrows raised. “What damage can they do if we avoid their traps? Blow foam at us?”
“It is not my place to advise or to warn,” said Hein Huss. “However, I point out that they exhibit a confidence which does not come from conscious weakness; also, that they carried tubes, apparently hollow grasswood shoots, which imply missiles.”
Lord Faide nodded. “No doubt. However, the knights wear armor, the soldiers carry bucklers. It is not fit that I, Lord Faide of Faide Keep, choose my path to suit the whims of the First Folk. This must be made clear, even if the exercise involves a dozen or so First Folk corpses.”
“Since I am not a fighting man,” remarked Hein Huss, “I will keep well to the rear, and pass only when the way is secure.”
“As you wish.” Lord Faide pulled down the visor of his helmet. “Forward.”
The column moved toward the forest, along the previous track, which showed plain across the moss. Lord Faide rode in the lead, flanked by his brother, Gethwin Faide, and his cousin, Mauve Dermont-Faide.
A half mile passed, and another. The forest was only a mile distant. Overhead the great sun rode at zenith; brightness and heat poured down; the air carried the oily scent of thorn and tarbush. The column moved on, more slowly; the only sound the clanking of armor, the muffled thud of hooves in the moss, the squeal of wagon wheels.
Lord Faide rose up in his car, watching for any sign of hostile preparation. A half mile from the planting the forms of the First Folk, waiting in the shade along the forest’s verge, became visible. Lord Faide ignored them, held a steady pace along the track they had traveled before.
The half-mile became a quarter-mile. Lord Faide turned to order the troops into single file and was just in time to see a hole suddenly open into the moss and his brother, Gethwin Faide, drop from sight. There was a rattle, a thud, the howling of the impaled horse; Gethwin’s wild calls as the horse kicked and crushed him into the stakes. Mauve Dermont-Faide, riding beside Gethwin, could not control his own horse, which leaped aside from the pit and blundered upon a trigger. Up from the moss burst a tree trunk studded with foot-long thorns. It snapped, quick as a scorpion’s tail; the thorns punctured Mauve Dermont-Faide’s armor, his chest, and whisked him from his horse to carry him suspended, writhing and screaming. The tip of the scythe pounded into Lord Faide’s car, splintered against the hull. The car swung groaning through the air. Lord Faide clutched at the windscreen to prevent himself from falling.
The column halted; several men ran to the pit, but Gethwin Faide lay twenty feet below, crushed under his horse. Others took Mauve Dermont-Faide down from the swaying scythe, but he, too, was dead.
Lord Faide’s skin tingled with a gooseflesh of hate and rage. He looked toward the forest. The First Folk stood motionless. He beckoned to Bernard, sergeant of the foot soldiers. “Two men with lances to try out the ground ahead. All others ready with darts. At my signal spit the devils.”
Two men came forward, and marching before Lord Faide’s car, probed at the ground. Lord Faide settled in his seat. “Forward.”
The column moved slowly toward the forest, every man tense and ready. The lances of the two men in the vanguard presently broke through the moss, to disclose a nettle trap— a pit lined with nettles, each frond ripe with globes of acid. Carefully they probed out a path to the side, and the column filed around, each man walking in the other’s tracks.
At Lord Faide’s side now rode his two nephews, Scolford and Edwin. “Notice,” said Lord Faide in a voice harsh and tight. “These traps were laid since our last passage; an act of malice.”
“But why did they guide us through before?”
Lord Faide smiled bitterly. “They were willing that we should die at Ballant Keep. But we have disappointed them.”
“Notice, they carry tubes,” said Scolford.
“Blowguns possibly,” suggested Edwin.
Scolford disagreed. “They cannot blow through their foam-vents.”
“No doubt we shall soon learn,” said Lord Faide. He rose in his seat, called to the rear. “Ready with the darts!”
The soldiers raised their crossbows. The column advanced slowly, now only a hundred yards from the planting. The white shapes of the First Folk moved uneasily at the forest’s edges. Several of them raised their tubes, seemed to sight along the length. They twitched their great hands.
One of the tubes was pointed toward Lord Faide. He saw a small black object leave the opening, flit forward, gathering speed. He heard a hum, waxing to a rasping, clicking flutter. He ducked behind the windscreen; the projectile swooped in pursuit, struck the windscreen like a thrown stone. It fell crippled upon the forward deck of the car—a heavy black insect like a wasp, its broken proboscis oozing ocher liquid, horny wings beating feebly, eyes like dumbbells fixed on Lord Faide. With his mailed fist, he crushed the creature.
Behind him other wasps struck knights and men; Corex Faide-Battaro took the prong through his visor into the eye, but the armor of the other knights defeated the wasps. The foot soldiers, however, lacked protection; the wasps half buried themselves in flesh. The soldiers called out in pain, clawed away the wasps, squeezed the wounds. Corex Faide-Battaro toppled from his horse, ran blindly out over the heath, and after fifty feet fell into a trap. The stricken soldiers began to twitch, then fell on the moss, thrashed, leaped up to run with flapping arms, threw themselves in wild somersaults, forward, backward, foaming and thrashing.
In the forest, the First Folk raised their tubes again. Lo
rd Faide bellowed, “Spit the creatures! Bowmen, launch your darts!”
There came the twang of crossbows, darts snapped at the quiet white shapes. A few staggered and wandered aimlessly away; most, however, plucked out the darts or ignored them. They took capsules from small sacks, put them to the end of their tubes.
“Beware the wasps!” cried Lord Faide. “Strike with your bucklers! Kill the cursed things in flight!”
The rasp of horny wings came again; certain of the soldiers found courage enough to follow Lord Faide’s orders, and battered down the wasps. Others struck home as before; behind came another flight. The column became a tangle of struggling, crouching men.
“Footmen, retreat!” called Lord Faide furiously. “Footmen back! Knights to me!”
The soldiers fled back along the track, taking refuge behind the baggage wagons. Thirty of their number lay dying, or dead, on the moss.
Lord Faide cried out to his knights in a voice like a bugle. “Dismount, follow slow after me! Turn your helmets, keep the wasps from your eyes! One step at a time, behind the car! Edwin, into the car beside me, test the footing with your lance. Once in the forest there are no traps! Then attack!”
The knights formed themselves into a line behind the car. Lord Faide drove slowly forward, his kinsman Edwin prodding the ground ahead. The First Folk sent out a dozen more wasps, which dashed themselves vainly against the armor. Then there was silence… cessation of sound, activity. The First Folk watched impassively as the knights approached, step by step.
Edwin’s lance found a trap, the column moved to the side. Another trap—and the column was diverted from the planting toward the forest. Step by step, yard by yard—another trap, another detour, and now the column was only a hundred feet from the forest. A trap to the left, a trap to the right: the safe path led directly toward an enormous heavy-branched tree. Seventy feet, fifty feet, then Lord Faide drew his sword.
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