by Hugh Cook
Then, scanning other memories, Ebonair changed his mind. Not ruthless at all. Weak. Confused. Sentimental. Ebonair had not tasted such agonising since the time he invaded the mind of an adolescent student priest of the Temple of the Ultimate Ethic. Weak, yes: yet successful. Such opportunities! Reclaiming the Harvest Plains would take only a word.
The wizard Ebonair had known it would take a hero to seize the key to the tower of Ebber from the pyramid tomb, and then to invade the tower itself, but he had been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Instead of using the hero's body and reputation to fight to reclaim his kingdom, he had only to step outside the tower and all would be on their knees before him.
Another memory.
Interesting.
Underground darkness. The noise of the river, rushing, rushing. A voice. Pain in the voice: weakness. Fear. 'You will have the power to enter the tower of Arl. And you will understand the High Speech, the reading of it, the writing of it, the speaking of it.' Darkness and the beat of a heart. Darkness, and then – Interesting indeed. Ebonair had never known that a wizard of Arl could, as he died, transfer his memories to the living. A pretty trick. A pretty trick indeed. But it is one thing to pass on a few disorganised memories: quite another to preserve one's identity within an artefact while spending centuries engaged in the Meditations, building the power needed to take possession of another body.
Such long centuries! Dust. Madness. The taste of ambition sustaining the will when eroding silence seems beyond endurance. And now the time has come.
He yawned.
Grinned like a skull.
Then laughed.
He was young, free, alive, with all the world supine beneath his trampling feet! Time to go…
The wizard Ebonair descended to the lowest level of the tower of Ebber, in which were gathered many metal devices from the Days of Wrath. In his last incarnation, the secrets of those devices had escaped him. In this incarnation, he hoped to do better. Ebonair commanded the tower: 'Open!'
A doorway opened to a flood of afternoon sunlight, revealing the two who stood on the battlements.
'Hearst,' said Blackwood. 'Are you all right?'
'What happened?' said Miphon. 'Morgan, you look strange. Are you hurt?'
As Blackwood and Miphon stepped forward, the wizard Ebonair let the Hearst-body sag toward the floor. Miphon ran forward and caught it, brushing against the staff of power; the wizard Ebonair took him with… a little difficulty. That was not as easy as he had expected! 'Miphon,' said Blackwood. 'Help me. Hearst's unconscious. Why are you standing there like that?'
Ebonair scanned Miphon's memories. Pox. Pox doctor. Scabs. Boils. Poultices. Leaking wombs. Bad backs. Leeches, application of. Bruises. Solicitous words to a man… what? Dying? If dying, why bother with him? Hands greasy, slimy, blood, blood, tender hands easing a cord free from the neck, taking the weight, eliciting the first birthcry – and smiling! Spare us from biology.
'Miphon,' said Blackwood, shaking him.
'Take this,' said Ebonair, getting the Miphon-voice all wrong, but the note of command was right, the peasant took the staff of power even as the wizard let the Miphon-body sag toward the floor.
'No!' screamed Blackwood, as it happened.
But for Ebonair, it was easy. Easier than taking over the Miphon-body. Almost as easy as seizing the Hearst-body. Memories now. A quick scan – nothing, after all, to be gained from the mind of a peasant. Sky. Blue sky. Sky? Is that all?
Sky, blue sky, the colour of my lover's eyes; Leaf, young leaf, her hands no softer.
The transfiguring vision. A trick, surely. A trick of perception. An illusion. Like a drug-trance. Like a mystic's starvation delusion. Not true. Not real. No!
And Ebonair screamed: 'No!'
Locked in the Blackwood-body, Ebonair collapsed.
A poet may, on occasion, see the world transfigured by visionary perception yet still come to terms with the world. A man such as Blackwood may see the world that way constantly, day by day, and survive by isolating himself as much as possible from human society, evading the pains of the world by immersing himself in scholarship and study.
But Ebonair, viewing himself through the lens of visionary revelation, saw how his entire life had been devoted to killing, distorting, maiming or repressing the flame of life which persists in every entity; worse still he saw the damage he had done to himself.
A saint may live with such visions; an ordinary man, with some effort, may survive them. For Ebonair, they threatened madness. He had to escape. He thrust the staff of power out to touch the supine Hearst-body. The next moment, Ebonair occupied that body: but in such a panic that the body was thrown into spasm.
The head of the Hearst-body slammed against one of the inert metal machines from the Days of Wrath, and was knocked unconscious.
***
Miphon came to slowly. He was groggy, dizzy. His head hurt. He blinked at the sunlight streaming into the tower of Ebber. He half-expected to see spectators crowding the entrance: surely many people in Selzirk must be able to see the doorway to the tower of Ebber was open. But there was nobody. Of course. They were afraid of it. And clearly there were good reasons to support their superstitious dread of the place.
Quickly Miphon checked both Blackwood and Hearst. Both were unconscious. So where was the wizard? Ebonair: yes, that was his name. Miphon had learnt a little from his enemy even as his enemy was learning from him: he knew to look for the staff of power. Which was on the floor of the tower. By Hearst. Which implied that Ebonair was trapped for the time being in the unconscious Hearst-body. Which meant there was a simple way of getting rid of Ebonair: kill Hearst, then burn the staff of power for good measure. But no, he could not do that! Or could he? Hearst would not have hesitated, in his place. It was the only way.
To delay the decision, Miphon sat back and tried to remember what Ebonair had discovered when rummaging through Miphon's memory. Mostly images of sickness and healing. Discovering Miphon to be a member of the order of Nin, an animal-caller and a pox-doctor, Ebonair had not looked very deeply.
There was certainly something he had overlooked.
The sleeping secrets: occult strength of the order of Nin.
The sleeping secrets: power too terrible for any human being to be trusted to live with, power sufficient to overwhelm the established order of the world. In the depths of the Shackle Mountains, in the shadow of thunder, in the place between darkness and light, they were taught by the book of Nariq, and then they were taught to forget.
Was this the time to recall the sleeping secrets? To open, as the saying went, the Book of Nariq?
No.
First, because the problem could be resolved by a simple act of murder. And second, because the sleeping secrets, whatever they were, might not be suitable for overcoming Ebonair without killing Morgan Hearst.
Miphon stood over Hearst's body. It would take only a moment: he knew where to put the blade. He could say afterwards that an evil spirit killed Hearst: the story would be true enough in its way. Hearst would have killed, if necessary.
But Hearst… yes, Miphon remembered how he himself, on a ship at sea, drunk with battle, had sent whales again and again to batter Alish's ships. Hearst had thrown a bucket of water over Miphon, to save the life of a man he had once counted as a friend. Yes, in Miphon's situation, Hearst would have killed if necessary – but if there was another way, he would have tried that first. Could a wizard do less than a Rovac warrior?
Yet it was an improper way to use the sleeping secrets. They were meant for the occasion of greatest danger. And what would Morgan Hearst have said to that? Miphon could imagine the answer: i dare!'
And, if Hearst died, there would be no chance for Miphon to present him to the Confederation of Wizards at the Castle of Controlling Power in a bid to resolve the age-old enmity between the wizards and the Rovac.
Miphon, consoling himself with the thought that he worked in the interests of the greatest good, began the Rites of
Recall, and was soon lost in a trance of remembrance.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Miphon opened his eyes and saw the Hearst-body studying him intently. It held a leather bag which, Miphon knew, contained the death-stone. 'Hearst?' "What do you think?'
Everything about Hearst-body was subtly wrong: the carriage of the shoulders, the angle the head was held at, the way the feet were together instead of shoulder-width apart.
'Ebonair,' said Miphon.
'Precisely,' said the wizard of Ebber, gloating. 'You know what I hold here?'
'The death-stone,' said Miphon. 'Careful how you use it. It brings stones to life.'
'But not the stones of a wizard castle: they've no minds left to animate. I saw that much when I scanned your memories. From here, I could destroy Selzirk without the slightest risk to myself.'
'But a mad rock might charge the battlements!'
'Ah,' said Ebonair. 'But from this warrior's memories, I see the death-stone repels the rocks it animates. I also see… that with this death-stone, I might become a god.'
'Heenmor killed himself experimenting with the death-stone.'
'I'm not Heenmor,' said Ebonair. 'Besides, I have an advantage he never had: your mind. You can read the thoughts of rock and stone. Isn't that right? A fascinating ability. It may help me much in my research.'
And Miphon thought:
– This has gone on long enough.
– So do it! And he did.
The order of Nin cultivated the ability to read and influence the minds of things that live wild. The powers of the sleeping secrets were the powers to read, understand and control both the minds and bodies of humans, and to change the same. This power could operate at a distance of up to ten leagues.
Miphon closed his eyes. When he closed his eyes, he saw the world around him in terms of life-energies. The stones of the castle were dead, inert. Monstrous powers glowered in the silent machines from the Days of Wrath. Blackwood's mind was a dull red glow, still unconscious. Hearst's mind was another dull glow, but in that glow was a web of green energy, which could be unravelled by… yes, Miphon saw how it could be done.
Miphon stood up. Wrong: his ghost stood up. He looked down on the bodies of flesh and blood. With hands that had no substance, he grasped part of that web of green energy and pulled. The green web started to unravel.
The wizard Ebonair felt his mind disintegrating into the nightmarish turmoil of a bad drug-dream. But in his agony he realised this was no dream: this was his own destruction. He used the last resource available to him. He used the Ultimate Injunction.
'Segenarith!' shouted Ebonair.
Miphon's view of a world of life-energies disappeared. His sensation of inhabiting a ghost-body was gone. He was back in his own flesh. He stared at the swaying Hearst-body. The echo of that shout still rang in his mind: Segenarith. The word had been sufficient to overcome the powers of the sleeping secrets.
'A pity to kill you,' said Ebonair, his voice slow and slurred. 'Such power! But there's no other wav, is there?'
Ebonair dropped the bag containing the death-stone. 443 He drew the sword Hast. Miphon tried to conjure up that vision of a world of life-energies: tried to work his way back into the ghost-body. He failed. 'Die,' slurred Ebonair.
The sword Hast ripped through the air. A wild swing. The wizard was un-coordinated, brain-damaged. He had almost been too late using the Ultimate Injunction.
Miphon leapt back out of reach of the sword. Ebonair slashed at him again. Miphon was forced back, out toward the entrance. If he turned to run, if he took his eyes off that blade, he would be killed.
The sword swung again.
Miphon jumped back – too slow!
He screamed as the blade knifed across his flesh. He fell to the stones of the battlements, clutching his pain. The Hearst-body loomed over him. A voice cried: 'Hold!'
Through eyes that were slits of pain, Miphon saw Blackwood taking the death-stone from its bag. He saw Ebonair wheel, advance on Blackwood, then hesitate. Miphon heard Ebonair begin to speak. It was hard to hear because of the pain. But then the pain was – - less.
– Pox doctor, heal yourself.
– Bone to be bone. Flesh to be flesh. Skin to be skin. And Ebonair was saying: 'Be reasonable. It's a generous offer. To rule the Harvest Plains is no small thing. You can't do it by yourself.'
'Tell me more,' said Blackwood.
Though Ebonair could not see how Miphon was healing, Blackwood could – and was having a hard job to keep his amazement from his face.
'You could become a wizard if you wished,' said Ebonair. 'You already know the High Speech. That makes it much easier. Have you any idea what it means to become a wizard?'
Miphon was ready. He struck.
This time he had no sense of the world as life-energies, no sense of himself as a ghost. He had only needed such tricks of perception while he was first coming to terms with the powers of the sleeping secrets. Now Miphon used his strength swiftly, intuitively, doing exactly what he had to.
One moment Ebonair was talking. The next instant his mind had been torn to pieces. The Hearst-body collapsed again. Miphon looked at Blackwood, who stood flipping the death-stone from one hand to the other.
'You can let it go now,' said Miphon. Blackwood dropped the death-stone as if it was poison.
'Is Hearst dead?' said Blackwood. 'I hope not,' said Miphon.
He examined Hearst's mind. The sensation was almost like listening to the mind of some wild thing -but* sharper, clearer, more painful. Painful because Miphon felt Hearst's agony, his indecision, the suffering of a man trying to cope with the complexities of a world which the heroic simplicities of his upbringing had not equipped him to deal with.
And Miphon realised he could cure that pain, deleting certain memories, closing down certain lines of thought. He could instill, where necessary, an ordered doctrine of etiquette and ethics, shaping Morgan Hearst into the precise tool he needed to perform that highest function: bringing about a peace between wizards and warriors. What greater glory than to serve as a peacemaker?
Hearst groaned, sitting up.
'Are you all right?' said Blackwood, kneeling by him. 'It's all over now,' said Miphon. 'The wizard's dead.' 'What about that staff?' said Hearst. 'That's just a piece of wood now,' said Miphon.
'There's no power left in it any more.'
It was hard to talk in a normal tone: he felt drunk with exultation. Such power! He would use it to reform the world.
Miphon knew what had to be done to Hearst. Would he also have to reshape Blackwood? He examined Blackwood's memories, let himself see the world through Blackwood's eyes. By the time Miphon was finished, he was very quiet; he had been first shocked then humbled by what he had learnt.
In Blackwood's memories, Miphon had discovered visions. He had seen the flame of life; he had seen the beauty of the vitality which graces every life. He had seen the way in which each thing is true to its own nature: nothing can be changed by an application of cleverness without destroying its essential nature. He had learnt how much he lacked in wisdom: what he had been about to do to Morgan Hearst would have been as evil as anything ever done by Ebonair.
'What's the matter with you?' said Blackwood, seeing how quiet Miphon had become. 'You look shocked.'
'You see visions,' said Miphon quietly.
'Yes,' said Blackwood, it's hard. I see… tragedy everywhere. I see people who never satisfy more than a tiny part of their potential, who are not what they wish to be, yet could be so easily if they only knew how. I see women dancing for men they hate, slaves honouring masters unworthy to rule the life of a rat. I see… so much that I can hardly bear to walk through the streets of Selzirk.'
'You have a choice,' said Miphon. 'You've no need to see such visions.'
'No man was made to,' said Blackwood. i can take away your visions – but I can never give them back,' said Miphon. 'You will see the world only through your seven senses.'
'Do it,' said
Blackwood.
And Miphon did.
***
Selzirk lay in darkness, yet Morgan Hearst knew the dawn was approaching. He dressed quietly and armed himself with his sword Hast. He ran his hand over his head: the hair had been cropped to the stubble he favoured for a campaign. The death-stone, couched in leather, lay next to his skin.
So he was off again. He must go south to the flame trench Drangsturm and the Castle of Controlling Power dominating the western end of that flame trench. The encounter with the wizard Ebonair had brought home to him the perils of delaying any longer in disposing of the death-stone. He was still shocked at what a disaster his drunken bravado had almost brought upon Selzirk and the Harvest Plains.
Hearst paused to look down on the kingmaker Farfalla. Had she loved him? Or had she just sought to use him? She had not protested when he took other women – so surely she could hardly have loved him. Or could she?
The night before, she had wept; in the end, Hearst had slipped her a sleeping potion. Even now, toward morning, she was in the grips of that potion. Or was she? As Hearst watched, Farfalla rolled over and opened her eyes.
She reached for him, spoke, her voice drugged, weak: 'Morgan…?'
Hearst said nothing.
Fighting the drug, half-conscious, Farfalla spoke, to say: 'Don't leave me…'
It was a kind of love that spoke to him: a kind of need.
And to his horror, Hearst found that the way Farfalla spoke brought to his mind the way the woman Ethlite had spoken in the city of Larbreth in the Cold West, when he had been standing in the shadows and she had thought he was Elkor Alish.
Hearst remembered striding through the city with his fingers knotted in her hair and her head dangling. Alish had seen him. And in Runcorn, when Alish lay paralysed by poison, Hearst had boasted of that killing, as if the murder gave him title to a kind of glory.
He knew, now, exactly what he had done. And he knew, now, that Alish would never forgive him.
He turned on his heel and walked away.