Madwand (Illustrated)

by Roger Zelazny

  “I can’t recall giving you cause for abduction and abuse.”

  “I suppose it must look that way to you.”

  “I suppose it would look that way to anybody.”

  “I don’t want to start off with you on the wrong foot—”

  “I didn’t want to start off with you on any foot. What do you want?”

  Ryle sighed.

  “All right. If that is the way it must be. You are my prisoner. You are in jeopardy. I am in a position to grant you any discomfort, up to and including death.”

  The fat sorcerer rose, moving around the table to stand before Pol. He made a simple gesture and followed it with another, his movements similar to those Larick had used. Pol felt nothing, though he realized what was occurring and he wondered whether the disguise within the disguise would hold.

  It did.

  “Perhaps you have grown fond of your present condition?”

  “Not really.”

  “Your face is masked by your own spell. I will leave it in place, since I already know what you look like. I suppose we could start with that.”

  “You’ve a captive audience. Go ahead.”

  “Last year I heard a rumor that Rondoval was inhabited again. A little later, I heard of the battle at Anvil Mountain. By magical means, I summoned up your likeness. Your hair, your birthmark, your resemblance to Det—it was obvious that you were a member of that House, and one of whom I had never heard.”

  “And of course you had to do something about it, since nobody likes Rondoval.”

  Ryle turned away, padded across the room, turned back.

  “You tempt me to agree and let it go at that,” he said. “But I have reasons for the things that I do. Would you care to hear them?”

  “Of course.”

  “There was a time when Det was a very good friend of mine. He was your father, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did he have you hidden, anyway?”

  Pol shook his head.

  “He didn’t. As I understand the story, I was present at the fall of Rondoval. Rather than slay a baby, old Mor took me to another world, where I grew up.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Interesting. For whom did he exchange you?”

  “Mark Marakson, the man I killed at Anvil Mountain.”

  “Fascinating. A changeling. How did you get back here?”

  “Mor returned me. To deal with Mark. So you knew my father?”

  “Yes. We engaged in a number of enterprises together. He was a very accomplished sorcerer.”

  “You speak as if there was a point where you ceased being friends.”

  “True. We finally disagreed on a very fundamental issue concerning our last great project. I broke the fellowship at that time and sent him packing. It was then that he initiated the actions which led to the conflict and the destruction of Rondoval. The third party to our enterprise left him when things began looking bad on that front.”

  “Who was that?”

  “A strange Madwand of great power. I don’t really know where Det found him. A man named Henry Spier. Odd name, that.”

  “Do you mean that if you both hadn’t deserted him Rondoval might have stood?”

  “I am sure that it would have, in a cruelly changed world. I prefer thinking that Det and Spier deserted me.”

  “Of course. And now you want some extra revenge on the family, for old times’ sake.”

  “Hardly. But now it is your turn to answer a few. You say that Mor brought you back?”

  “ ‘Returned me’ is what I said. He did not accompany me. He seemed ill. I believe that he went back to the place where I had been.”

  “The exchange . . . Yes. Were you returned directly to Rondoval?”

  “No. I found my own way there, later.”

  “And your heritage? All the things that you know of the Art? How did you come by this?”

  “I just sort of picked it up.”

  “That makes you a Madwand.”

  “So I’ve heard. You still haven’t told me what you want.”

  “Blood tells, though, doesn’t it?” Ryle said sharply.

  Pol studied the man’s face. Gone now was the bland expression which had accompanied most of their earlier exchanges. Pol read menace in the narrow-eyed look now focused upon him, in the rising color and the tightness about the mouth. He noted, too, that one pudgy hand was clenched so tightly that its rings cut deeply into the flesh.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Pol said.

  “I think you do,” Ryle replied. “Your father tipped the Balance which prevailed in this world, but did not succeed in his attempt. I stopped him here and Klaithe’s forces finished him at Rondoval. There had to be a reaction sooner or later. Mark Marakson brought it into the world at Anvil Mountain, where you stopped him. Now it must tip in the other direction again—your father’s way—toward total sorcerous domination of the world. It can be stopped for good at this point, or it can go all the way—your father’s dream realized. I have been waiting all these years to stop it again, to end it, to see that it does not come to pass.”

  “I repeat. I don’t know what—”

  Ryle came forward and slapped him. Pol fought down an impulse to strike back as he felt a ring cut his cheek.

  “Son of a black magician! You are one yourself!” he cried. “It can’t be helped! It’s in your blood! Even—” He grew silent. He stepped back. Then, “You would open the Gate,” he said. “You would complete your father’s great work for this world.”

  Pol suddenly felt that this was true. The Gate . . . Of course. He had forgotten. All those dreams . . . They began phasing now into his consciousness. With this, a certain wiliness came over him.

  “You say that you were party to the entire business, at its beginning?” he asked softly.

  “Yes, that is true,” Ryle admitted.

  “And you were talking about black magic . . . ”

  Ryle looked away, walked back to the table, drew the chair farther back and lowered himself onto it.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes directed toward the remains of his breakfast, “in both senses, too, I suppose. Black because it was being used for something that was morally objectionable, and black in the more subtle sense of its deepest meaning—the use of forces which must warp the character of the magician himself. The first is always arguable, but the second is not. I admit that I was once a black magician, but I am no longer. I reformed myself long ago.”

  “Employing Larick to perform the actual spells for you hardly seems to avoid the spirit of black magic. As in my case . . . ”

  His words trailed off as Ryle raised his eyes and fixed him with them.

  “In your case,” he said, “I would—and will, if necessary—do it myself. It would at worst be an instance of the first sort—employed to prevent a greater evil.”

  “On the general theory of morals—that others need them?”

  “I am thinking of more than the two of us. I am thinking of what you would do to the entire world.”

  “By opening the Gate?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Excuse my ignorance, but what will happen if the Gate is opened?”

  “This world would be flooded, submerged, by the forces of a far older world—in our terms it is an evil place. We would become an extension of that land. Its more powerful, ancient magic would completely overwhelm the natural laws which hold here. This would become a realm of dark enchantment.”

  “The evil may well be relative then. Tell me what objection a sorcerer could have to something which would make sorcery more important.”

  “You use the argument by which your father first swayed me. But then I learned that the forces released would be so strong that no ordinary sorcerer could control them. We would all be at the mercy of those others from beyond the Gate and those few of our own kind to whom it would not matter, in league with those others.”

  “And who might those few of our own kind be?”

/>   “Your father was one, Henry Spier another; yourself, and those others like you—Madwands all.”

  Pol repressed a smile.

  “I take it that you are not a Madwand?”

  “No, I had to learn my skills the hard way.”

  “I begin to understand your conversion,” Pol said, instantly regretting the words as he saw Ryle’s expression change again.

  “No, I do not believe that you do,” he answered, glaring, “not having a daughter bound by the curse of Henry Spier.”

  “The ghost of this place . . . ?” Pol said.

  “Her body lies in a hidden spot, neither dead nor alive. Spier did that when I broke the fellowship. Even so, I was willing to fight them.”

  Pol wanted to look away, to shift his weight, to pace, to depart.

  Instead, “What exactly do you mean when you say Madwand?” he asked.

  “Those like yourself with a natural aptitude for the Art,” Ryle said, “those possessed of a closer, more personal relationship with its forces—its artists rather than its technicians, I suppose.”

  “I appreciate your explaining all these matters,” Pol told him, “and I realize you are not going to believe any denials I might make concerning my intentions, so I won’t make any. Why not just tell me what it is that you want?”

  “You have had dreams,” Ryle said flatly.

  “Well, yes . . . ”

  “Dreams,” he continued, “which I sent to you, wherein your spirit traveled beyond the Gate to witness the starkness and desolation of that evil place, wherein you saw the creatures who dwell there, engaged in depravities.”

  Pol recalled his earlier dreams, but he thought too of the later ones, showing him the cities beyond the mountains, neither stark nor desolate, but holding a culture so complex as to surpass his understanding.

  “That is all that you showed me?” he asked, puzzled.

  “All? Is that not enough? Enough to persuade any decent man that the Gate must not be opened?”

  “I suppose you made a good case then,” Pol said. “But tell me, are dreams all that you sent to me?”

  Ryle cocked his head to one side, frowning. Then he smiled.

  “Oh. That,” he said. “Keth . . . ”

  “Keth? He was the sorcerer who attacked me in my own library?”

  Ryle nodded.

  “The same. Yes, I sent him. A good man. I thought he’d best you and settle things then and there.”

  “What things? For all your talk about the Gate and my father and Madwands and black magic, I still do not know what it is that you want of me.”

  The fat sorcerer sighed.

  “I thought that by sending you the dreams—showing you the menace of the thing—and then by explaining the situation carefully, as I have just done, that I might—just possibly might—win you over to my way of thinking and persuade you to cooperate with me. It would make life so much easier.”

  “You didn’t exactly start off on the right foot by playing monster games with my anatomy.”

  “It was also necessary to show you the extent to which I will go if you do not choose to help me.”

  “I’m still not sure of that. What’s left—besides death?”

  Ryle rubbed his hands together and smiled.

  “Your head, of course,” He said. “I have begun in the easiest manner possible. But if, after suitable painful practices upon the body you are now wearing, you refuse to give me what I want, then I will complete the transfer. I will send your head to join the rest of you in exile beyond the Gate. I will be left with a somewhat maimed demon servant, and you—you have seen that place—you will have an unfortunate existence before you for all your remaining days.”

  “It sounds very persuasive,” Pol observed. “Now, of what might it be the consequence?”

  “You know where the Keys are—the Keys that can open the Gate or lock them forever. I want them.”

  “Presumably to do the latter?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any such Keys. I wouldn’t even know where to look for them.”

  “How can you say that when I saw them on the table in your study numerous times—and even as I watched your struggle with Keth?”

  Pol’s thoughts went back, both to that scene and to one of his dreams. He felt the resistance building within him.

  “You can’t have them,” he said.

  “I’d a feeling this was not going to be easy,” Ryle remarked, rising. “If opening the Gate means that much to you, it just shows how far gone you really are.”

  “It is not opening the Gate,” Pol replied. “It is having something taken from me in this fashion that rankles. You are going to have to work for anything you get out of me.”

  Ryle raised his hands.

  “It may be easier than you think,” he said. “Painless, in feet—if you’re lucky. We’ll learn in a moment how far-sighted you might have been.”

  As Ryle’s hands began moving, Pol fought down the desire to strike back. A small voice seemed to be saying, “Not yet.” Perhaps it was himself. He shifted his vision to the second seeing and saw a great orange wave rolling toward him.

  When it struck, he felt a certain slowing and then a rigidity of his thought processes. A genuine stiffness came over his body. Gone was any certainty as to what he wanted or did not want.

  Ryle was speaking and his voice seemed somehow more distant than their proximity indicated:

  “What is your name?”

  It was with a peculiar fascination that he felt his lips move, heard his own voice reply, “Pol Detson.”

  “By what name were you known in the world where you grew up?”

  “Daniel Chain.”

  “Do you possess the seven statuettes that are the Keys to the Gate?”

  Suddenly, a sheet of flame hung between them. Ryle did not seem aware of its presence.

  “No,” Pol heard himself reply.

  The fat sorcerer looked puzzled. Then he smiled.

  “That was awkwardly phrased,” he said, almost apologetically. “Can you tell me the location or locations of the seven magical statuettes which once belonged to your father?”

  “No,” Pol answered.

  “Why not?” Ryle asked.

  “I do not know where they are,” Pol said.

  “But you have seen them, handled them, had them in your possession?”

  “Yes.”

  “What became of them?”

  “They were stolen from me, on the way to Belken.”

  “I do not believe that.”

  Pol remained silent.

  “ . . . But you are to be congratulated for your foresight,” Ryle continued. “You have guarded against self-betrayal with a very powerful spell. It would take me a long time to ascertain its exact nature and to break it. Unfortunately for you, I have neither the time nor inclination, and you must be forced to speak. I have already mentioned the means which will be employed.”

  The man began another series of gestures, and Pol felt a certain clarity return to his consciousness. As this feeling grew, the image of the flame faded.

  “I have also restored your appearance, for esthetic purposes,” Ryle said. “Now that you are yourself again, is there anything that you would care to add to what you said?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  The fat sorcerer turned away, crossed the room, opened the door.

  “Larick?” he called.

  “Yes?” came a distant voice.

  “Take this man back to his cell,” he said. “I’ll send for him when the interrogation room has been made ready.”

  “You tried a coercion spell?”

  “Yes. A good one. He’s protected. We’ll have to go the other route.”

  “A pity.”

  “Yes.”

  Ryle turned back.

  “Pol, go along with him.”

  Pol moved, turning, advancing slowly toward the doorway. He wondered as
he did . . . He would be passing very close to Ryle. If he were to turn suddenly and attack the man, he felt that he could deal with him fairly quickly, before the other could bring any magic into play. Then, of course, he would have to fight Larick, and he wondered whether he could dispatch Ryle before the younger sorcerer was upon him. For that matter . . .

  A vision of the flame flashed before him again.

  “Not yet,” came the voice in his mind. “Wait. Soon. Restrain yourself.”

  Nodding mentally, he passed Ryle and stepped out into the corridor where Larick waited.

  “All right,” Larick said, and he commenced walking, heading in the opposite direction from which they had come.

  Pol heard the door of the room he had quitted close behind him. One quick rabbit punch, he decided, just below that kerchief he always wears, and Larick will be out of the picture . . .

  Almost predictably, the image of the flame passed before his eyes once again.

  “Turn here.”

  He turned, then said, “This isn’t the way we came.”

  “I know that, you son of a bitch. I want to show you what your kind have done.”

  Suddenly, they passed into a familiar area, and with a touch of panic Pol realized where they were headed and what it was that he was being taken to see. He slowed his pace.

  “Come along. Come along.”

  No plan presented itself to him, but the pulse of power still throbbed in his disguised arm. He decided to rely upon the guidance of the invisible flame. Something would provide him with an opportunity, very soon, he felt, an opportunity to smash Larick and—

  Of course. His future actions came into perfect focus. He was suddenly certain as to what was going to occur, knew exactly what he was going to do when it did.

  They entered the cavern. Larick produced a magical light which traveled on before them, illuminating their advance. Pol readied himself as they made their way around to the place where the opened, empty casket lay. Just a few more steps . . .

  He heard Larick cry out. The sounds echoed from the rocky walls. His vision swam through the second seeing. Bands of bright, colored light moved everywhere. When he tried, he was able to resolve them into strands, but the moment he relaxed this effort they became bands again—horizontal, not drifting, but moving slowly upward, of various widths. After a moment, he saw that they overlay a field of vertical bands, and beyond them, diagonals. The world had acquired a peculiarly cubist structure. And he realized in that instant that he had but shifted to another mode of seeing the same thing which had always been presented to him as the strands—and he knew that there were others beyond it and that, somehow, in the future, he would always view the magical world in the mode most appropriate to his needs of the moment rather than the more restricted vision his power had brought him in the past. And he knew, intuitively, how to use these bands just as he had known in the past what the strands were for. It took a great effort to restrain himself from reaching out to manipulate them as Larick turned toward him, teeth bared.