by Lyndon Hardy
Alodar scrambled to his feet and cautiously felt his way around the periphery of the room towards the dragon. The wyvern eyed his motion in anger and, between spasmodic struggles against its trap, sent volleys of fire into the chamber to consume its adversary.
In a moment Alodar was at the wall which held the exterior doorway and out of the angle of fire from the wyvern. He quickly dismantled a rod from which a small decorative tapestry hung and advanced on the beast from the side. His hands pained him enormously and he felt giddy from the loss of blood, but he performed his task with determination.
Alodar leaned wearily against the wall with the bloody, brain-spattered bar hanging limply in his hand. How many blows it had taken he could not recall, but only a pulp of bone and flesh remained of the wyvern’s head, and the great body lay silent, to flame no more.
The portcullis that led to the balcony raised back into place, and Cynthia cautiously came into the room.
Alodar motioned her to him. “It is all over,” he said. “All that remains is to repair our wounds and forget what has happened.” He reached down, grabbed the small tapestry, and flung it about her shoulders. “Come to my cubicle,” he said. “I have a small amount of sweetbalm that will help those burns of yours.”
Cynthia nodded her assent and the two found their way out of the building without looking back.
In an hour, Alodar was arching his back and smiling with contentment. The sweetbalm had anesthetized his pain, and the wine from the larder blurred the recent memories and the horror of what might have been. Cynthia lounged easily in the chair beside him, sipping from her glass and staring deeply at Alodar over the rim.
“Why do you think such vandalism occurred?” he said.
“For certain, I cannot tell,” she responded. “I know however that the initiates loyal to Beliac were abuzz with activity. I suspect they feared that if Lectonil could almost change Fulmbar’s vote, he might succeed with others. They struck to discredit him as best they could on such short notice. The maintenance of the wyverns has been a source of contention between the groups for many years. One running loose and slaughtering a few unlucky passersby certainly would harm Lectonil’s position.”
Cynthia shuddered and drew the folds of one of Alodar’s brown robes tighter about her.
“A most complete speculation,” he said. “What points you to it?”
“I was not in the house by chance, but by direction of one of Beliac’s acolytes. I had ignored his advances some years back and thought no more of the matter, but apparently he did not see it the same. Had you not come along when you did, I fear that double purpose would have been served by the mayhem.”
“Then do you think to embrace Lectonil’s position and seek protection from him? It seems to me that the entire Guild soon will be divided into the two camps.”
“And doing increased violence to one another,” Cynthia said. “A year ago they were content with finding flaws in the other’s conjectures and theorems, but I think that day will not return. As for Lectonil, what he could offer is most limited. Few of the acolytes and initiates harken to his standard. Even the likes of Duncan casts his fortune elsewhere. For myself, I intend to leave the Guild on the morrow and wait in the village until it is settled. There is none here to whom I am attached. None that could protect me well. None that I can in truth call a man.”
Cynthia lowered her glass and extended her hand to rub against Alodar’s as she had done in the tavern. “None save one.” She smiled and moved towards him. Alodar set down his wine and looked up as she stood before him. With a shrug, she dropped his robe from her shoulders and beckoned him to rise to meet her.
Instinctively he rose, pulse quickening. Again he tried to focus on Vendora, compare her beauty and position to Cynthia’s and find her the winner. But Vendora was miles and months away. He sighed and all images vanished from his mind.
Alodar woke when the first rays of dawn filtered through the blinds into the room. Cynthia breathed in a deep slumber beside him, still in the euphoria of the sweetbalm. Idly, he fingered her curls which lay on the pillow beside his head.
What course now? Cynthia was enough woman for any man, beautiful and full-figured, intelligent, and a self-confident initiate in the magical arts. He had saved her life, and the little skill in arms he possessed stood to her in exciting contrast to the scholarly attitudes of her peers. He could seek out Periac, resume his trade in thaumaturgy, or better yet combine it with alchemy and provide services most unique. And would such a life be so bad? Could the secret of the spheres really mean more than that?
Alodar sighed and shook his head. No, he would soon tire of thaumaturgy, and with alchemy it would only take longer. At least his quest offered a definite goal and excitement. Alodar the hero, Alodar the savior of the fair lady!
His mind again of single purpose, Alodar quietly began to pace the room. His visit to the library with Beliac had shown him how he could enter. The problem that remained was that of moving freely inside without triggering the watchbells.
He puzzled over the ease with which the initiates and their superiors passed through the protected hallways, while he was instantly recognized as an outsider. They made no special motions, nor did they touch marked panels in the wall. In fact, Cynthia without a stitch was easily hurled past a barrier while he was trapped behind.
If it was nothing of action or what one carried, what indeed set the magic user as different from the rest of the workers of the Guild? Alodar stopped and pondered a few moments more. Only one thing marked the initiates, he realized in a flash of excitement—the small scar on the back of the wrist. Alodar walked to the bedside and grasped Cynthia’s hand. He gingerly fingered the pad of flesh that indicated her station. The tissue was thick and told him nothing, but he knew what he must do.
He woke her gently and explained his request. She gave her consent. “If our paths are not to intertwine,” she said, “then it is my parting gift for the brave warrior.” She looked deeply at Alodar and smiled. “Perhaps in the village below I can find another.”
A small dab of sweetbalm at the nostrils returned her to slumber, and Alodar grasped her hand firmly in his left while he opened his small knife with his right. Carefully, he began to cut around the base of the scar. Although tiny rivulets of blood obscured his vision, he heard the satisfying scrape of metal on metal.
He continued to cut for a full half circle; then with a pair of tweezers, he pulled the secret from its hiding place. Alodar wiped the object clean and stared at a small, unadorned disk of gold. The ritual of the branding was merely a ruse so that the initiates might not even know how they moved past the barriers so easily. The thin disk looked innocuous enough, but it would be his safe passage on the floor of the library.
He dabbed sweetbalm onto the small wound he had made and saw it instantly close. If Cynthia went directly to the village as she planned, then the loss of the disk might go undetected until Alodar was long removed from the Guild and back on the road to Ambrosia. He let her arm fall and then hastily finished the rest of the preparations for his entry.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Improvised Ritual
ALODAR stretched to tiptoe in the darkness and groped with both hands against the sloping library walls. His right brushed against one of the decorative nodules that randomly dotted the sides. He put his foot onto the projection at knee level and pulled himself up. He was off and climbing.
With his left hand, he reached out for another purchase and lifted himself three feet more. His feet wobbled against the narrow projections, and his hands felt slippery from the effort to scale the steep incline. Upwards he struggled, ten feet and then another ten, switching back and forth laterally across the face of the slope as he climbed.
After thirty feet, he stopped and cautiously adjusted the straps that held the pack to his back. The next handhold was only a foot above his head but far to his left, outside of comfortable reach. Alodar extended his hand, rocking all of his weight onto his l
eft foot and stretching as far as he dared, but a good nine inches separated him from the grip. He looked back down to the esplanade and felt the first twinge of the instinctive reaction to his height.
He frowned tightly and shut his view of the hard cobblestones out of his mind. Moving his right hand close to his body for additional thrust, he sprang upwards and outwards towards the grip.
The momentum of his jump carried him past the target, and his hand closed on empty air. As he began to slide downwards, he lashed out again, catching the nodule as it seemed to rush upwards into his hand. He felt the tug of his body loosen his fingers, not yet set in their tenuous grip, and he reached about with his feet frantically for the perch they had just left. His right foot felt resistance and he thrust savagely against it to stop the downward motion.
In an instant, Alodar’s hand grip was secure, but he was diagonally stretched across the face of the pyramid, holding on with opposite arm and leg fully extended. Slowly he worked his right arm upwards until he could clasp his hands together. Then, abandoning his foothold and pulling so that his arms trembled, he raised his head until the nodule he gripped was at eye level. Carefully, he extended his leg outwards to the left and then smiled with satisfaction when he felt another gemstone beneath his heel.
Other nodules were randomly scattered nearby; in a few minutes, Alodar was resting for a second time, but some ten feet higher than before. Only thirty feet remained until the top, and the grips seemed closer spaced than below. Exercising increased caution as he moved higher, he gained the level of the apex in another half hour.
Alodar peered in through the square opening and saw the back of a heavy tapestry blocking out the wind and starlight. He reached into his pack and withdrew the small disk of metal that he had received from Cynthia and clasped it firmly in his left hand. No grillwork or shutters barred his entrance. Pushing his arm in front, he squirmed through the window and thrust the curtain aside.
He dropped to the floor silently and stood frozen for a moment more. No bells sounded in alarm at his presence. Alodar waited a full minute and then another. Nothing stirred and only his own breathing broke the absolute quiet. Cautiously he lit a small candle and looked about in the flickering light. The room was as he had seen it before, cramped and unfurnished except for the U-shaped table that crowded about its periphery.
Alodar slowly moved to the portal in the floor that led to the library proper, expecting at each step to trigger the watchbells. He grasped the latch and pulled the door open, staring into the blackness below.
The candlelight showed the first rungs of the staircase that spiraled downwards to the floor, but Alodar did not place his foot on the first tempting step. The magicians let the lower orders into the library and then left them unattended. Something kept them from using the stairway. Indeed, Beliac had pressed his ring against the banister before they had started their climb.
Uncoiling the rope from his pack, he secured it to one of the legs of the massive table and let the other end fly downward into the darkness. He grasped the rope awkwardly, not trusting to remove the golden disk from his palm. Slowly, he let himself down hand over hand in the midst of the spiral, gradually loosing his sense of height in the blackness. Methodically, he descended a foot at a time, unmindful of how far he had traveled and how far yet to go.
His reverie was suddenly broken by the sharp contact of solid stone beneath his feet. He released his grasp of the rope and stood upright in exultation. He had gained the library floor.
Alodar relit the candle and let his eyes grow accustomed to its meager light. All about the four walls books, scrolls, and manuscripts were neatly stacked, beckoning with the secrets of the magicians. He quickly scanned the vast arrays of knowledge and saw in the north corner scrolls tossed in a disarray uncharacteristic of the order of the rest. He walked over to the pile and lifted the first one from the heap.
“Helices and spirals, tier four; Heptagons, tier three; Hexagonal symmetries and tiles, tier fourteen,” he read aloud softly. “The index, precisely what I need.”
He shuffled through the coiled manuscripts until he found the one that alluded to his metal spheres. “Tier seven,” he mumbled and counted off the cases from where he stood. Several minutes later, after carefully scrutinizing titles in the dimness, he found what he sought and wrenched the book from its place on the shelf.
Cracking it in the middle, he held the exposed pages to the light and mouthed what he read.
“The two spheres of Dandelin are tangent to the ellipse at points one and two respectively and touch the cone along parallel circles. If we join the point of presence to the points of tangency and also the line connecting with the vertex, these lines will all lie entirely on the surface of the cone.”
Alodar snapped the book shut, set it back in the rack, and exhaled a deep sigh. The secret of the spheres would not be a single night’s work, he reasoned sadly. Time would have to be spent with some fundamentals before he could even begin to understand what he needed to know. The general education that took an initiate through acolyte to magician would not be necessary; he could focus on only those things necessary. Still, the walls of the library would have to be scaled many times before he was through with his task.
Moving with considerably less haste back to the index tier, Alodar began to search for the first reference text of the beginning initiate.
“And Cynthia disappeared without a trace as well,” Hypeton babbled on. “She has been missing nearly a month, yet both sides avow no knowledge of her, but accuse instead the other of misdeed. The tension virtually pulls the Guild asunder.”
Alodar nodded sleepily in reply and pulled closed his entrance curtain as the other neophyte departed. He worked with dedicated effort by day so no attention would be drawn to him, but even more diligently at night as he delved into the secret of the spheres. The ascent was by now a mere routine and most of the evening could be spent in study. Still, the intensity with which he concentrated and the strain of anticipated discovery took their toll as surely as the labors of the day. At least tonight would be the last, Alodar thought slowly, his weariness suppressing even the excitement of the occasion. He knew enough now about this one facet of magic to start the ritual that would release the power of the spheres. He shouldered his pack and looked about the cubicle. The paraphernalia for the evening and everything that he would need for a hasty journey were packed and ready. If all went well, the sun would find him free of the Guild and on the road north back to Ambrosia.
He crossed the courtyard quickly and soon was at the base of the library, grasping for his first handhold with a grip made familiar from much practice. In scarcely ten minutes he was at the top and through the curtains into the deserted council chamber.
Alodar lit his small candle as before, but this time did not move to the doorway in the center of the floor. Instead he carefully spread a silken scarf along the surface of the table and removed from his pack the small box which contained his treasure. He opened the lid and felt immediately the aura of power that coursed up from his fingertips to permeate his entire body.
He removed the scraps of parchment that contained his notes from the previous evenings of study. Everything he needed should be here; but if not, he could descend to the floor below and consult with the texts.
He scanned the notes twice quickly and then began the ritual. Placing copper rings on each of his fingers, he grasped a small incense coffer with his left hand and immersed it in the flame of his candle with his right. The perfume began to well upwards into the small confines of the room; in a minute, it was almost overpowering with its sweetness.
Alodar stood immobile as the smell penetrated his nostrils and filled his lungs. Concentrating not to cough, he counted heartbeats to one hundred thirty-seven and then struck a small triangle hung from a tiny frame with the copper ring on his index finger. The chime sounded shrilly and, rather than dying away, rang in resonance with the structure of the ritual as it began to take shape.
Something was obviously wrong. Alodar thought slowly, his mind dimmed by the fury of the noise. Some other ritual was being enacted and interfering with his magic here.
Before he could think more, the doorway in the floor suddenly flew open, bathing the chamber with light from the library below.
Lectonil leaped up into the council room, and two other magicians panted after. “As I suspected,” he said, “Beliac’s deceit with the Guild is most complete. Despite his protests, he traffics our secrets even to the neophytes who would support him.
“Bring them forward,” he motioned to the black-robed followers. “Let Beliac bite on the fact that it is the ritual of presence that has led us to the last of his crew of traitors.”
The shrieking stopped and Alodar felt his thoughts clear in a rush. He immediately dropped the triangle to the floor with a clatter and reached to scoop up his spheres.
“Hold, neophyte, it is enough,” Lectonil commanded and clapped his gloved hands together. A bolt of jagged yellow jumped from his palms and shot towards Alodar with a blinding flash. Before Alodar could respond, he felt his arms thrift apart and backwards and his whole body suddenly lifted and slammed into the wall. As a sharp explosive report echoed around the small chamber, his breath rushed out and his vision clouded from the force of the blow.