That meant he had to start at the end and work inward. There was no safe way to pull any figurine out of the structure but the last that had been placed—a robed and hooded woman with a distinctly serpentine cast to her features. He knew her name now, Issalia, and she presented a particularly difficult challenge. But, there was no helping it, so Pol began the careful work of freeing her from the warding structure.
As soon as he broke the outer ring, her voice spoke into his mind and a small hovering flame appeared in the air in front of him.
You have returned at last, Detson. Does freeing us mean you are finally ready to continue your father’s holy work and open the Gate?
Pol answered aloud, “Let us say that I am ready to discuss it again, and leave it there for now. Nor do I have time to free all of you. In fact,” Pol broke another line and then reached down to snatch up the figurine despite the still partially intact state of the ward—it cost him a nasty shock and he gasped in pain, “I don’t have time to do more than collect you and flee.”
In seeming punctuation of that statement, a horrible bellow echoed down from somewhere high in the castle above. Pol opened a pouch at his hip and started to move the figurine toward it.
Hold, said the flame, and Pol felt himself slowing down as though he were a bug trying to move through hardening pine sap. There are warding runes on that bag that will impede my abilities. If you are going to put me in there rather than free my fellows or help us to open the Gate, I must move to oppose you.
Ever so slowly and painfully, Pol opened the hand that held the figurine and began to turn it over. “It’s your choice, but if you do so, I will be forced to flee without you. That will leave you here to be reimprisoned by Ryle Merson. Come with me willingly and you may get the chance to complete your purpose.”
The figurine began to slide out of his hand. Wait. I will comply for now.
Pol closed his fist around the little statue again, then shoved it into his pouch. As soon as it was closed he ran for the room’s only window.
Merson’s voice cried out from behind him, “Dammit, Madwand!”
Pol jumped onto a little table below the window and dove straight through the glass filling the narrow gap. As he fell away from the opening, a burst of flame went roaring through the space above him. He had dropped perhaps ten feet when a great handlike claw caught him out of the air—Moonbird!
*
Hours later, Pol found himself reinforcing the wards on the bag by playing yet another song of soothing. The thing within had just made its dozenth attempt at breaking free, and despite Pol’s exhaustion, they still had many miles to go before they would reach their intended destination.
You’re going to put me to sleep if you keep that up, Moonbird said into his mind.
Pol sighed. Yeah, me too. Then, with more resolution, This isn’t going to work. You’d better take us down before this thing breaks loose and I end up having to deal with it a-dragonback.
Anywhere specific?
Good question. Pol scanned the area below them, hoping to spy a stone circle, or sacred grove, or some other such site, but couldn’t see anything appropriate along the coastline they’d been following. There’s a stony little island or something out there at the edge of what I can see. It’s not what I’d choose, but it’s got some magical potential and it’s better than anything I see ashore. If nothing else it will isolate the aftermath if I lose.
As they got closer, Pol’s assessment of the island—a red stone sea stack perhaps a hundred feet tall and fifty across the roughly flat top—didn’t improve. The barren little island did have a few threads of magic clinging to it indicating some past history with the art, but nothing half so useful as the deeply set wards and even deeper history of the ancient magical dueling grounds that had been his first choice.
Is this wise? asked Moonbird.
Almost certainly not. From what I’ve learned of the creation of the Keys I should be doing this in the place where Issalia was originally bound into this form. Or, failing that, at Rondoval or some other place where I have deep magical roots. But the bindings on the bag are already fraying and I’ve simply run out of time.
Is there anything I can do?
Return to the air after we land. Watch. If I am killed, fly back to Rondoval and have Belphanior alert my brother and Merson as to what has happened and where I fell. Perhaps they can retrieve the statue and the situation, or at least my body.
Pol tucked the guitar back into the pocket dimension and retrieved a metallic rod and a large stick of green chalk inscribed with symbols Pol had found in the east. The chalk was one of seven such, each tightly bound in a cocoon of braided spell strands all in bright blues and golds. The scepter had belonged to his father, and now he tucked it into the back of his boot.
As soon as Moonbird touched down, Pol slid off the dragon’s neck and slapped him on the shoulder. A moment later Moonbird jumped over the edge, dropping nearly to the water’s surface before catching an updraft and soaring back into the blue skies above.
The young sorcerer was barely aware of his scaly companion’s departure, having started to inscribe a series of complex designs on the rock as soon as he landed. Initially he worked with one hand holding the chalk, and the other clutching the bag that he’d removed from his hip while occasionally mumbling a word of binding. But, as soon as he’d gotten a series of three small concentric circles in place and connected them with a half dozen carefully drawn glyphs, he dropped the bag into the innermost circle.
Within seconds the red velvet of the bag had begun to smoke and char, quickly turning black as the thing within worked to free itself. Seeing that, Pol swore and redoubled his efforts at completing the figures. As each line was drawn, a corresponding thread of magic slid free of the dense braid on the chalk and melded with the diagram.
The stick itself was a very sophisticated piece of magic, and the end result of a formalized magical ritual of the sort that Pol could never have managed even a year previously. He kept glancing at the smoldering velvet as he worked and mentally measuring the unnaturally rapid diminution of the chalk against the ongoing destruction of the warded bag. Finally, he closed an arc that looked like it didn’t quite belong in this world and completed one last glyph. The process finished off the last tiny lump of chalk and finished unbraiding the spell he’d built into the matrix of the stick.
It was only just in time, as the bag suddenly puffed into ash, exposing the little statue within. It lay on its side in the center of the circle for several seconds, then shook and rocked until it finally righted itself.
A flame appeared in the air between Pol and the figurine and spoke into his mind, What is this? For the only time since he’d first encountered them, one of the Keys seemed unsure. I don’t recognize these figures. . .but they still seem familiar somehow.
“That’s because the last time you encountered something like them, you were more or less dead.”
What are you planning, Detson?
“This.” Pol reached forward with both hands, catching the first upwelling of magical threads rising from the final glyph.
He pulled and twisted, activating the spell and sending magical sparks fountaining along the lines that connected him to the figurine. The Key raised a shield of light that flared momentarily when the sparks reached it, then contracted to form a sort of second skin around the figurine. For perhaps ten heartbeats it looked like nothing more was going to happen, then the figurine began to grow and twist.
I don’t understand! it cried. What are you “doing to me?” The last half of the question was spoken aloud as the tiny figurine finished its transformation into a tall pale woman with a snake’s eyes and shimmering robes. “I. . .” She trailed off and looked down at herself, her mouth widening into an astonished gape. “That’s not possible.”
“Not for long, no. I’m sorry, Issalia, truly. If I could restore you fully, I would, but that’s beyond my powers.”
She moved her hands through the begi
nning of a spell of transportation, but froze in mid-gesture before she could complete it, her face twisting painfully. “I’m me. . .but not. My will is still bound. . .”
“To the purpose my father made you for, yes. You are still one of the Keys to the lands beyond the Gate and wholly subjugated to his goals and vision. There is only one way to change that, and even if I succeed, you won’t be restored to your humanity.”
Issalia looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding. “You propose to defeat me in a duel as your father did before you and then, should you succeed, you will be able to alter my purpose and enslave me to your own will. Clever, and cruel beyond measure to restore me so, only to re-imprison me to serve your purposes. You truly are the son of Devil Det.”
“That’s not exactly how I see it,” replied Pol. And then, because he felt he owed the sorceress some duty for what he was about to do to her, “though I can’t argue that it might look that way from where you’re sitting. Shall we commence? The spell that lets you temporarily return to your original form won’t last for long.”
“Wait.” She held up a long delicate hand—it was shaking visibly. “The purpose that drives me forces me to this duel, but I can hold it back for a time and I would breathe the clean air of the world a bit longer. Also, I have a question. What happens if I defeat you?”
“I die.”
“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” said Issalia, whose eyes had been darting back and forth across the diagram that connected the two of them. “If I read this right, there’s a chance that you will become what I am now, another Key for the gate.”
Pol blanched and looked more closely at the structure of his spell. “That. . .hadn’t occurred to me, but yes, I think there is a possibility of that.”
“More than a possibility,” said Issalia. “In order to transform my soul into your tool, you must risk your own. In fact, if I’m reading this spell aright, I may even be able to shift this curse your father inflicted on me to the son he left behind. . .”
“Wouldn’t that violate your purpose as a Key?” Pol asked nervously. Things were rapidly going from bad to worse.
“Not at all. The compulsion is quite specific. I must advance the cause of magic in this world at every opportunity. As Det’s son you are very likely as powerful a sorcerer as I, and since I would like to see the Gate opened of my own account, a world where you were a Key and I was free to wield you is a world that is several steps farther along the path your father set out, than it is right now. Yes, I think that might work very well indeed.”
Without any warning at all, Issalia clapped her hands together, sending a small arc of silver light flying at Pol’s chest like a thrown blade or metallic bird of prey. She followed it with another and another as she continued to clap.
Pol flicked the first out of the air with the tip of a green spell strand snapped like a whip, but his tool was too unwieldy to catch the second and he had to drop to his knees and twist aside to avoid the next couple. As that was happening, the world shifted around him, the threads and strands that were the way he usually saw magic vanishing to be replaced by simple geometrical shapes like the wire-frame polygons of early video games.
Grabbing a passing cone, Pol pointed the broad end at Issalia and quickly caught a half dozen of her silver arcs out of the air. Then, guided by one of the madwand impulses that raised his magical skills to an art, he lifted the point to his lips and blew the silver spell shards back at their originator.
Issalia clapped faster, knocking five of the six out of the air. But the last one drew a sharp line of blood across her hipbone. She stomped her left foot then, and snapped the fingers on both hands. In response a line of destruction shot from her foot through the rock of the island toward Pol, like the trail of some demonic mole, while twin lances of blue light scissored in toward either side of his neck.
Pol’s vision shifted again, replacing the wireframe polygons with loose sheets of light like tumbling towels in a dryer. Without thinking about it, he caught one and snapped it down and across like a toreador wielding his cape. It broke the twinned lances and cut off the ridge of burning stone. One of the blue lances clipped his shoulder with bruising force as it spun away, leaving a charred mark on his shirt and blistering the skin beneath as he climbed back to his feet.
Before Pol could recover, Issalia snapped her fingers again and stomped one foot and then the other, moving into a rhythm not unlike a flamenco dancer as she sent one attack after another at him. He now had a second sheet in his other hand, and was able to continue to fend off Issalia’s ongoing assault, but only barely and at the cost of his ability to counter and several more painful burns. She was stronger than he was and much more experienced.
He desperately needed to change the terms of the duel, or he would be destroyed. He shifted his magical perception again, this time consciously, forcing the shape of Issalia’s attacks and his own defense to conform to the strands he was most comfortable with. Here, the snapping fingers and stomping feet produced unrolling strings of energy like the fiery tongue of some demonic frog, and Pol’s own sheets of defensive energy transformed into fringed nets that flipped and flicked like large fans.
Before Issalia could shift the field of battle again, Pol slammed his two nets together into one and then flung his arms apart to expand them outward like a huge spider’s web hanging in the space between them, then let it go. She was shredding the web, but it gave him the time he needed to draw his father’s scepter from where he’d tucked it into his boot earlier. Touching the scepter to the web, he sent fresh power to the strands, restoring and strengthening them.
For a moment he felt that he had the upper hand, and he started to push the net forward toward Issalia. But his triumph didn’t last, as Issalia upped the tempo of her dancing attack, adding hand claps between the snapping of her fingers. Razor edged loops of silver spun forth then, slicing away the juncture of his web faster than he could repair it. Once again, Pol was losing and badly.
Pol didn’t realize Moonbird had joined the battle until Issalia suddenly leaped backward to avoid a falling spatter of chemical fire. But he didn’t have the chance to take advantage of the shift as she shouted something into the air that sent the great dragon tumbling away toward the waves beyond the island.
Pol was going to die. Or worse, become one of the Keys that would open the Gate between the worlds and drown this world in the baroque magics of another.
The bottom segment! It was Moonbird’s voice speaking into his mind, weak and weary yet urgent. It’s the—But Issalia let out another shout and the dragon’s voice suddenly broke off.
By then Pol had been driven once more to his knees by the more powerful sorceress’s ongoing assault. He was about to join the world of the soul-bound unless. . .the bottom segment? Wasn’t that the one that Moonbird had used at Anvil Mountain? It was; the dragon’s segment. . .fire magic.
Pol glanced at the dragonmark on his arm. The blood of a dragonlord. . .he pressed the mark to the base of the scepter where carved demons cavorted amidst stylized flames.
Contact!
Words growled out of his mouth, harsh, ancient, sibilant and snarling—the tongue of the dragons. Fire erupted across the whole top of the island, brightly burning and furious. Pol’s own clothes burned away, though the flames left his skin untouched. Issalia’s clothes burned too, and the flesh beneath them. She screamed and fell, burning and bound once again, collapsing in on herself like a building devoured by an inferno. Gold and black, burned and burnished, a jeweled figurine once more.
The flames subsided around Pol, though he could still feel them burning within. He crossed the short distance to the place where Issalia had fallen. As he lifted the statuette, the woman’s screams seemed to ring in his ears once again and he could feel her pain in the depths of his own soul, feel exactly what her imprisonment meant to her, feel the absolute despair that bound her as firmly as any spell.
More than anything, he wanted to fling the statuette
into the sea, to let it go unchanged, and never have anything to do with the binding of souls again. But if he did, he might as well just concede the world to Henry Spier then and there. As long as the Keys existed as Keys the risk to this world, his world, would stand. If Spier was allowed to break the seal between the worlds, a hundred million souls would drown in the corruption of the elder gods.
Pol spoke the words of binding, reshaping the Key to hell into a Ward against the falling dark. They were the hardest words he’d ever said, knowing as he did the price for saving all those souls from the darkness was the darkening of his own.
*
I watched suspiciously as my accursed master set the jeweled figurine on the table beside Mouseglove’s couch. I’d had contact with the little monstrosities before and hadn’t liked it in the least. Worse, the thing was clearly responsible for the weight that seemed to have settled on Pol’s shoulders.
“You say that this is on your side now?” Mouseglove tilted his head to the side dubiously.
“Not exactly. It’s on the side of. . .call it stasis. The other six exist to increase the power of magic in this world, and the most effective way to do that is to throw wide the gates of Prodromolu, the opener of the way, and let the magic of the old ones enter and drown ours. Now, Issalia has been retasked to maintain things as they are. As long as that remains my goal, she will serve me.”
“Those things are dangerous tools, Pol, and liable to turn in your hand. You’d do better to leave them all bound at Avinconet.”
“I wish I could, I really do. But this is the only way I can see to defeat Spier and prevent the gate from opening. I took a big step in that direction with Issalia here. A very big step indeed, though there are more to come.”
Mouseglove frowned. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Pol.”
“So do I, old friend. So do I.”
I left them then, to fetch another bottle of wine—theirs would soon be empty—and to ponder on the ways of men. My master seemed harder and colder than before, but when I looked into the fires of his heart I still saw the same Pol Detson I had always served. There was a lesson there, if I could only figure it out.
Shadows & Reflections: A Roger Zelazny Tribute Anthology Page 6